Location: In-Person, Hudson, NY
Position: Full-time
Schedule: M-F with occasional weekends
Start Date: January 2026
Applications Due: November 24, 2025
Kite’s Nest is a center for liberatory education in Hudson, NY. We are a small organization, currently run by a core team of 7 full time staff members; each semester we are joined by a seasonal crew of contract educators and volunteers. We are looking for a full-time Director of Youth Power to join our team.
Kite’s Nest runs the Social Justice Leadership Academy (SJLA), a year-round political home for teenagers, including both a weekly after school space and 5-week summer intensive. Now in its 12th year, SJLA combines transformative political education and hands-on arts programming, bringing youth together to connect, create, grieve, heal, learn, play, and organize. The program centers youth of color, immigrant youth, queer youth, low-income youth, and court-involved youth in our community.
The Director of Youth Power leads this powerful program and supports youth-led organizing and campaigns throughout the year. The Director of Youth Power will work closely with our experienced team of educators to coordinate all aspects of SJLA and our youth organizing programming: overseeing the program schedule and teaching staff, collaborating on the development of and working within the parameters of the SJLA program budget; collaborating to design creative curriculum and political education workshops for teens; leading group activities during after school and summer sessions; building meaningful relationships with youth; providing one-on-one mentorship to youth organizers; and supporting youth-led campaigns throughout the year. We are seeking someone with a passion and talent for supporting the creative power, collective leadership, and joy of youth.
The person in this role will report to the Co-Executive Director of Liberatory Education.
Responsibilities include:
- Manage all aspects of SJLA program:
- Collaborate with contract educators, partners, and Youth Staff to design after school and summer curriculum, including experiential learning activities, group discussions, arts projects, campaign development, community actions, and field trips.
- Coordinate program planning for SJLA, facilitating planning meetings with SJLA adult and alumni educators and coordinating with youth program advisors.
- Co-develop and manage SJLA program budget with support from our Co Executive Director of Resource Mobilization; manage purchases and supply inventory within budget parameters; maintain and submit purchasing records for bookkeeping purposes
- Support in interviewing, hiring, and training teen Youth Staff and young adult Alumni Staff; supervise and provide leadership development for Youth and Alumni Staff.
- Hire, train, and supervise lead educators, guest educators and teaching artists. Coordinate partnerships and field trips with community partners, including youth organizing groups, social justice organizations, activists and artists in the Hudson Valley, the Capital Region, and New York City.
- Help facilitate restorative and transformative practices and peer mediation as needed.
- Facilitate regular feedback sessions and program evaluation with Youth Staff and young adult Alumni Staff.
- Support youth-led organizing and campaigns:
- Facilitate creative curriculum and political education workshops for SJLA teens to support their development as thriving youth leaders.
- Partner with SJLA youth to design and lead campaigns for policy change, supporting teens to identify issues impacting their lives, co-develop and conduct Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) projects, develop campaign strategy and goals, connect with local and statewide partners, create media, organize public actions, attend political events, and mobilize community participation.
- Provide mentorship to youth organizers in our programs.
- Lead occasional creative political education workshops at high schools and with other youth organizations in Columbia and Greene counties.
- Represent Kite’s Nest at relevant city meetings and events related to local, regional, and statewide organizing.
- General responsibilities
- Develop and maintain seasonal work plans
- Contribute to program reports for grant reporting, applications and end-of-year documentation
- Participation in occasional organizational fundraising events
- Develop and provide broad-level strategic visioning for the program, with support from the Co-Executive Director of Liberatory Education
- Document and contribute social media and archival content telling the story of program activities
- Optional participation in various staff committees
The successful candidate will demonstrate:
- Alignment with Kite’s Nest core values
- A personal commitment to anti-oppression and social justice work
- A love of and respect for young people, and ability to collaborate with them in a multi-generational workplace
- Clear, direct, kind, and principled communication skills
- Experience building healthy relationships and communication within multiracial teams
- Experience with social justice education, youth work, community organizing, and/or art as a tool for liberation (including work related to education justice, housing justice, LGBTQIA+ rights, immigrant justice, racial justice, community organizing, youth-led change, etc.)
- Experience with program coordination and/or management; highly organized, and able to manage logistics and communications related to program coordination.
- Experience and skill facilitating restorative and transformative approaches to conflict and communication among youth
- Experience with Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) projects
- Familiarity with experiential, creative, project-based education and curriculum design; training and/or experience in group facilitation with youth.
- Experience training educators, providing leadership development, and supporting others to develop facilitation skills and confidence is a plus.
- An ability to work with a team as both a leader and collaborator, and a commitment to supporting healthy communication, feedback culture, and group dynamics.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills including being a timely, respectful, and consistent communicator within a team
- Comfortable and experienced in giving and receiving constructive feedback
- A deep respect for teenagers, and joy working with teenagers; an interest in supporting young people in developing their own passions, leadership skills, and pathways forward; and a commitment to healing-centered youth engagement.
- An ability to serve as a mentor and role model to youth, to build meaningful relationships, and to bring positive energy and enthusiasm to a group environment.
- Preference will be given to candidates who can commit to 5 or more years in this position; we are looking for someone interested in building relationships with our youth to strengthen and grow our program for the long-term.
Compensation: This is a full time exempt position. Pay is $62,500/year with a full-time benefit package, including paid vacation, $200/month housing stipend, wellness/sick days, professional development funds, wellness fund, & employer-funded ethical 401(k) plan. Fully-covered health, vision, dental, life, and accident insurance.
Schedule: Full-time position, M-F with occasional weekends
School year program days (2 days/wk): 11:30am-7:30pm
Non-program days: 10am-6pm
Summer program days (5 days/wk, Early July - Early Aug): 8am-4pm
APPLICATION DEADLINE: Applications received by November 24, 2025 will be prioritized.
About Us
Kite’s Nest is a center for liberatory education in Hudson, NY. It is our mission to build the collective capacity of young people in our community to bring about healing, personal transformation, social connection, and systemic change. We work in a deeply collaborative environment that is committed to embodying the values that we seek to foster in the world. Everyone who joins our staff is part of a family of educators, activists, thinkers and artists who are committed both to our work with young people and to nurturing a healthy and supportive organizational culture.
