Amanda Boyd, Co-Executive Director of Liberatory Education (she/her) amanda@kitesnest.org
Amanda M Boyd is the Co-Executive Director of Kite’s Nest. She has spent most of her career serving youth in schools, summer camps, after school programs and youth clubs in New York City, Long Island, and the Capital Region. She comes to Kite’s Nest after almost 7 years supporting the strengthening of access to resources for youth and their families in the South End of Albany through implementation of the Community Schools Strategy. Through her studies and experience in many learning spaces, Amanda has developed a deep interest and desire to explore ways to engage youth in learning rooted in joy, and exploration, while tending to their hearts and hopes. An educator and stationer, Amanda brings with her to Kite’s Nest a love for correspondence through handwritten notes, poetry and making art outdoors. She enjoys spending time in and near the water and sending postcards to loved ones while traveling.
Claire Cousin, Director of Youth Power (she/her) claire@kitesnest.org
Claire Cousin is a community organizer, artist, and fierce advocate in our community. Growing up in a working-class family in Hudson has shaped her belief that youth deserve not just support, but power, voice, and room to imagine beyond their circumstances. Claire is returning to Kite’s Nest as Director of Youth Power, marking a homecoming after years of deepening her experience as an organizer, educator, and public servant. In this role, she will bring decades of youth leadership, mentorship, and movement-building into a bold, future-focused vision. She will lead and teach within the Social Justice Leadership Academy, which she helped found through her early work with the Staley B. Keith Social Justice Center. Claire’s path in youth work began as a teenager at the Staley B. Keith Social Justice Center, where she grew from participant to program builder, leading children’s workshops, founding Space 101 at Kite’s Nest, co-creating the Social Justice Leadership Academy, and helping secure local juvenile justice reforms that established real alternatives to incarceration. Her work spans education, housing justice, and public service. Claire co-founded and served as Executive Director of the Hudson/Catskill Housing Coalition, made history as the first Black woman elected to the Columbia County Legislature, and now serves as the 5th Ward Councilperson for the City of Hudson, advocating for working families and community-centered policy. A mother of three, singer, and poet, Claire brings creativity, honesty, and care to everything she does. At her core, she is committed to building spaces where young people feel seen, protected, and powerful.
Early Shinada, Development & Grants Manager early@kitesnest.org
As our Development & Grants Manager, Early works to grow Kite’s Nest’s capacity to support our youth and educators. Early’s approach to fundraising centers relationships, community building, and expanding possibilities for collective thriving.
Kaya Weidman, Co-Executive Director of Resource Mobilization (she/her) kaya@kitesnest.org
Kaya is a co-founder and Co-Executive Director of Kite’s Nest. As an educator at Kite’s Nest, Kaya has taught woodworking for girls, the history of social movements, urban gardening, and digital journalism to children and teens. Kaya began living in Columbia County two decades ago as a land steward and farmer, when she started a collectively-run CSA called Germantown Community Farm on land that is now home to Sweet Freedom Farm. After traveling throughout Mexico and the US teaching about radio production and transmission as a tool for organizing and empowerment, she co-founded the local community radio station, WGXC 90.7-FM, Hands-On Radio in 2008. She served as the station's Director of Community Engagement, and chaired the governing council. Growing up, Kaya was supported to have agency about her own educational path, and she’s passionate about supporting young people to have the power to make choices about where and how they learn. A lifelong self-directed learner, Kaya’s favorite moments involve opportunities to share, learn and build with others.
Vanessa Baehr, Operations & Admin Coordinator, (she/her) vanessa@kitesnest.org
Vanessa is passionate about working with local youth organizations by helping to support programming opportunities and connecting families to community resources. She began working with Hudson youth in 2011 as a hula-hoop instructor, environmental educator, and served as co-director of the former Hudson Community Garden. She has served on a variety of local advisory boards and loves feeling like she is making a direct impact in her community’s future. Vanessa finds great joy in organizing events, people, and spaces for connection, learning, and growth and loves being a part of creating a sense of belonging and comfort. She is incredibly inspired by witnessing youth find themselves through education and expression. In her free time she can often be found trying to identify all the plants, hiking, reading, roller-skating, and crafting.
Kenn Pan, Environmental Justice Director (they/them) kenn@kitesnest.org
Kenn Pan is the Environmental Justice Director supporting the ReGen Teens program with the regenerative and ecological work of land stewardship and environmental justice in caring for the community garden, compost initiative and site restoration. Holding the core values of food sovereignty, access and justice for the program, they aim to interweave the ReGen program with the local community and empower the teens through entrepreneurship and education based in foodways and craft.
Zebi Williams, Capacity Building Consultant (she/her) zebi@kitesnest.org
At the age of eighteen, Zebi founded the Lil Ragamuffin Summer Camp in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica where she grew up. The camp grew to be recognized as one of the top arts programs in the country. Zebi has also worked as a community organizer in a range of contexts, advocating for young people to be agents of change in the development of their communities. She is a founding member of the Sista-2-Sista Youth Summit, an annual event built to empower and connect young women of Pan-African descent in Brooklyn, Jamaica, and Ghana. And she has worked with public housing residents and small businesses in the Lower East Side to organize against gentrification. Zebi’s education methodology emphasizes teaching to different learning styles, creating platforms for both indigenous and western based knowledge systems, celebrating teachable moments, redesigning community approaches to conflict resolution, and promoting community rituals to help ground children in local stewardship at every age. A lifelong learner, Zebi’s skills and interests are truly wide-ranging. She has a degree in Applied Anthropology, holds a certificate in UX Design and Design Thinking Methodologies, and recently won her first hackathon. Coming from a family of artists, Zebi’s own art includes poetry, fashion/jewelry design, filmmaking, graphic design and interactive data art.
Samantha Gloffke, Operations Director (she/they) sam@kitesnest.org
Samantha Gloffke is our Operations Director at Kite’s Nest. Her focus is on supporting Kite’s Nest staff and community members by managing behind-the-scenes processes and communications. For many years, Sam honed her operations management skills in the food world; prior to that, she worked as a caretaker for young people, families, and elders. Sam is passionate about tuning in: listening closely for the needs of an individual or group and offering up the reflections, care, and resources that may be needed to support connection, creativity, and visionary action. She loves painting, cooking, carving block prints, working with clay and found treasures, cultivating warm spaces, heart-to-hearts, intergenerational bonding, making and sharing playlists, and written, oral, and visual storytelling. She is deeply invested in the collective work of building joyful, imaginative, abolitionist futures.