EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

From a life in Camphill communities working with people with disabilities, to a career in agriculture and food systems, to her current field of educational spaces, a throughline in Kam’s life is a dedication to creating living environments in which people can practice new ways of being. How do we want to be—with ourselves, with each other, and with the earth? Kam is excited about Springboard because it works to ensure young people have opportunities to “imagine (and make real) otherwise.” From communal living to governing their daily life and the world around them, Springboard is about developing practice grounds in which young people can create the world they want to inhabit.

Kam feels passionately about the power of connected relationships to create long-lasting and meaningful change. She has served as the inaugural Executive Director of 3 successful non-profits and earned an MBA from Yale School of Management. With grounded idealism, Kam loves working with forward-thinking individuals and groups to envision and forge new paths.

DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH

Grace comes to the Springboard team from on-the-ground work in the microcollege world. She helped build Outer Coast (a nascent liberal arts college in the rural island community of Sitka, Alaska) in its early years through fundraising, program design, and supporting students in communal living and self-governance, and remains involved in special projects.

She went on to build infrastructure for several early-stage education projects that think differently about what school can be – including The Burke Middle School in Boston, and Workshop U community college in Philadelphia.

At Springboard, Grace leads strategic planning on our research initiatives, and helps tell the story of our partner institutes through qualitative research and narrative ‘portraiture’ that helps their impact come alive and sing.

Grace graduated from Stanford University, and received her M.Ed in education leadership from Harvard.

BOARD PRESIDENT

Christopher Nye has a PhD in American Studies and has been a professor and then dean. After leaving higher education, he moved to Orion Magazine to serve eventually as board chair and acting CEO. He also is vice president of an operating foundation, The Myrin Institute, and manages its nature preserve. He is co-founder of Educate the Whole Child and is a children's author and published poet. From early in his teaching career, when he taught a course called "Strategies for Social Change," Chris has had a keen interest in visualizing more just, creative, and humane ways for people to live together, and at the same time ways to prepare and empower young leaders who want to seize this challenge.  His book, Beyond Tomorrow – Planning a New Civilization, envisions a world transformed through education in ways consistent with the Springboard initiative.

BOARD VICE PRESIDENT

Jean Nye works as a consultant and coach to individual leaders in businesses and non-profits. Majoring in art history, she started her career leading a children’s museum and doing research into early-childhood learning and play. She transitioned to high tech, using her MBA during 19 years at Hewlett Packard before becoming the first head of Human Resources for the HP spin-off Agilent Technologies, responsible for the cultural transformation of the new company as it established its distinct identity and leadership practices. She works as a director of several non-profit organizations, including Canterbury Shaker Village and Safe Schools New Hampshire. She aims to be an encourager, guiding others to know and apply their gifts and aspirations to serving their communities and the planet. She is a founding director of Springboard.

BOARD SECRETARY

Elizabeth Lynch holds an Ed.D. in Literacy Studies from Hofstra University. Her experience in education includes a 26 year career in elementary education, from which she retired in 2015, as well as 20 years as an adjunct professor of education. She is the author of a chapter in Resisting Reform: Reclaiming Public Education through Grassroots Activism (2015), which documents her journey as an outspoken education activist resisting policies and mandates that are harmful to children. Her current participation as part of the leadership team at Educate the Whole Child and as a board member of Springboard reflects her belief in holistic education and in meeting the unique needs of each individual student, at every level of their education. She currently teaches an on-line course on Fundamentals of Teaching the Whole Child at Castleton University

BOARD MEMBER

Chris Higgins is a philosopher of education who has spent his career championing humane educational values displaced by privatization, instrumentalism, and a shallow conception of personhood. In his teaching and writing, he has defended the idea of education as a public good; explored the ethical and existential dimensions of teaching and learning; rearticulated the aims of liberal education, and advanced a capacious vision of vocational enactment. In his recent book, Undeclared: A Philosophy of Formative Higher Education,he shows both the difficulty and the necessity of educating the whole person. Chris is the founding Chair of the Department of Formative Education in the Lynch School of Education and Human Development at Boston College, where his research teamexplores the history and contemporary landscape of experimental higher education.

BOARD MEMBER

Matt lives by the mantra, “Do what you love; Do it now.”  When not teaching or developing creative ways to engage special education learners in Pittsfield, you can often find Matt singing in the Berkshire Lyric Chorus or riding his bike—sometimes for charity, or sometimes helping Mass DOT and his students as part of the Safe Routes to School program.  Matt is a former school principal with an MA in School Leadership from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.  He completed his undergraduate work at Amherst College and went on to study Developmental Psychology at UC Berkeley. A father of two, Matt founded with his two sons an interfaith Young People's Fellowship to support youth volunteerism in the community.