Meet Our Team!
Kira Sarai Helper, MT-BC, MFA
Founder, Program Director
Kira is a performing artist, musician, director, playwright, poet, board certified music therapist, reiki practitioner and the founder of The Helper Collective.
In 2023, Kira and her friend rented an airbnb in Upstate New York for four nights to buckle down and finally work on a musical they wanted to co-write. Kira created a structured schedule, planning early morning meditations (when neither of them are early risers) to help focus the day, allow ample time to create, check-in, and also take breaks from the art so they could come back to it without burning out. What resulted from this long weekend away from the city was nothing short of magic. In 3 days of writing time, the pair wrote 5 new songs. And 4 of them were pretty good! One was terrible, but that didn’t matter; the mini-retreat kicked off the beautiful process of being in process.
Kira is an award winning poet and filmmaker, earning the Best Runner-Up Narrated Short Film award from the 2022-23 Kwanzaa Film Festival for her film, It’s Napplicated, based on her late father’s book by the same title. She has directed and choreographed regional productions of SIX: Teen Edition and Sister Act, and directed Once on This Island. She is an independent songwriter under the name Kiki Saraia, with her band The Sunshine Kids. Currently, Kira is composing the music and co-writing the lyrics and book of a new musical, set to premiere at Zeider’s American Dream Theater in Virginia Beach in May 2026.
Through her music therapy work, Kira has volunteered in Panama City, Panama with the Danilo Perez Foundation to help build sustainable music therapy programs, and presented work at the Latin American Music Therapy Symposium. She has also acted as a teaching artist for ArtsInsideOut in Johannesburg, South Africa. There she taught storytelling at Nkosi’s Haven: a haven for mother’s with HIV, survivors of gender based violence, their children, and other children affected by HIV/AIDS. She holds an MFA in musical theater from the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, and a BM in music therapy with a minor degree in psychology from Berklee College of Music.
As a performer, Kira has appeared in roles Off-Broadway and in many regional houses around the country, toured internationally with the cast of Sister Act the musical, and has appeared in national commercial campaigns for TV, internet and on Shark Tank.
Kim McLeveighn, MSEd
Associate Director
Kim is a special education teacher. Currently she works at Bank Street College of Education where she is the Director of Student Learning Support, an instructor, and advisor in a teacher residency program. She’s also a doctoral student at American University. Kim is a musician, writer, knitter, and avid home cook. She is the mom of “Mom’s Room.”
Stella Boonshoft
Producer
Chef Dmitri Burtis
Culinary Director
Dmitri is a performing drummer, drum teacher, chef and amateur chess enthusiast. His cooking career has spanned over the last 15 years in restaurants throughout New Mexico, Boston, New Jersey and New York City. He has a particular love for working with Japanese and Korean soup-based cuisines, having worked in both traditional and plant-based vegan ramen restaurants. He has also worked with traditional French and American cooking during his time in the fine dining industry in Manhattan. He put up his first independent tasting menu pop-up in 2023 with his co-chef, Jules Violetto.
Dmitri most enjoys fresh, simple-ingredient styled cooking that pulls from a mixture of cultures to create personalized, meaningful dishes. He believes that the visual presentation of food along with the contents and flavors affect how we move and think throughout the day. Most importantly, he enjoys how food brings people together, both in its creation and then consumption.
He has attended Berklee College of Music for drum performance and holds an AA in music from Bunker Hill Community College. He has engineered recording sessions for local indie artists, plays in an experimental post-jazz math-rock band and has composed music for for the short film Ha//lf (2019).
Seren Helper
Sous Chef