Interview of Karen Marzloff

By: Max Jasper and Mae Rines

Karen Marzloff is a truly upstanding citizen. She co-founded the non-profit organization, Seacoast Local. It’s first “Buy Local” campaign was during holiday shopping in December 2006. Seacoast Local encourages citizens to buy from local businesses to help support a healthy economy. Her job at the Portsmouth-based headquarters is to make sure everything functions properly. For co-founding the organization she received the “Citizen of the Year” award in 2009. Though the award was shared with the other founder Tom Holbrook, it is no less prestigious.

“Our mission is to educate the public on the value of our local economy here on the seacoast. The healthier we make our economy, the healthier our community will be” said Marzloff when asked what her organization did. “What difference does that make? Well, when we spend our money at locally owned, independent businesses as compared to national chains, three times as much of our money stays in the community, thanks to profits that stay in the pockets of local owners, payroll of more local employees, philanthropy to local charitable causes, and purchasing of local goods and services. The bigger the national chain, the more of each dollar spent at the cash register goes straight to corporate headquarters somewhere else.”

Karen’s interest in philanthropic endeavors originated from how she was raised. Church taught her that she was responsible for her brothers and sisters, both in the local community and around the whole world. Her parents were always involved in some sort of volunteer work while Karen was off at 4-H. Her time there taught her to take action and donate time back to the community instead of just going home and watching TV.

“I think I am influenced by a lot of things; authors, artists and musicians, or entrepreneurs who run interesting businesses, historical and contemporary figures who display genuine leadership and courage, even nature. I'm influenced a lot by how beautiful and diverse planet earth is. I know that's kind of a vague answer, but it's true. I think I do absorb a lot of what I'm surrounded by.” According to Karen, the trick to doing well, for both yourself and others, is to surround yourself with diversity. The reason for that is you can then do a trial and error in life by “seeing what works and what doesn’t”. She admires those who do whatever they do, as well as possible. It may be very difficult to perpetuate such behavior. Her advice for that is to “have a lot of inspirational examples to help stay on track”.

Seacoast Local is a non-profit organization and you can find them online at http://www.seacoastlocal.org/