Beyond Better Together: A Vision for Community Wellbeing Through Collaboration

Diana will share successes and lessons learned from Better Together, an eight-year countywide youth mental health initiative funded by the Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin Endowment.  She will outline the vision for a new partnership between Great Rivers United Way and the Mental Health Coalition of Greater La Crosse, aiming to build on this foundation to address resource gaps, reduce stigma, and promote community-wide wellbeing.   

 

Bio: Diana DiazGranados is the Community Wellbeing Director at Great Rivers United Way, a newly established position aimed at fostering community mental wellness in partnership with the Mental Health Coalition of Greater La Crosse. She previously led Better Together, an eight-year youth mental health initiative, where her leadership significantly advanced strategies for increasing mental health literacy, resilience and community collaboration to support youth.

With extensive experience in community-level prevention, Diana enjoys working with organizations and communities to identify assets, address needs, and use data-driven approaches to inform decision-making. She began her career as a community health worker with the U.S. Peace Corps in Lesotho, southern Africa, and holds dual master’s degrees in social work and public health from Columbia University in New York. She is also a certified Mental Health First Aid trainer.

Diana’s global work includes leading the mental health response for International Medical Corps in Kosovo during the 1999 war, where she developed the nation’s first youth-focused trauma recovery program. She has also worked in Bangladesh, Guatemala, and Bulgaria, bringing a cross-cultural lens to her work.

Diana and her husband Rob Wayss moved to Onalaska in 2009 with their 2 kids.  Married for 31 years, they are proud parents to Simon and Alexandra, both students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.