Our Team

Meet Dr. Saïda, Co-Founder of Little Eagles Nest :

Saïda is a scientist, a mother of three, and the co-founder of Little Eagles Nest. Her path into early childhood education didn’t begin as a business idea. It began as a very personal search for the kind of place she wanted for her own children.

Born and raised in the south of France, she grew up surrounded by more than one culture, language, and way of seeing the world. Her passion for science eventually brought her to New York, where she came to pursue postdoctoral research in Cancer Immunology at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

Years of research taught her to ask questions, study evidence, and understand how living systems develop and adapt to the environments around them.

She never expected motherhood to turn that same curiosity toward an entirely different subject: her own children.

As a scientist, Saïda understood something most parents are never told. In the first years of life the brain is building itself at a pace it will never match again, and it builds from whatever surrounds it.

Which is why she believes the environment matters as much as anything taught within it. A child who feels safe, known, and genuinely at home, surrounded by warmth, unhurried attention, real conversation, and the freedom to explore, is a child whose brain is laying down the circuits for confidence, curiosity, and the capacity to learn. That groundwork is done long before a classroom ever asks anything of them.

This is where early childhood is so often misunderstood.

The years before kindergarten get treated as the waiting room before “real school,” and childcare as the arrangement that allows parents to work. But early childhood isn’t a smaller version of school. It is a fundamentally different thing, and it calls for a radically different approach.

Children this age don’t need academics introduced earlier. They need richer experiences to build with.

Conversations instead of screens. Real objects instead of pictures of them. Nature instead of a whole day indoors. Building, touching, experimenting, creating. Hearing rich language. Moving their bodies. Learning to solve a problem before an adult solves it for them. And enough time to become deeply, seriously interested in something.

A young child’s day may look simple from the outside: digging in the dirt, listening to a story, helping prepare food, negotiating over a toy, stopping to examine an insect. In reality, this is a child assembling an entire understanding of the world.

When Saïda went looking for a program built this way, she couldn’t find one that brought it all together: loving and attentive teachers, thoughtful (organic) nutrition, bright and stimulating spaces, meaningful time outdoors, individualized learning, room for independence and creativity, cultural inclusion, no screen time, and above all an environment where each child is genuinely known, heard, and respected.

So together with her husband, they built it.

Her approach draws on Montessori and Reggio Emilia principles, grounded in the conviction that children deserve to be treated as capable, curious individuals. Teachers observe closely, offer materials and experiences suited to the child in front of them (called provocations), and resist the urge to fill every moment with adult-directed instruction but rather let the children lead and explore. Teachers are there to guide and provide the rich environment.

Her multicultural upbringing shaped LEN as well. Different languages, foods, families, and traditions aren’t an occasional classroom lesson here, they’re part of how children learn early that difference is normal, interesting, and worth celebrating.

Her own three children have grown up within the program, and most decisions still begin with the question that started it: is this what we would want for our own children?

She hopes every child leaves LEN curious, confident, kind, and independent, because these years are not preparation for the important years. These are the important years!

Meet Nick, Co-Founder & Director of Little Eagles Nest :

Nick is an entrepreneur, a builder, a father of three, and the co-founder of Little Eagles Nest — and the person you’ll find running it, most days, at one location or the other.

Long before he became an entrepreneur, he imagined becoming a teacher. He was drawn to children early, as a Big Brother, a camp counselor, a lifeguard — and found real meaning in being the kind of adult a child could look up to, learn from, laugh with, and trust.

His career took him another way. Trained in IT, he went on to build and run businesses in technology, construction, and hospitality, learning how to take an idea that exists only on paper and figure out all the complicated pieces required to make it actually work.

Little Eagles Nest gave that skill an entirely new purpose.

When he and Saïda began imagining the environment they wanted for their own children, they weren’t starting from a conventional daycare model. What would a place look like where children could move freely and explore? How could a classroom feel like an extension of a thoughtful home rather than an institution? And if that place didn’t already exist, could they build it themselves?

So they did. Quite literally. Much of what families see at LEN was planned, built, and installed by Nick himself: classrooms, gardens, play structures, and the countless small details that make a space actually work for children. Nothing was ever really finished, he watches how the children use the spaces and keeps improving them.

