Learn more about our team and reach out with questions about how you can get involved with No Kid Hungry Florida.
Sky Beard
Sky Beard serves as the Florida Director for No Kid Hungry where she is honored to lead a mission-driven team focused on addressing child hunger across the state. Sky has extensive experience working with schools and community organizations focused on child and family programming in Florida. As the Florida Director, Sky oversees the team’s strategic planning and program operations focused on increasing access to nutrition programs for children and their families.
Prior to joining No Kid Hungry, Sky served as the Executive Director of the Early Learning Coalition of Brevard County. In this role, she led a community-based organization serving early learning providers and Florida’s youngest learners. She was engaged in both local and statewide committees that worked with partners to enhance access and quality of early childhood education programs in Florida. Sky was also involved in state associations where she participated in legislative advocacy and state policy development. Prior to her 12 years in nonprofit early childhood education leadership, Sky was a Florida trainer for a national child abuse prevention program. She has managed programs focusing on access to prenatal care as well as programs that enhanced parent-child interaction and early identification of developmental delays in children. Sky is a strong advocate for ensuring that all children have an opportunity to benefit from existing services and championing additional programs when gaps in services are identified.
Sky is a native Floridian and is passionate about identifying approaches to tackle food insecurity in a state where she has such deep roots. Sky earned her Bachelor and Master of Social Work degrees from the University of Central Florida.
Contact Sky: sbeard@strength.org
Joshua Proffitt
Joshua Proffitt is the Program Manager for No Kid Hungry Florida. He brings years of experience in international and national/local program development and project management to his position in which he has the pleasure of seeing the convergence of two passions–youth education and increasing food security. In his role, Joshua works to build relationships with community organizations and school districts to expand and enhance meal programs that ensure kids have the food they need to succeed.
Joshua previously worked for nonprofits where he engaged with youth in schools to facilitate violence prevention training and developed afterschool mentoring and tutoring programs. Before becoming a Florida resident, Joshua moved from his childhood home of Cincinnati, Ohio to Senegal, West Africa to work with communities to build the resilience of local food systems and increase food security. Joshua earned his Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Berea College in Kentucky.
Contact Joshua: jproffitt@strength.org
Nayshma Jones
Nayshma Jones serves as the Program Manager for No Kid Hungry Florida, supporting state-wide efforts to increase student access to school meals with a regional focus in South Florida. An area that houses the largest school districts in the state – Miami-Dade and Broward County Public Schools.
Due to her family’s military background, Nayshma lived in Homestead, Pensacola, and Broward County. Jones then received her degree from the University of Central Florida in Orlando and started her teaching career in Miramar. Nayshma’s life path across the state has led her to have an extensive understanding of the unique mosaic that Florida is. After expanding her teaching career to Houston after Hurricane Harvey, a large disparity between student success and the issues they faced in their community was on display. This propelled her career into non-profit programming.
Since then, she has managed small- and large-scale programs centered on deep community engagement, advocacy, and coalition building. It certainly takes a village to address these large and complex social concerns and her egalitarian approach to collective impact has allowed for this truth to come to fruition. Jones has worked in areas of climate and environmental justice, health equity, and education. The major theme is intersectionality – when addressing one social determinant of health, many more are impacted. This is also applicable to the approaches and partnerships needed to address food security and economic mobility – which are the main priorities of No Kid Hungry. Nayshma looks forward to applying her knowledge and experience to advancing the mission of Share Our Strength and the No Kid Hungry Florida Campaign.
Contact Nayshma: njones@strength.org
Anaïs Rice
Anaïs Rice serves as the Program Associate for No Kid Hungry Florida. She is a key resource developing organizational communications concerning the non-profit’s campaigns and programmatic initiatives. In this role, Anais seeks to increase awareness about the organization’s mission and resources – with the goal of providing greater access to nutrition programs for Floridian children and families.
Anaïs’ passion for human rights led her to work in nonprofits from early on in her professional career in Puerto Rico, California and then Florida. She advocated for human rights at Amnesty International and later at Via Migrante, an organization that supports migrant families in Tijuana, Mexico. Ultimately, during her master’s degree in Peace and Justice, her interest in food security grew stronger as she realized it’s crucial to the enjoyment of all human rights. Equal rights and equal opportunities start with access to healthy food for all – children need full bellies to thrive in and out of school and this is still an important challenge here in Florida.
Anaïs is honored to work towards such a crucial mission with an amazing team!
Contact Anaïs: arice@strength.org