Tag Archives: Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Steve Lyons and Carol Palladini Honored as Man and Woman of the Year

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Carol Palladini was named Woman of the Year. Courtesy photo.

Carol Palladini was named Woman of the Year. Courtesy photo.

Hundreds of friends and supporters gathered at the Four Seasons Biltmore to recognize Steve Lyons and Carol Palladini for their long-standing commitment to volunteerism and the significant impact they have had throughout the community.

The awards were presented by Ron Gallo, president & CEO of the Santa Barbara Foundation. “The landscape and sense of community we treasure in Santa Barbara was shaped to a great extent by the efforts of volunteers,” says Gallo. This year’s recipients of the Man & Woman of the Year award, Steve Lyons and Carol Palladini, continue this legacy of service. Their compassion and willingness to give back has touched the lives of thousands and clearly demonstrates the impact of committed volunteers.”

Lyons came to Santa Barbara with his family in the early 1980s. His local nonprofit involvement has included CALM (Child Abuse Listening Mediation), ADL (Anti-Defamation League), Family Service Agency (FSA), Cottage Hospital,  The Land Trust for Santa Barbara County, Laguna Blanca School, the Boys & Girls Club and AYSO, among others.

Steve Lyons was named Man of the Year.

Steve Lyons was named Man of the Year.

Palladini, who moved to Santa Barbara from Pasadena in 1996, has also been involved with a number of local nonprofits, including CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates), Planned Parenthood of Santa Barbara, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Rotary Club of Santa Barbara and Tres Condados Girl Scout Council. In 2004, she established the Women’s Fund of Santa Barbara, which has awarded grants totaling $4.7 million to 64 local nonprofit programs impacting more than 83,000 local women, children and families in Santa Barbara, Goleta and Carpinteria.

The awards were presented by the Santa Barbara Foundation and Noozhawk, with special commendations by Mayor Helene Schneider and Rep. Lois Capps.

—Leslie Dinaberg

Originally published in Santa Barbara Seasons on October 8, 2014.

Leslie Dinaberg Sits Down with Steven Crandell

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Steven Crandell courtesy photo

Steven Crandell courtesy photo

Between his calming Kiwi accent and his towering 6-foot-6-inch presence, working with the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation for the abolishment of nuclear weapons seems a natural fit for Steven Crandell. There’s something soothing about spending time with this former Stanford basketball team captain, journalist, biographer and fund-raising consultant, who now devotes his days to working for peace.

Leslie Dinaberg: Tell me about the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

Steven Crandell: The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has been working on the abolition of nuclear weapons for 25 years and it has a great reputation. (President and founder) David Krieger is well known; he has international relationships and reputation and yet the question that always comes back is, “What do you do?”

LD: So you’ve created this DVD about nuclear weapons to help explain. What are the main things you want to communicate?

SC: I have this story of three numbers, and if you know them you can take a big step toward awareness about nuclear issues.

How many nuclear weapons are there in the world? And the answer is 26,000. Most people don’t know that. Most people are pretty surprised that it’s that many.

The second question is how many nuclear weapons are on high alert, which means they can be fired in moments? 3,500 can be fired in moments.

OK, we’ve got two numbers: 26,000 nuclear weapons and 3,500 on high alert.

How many does it take to kill a million people? One.

And I think those numbers tell the story probably better than anything. We’ve got a weapon that’s so terrible it’s impossible to imagine it being used.

LD: Now of those 26,000, how many belong to the United States?

SC: About 10,000. Russia has a few more than we do and I think it’s around 90 percent are Russian or American.

LD: You have said previously that three-fourths of Americans are against nuclear weapons. What can we do to stop them?

SC: The first thing they can do is get informed … (We have a) new local program which is Santa Barbara Peace Community, and the basic goal of that is to train peace leaders in Santa Barbara. They’ll watch our DVD, and next year we’re adding a simple quiz so you’ll have the right answers. We’ll ask people to sign a pledge that says what we want the U.S. to take leadership for de-alerting weapons and no first use, getting back to working with other nations working toward the goal of a nonproliferation act and using the money, the billions of dollars — the U.S. alone spends $6 billion a year on nuclear weapons. Another step is e-mail five of your friends and ask them to watch the DVD, that’s something you can do right now on our Web site, which is www.wagingpeace.org. And the fifth step is you give to us. The sixth step is actually coming in here … they’ll get trained on how to present things to people and also more background information about nuclear weapons. And seventh is a very important step, especially for today’s peace leaders: They’ll come up with their own individual plan for who they want to approach.

