Meet Stephen Knight | Principal

We had the good fortune of connecting with Stephen Knight and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Stephen, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
In June 2018, our firstborn, Elijah, died in a storm at summer camp. Two weeks before he passed away, he was working on ideas for his Eagle Scout project. He didn’t just want to make a one-time object; he wanted to solve a systemic challenge. While brainstorming, he said the words that would become his legacy: “Start everything with kindness and the end will be okay.” Based on Elijah’s profound statement, we asked our community for two things when he died: kindness and action, because you must have both to make real and positive improvements in the world. We founded the non-profit, Kindness to Action, to further that vision and support Elijah’s generation, today’s middle and high-schoolers, in remaking the world as it should be.

The goal is to generate self-sustaining momentum by empowering the youth to carry out projects large and small with our support. One of these projects is the global distribution of Kindness Coins, physical tokens sequentially numbered that are given freely in recognition of acts of kindness and registered on our website. The world map on KindnesstoAction.org is filling up with registered coins all over!

Through Kindness to Action, we hope to further Elijah’s vision to improve the world and see his unfulfilled potential carried forward by others, in his stead.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
We do this all in honor of Elijah James Knight, who died at the age of 14 with so much potential to do good in the world. From an engineering mindset, he wanted to fix problems at their source once and for all. He once said that he didn’t want to hug a tree or save a whale, he wanted to make it so that no one ever had to hug a tree or save a whale again! Founding this non-profit has kept me close to him and gives me some hope for the future that out of our tragedy, others are willing to step in and continue the vision Elijah so eloquently set forth.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Not being from the DFW area personally, I’d love to be on the receiving end of a great tour of the local places to visit.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
The support of the Dignity Memorial family of funeral homes and cemeteries has sustained us from the very first dark minutes when we received the worst news anyone can hear to the present in which they actively support and embrace this vision of Kindness to Action. Specifically, we’d like to thank Cary Grossi, Market Director for the DFW area, who invited us to present to all the local funeral directors about this vision. He genuinely cares and earnestly supports our mission!

Website: www.KindnessToAction.org

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kindnesstoaction/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kindnesstoaction

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Kindness2Action

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KindnessToActionOfficial/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCk64NMqUqcWKqA3BrHZPE5g

Image Credits
Lee Ray