About Us
The Kindness Cloud Foundation is a tax-exempt, nonprofit foundation committed to increasing the Amount of Kindness in the world.
As everyone will agree, Kindness is an idea, a value, a motivation, a mindset, an action, a belief, and a way of life that has been promoted throughout human history. There is little disagreement with Kindness. But, it is not enough to Like or Agree with Kindness. To make the world a better place for everyone, the Actual Amount of Active Kindness must be increased. Our goal is to spark a Global Kindness Movement.
With Kindness
We Can All Create A World Working Well
WHO WE ARE
Arthur Bushkin, Chairman of the Kindness Cloud Foundation, is a writer, philanthropist, and social activist. In addition to Kindness, his principal causes include: Harnessing the Power of Technology for Social Good, Open Educational Services, and Civil Dialogue and Social Justice.
From 1999-2009, he was the CEO of the Stargazer Foundation, focusing on online services for education, communications, and safety and emergency response. In the early 1990s, he was President of Bell Atlantic Video Services, which led the creation of video-on-demand.
In the 1970s, he led President Carter's Privacy Initiative, resulting in the Right to Financial Privacy Act of 1978. He was also the principal U.S. representative on information, computer, and communications policy at the OECD and other international negotiations.
In the 1960s, he was present at the creation of what was to become the Internet, working with ARPA in the Defense Department. He studied and taught computer science at MIT, and he also taught at Wellesley.
Mary Guckert, Ph.D., President of the Kindness Cloud Foundation, is an author and public speaker. Mary is an adjunct professor at George Mason University and teaches courses focusing on cultural and emotional intelligence, human development, and educational psychology.
She is the founder of Back on Track LLC, which provided individual and group coaching to help people become the best version of themselves. Mary has written and spoken extensively on well-being, productivity, self-determination, motivation, and cyberbullying.
HISTORY
In 1960, two high school sweethearts, Barbara Steinback and Arthur Bushkin, both committed to doing an Act of Kindness every day of their lives. They occasionally dated for the next five years while living in different cities and then reconnected in 2010. After 45 years apart, they were pleasantly surprised to learn that they each had kept their Kindness Commitment.
Barbara and Art were married in 2011, and by 2012 their relationship was being publicly described on social media. On Valentines Day 2013, CNN.com published their Lifelong Valentines' story, spreading it widely on the Internet. Later in 2013, they started to write what they hoped would be an inspirational book focusing on the positive aspects of their history. They also started working on what they called the Kindness Project, and in 2014, they created their first Kindness Cloud graphic for social media. To them, the Kindness Project was always far more important than their personal story.
In their younger years, Barbara and Art did not think specifically about their Kindness Commitment; it was just something they both always did. However, after their reconnection, they often discussed making Kindness Contagious. They wanted to be Kindness Butterflies.
In 2018, Mary Guckert joined Barbara and Art to assist in their book and help bring the Kindness Project into greater focus. In March 2019, their book, called Lifelong Valentines, was published. Sadly, Barbara passed away unexpectedly in May 2019. In July 2019, the Kindness Project officially became the tax-exempt, non-profit Kindness Cloud Foundation with the mission of increasing the amount of Kindness in the world.