North Bay Woman

S P R I N G | S U M M E R 2 0 2 2 NORTH BAY WOMAN 31 eidi Kuhn's life force makes the Energizer Bunny look like a slug. The Marin County native is almost rabidly passion- ate about ridding the world of land mines and striving for world peace. Her fierce curiosity, need to travel and desire to create opportunities to help people and tell their stories, have been the bedrock under most of the life paths Kuhn has chosen since growing up in the Dominican neigh- borhood of San Rafael. She graduated from UC Berkeley with a major in political economics of industrial societies. She married her college sweetheart Gary Kuhn, also a local boy (Tiburon) who from the get-go supported her many dreams. She became a broadcast journalist and worked in Juneau, Alaska for several years. She founded her own news production company called Newslink. She had four children. In 1997, she created the nonprofit that would become the driving force behind her and her family's life from then on: the humanitarian nonprofit organization Roots of Peace, for which she serves as spokesperson and CEO. This year is the operation's 25th anniversary. "Roots of Peace is like my fifth child," Kuhn said. "You love it like a child, it gets rambunctious, sometimes misbehaves, and on the path to its growing up there's a tremendous amount of scary." In 25 years, Roots of Peace, dedicated to removing land mines from war zones and turning the land back to viable agriculture, has grown from a living room statement of intent to a staff of 300 with an operating budget of $200 million in grants. The nonprofit is helping de-mine land in 10 countries including Afghanistan, Angola, Bosnia/Herzegovina Croatia, Cambodia, Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Vietnam and most recently Guatemala. From an initiative to replace land mines with grape vines, its mission has evolved to include planting orchards and supporting farmers in those countries to sustainably raise cash crops. Roots of Peace has also inspired the Kuhn family to launch a side business, run by husband Gary and youngest son Christian Kuhn, called Noble House Spices. With a budget of $75 million, the Kuhns team with farmers in places such as Vietnam, to wholesale the spices they grow (single origin pepper for one) and help them get a fair trade price with American businesses including Novato-based Morton and Bassett Spices and the East Bay's Oaktown Spice. Noble House gives a percentage of its profits back to Roots of Peace. "It's like the Newman's Own model," Kuhn said. "The for-profit business supports the nonprofit organization." I vividly remember the day Roots of Peace debuted in September 1997 at a daytime gathering in the Kuhn Turning Mines Into Vines H Left: Heidi Kuhn at China Camp, where her family has deep history, in January 2022. Above: Kuhn wearing a traditional hijab of Afghanistan at her home in Marin County. – Photos by Trevor Henley | Desire to Inspire Studios Foundation

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