ALL OUR KIDS - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Deputy Director
- Member of the Staff and Board
Nothing makes Carolyn happier than seeing the AOK artists reach for their dreams. Carolyn has worked in both the for-profit and nonprofit sectors with a background in planning and logistics. Her passions are marketing, networking and convincing others to help her make positive change in the world.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder
- Executive Director
- Member of the Board
- Member of the Staff and Board
David is grateful to have the opportunity AOK artists extend to him every day to mentor and learn-and so much more. It turns out that David's career turning start-ups into successes is the perfect fit for leading AOK. Committed to following his heart and taking on the hard work to make it all happen, David's leadership roles in the nonprofit and business worlds have prepared him to make good on AOK's commitment to creating equity for the young artists it serves.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Staff and Board
- Intern
Eduarda Tartaglia joins AOK Arts as a summer intern from Argentina! Edu, as she is known to her friends, grew up in Minas Gerais, Brazil and is fluent in Portuguese, Spanish and English. She moved to Argentina to attend The University of Buenos Aires where she has a double major in anthropology and psychology. Edu believes we can learn a lot about people through their food, music, politics and art. While in school, Edu works full time in the restaurant industry and plans someday to create an innovative space that brings people together. AOK Arts will draw on her passion for culture and the culinary arts while she is with us this summer and help us expand our community presence on the Cape.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Staff and Board
- Intern
Haven Rhodd hails from Prince George's County, Maryland and is a long-time member of the AOK community, and we are so proud to be a part of her chosen family. Haven will be helping us spread the word about AOK online exhibitions and in general make sure our fabulous young artists get all the attention they deserve. Haven is a visual artist with a career in youth advocacy and community organizing. She graduated in 2018 with a bachelor's degree in Psychology and will be beginning her dual master's degree program in Public Administration and Nonprofit Management in the Fall of 2021. Currently, Haven is developing a youth mentorship program for underprivileged teens to provide them with the support they need to matriculate through high school and secure post-secondary education. Haven's hobbies include writing, singing, and painting. Her art style includes watercolor and acrylic to create representational art with her own personal spin.
Job Titles:
- Emeritus of the Board
- Member of the Staff and Board
Karen likes to engage in conversation about all things political and the importance of showing up and participating in the democratic process. Having watched Kathy and David mentor and love their amazing kids, she considers it a gift to provide warmth (literally with a fireplace heater!) and support for this amazing family. Cooking is an important theme and crab cakes, compliments of her Aunt Jeannetta's recipe, is her specialty. For the past 30 years she has had the honor of working for the premiere civil rights coalition working to make an America as good as its ideals. She is also wife to Warner, mother to Lauren and Jay, and Nana to Sakile, Kimathi and Sankara.
Job Titles:
- Chairman of the Board
- Co - Founder
- Member of the Staff and Board
- Founders
AOK founders Kathy Fletcher and David Simpson have been supporting young creative people-all of whom have enormous potential but too little support-for many years. In the summer of 2016 they formed AOK, a 501c3 nonprofit organization, in order to provide more comprehensive support to the young artists they were supporting.
Kathy loves to nurture the potential in everyone, feed large crowds, keep plants flourishing, and coach teens on overcoming challenges large and small. David is constantly amused as he watches his wife re-create her childhood home with nine brothers and sisters. By day, Kathy is Executive Director at Silkroad, the arts organization founded by Yo-Yo Ma. Previously, she was the founding National Director of Turnaround Arts, a program of the John F Kennedy Center of the Performing Arts, that uses the arts to engage students and teachers and turn around under-performing schools across the US.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board
- Member of the Staff and Board
A native Washingtonian, Lisa raised her sons during the trying 80s and 90s along with more than a dozen of their friends who frequented her home regularly for hot meals and a safe haven. For over three decades Lisa has supported the dreams and ambitions of her family, friends, and community. Her recipe for compassion begins with a plate of her famous fried chicken wings. Wings and a smile are Lisa's true and tried recipe for breaking the ice and beginning a friendship. She believes in the old adage, "it takes a village…," and just as there were many "villagers" in her journey; hopes to give back in as many ways as possible. In her spare time, Lisa is membership director for The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and loves to spend time with her grandchildren Kayla, Jaylon, Lauren and Aiden. An adventurer at heart, Lisa also enjoys karate in her leisure time.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board
- Member of the Staff and Board
Michael feels blessed by opportunities afforded to him in life and welcomes the opportunity to help others in the ways he was helped. As the son of an OB/GYN, Michael was born in Los Angeles and raised in the Virgin Islands. He attended college at Johns Hopkins University, medical school at Cornell, and did his residency in anesthesiology Emory University in Atlanta. He now practices in Bethesda. With his mother's side of the family hailing from Louisiana and his father's from Trinidad and Tobago, Michael is happy to bring his multicultural background (and taste buds) to the AOK table. Always drawn to the arts, Michael has a deep respect for the dedication artists have to their craft and is awed by the impressive talents of our kids. He admires their commitment to self-expression, living authentically, and ability to communicate themselves through their various mediums. Michael is into biking, running, general fitness, and eating well and believes we should take care of our bodies inside and out.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board
- Member of the Staff and Board
- Director of Energy and Environment Programs for Emerson Collective
Nicole is the Director of Energy and Environment Programs for Emerson Collective, a social change organization founded and led by Laurene Powell Jobs. Prior to Emerson, Nicole was the Managing Director of the Aspen Institute's Energy and Environment Program where she led and managed the team and the program's thought leadership convenings, outcome driven policy dialogues, and events on topics ranging from clean energy innovation to global food security to high-level change dialogues with India and China. Nicole grew up in Alaska and spent her young adult life dancing in San Francisco. She's passionate about the role public art and cultural performance can have in the public discourse and is the co-founder of CubaCaribe, an organization that preserves and promotes Caribbean arts and culture. She now keeps busy hosting dance parties in her living room for her 3 boys!
Job Titles:
- Emeritus of the Board
- Member of the Staff and Board
Sara loves to provide tips on parenting college students (having gotten her only daughter through college), leads shopping excursions, and gives solicited and unsolicited general advice on the ways of the world. Besides doing all of AOK's legal work, she cooks, as Aunties often do, and is recognized for her cheesecakes (well, David recognizes her anyway). During the day she is a lawyer with a civil rights law firm, after retiring from the federal government in 2015 as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Enforcement and Programs at HUD's fair housing office. For even more fun she advocates for affordable housing preservation and maintains a garden at her church.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board
- Member of the Staff and Board
Stefanie brings energy, creativity and her entrepreneurial spirit to the AOK board. As a co-founder of her own small business www.in2green.com, Stefanie is a serial marketer as well as a closet architect, handling many custom real estate projects over the years. Stefanie is looking forward to the challenges of growing AOK and finding the ideal space to house future expansion activities. Short term, Stef will help bring the talents of the group forward with yearly Friends' Giving* and strengthen ties to her alma mater Hampshire College's James Baldwin Scholarship. Rob Sigal is in the wings to dance, sing and take "our kids" to dinner. Both believers of the power of the dinner table, Stefanie and Rob have two grown daughters, who live out of state, giving them extra reason to engage with local AOK kids.