Payson Kennedy is a founder and past president of the Nantahala Outdoor Center (NOC), located in the Smoky Mountains of western North Carolina. Many top American paddlers have trained and worked at the NOC, including more than a dozen US Olympic team paddlers. Payson has degrees in philosophy, anthropology and librarianship and spent fifteen years in the academic world before leaving for the NOC. With his wife, Aurelia, he has led adventure travel trips in Central America and Nepal for 15 years. He is now retired and living on the banks of the Nantahala River, where he guides, bicycles and is creating a pond without the use of mechanized equipment on an oxbow that was cut off from the river. In 2005, Payson was inducted into the International Whitewater Hall of Fame at its inaugural ceremony.