… It’s kind of like a personal journey of development, if you like, except you are developing your knowledge about nuclear weapons and your ability to actually be involved and make a difference.

LD: I understand the work obviously is very admirable, but why did you choose this particular job?

SC: I’ve got four reasons and their names are Isaac, Luke, Josette and Nathaniel, my children. And I don’t try to, I’m far from an expert on nuclear weapons, but I don’t think you have to be. I think this is a legacy issue and by that I mean it’s an issue about what do we give to our kids, what world do we leave to them.

LD: Were you actively looking to go from being a consultant for a bunch of different organizations to working for a single organization?

SC: I think that was always a temptation. I had a great, great time as a consultant with my dad, we had our little company, the Crandell Company, the highlight was of course the book (Silver Tongue), which you’ve heard a lot about, which in itself was a fund raiser. But one of the things I felt as a consultant is that … fund raising is so strongly connected to the program, and when you get people who will give the time so that you can present the case, they want to know that you know it in and out and you believe in it. I think that makes a difference. And it’s not that I didn’t believe in the other charities I was helping, but I was helping a number of them and I was a consultant. Now there’s no question what I’m about and which team I’m on, and that makes my job easier in the end because I think that’s one of the things that I do probably better than other things, which is just speak from the heart.

LD: What do you like to do when you’re not working?

SC: I play the guitar and sing. I’ve been running with my brother, Michael, who is a marathoner. I can’t run that far but just to get away at lunch and go for a run by the beach is great. That’s the advantage of Santa Barbara. And I’ve got two little kids — 2 and 5 — who I spend a lot of time parenting when I’m not working.

LD: If you could be invisible anywhere in Santa Barbara, where would you go and what would you do?

SC: The whole invisibility thing isn’t all that attractive to me so. … I guess I’ve gained a lot of humility through life in various different ways, and I have a real sense of my own clay feet, so I don’t mind being myself. There’s an acceptance that has come with that, an acceptance of my foibles and more glaring faults as well, not as an excuse, just that I’m going to disappoint people in some ways somehow. But that’s not really the point of life. This point is, and I actually said this. John Zant interviewed me, or Mark Patton, when I was 18 and I was going away on a basketball scholarship and the headlines said, “He just wants to enjoy life.” … This is still me. I want to enjoy my life.

Vital Stats: Steven Crandell

Born: Feb. 15, 1959 in Harrisburg, Pa. Moved to Santa Barbara in 1960

Family: Wife Kathleen, children Nathaniel, 2; Josette, 5; Luke, 14; and Isaac, 18

Civic Involvement: “I do my best to my limited capability as a father and I think that, in the end, fathers and mothers are the key to community health. We don’t all have children but we all are children, all sons and daughters, and so that relationship is the key and often colors the relationships we choose for ourselves, how we approach life. My thought is if I’m going to invest time in anything I’m going to invest time in my kids.”

Professional Accomplishments: Author of Silver Tongue, about the life of his father, Larry Crandell; producer of the national news in New Zealand for 15 years; director of development/public affairs, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Originally published in Noozhawk on December 24, 2007.

Talking Kindness with Anita Roddick

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anita-roddickA walking billboard for her belief that, “enthusiasm can’t be taught, it must be caught,” Dame Anita Roddick recently delivered a lecture on “Kindness as a Key to Humanity’s Future” to a crowd of about 200 UCSB students and people from the community.

“Kindness doesn’t have to be random … It can and should be practiced tenaciously, “said the founder of The Body Shop, who is a frequent speaker on corporate responsibility and social justice issues. Certainly a practitioner of kindness herself, Roddick said she believes that “We need to measure progress by human development, not GNP.” And she has walked the talk at The Body Shop for more than 28 years while spawning 1,980 stores and 77 million customers around the world, according to her website.

“I’m here not in the guise of a successful business person but as an activist for peace, said Roddick, a part-time Montecito resident who serves as a trustee for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, sponsor of the event.

Nonetheless, she’s managed to intertwine her business with her personal values in a way that few corporate leaders have. “We have to put human rights at the very, very center of every trade relationship. Gender balance is also essential. We need to involve women at all levels on an equal basis as men,” she said.

“Businesses must show more developed emotions than fear and greed. If business comes with no moral sympathy or honorable code of behavior, God help us all,” said Roddick.

She challenged the audience to imagine a world where institutions such as religion, the media and the legal system were required to be kind, in turn generating dialogue from the audience about the dynamic between truth and forgiveness, aggressive kindness and the role of the media in modernizing youth around the world.

Originally published in South Coast Beacon