Cowan Staff

Valerie Horn is a community leader. Valere is Executive Director at Cowan Community Action Group, Inc. Valerie also serves as board chair and founding partner for the City of Whitesburg Farmers Market and Community Agricultural Nutritional Enterprises Inc. (CANE Kitchen). These programs work together to grow a stronger and healthier community.

Valerie believes that communities carry hurt but have the power to heal from within. Valerie has developed partnerships that have created a nationally recognized Farmers Market with a large incentive program including a fruit/vegetable prescription program, a commercial kitchen and event space, and a community center with programming to meet many needs in the community. 

Valerie worked at Community Farm Alliance as Director for a community-based participatory research project and served as co-facilitator on a UK research project to promote fitness and nutrition through the Farmers Market and CANE Kitchen. Valerie was recognized as a Healthy Communities Champion by the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky.  Valerie received the SOAR EKY Leadership Award.

In 2023, Valerie received the James Beard Leadership award for her community service and leadership.

Stacy Dollarhide is the Administrative Assistant at Cowan Community Action Group, Inc. She began her work in February 1992 serving as the secretary/treasurer of the CCAG Board and volunteer recordkeeper. In 1994, she began work as a bookkeeper and assisted with the Letcher County Save the Children program. Through the years she has served in various roles and work with CCAG including the Cowan Creek Mountain Music School. 

Louise Murtaugh is a resident of Letcher County and has roots in Northeastern Ohio.  She has been many things, a wife, a mother, a gramma, a teacher for the visually impaired and has attempted to retire at least once.  Seven years ago, after letting go of a long teaching career, Louise took on the role of Market Manager for the City of Whitesburg Farmers Market. She has been involved with this market and has served as a friend and mentor to other markets. This market has been recognized as one of the best and works with Cowan Community Center and with CANE, our local commercial kitchen.  Louise will step back and encourage others to take the lead at the market while still being a part of Cowan Community Center’s  giving, farming, marketing, canning, preserving community. 

Yoko Nogami is an interdisciplinary artist, born and raised in Tokyo, Japan. She resides in Letcher County of Eastern Kentucky drawn by her passion for old time music and banjo playing.  She serves as Cultural Arts Specialist for Cowan Community Action Group Inc. and as an independent artist consultant focusing as an advocate for arts education accessibility for all, representing marginalized populations of Kentucky and preservation of old-time music and traditional arts. As an interdisciplinary artist, she uses diverse media from drawing, painting, photography, performance, video and digital media, choosing ones which align best with her concepts. As an educator, her experiences range as the Department Chair at the Pinellas County Center for the Arts in St. Petersburg, Florida, adjunct professor of art at the University of South Florida, University of Tampa, Hillsborough Community College and the Art Institute of Tampa, also as an interdisciplinary artist resident at the Creative Clay (teaching Developmentally Disabled Adults through the Pinellas County School Extended Transitions Program), Youth Arts Corps with at-risk youth and Visual Art faculty for Interlochen Arts Camp in Interlochen, Michigan.

Steve Ruth is a life-long communicator. He sold his first newspaper story at 13 and continues to write for print media over 50 years later. He received a Bachelor’s Degree in Theater with minor study in Media from Centre College. Steve’s professional career has been varied and dynamic. It has included 10 years with the IBM Corporation producing educational and promotional media for a worldwide audience, 8 years at Appalshop as a fundraiser, radio producer and web development director, 10 years as the Adventure Tourism liaison for Elkhorn City, KY and 6 years as the Coordinator of the Levitt AMP Whitesburg Music Series. He’s been mostly involved in community work for the last 20 years. In his spare time, Steve is either playing music or trying to find something new to listen to. If the weather’s nice he’s either kayaking or hiking in the Breaks.

Mandy Fleming coordinates the Kids on the Creek and youth programs for Cowan Community Action Group, an engaging summer camp designed for local children, providing them with unique opportunities to explore a wide range of artistic disciplines, music, sciences, and cooking. Mandy believes that education should be fun, and she strives to create memorable experiences through exciting instructional sessions and educational field trips that inspire curiosity and creativity.

