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Member Spotlight Christine Andersen
“I was just beside myself. I thought, I’ve got two small kids, so what can I do? I can boycott, that’s easy,” said Andersen. “I gave a little money, $20 or something, so I started getting reports…” The reports from INFACT (now Corporate Accountability International) documented how babies in the developing world were dying from infant formula mixed with unsafe water. This moved Anderson to get more involved in an organization she continues to support to this day. “This was the first thing I felt like I could do as a stay-at-home mom without much money,” she said. Andersen was already a leader in the local La Leche League, which promotes the health benefits of breastfeeding. She had also just given birth to her second son and was empathetic to the plight of nursing mothers abroad. A decade later, an energetic, young organizer named Kelle Louaillier from INFACT asked Andersen to join the board of directors. “I did three years on the board, and I’d go up to Boston, and I never saw a group of people who worked so hard, accomplished so much…with no money,” she said. “That office was held together with spit and glue!” During board meetings, Andersen and other members would take ironing boards and petitions down to the streets. At night they would cook together and catch up on each other’s lives. And like INFACT, over the years Andersen’s means to affect change grew. Her family had founded the Andersen Windows Corporation 100 years ago and when her father passed away, Andersen and her sister took over the Hugh J. Andersen Foundation. “My grandfather started foundations to help people,” said Andersen. “Like him, I just like taking care of people.” The Foundation has supported clinics, battered women’s shelters, food banks, hospitals, and Corporate Accountability International campaigns.
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For Christine Andersen it began with a news article. Staff at a national breastfeeding organization handed her a story on Nestlé’s marketing of infant formula in Africa. 