Every Partner Counts: Lifeway Foods

I met Julie Smolyansky, CEO of Lifeway Foods, in the spring of 2010 at the Summit Series in Washington, D.C. She was then pregnant with her second child and I was about to premiere “No Woman, No Cry” at the TriBeca Film Festival. Julie and I stayed in touch and later, after I founded Every Mother Counts, I wrote her to tell her about what we hoped to achieve with our campaign. Julie asked what she could do to support our advocacy efforts and what resulted was her generous offer to launch a Kefir product to benefit maternal health through EMC. Lifeway is donating $ .05 from the sale of specially marked bottles of Low Fat Blueberry Kefir to the Every Mother Counts campaign.

But that was just a start. In addition to this incredible support, Julie traveled with us to Bangladesh last June to learn more about one of the countries highlighted in “No Woman, No Cry” that has seen a 40 percent reduction in maternal deaths in the last ten years. She impressed us on the road sharing stories of all the marathons she had run over the years and so when we received ten spots for Every Mother Counts in the 2011 ING New York City Marathon, we reached out to her immediately and she joined the team.

Julie continues to be an incredible partner and friend. This past year Julie and her team organized two “No Woman, No Cry” screening events in her hometown of Chicago and a sweepstakes to bring some loyal Lifeway customers to meet with us in April.

Julie, Christy, Erin and Heather Armstrong in Bangladesh 2011.

Erin, Julie and Christy at the “No Woman, No Cry” screenings with Lifeway Foods in Chicago. 

Heather Armstrong, Erin Thornton, Julie Smolyansky, and Christy in Bangladesh in 2011.