Our Team

Kara Tupy

Executive Director

A former school administrator turned educational entrepreneur, Kara brings more than twenty years of experience in traditional classrooms, outdoor learning, youth, higher education, and professional development for schools and nonprofit organizations.

In 2014 she and her family sold their suburban home and relocated to a 40-acre parcel of land in the Sierra Nevada foothills with the goal of growing their own food and fostering deeper connections with the earth and each other.

Three years later she founded a learning cooperative called Farm School and began learning about land-based experiential education.

Kara combines proven educational leadership with direct experience supporting wildfire-impacted youth during the Camp Fire and raising $500K to establish a regenerative farm, positioning her to lead FarmTeach’s expansion with experience, authenticity, and credibility.

Paul Tupy

Operations Director

Paul grew up in St. Paul, MN visiting his grandfather's farm in nearby New Prague. Though a city kid, he felt drawn to the rural lifestyle and dreamed of one day owning acreage that he could farm. Paul knew it was time to turn that dream into a reality when the flock of chickens and turkeys he was raising in his surburban backyard outgrew their space. Drawing on the memories of his childhood visits to his Grandfather's farm, he embarked on his own agricultural adventure when he bought his first rural plot of land in Northern California in 2014.

Knowing there was a lot to learn, Paul read voraciously about all aspects of farming, visited local farms, and took classes through the UC Davis Cooperative Extension. In his research, he stumbled onto the idea of regenerative agriculture as a means to reverse climate change by sequestering carbon in healthy soils. From that moment on, Paul has been on a mission to see Hidden Springs Family Ranch operate under the principles of regenerative agriculture. Slowly but surely, the changes he has implemented are resulting in greener pastures, healthier animals, and impacting the climate for the better.