It should come as no surprise that the Denver Metro Chamber Leadership Foundation has named Jesse Ogas its 2021 9News Leader of the Year. The CEO and Executive Director of Firefly Autism has had a hand in raising nearly $20 million for Denver-area nonprofits over the past 30 years.
But every aspect of his story along the way is surprising. And heartbreaking. And inspiring.
Ogas, the living antidote to cynicism, is not your prototypical businessman. He’s also a doting grandfather, passionate actor and survivor of childhood physical and sexual abuse. A man who somehow grew out of a culture deeply engrained in generational machismo to proudly embrace his identity as a gay man at age 26, after having married and fathered two children.
Most people know Ogas as a man with a boundlessly open heart for the vulnerable. “A voice for the voiceless,” he says. Among the many communities he has championed are the Colorado AIDS Project; the Latina SafeHouse; Clinica Tepeyac Community Health Center; ARC Thrift Stores; Adam's Camp for special-needs children; NEWSED Community Development Corporation for low-income housing; and Su Teatro, the performing-arts center that has served as his artistic home for nearly 20 years.
Ogas’ life could have turned tragic at any of a dozen turns. Instead, he has survived and thrived and is embracing life at 61 with the infectiously affable joy of a much younger man. Not in spite of all he has overcome. Because of it.
“My experiences make me the person I am today, and make me empathetic to the plight of so many others,” he said.
Ogas was born into domestic violence in New Mexico. His mother, just a girl of 16, endured horrific beatings from Jesse’s father. “When I was 4, I would stand in front of my mom and wrap my arms around her legs behind me thinking I could protect her from being hit,” Ogas said. “Instead, my father would knock me across the room.”
Later, when his father caught Jesse’s brother, Thomas, smoking, he punished him by making him smoke an entire pack of cigarettes – then burned his lip with a lit butt.
Ogas’ Catholic godfather, his own father’s best friend, won Jesse’s trust, in part by protecting him from his father’s violence – then began sexually abusing Jesse when he was 9. “It wasn’t until I was 18, watching an episode of Donahue, that I learned how prevalent child molestation really was,” Ogas said. “That was the first time that I was able to say, ‘Oh my God, it wasn’t my fault.’ And I just started bawling.
“It’s a horrific part of my past, but I grew from that experience because it made me compassionate about making a difference, so that no other child would ever feel the pain, the anguish and the fear that I did.”
His rock throughout his life was his mother, who had four children. “She taught me that within each of us, we have the power to change the outcome of our lives, and there’s no bad thing that cannot result in good,” Ogas said. “She never took time for self-pity.” Not even in December, when, at 76, she became one of the half-million Americans who have died from COVID.
Ogas studied business at Western New Mexico University, moved to Denver and became a rising shaker in local retail after working for May D&F, Mervyns and others. He was managing Sears’ Southglenn branch when he discovered Su Teatro, quit his job and enrolled at Metropolitan State University of Denver to study theater with his then 18-year-old son, Jordan.
"The higher up I got in the corporate realm, the more apparent it was that I just was not connected to who I really am," said Ogas. "I made a lot of money. But Su Teatro ignited something in me. And if I had never found it, I would still be at Sears."
Su Teatro, now in its 50th year, was born at the height of the civil-rights movement and has been telling homegrown stories that speak to the history and experience of Chicanos ever since. Without Su Teatro, Ogas said, “The identity of the Chicano population absolutely would have been lost by now.”
Over the years, Ogas has played a number of deliciously bombastic and uncharacteristically evil roles, his favorites including Narciso in Su Teatro's original musical “The Sun That You Are,” a bilingual reimagining of the Greek Orpheus-Eurydice myth infused with Aztec traditions. He’s most proud of being part of the world-premiere adaptation of Rudolfo Anaya’s controversial coming-of-age drama, “Bless Me, Ultima.”
His time on the stage has made Ogas a more effective business leader because, he says, “Art allows us to tap into all aspects of humanity, and to understand who we are as a people. But it also gives us the creativity to think outside the box and to come up with solutions no one has thought of before.”
In 2013, Ogas joined Firefly Autism and became its Executive Director the next year. Firefly's purpose is to transform the lives of children and adults on the spectrum through lifelong treatment and learning programs. "When we got started back in 2003, the rate of autism diagnosis was around 1 in every 200 children," Ogas said. "Today, it is 1 in 54.” That’s partly because the definition of the autism umbrella has expanded, pediatricians are getting better at recognizing the condition and, Ogas said, “We are getting better at educating African American and Latino families on what autism is by hosting bilingual workshops that break down cultural stereotypes.”
After a $5 million capital campaign, Firefly Autism recently moved into a vacant school in Lakewood where the number of children they can serve on-site will soon triple to 120. There are also staff working out in the field, new support groups for adults and plans to open a center in Colorado Springs. “While other organizations were closing their doors, we actually grew during the pandemic,” Ogas said. “We have 108 employees working with up to 150 individuals at any given time.”
Ogas is already hard at work on the non-profit’s 10th annual “Laugh Yourself Blue,” a virtual and in-person gala emceed by comedian (and autism parent) D.L. Hughley that is expected to raise $1 million for Firefly Autism on June 24 from the Denver Center's Seawell Ballroom.
Ogas hopes the message anyone takes from his unlikely life story is to always be open to failure. “Because often when people fail, they just stop altogether,” he said. “When I fail, I learn from it. And I don’t give up until I conquer and surpass whatever it was that kept me from winning in the first place.”
