meet our team of Staff and Board Members

Co-Director / Board President - Andrew “Birch” Kemp is a lifelong Detroiter and a former Detroit high school teacher. He taught English and built arboretums with students at three different high schools. He has been planting trees in Poletown for over 20 years and started the nonprofit Arboretum Detroit with his partner, Kinga Osz-Kemp in 2019, to expand and formalize this work. He has recently left teaching to devote himself to the dream of building an arboretum.

Co-Director / Board Treasurer - Kinga Osz-Kemp has a deep love for growing food, medicine and community, for old growth forests and the Great Lakes. She was born in Hungary, and has lived in Detroit for 29 years. She has a BS in Art Education from WSU, raised children in Southwest Detroit and Poletown, founded and managed Ocelot Print Shop for ten years, and then more recently, co-founded Arboretum Detroit.

Grantwriter / Board Member - Elizabeth Underwood is a writer, archivist and community organizer - recently returned home to Detroit after 25 years in New Orleans. Escaping the Gulf Coast climate crisis, Eli is grateful to be reconnected to their ancestral lands and beloved pine, crabapple and birch trees.

Park Maintenance Assistant - Robyn Redding is a lifelong Detroiter, and since the age of thelve has been actively engaged in community development. Starting a block club with her mother and five other women in their neighborhood, she remained the historian until age eighteen. Now at age 22, since moving back to East Poletown, her family’s neighborhood of 68 years, she devotes all of her time to loving and listening to music, gardening, laughing, being a jokester, and helping out to increase biodiversity in her neighborhood by working with Arboretum Detroit. It is the best partnership she could have hoped for!

Park Maintenance and Volunteer Engagement Assistant / Board Member - David McGuffie is an illustrator, printmaker, and amatuer naturalist interested in inspiring engagement with place, and home.

Board Members

Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. is an American printer, book artist and papermaker best known for social and political commentary, particularly in printed posters. One critic noted that Kennedy was “...unafraid of asking uncomfortable questions about race and artistic pretension”

carolyn leadley (they/them/their) is Vice President of the Board.  carolyn has lived and worked in the City of Detroit since 2007 as a farmer and activist. carolyn and their partner, Jack VanDyke, have spent most of that time establishing a family farm and agricultural business, Rising Pheasant Farms, located in the Poletown East Neighborhood where Arboretum Detroit is centered. They are a mother of 4 nature-loving kids often seen at Arboretum Detroit events.

Kat Cameron is Secretary of the Board. She is a filmmaker turned urban planner. She is currently a graduate student at the University of Michigan, where she studies climate resilience in Great Lakes communities. Kat is also an avid cyclist, gardener, and dancer.

Kyle Schanta is a horticulturist and birding guide with a deep passion for Detroit's native flora and fauna. He gardens and does other plant things around Detroit. Kyle is a board member of Detroit Bird Alliance and received their 2022 Conservation Award for his work with the Detroit Bird City parks, including Poletown's Callahan Park. He is a birding tour leader with Eagle-Eye Tours, guiding in South and coastal Texas, Southeastern Arizona and South Florida. He has traveled the US, Canada and Europe as a touring musician and holds a bachelor's in History from Wayne State University. He loves to plant trees with others.

Paul Weertz is a retired Detroit high school teacher and journeyman pipefitter. He has lived and stewarded greenspaces in the Poletown neighborhood for over 30 years, baling hay, planting trees, and helping others build their dreams and homesteads. He and his Bobcat are the earth and boulder moving team at Arboretum Detroit.

Poppy Kemp is a lifelong Detroiter. When she's not slinging a squeegee, she loves to marvel at the Moon, play with colors in drawings and embroidery, and be mesmerized by the beauty of a meadow in the sun.