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Meet Our Team
Alyce Hartman
Founder & Executive Director
Alyce Hartman has over a decade of teaching and non-profit experience. She is a passionate urban educator and curriculum developer with a creative writing and literacy background. She served as the Director of Education at MACC Development for five years, currently teaches K-4th grade STEM at Detroit Prep, is the Mack Kids Director at Mack Avenue Community Church, and Founder & Executive Director of
Birdie's Bookmobile.
While still in high school, Alyce attended American University in Washington, D.C., and later attended The Ohio State University. She majored in Journalism and minored in Political Science and Art History.
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She is honored to follow in the footsteps of family members who forged the path generations before as college professors, principals, and educators and attributes her love of learning to her mother, who was an elementary school teacher, her maternal grandmother, who held her master's degree in home economics and her paternal grandmother, who held her master's degree in psychiatric social work and had a longstanding career in youth development.
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Alyce is a lifelong learner, changemaker, and legacy educator.
Jen Kinney
Board Member
Jen Kinney is a writer, podcaster, peacemaker, and disruptor. She is a social media marketing strategist with 15 years of experience working in anti-trafficking, including communications for a non-profit anti-trafficking organization in China.
In 2012, after the killing of Trayvon Martin, she began digging deeper into the topic of race in the US, which started her journey into anti-racism. Along the way, Jen discovered her love for podcasting and launched several podcasts, including her current project, Story Power Podcast.
Jen believes in the power of story to change the world and finds immense joy in the collective movement toward co-liberation.
Lindsey Novack
Board Member
Lindsey Novack is an outdoor enthusiast, and holistic wellness specialist. She specializes in Lymphatic drainage , Myomassology, and negative pressure therapy. As a holistic healer, she is passionate about nutrition, movement, and alternative methods for pain management. She’s a mother of two and small business owner who believes a love for lifelong learning starts as a child.
"The more we can encourage our youth to have a love for reading, storytelling, and the outdoors the more it fosters a connection with the people around us and the wonders the world has to offer."
Lindsey believes education is the doorway to endless possibilities and that throughout our lives, we should never stop learning and growing.
Ashley Biondi
Board Member
Ashley McDaniel is Vivian Banks meets bell hooks. She has been working in the nonprofit space since 2001. She began her work at The James House in Richmond, VA, continued through her executive team membership in university organizations such as C.A.R.E. and "Take Back the Night," as well as an eventual tenure with BRIDGES, in Franklin, TN. Ashley also had the pleasure of instructing adults who live with autism through Williamson County TN's "Literacy Council." She is proud that each adult in that program was able to earn their GED! One of her fondest personal and professional experiences is her participation as a teacher in one of Marian Wright Edelman's Freedom School sites. Protecting and empowering children through literacy is a mission Ashley believes in staunchly and personally.
Ashley studied English Literature and Women’ Studies at James Madison University and is a current Paralegal Student. As a former debate nerd, she is notorious for giving the answers to all questions in long form. Ashley also has a propensity towards cooking something delightful and not remembering what ingredients she used, spontaneous bouts of dance, book huffing, and impassioned rants. She is a proud mother of bold thinkers, voracious readers, and world changers. Ashley's general modus operandi is that good books, good music, fun shoes and treating others well will take you to most places you want to go in life.
Esther Yang
Board Member
Bio coming soon!