Robert Kinnaird (he/him) has served as MCN’s Communications Project Coordinator since 2021, advancing MCN’s thought leadership through innovative social media strategies that better connected MCN to journalists and organizations with similar goals. A Hofstra graduate, Kinnaird initially joined MCN as an intern while finishing his degrees in journalism and global studies, before being asked to join as a staff member. 

During his time at Hofstra, Kinnaird dove into data journalism and the mapping of data through geographic information system (GIS). For his work in GIS, he was invited to join Gamma Theta Upsilon, an international honors society for geography. He began working in communications young, managing his high school’s radio station, and in college became a staff writer for both the school’s newspaper and its humor magazine. He served as Multimedia Editor and Business Manager for the Hofstra Chronicle and as the Social Media Manager for Nonsense Humor Magazine throughout his undergraduate career. 

He grew up surrounded by small, owner-operated family farms in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts, seeing the romantic vision of farmwork often best known to your average American. Coming to MCN, he discovered the complex and at times unethical undercurrents of agriculture. His work continues to bolster MCN’s global position as a leader in migrant health. 

Kinnaird now plans to attend law school, hoping to make a direct impact on the policies and practices that hurt disenfranchised workers and their families. He spends his time not working obsessing over Magic: The Gathering, Dungeons and Dragons, or some other nerdy fixation.