About Nantucket Together
Our Team Is Made Up of Volunteer Members from the Community
The Nantucket Together organization is made up of members of the island community - people like YOU.
We represent the hardworking parents, grandparents, individuals and families who began as visitors. We represent the summer residents, the visitors and year rounders and everyone in between.
Our mission is to make Nantucket a better place for everyone, including future generations to come.
Meet our team
Kathy Baird
Co-Founder and President
Kathy began visiting Nantucket in the mid-1980s, fell in love with the island and purchased a modest home in the early 1990s in Tom Nevers. Now retired from the IT industry that served state social services agencies, her 5 ‘kids’, their spouses and the grandkids come together on island each summer. Upkeep and repairs on their 30 year old home are paid for by short term rentals when they are not on island but she visits the island nearly every month of the year.
Her son is a year round resident after ‘growing up’ on island during the summers, weekends and school vacations. Kathy has been on the board of the Tom Nevers Civic Association since 2005, and is an appointed member and current Secretary of the Advisory Committee of Non-Voting Taxpayers (volunteers who meet publicly and provide input to the Select Board on issues affecting non-voting taxpayers).
Kathy and her husband are volunteers at the ACK Clean Team, members of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, serving in their weekly meals delivery and Laundry Love (which Kathy founded on the island) missions. Her husband Joe is a semi-retired Episcopal priest with a congregation in rural western PA.
Robin Nydes
Co-Founder and Advisor
Robin fell in love with Nantucket in 1984 after stepping foot on island with a group of college friends sailing around the cape. They intended to stay one night, but as the crew raised sail the next morning they told the captain this was a mutiny. The captain had to stay four more days or leave with no crew. Robin has been a regular since and his middle son, Theo, born at the Cottage Hospital, proudly shows to friends and family his plaque on the "Wall of Nantucket Natives."
Robin spent most of his career in London, and was the co-founder of a non-profit helping abandoned children in developing countries suffering from physical or mental disability, https://www.humanitascharity.org/our-story
Ron Kokot
Treasurer
Ron first visited Nantucket in 1967 as a student at Boston College. The town and beaches fascinated him. With his late wife Pam, he returned in 1982 staying at a friend’s house in Tom Nevers. Two years later they decided to build a house. In 1991, with their infant son Jonathan, Pam began spending entire summers, and could be found gardening, riding her bike, hosting gourmet dinner parties or volunteering at the community pool for twenty plus years, while Ron visited on weekends and precious vacations from his business career.
His 20 year career at GE included marketing and general management in Consumer Electronics and Medical Systems. An entrepreneurial opportunity as Chairman and CEO of a venture backed medical equipment start up in Houston, Texas lured Ron south in 1993, but Nantucket remained his beloved northern home.
Since retiring in 2004, he has regularly trekked north in mid-May and summered on island through mid- October, where daily bike rides to Sconset for a bite at Claudette’s, golfing at Skinner’s or Miacomet, casting for the elusive striper or wandering about town in between visits from his son and various friends occupy his days.
Virginia Vidoni
Secretary
Virginia and her husband Bob first arrived on Nantucket in July 1999 for a long awaited one week vacation in a small cottage in Sconset’s Codfish Park. By the end of the week they had fallen in love with the island and approached the owner of the cottage, letting her known that should she ever want to sell, to please contact them. One-month later, the call came and with the ability to do short term rentals, they were able to buy the cottage and make significant improvements to it.
They moved to Quidnet in 2004 in order to have a larger place for friends and family. Short term rentals have made this possible as well as to continue to maintain and improve the property with the use of local, on-island businesses.
Virginia is a Licensed Psychologist, recently retired after 36 years in private practice. Virginia is enjoying the 3 to 4 months that she and Bob are able to be on Nantucket and spending time with her 3 grandsons and is looking forward to the arrival of a new granddaughter. Bob is a real estate professional specializing in the management and operation of multi family residential communities in the Lehigh Valley area of eastern Pennsylvania, where they have resided since 1977.
Help Us Protect Nantucket's Economy
Want to get involved?
Whether you own a vacation rental, vacation on Nantucket, or are here year-round, short term rentals are incredibly important for the island's economy
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