But building it was the beginning. Nick manages day to day operations: the team, the hiring, the schedules, licensing and safety, the enrollment conversations with new families, the events, the food, the hundred decisions that never reach a parent’s attention because someone handled them first.

He is also simply another adult on the rug teaching, and playing with the children, which is how he ends up fielding a long run of “Mr. Nick, why?” between everything else.

His years in hospitality shaped one conviction he holds tightly. Parents are trusting LEN with the people they love most in the world, and that responsibility should never become routine. A family should know the people caring for their child. And a child should be known, heard, and left in no doubt that the adults around them are glad they’re there.

After years of building companies, Nick has found that the things he’s proudest of building aren’t companies at all.

This one came from the heart.

Meet Deb, Educational Program Lead of Little Eagles Nest :

Ms. Deb is an accomplished early childhood educator, educational leader, nature-based learning specialist, and mother of four with more than 35 years of experience working with young children.

She raised her own children in Hastings-on-Hudson here in Westchester, giving her both a professional and deeply personal understanding of what families in our community hope for during the early years.

Deb currently serves as the Educational Program Lead of Little Eagles Nest, where she helps bring our educational philosophy to life across our classrooms and locations.

At the heart of her work is a simple belief: children are capable, curious, creative, and full of ideas. They are not empty vessels waiting to be filled with information. They are active participants in their own learning.

Deb believes children learn best when they are given meaningful opportunities to investigate, create, collaborate, ask questions, solve problems, and develop ideas of their own.

Before joining Little Eagles Nest, Deb spent 18 years as a Lead Pre-K Teacher at the Early Childhood Center in White Plains. During her time there, she spearheaded the development of the school’s Outdoor Classroom and created a year-round Nature-Based Education Program, helping children build meaningful connections with the natural world through exploration, observation, and hands-on learning.

For Deb, nature is not simply an occasional classroom theme.

Nature is one of childhood’s greatest teachers.

A puddle can become a science investigation. Leaves can inspire art, sorting, counting, and observation. A child’s question about an insect can become a project that continues for days.

At LEN, Deb encourages teachers to notice these moments and build upon them.

She also believes deeply in the idea of the classroom as being an “additional teacher”. The environment itself should communicate respect for children. Materials should be thoughtfully organized and accessible, classrooms should feel calm and inviting, and children’s work and ideas should be displayed in ways that show their thinking has value.

Rather than relying heavily on worksheets, rote learning, or crafts where every child’s project looks the same, Deb guides teachers toward open-ended invitations, child-led investigations, and process over product.

Academics are still very much present, but embedded naturally in children’s experiences.

Math happens while measuring, building, sorting, cooking, and counting. Literacy grows through storytelling, conversations, class books, and writing. Science begins with observation, experimentation, and questions such as:

“What do you notice?”

“What do you think will happen?”

“How could we find out?”

Deb also strongly believes that behavior is communication. Children need calm guidance, clear boundaries, empathy, and opportunities to learn how to express feelings, solve problems, and participate within a community—not shame or punishment.

As Educational Director, Deb mentors LEN teachers, helps design classroom environments and learning experiences, supports curriculum planning and documentation, and ensures that our philosophy remains consistent as Little Eagles Nest grows.

Her goal is not for every classroom to look exactly the same.

It is for every LEN classroom to share the same foundation: respect for children, meaningful relationships, curiosity, independence, nature, creativity, and genuine joy in learning.

Deb is a Certified Nature-Based Teacher through the Eastern Region Association of Forest and Nature Schools and has studied Early Childhood Education at Mesa College and SUNY Westchester Community College. She is also a certified facilitator for Project WILD, Growing Up WILD, and Project Learning Tree, has trained early childhood educators throughout the region, and has presented at professional early childhood education conferences.

Her dedication to the field was recognized through her induction into the Westchester Child Care Council’s Early Education Hall of Heroes.

After more than three decades in early childhood education, what still excites Deb most is remarkably simple:

watching a child discover something for the first time.

A question asked.
A theory tested.
A friendship formed.
A child realizing, “I can do this.”

For Deb, those moments are what early childhood education is really about, and helping create more of them for the children of Little Eagles Nest is the work she continues to love.