Kate has worn many hats at UnTours from foundation board member to expert editor for many of us. She succeeded in describing UnTours and its foundation beautifully and in under 100 words for the packaging of Equal Exchange’s coffee: Hal’s Blend. Quite a feat! Though she’s moving onto a nursing career, she still does consulting with the foundation — thank goodness!
Here’s Kate:
How did you meet Hal and Norma? I met Hal at a job interview! I was hired in 2001 to work at UnTours, part-time on the Swiss Team and part-time assisting Hal with the foundation. I met Norma at the first foundation board meeting I attended.
What is most unique to you about the foundation? There are very few hurdles for loan recipients to jump over. The projects the foundation funds have their work cut out for them already, and it’s very difficult for them to have to ask for money in sixty different ways on top of that. The board does due diligence certainly, but the application process is very simple and special.
Favorite book: Right now I’m reading The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander.
Favorite children’s book: Our Animal Friends at Maple Hill Farm by Alice and Martin Provensen
Childhood ambition: I wanted to marry a rock star. No one bothered explaining to me that I could be the rock star myself.
Indulgence: Television. It distresses me that TV shows are good now.
Biggest challenge: Having a routine.
First job: Working the counter at a donut shop owned by a police officer. I got fired after a month because I “wasn’t cut out for the donut business,” which meant that I wasn’t constantly cleaning up after people even when no one had come in all day.
Last job: I’ve been in nursing school for two years. In the few years before that, I cobbled together part-time jobs that I could do mostly at home, mostly on my own time. At one point I had six jobs at once.
Soundtrack of your life: I am lucky enough to have a few friends whose driving passion is music, so I let them make my soundtrack.
Animal friends: I live with two cats who are the charges of my housemate. Tessa sits on top of inch-wide doors because loves being up high, and Sebastian is the most talkative cat I have ever met, ever.
Mission statement: Do more than your share. Spend less than you earn. Pet every cat you see.
Favorite foods: Bread, salt, butter and cheese from local farms that don’t poison and torture the animals or the land.
Couldn’t live without: A cat.
Sweet or salty: Salty.
Pet peeve: When people park in the bike lane, and when people stand still on escalators. They’re still stairs!
Most unusual gift given: I found a ridiculously heavy brass compass the size of a large hat box in a curio shop, and bought it for a friend who was about to go to merchant marine school. He was really confused. Did I think he could take it with him?
Most unusual gift received: On the Mediterranean in Turkey, there was some commotion on a van I was on at night, heading up to a mountain where eternal lights burn from the ground. The van stopped suddenly, opened the side door, and a person I had met on the beach earlier that day handed me a small rock with a stick-figure image of me he’d drawn on it. Then the door slid closed and the van drove away.
Passionate issue: Making death something we openly acknowledge and prepare for, which ultimately leads to a fuller and deeper life.
Proudest accomplishment: Taking my parents on a Swiss Heartland Untour.
Last splurge: Casual professional clothes (second-hand) for a job I haven’t actually gotten yet.
“Dogs come when they’re called; cats take a message and get back to you later.” Mary Bly