This week marked 15 years since my dad’s passing. This anniversary coupled with the start of a new year had me in a very reflective mood. I’m sharing the note that I sent to the KIND Team last night.
KIND Team,
I came back from the winter break refreshed and energized. I tried my best over the last two days to personally share with every one of you my wishes for a great new year. To all of you that I didn’t get to shake your hand, I send you all my warmth through this note.
Yesterday was an unusual day for me. It marked the 15th anniversary of my dad’s passing. As most of you know, KIND and the mission of fostering kindness and building bridges among human beings was inspired by the example my parents inculcated in me, but in particular by my commitment to prevent what happened to my father – going through the Holocaust and being sent to a concentration camp as a young kid – from happening again to others.
While I miss my Dad tremendously and wish he could have seen all that we’ve been able to accomplish in his honor, I feel at peace and energized and positive about doing my best to follow his example.
To all of you, amidst all the challenges that humanity faces daily – from climate change to nuclear proliferation, from food scarcity that causes some to starve to consumption excesses that perturb all our senses and kills so many with inflammation, diabetes and obesity epidemics, from the resurgence of totalitarianism to the fear to speak one’s mind, from divisions abroad to divisions within – I share my hope that, together, we can continue making a positive difference. I hope that in 2018 we can increase our impact, both through the small actions every one of us can take, to the collective power the KIND family can deploy to make this a better world.
Whether we use our Hungry & KIND values to make our healthy and tasty snacks available to more people across the globe, whether we stretch ourselves to enter new categories with the KIND Promise, or whether we creatively find ways to expand our market share while extending our social impact, let us seize every moment of every day to be the best that we can be.
And as we value each other as the KIND Family, make sure to also prioritize and appreciate your own families – take nobody for granted, enjoy your loved ones, share how you feel, and soak them up every day. We all have a commitment to each other to work hard, but we have an even more important contract to ensure balance in our lives and with our loved ones.
With best wishes for 2018,
DL
LinkedIn Article Published January 10, 2018