Karen Kiefer	The Week of May 29th, 2005

Spread The Bread

1. What's in your wallet right now?

No cash, a license, 3 credit/bank cards, Tufts Health Plan medical cards for every member of my family, crinkled receipts from grocery shopping and more, Ocean City Library card, Boston College Women's Basketball ticket stubs, receipt for a pool membership, my aunt's funeral memorial card and an old office key.

2. What do you wish your parents taught you about money?

I wish I had learned to embrace money rather than fear it, to talk about it openly and understand its power and place in this world.

3. What is your worst habit around finances?

Not valuing it enough.

4. What makes you happy?

My faith, people and our great country.

5. Personal philosophy around money?

Money buys opportunity!

6. Where does money come from?

Money comes from hard work, discipline, great ideas executed, talent, luck and opportunity.

7. What would you do with a million dollars?

I would help secure our four daughters' college educations, travel this country and introduce its people and all its gifts to our young family, endow an educational scholarship in our parents' honor and find a way to spread more "bread."

8. What is your most prized possession?

Time—more time to grow our family and to make a difference in this world.

9. Who is your role model?

My husband Sam is really my role model for a million reasons, but I'll just list a few that involve money... We are so different and yet so much alike. He cares about growing money for others and I care about spreading it to others. He's a money guy with sensibility and a great business sense. He works in the land of money—helping people invest for the future. His strengths are my weaknesses. I'm an idea person, a creative spirit. He is grounded in his approach to most things. We both work towards "serving men and women for each other" but in very different ways—I for nonprofit, he for profit. He is a great father, husband, friend and money coach.

10. What is your greatest achievement?

No question, being a mother...nothing else even comes close.

11. How did you come up with Spread the Bread?

I was lucky. I grew up in a large middle class Irish-Catholic family and the only thing that was predictable was attendance at 9 o'clock Mass on Sunday morning and a daily dose of my mother's Irish bread. This freshly baked bread dressed our table and filled our hearts. Whether we were happy, sad, celebrating or lamenting, it was there, always.

I had no idea of the power of this bread until I became a mother myself. So when my kids were old enough to stand on a stool, they were making loaves of this bread. Loaf after loaf, we baked and we laughed. We had so much bread that we began to spread it to others with artwork, notes and words attached. Neighbors, friends and strangers loved the gift of this offering. It become our comfort, their comfort.

After September 11th, it seemed like spreading bread could not only help others but comfort and empower children, letting them know that they can make a difference in their world by spreading love and spreading bread. I went to my friend, Juliette Fay, and she helped me (along with thousands of big hearts) to mold this dough of an idea into the magical gift it is today.

12. What contributions to society do you want to make?

My hope is that Spread the Bread can help people realize: how easy it is to reach out to others, how our children can show us the way, how happiness is a choice, how being positive can change lives, how important it is to smile and make others smile too.

13. If you could buy one thing right now what would it be?

A healthy future.

14. Favorite activity that doesn't cost a dime?

Good conversation.

15. How do you indulge yourself?

A grande skim latte at Starbucks, slowing down and doing nothing with my husband and the kids, making Irish bread, sleeping in, church, a good movie and a bottle of wine with family and friends, a Josh Groban CD and writing.

Karen Kiefer is the co-founder of Spread the Bread, a nonprofit organization that empowers the young, the old and everyone in between to reach out to others by baking bread for others. Thousands and thousands of loaves of love are being spread across this country to neighbors, friends, strangers, heroes and those in need. When Karen isn't baking bread, she's helping raise four daughters and coming up with new ideas to connect people to each other.

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