With a passion for Appalchian culture, Mandy loves to see mountain folks thriving. Through her interests in film and photography, Mandy is always seeking innovative ways to incorporate visual storytelling into her work, enhancing the educational experiences of the youth she serves. She hopes to pass along the utilization of these mediums to the next generation.

Abby Maggard is a ACC Americorp Member with Cowan Community Action Group. She is a devoted community member and garden enthusiast from Viper, Kentucky. As the Grow Appalachia Coordinator and City of Whitesburg Farmers Market Coordinator, Abby cultivates connection and growth within the community. Inspired by her family’s gardening traditions, Abby tends to her own garden with love and care. When she’s not working, Abby enjoys spending time with her family, planting flowers, thrifting and decorating her home. Her passion for community, family and Appalachian heritage shines through in every aspect of her life. 

Grace Rogers is a musician and writer from Owingsville, KY, currently based in Louisville, KY. She has been playing traditional Kentucky music and writing songs since childhood. She first attended CCMMS when she was seven years old as a beginning fiddle student. In 2022, she was a CCMMS Charlie Whitaker Memorial Apprentice under banjo player John Haywood and in 2023, she was an archival fellow at the Berea College studying the banjo music of Magoffin County, KY. She has served as teaching assistant and faculty at CCMMS. She performs her original music as a solo artist and is also a member of the stringband Man Eaters alongside Blakeley Burger and Nadia Ramlagan. 

A native of Eastern Kentucky and graduate from University of Kentucky, James is dedicated to developing methods and implementing processes that preserve, enhance, and restore natural stream function, in the coalfields of Appalachia. For the past 25 years James has provided technical consulting for hundreds of stream projects involving the private sector, as well as state and federal agencies. As an environmental scientist and lifelong resident of Central Appalachia, it is his goal to better understand the unique circumstances and challenges of restoring and preserving our creeks and rivers, in the coalfields. In short, he has lived a lifetime and earned a living playing in the creek!

In the golden years of my scientific career, he is striving to become an amateur ecologist that can see through haze of the scientific method and just continue playing in the creek, unencumbered by academics, gurus, and experts. He feels fortunate that his Appalachian experience has instilled a sense of gratitude for the natural world, and the rich culture we share in these hills and valleys.

He believes that our streams are our greatest natural resource, and the value of good, unpolluted water is essential for a high quality of life. His goal is to encourage the scientific community and citizen scientists alike to work together to provide comprehensive data that can be used to provide practical solutions that can be implemented to sustain our most precious resource.

He is humbled and honored to be a small part of the Cowan community and excited to be around good people, doing good things.

Jennifer is a Letcher County native and graduated from Eastern Kentucky University with a degree in social work. She spent several years working in residential and community mental health programs, and for state guardianship services before taking a job with the Letcher County Public School System, where she worked for twenty-three years as a coordinator for Kentucky’s Family Resource and Youth Services Centers program. Jennifer retired at the end of the 2023 school year.

Passionate about the natural world, Jennifer is a student of Nature, an avid hiker and a bird and wildlife enthusiast. Her love of hiking led her to purchase a camera many years ago to photograph her favorite places throughout the central and southern Appalachians. Jennifer now utilizes a camera to document the wild places and wild things within her own world in eastern Kentucky, capturing in photos the natural beauty and wildlife in a region whose ecological significance and biodiversity have yet to be fully recognized.

Jennifer’s interest in regional water quality and the environment in general led to a long-term seat on the board for Headwaters, Inc, a local watershed watch group that works to educate the local citizenry about water quality in Letcher county. She’s also been a volunteer for Kentucky River Watershed Watch, collecting water samples from the North Fork of the Kentucky river for over twenty years.

Her new journey with Cowan Community Action Group, a newsletter called Sustaining Our United Regenerative Community Efforts (SOURCE), will provide local landowners and farmers the tools to sustainably manage their land by offering education and information about agroforestry and regenerative farming techniques, enabling them to earn income from farming and forestry products while also protecting water quality and improving the overall health of the land.