Amanda Boyd, Director of Liberatory Education (she/her)
Amanda M Boyd is the Director of Liberatory Education at 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.
Donnay Edmund, Social Justice Leadership Academy Director (they/she)
Dreamer. Daughter. Dancer. Lover. Movement fairy. Earth adoring. Liberation believing. Donnay is a Brooklyn born Black Femme, raised by a collective of single, working class mothers. Donnay is an educator working towards collective liberation. She believes in transformative justice and the power of imagination to create new worlds full of justice and love.With a brother in and out of prison, her deep analysis of the prison industrial complex is fueled by her complex personal experience. She trusts in the power of art and organizing to help us all envision a future where all our complex love-centered imaginations can flourish. Donnay believes that we have the ability to care for one another as we unlearn oppressive ideas and remember and create new practices for communal care. She joins the amazing team at Kite's Nest as she works to center healing justice, popular education, and anti-oppressive organizing to create a more just world. She is also a multidisciplinary artist; she fluidly moves from the realms of dance, theatre, and storytelling to somatics, yoga, and herbalism and seamlessly interweaves these elements into the cultural throughline of her work. Her practice explores the connection of mind, body, spirit, land, and ancestral healing.
Early Shinada, Development and Grants Manager (they/them)
As our Development & Grants Manager, Early works to grow Kite’s Nest’s capacity to support our youth and educators. Early brings nearly two decades of engagement in social movements to this role, and their approach to fundraising centers relationships, community building, and expanding possibilities for collective liberation. They are also an interdisciplinary artist and writer whose work scavenges history to find new futures..
Kaya Weidman, Executive Director (she/her)
Kaya is a co-founder and 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.
Natasha Strickland, Environmental Justice Program Director and Starr Seed Healing Project Coordinator (she/her)
Natasha Strickland is vibrant soul who dances to the beat of her own drums, following her intuitions and heart along the way. A lover of nature, a child of the moon, a healer, a mother, and a teacher, Natasha has dedicated almost 15 years in restorative justices practices and therapeutic crisis intervention. She has helped shape the lives of countless at-risk youth throughout multiple regional counties. Natasha became an Assistant Director of a residential program, overseeing the day to day operations of six different locations, making sure that each location was person-centered and focused on improving the lives of people who live with disabilities. With her avid love of gardening and growing vegetables, as well as sharing part of her harvest to local community members to promote healthier eating, she became a farmer. She founded and owns Moon Gypsy Farms, a farm in its beta phase, with a vision of offering sliding scale pricing as well as donating a large portion of her harvest to BIPOC communities. She believes that eating healthy is a right and too many people are forced to choose a less healthier food option because of cost and she aims to change that.
Samantha Gloffke, Admin and Operations Director (she/they)
Samantha Gloffke is our Admin & Operations Manager 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, block-printing, 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.
Sharece Johnson, Arts and Media Program Director (she/her)
Born in Queens, NY, Sharece moved to Hudson when she was eight years old. Sharece has a B.A. in Communications from the University at Albany, an Associate’s Degree in Arts from Columbia Greene Community College, and is a graduate of Hudson High School. Sharece runs afterschool and break camp arts and media programs at Kite’s Nest and has been a Lead Educator for the Social Justice Leadership Academy since 2016. Prior to joining Kite’s Nest, Sharece had significant experience working with children and teenagers. She has worked as a Child Mentor for Americorps with the Greater Hudson Promise Neighborhood in Hudson, a Youth Mentor with the Liberty Partnership Program in Albany, a Program Assistant at the Boy’s & Girls Club in Albany, a Counselor of the Catskill Kids Club, and with the Hudson Bluehawk Nation After School Program. In these programs she’s led classes in improvisation, facilitated girl circles, run glee clubs, led community games, and more. Sharece is a passionate educator, musician, singer, artist, and community volunteer. With appreciation for the counselors and mentors in her own life, Sharece is dedicated to being a source of strength to the young people growing up in her community.
Zebi Williams, Capacity Building Consultant (she/her)
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. Zebi is also the mother of a Kite’s Nest alum, Zia!