PARENT YOU SHOULD KNOW
Carrie Fox
The ‘Adventures in Kindness’ co-author and
Mission Partners CEO shares her family life
BY LINDSAY C. VANASDALAN
on dinnertime conversations. To think about
our actions more intentionally. In a lot of ways,
it feels like it’s our responsibility as parents
and humans, and as a family, to really be aware
of the world that we’re in and to be taking
meaningful steps every day to contribute to a
more just and connected world.

What is your goal with the
second edition of the book?
Your work with Mission Partners I have in this world, I want to think about
contributing something good.

and Adventures in Kindness is
focused on social impact. Why
is this area important to you?
How has that mindset inspired
We have one planet, and it’s in danger. Every your family?
What is one lesson you hope your
children learn from your career?
There’s a sign that hangs above my daughter’s
bed, and it says, “Be brave,” and I think that’s
a lot of this. If we start where we are and every
day take a step forward toward justice, we will
day, especially as a parent, every minute that I think it’s given us opportunities to go deeper tip the world toward love. n
28 Washington FAMILY JANUARY 2022
PROVIDED PHOTO
M ission Partners Founder and CEO Carrie Fox always had a mind for social impact. After
starting a communications consultancy for nonprofits, C. Fox Communications, at
age 25, she knew she could do more if she focused exclusively on issues of community,
such as social justice, sustainability, children’s health and higher education.

“It was as the 2016 election was unfolding, and we were thinking about the role that we were
playing and could play in disrupting a lot of the toxic and harmful narratives that we had seen
play out in our country,” she says. Mission Partners, a strategic communications firm which
guides nonprofits, foundations and corporations, was born in 2017.

Two years later, Fox got the chance to share her passion with her eldest daughter when her
daughter asked “why people in positions of power can be so mean.”
“That was a really big question for a little kid,” Fox says.

She asked her daughter, Sophia, 11, what would happen if she could put the opposite out into
the world. “Adventures in Kindness” was born. The two co-authored the book’s second edition,
packed with mission-focused apparel and kindness adventure kits for kids 7 to 13. Their project
hit bookshelves last month.

Fox spoke with Washington FAMILY about balancing family life as a mission-focused CEO
and author. She lives in Rockville with her husband, Brian, daughters Sophia and Kate, 8, and
their dog Baxter.

We wrote the second edition reflecting
on the year that was 2020 and everything
that happened in 2020. What we wanted
to do with the second edition is to include
new adventures that are directly informed
from having lived through that experience.

There are new adventures like how to
practice the use of your preferred pronouns
and how to introduce yourself using your
preferred pronouns as a way to advance an
inclusive mindset.

We have new adventures around starting
kindness clubs and new adventures around
supporting the planet more intentionally—
even around signing a no-bullying pledge.

The second edition is designed to build on
the first and to be very in tune and reflective
with where our world is now. Keep in mind,
you know, we wrote that first edition well
before (COVID-19) was even in our minds,
and funny enough, a lot of it was really
relevant. Perhaps the best way to say it is
we’ve gotten more explicit in why kindness
really matters.

Being kind is being deeply compassionate
and empathetic and understanding in a
way that is far greater than saying “please”
and “thank you” or holding a door open for
someone. It’s really thinking about stepping
outside of our own shoes and understanding
the larger context of the world we live in.