CloseKnit Executive Director
Executive Director Angela Reed (she/her)
Angela Reed is a dedicated professional whose passion, vision, and skills are deeply rooted in her lifelong commitment to families, children, and communities. With extensive experience in both her local community and African American communities nationwide, Angela’s work has had a profound impact.
Her career highlights include serving as the Chief Operating Officer for Substance Use Disorder housing and treatment program as well as working as a capacity building assistance provider on behalf of the Center for Disease Control (CDC), where she played a crucial role in developing strategies for change and addressing risk determinants. Angela’s expertise extends to teaching interventions that promote behavior change, as well as providing valuable insights on logic modeling and program creation.
Angela has operated as over-site, development and implementation of culturally specific programming to support individuals in addressing their risk factors and establishing lifelong goals for themselves, their families, and the community.
She plays a pivotal role in crafting policies and programming that catered to the unique needs of communities their families.
Now, as the executive director of CloseKnit, Angela believes in the power of focus, unity, support, and strategy.
With a focus on preserving and expanding upon Closeknit’s remarkable research and models , Angela looks ahead to a future marked by growth and opportunity. She is enthusiastic about the potential that lies ahead for both the organization and the community it serves. Angela values the wealth of experience and deep commitment demonstrated by CloseKnit’s founder, current and past leadership/staff, supportes, advocates and all of whom share a genuine understanding and care for the well-being of our most vulnerable youth.
Angela’s door is always open, and she welcomes the opportunity to meet with new stakeholders, hear their perspectives, and support existing initiatives. For further inquiries, Angela D-B Reed can be contacted at ar@closeknit.us.
Project managers and facilitators
Patricia Carter
Dr. Mary Joe Winston
Area of expertise: management, administration, ministry , street outreach, Group facilitation, media, Kinship hosting, And trauma informed care.
Dorothy Jones
Janet Forman
CloseKnit Board
Cresston Gackle (he/him)
Principal, Cresston Law LLC and Assistant Public Defender
Cresston Gackle (he/him/his) is a youth advocate in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Through his public defense and solo practice work, Cresston advocates as an attorney for youths and their families in child protection and delinquency court cases. Cresston is originally from Iowa and moved to Minnesota to pursue undergraduate and legal education at the University of Minnesota. Cresston is an active member of the bar association (association of lawyers in Minnesota) advocating for youths, racial justice, and reform. In his free time, Cresston enjoys reading about youth law, playing modern board games with friends, and going to the many fairs and festivals held during Minnesota summers.
Beau RaRa (they/them), Board Chair
Youth Restorative Justice Initiative Lead, Legal Rights Center
Equal parts learner and educator, Beau believes that youth are the experts of their own lives and feels immense reverence for the various roles they have gotten to play in the lives of youth. Their background is in positive youth development in after school programs. Beau spent their first two years as a lawyer at Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid and the Disability Law Center representing unhoused youth and youth with disabilities on cases ranging from eviction to emancipation to disability-related proceedings in schools or related to county benefits. As an advocate for systems change, Beau could not be more thrilled about their role as Youth Restorative Justice Initiative Lead at the Legal Rights Center.
Nina Brown (she/her)
Marketing Manager, Independent Natural Food Retailers Association
Marika Reese (she/her)
Executive Director, Ubuntu Cares
Past Advisors
K. Adam (they/them)
Principal Consultant, Umoja Collective
Our History
CloseKnit began in 2014 as the Minnesota Host Home Network, a special project of the Minnesota Council of Child Caring Agencies Foundation (now AspireMN). We changed our name to CloseKnit in 2019.
CloseKnit was to bring together young adults facing homelessness, their chosen families, and supportive service providers. We firmly believe that our holistic approach transcends racial barriers by recognizing and empowering existing “chosen family” arrangements as vital preventive measures against youth homelessness. In relations to the steps needed to create change systematically CloseKnit has assessed, developed and deployed our research and approach. In order to complete the system changes needed we are currently in the final phases of assessment/data with the goals of normalization and community validation.
Although CloseKnit’s work responds to the need to bolster ALL chosen family hosting arrangements, we give concentrated attention to the needs of African American families and young adults.
Examples of our approach include our collaboration with Arc Minnesota to provide staff training to support chosen family hosting through existing funding streams. We also partner with the Equity in Place Coalition to push legislation, i.e. the Good Neighbor Exemption allowing renters to host a youth facing homelessness without fear of a lease violation for up to 60 days annually.
CloseKnit Executive director is a content expert on culturally specific best practices to behavioral health and care.
Closeknits Executive director has managed the following A.A. Culturally specific state and federal projects
- Cultural and ethnic minority grant(s) MN department of human services, CEMIG
- HIV early intervention services MN Dept. of health, EIS
- HIV High Risk Populations MN Dept. of heath, HPP
- Covid-19 Crisis Counseling program-FEMA
- Cultural Capacity building work group MN Dept. of Human services
- Diverse media Covid-19 vaccination campaign MN Dept. of Health
- Overdose Fatality Review (OFR) MN Dept. of Health
CloseKnit is a proud member of:
MN Coalition for the Homeless
Homes for All
National Network for You
McKinney-Vento
African American child wellness institute
Technical Assistance Center for people of African descent.
Federal focus on housing.
Canadian homeless hub.
Hennepin county youth demonstration project.