LillyPad Blog and Video: Walking in Someone Else's Shoes

by David Marbaugh

Krista Brantly loves shoes. Not because she wants to make a statement of fashion, but because she has a heart of compassion.

Krista, a Lilly colleague with our human resources team in Indianapolis, traveled to Tanzania last year as part of our Connecting Hearts Abroad employee volunteer program. She worked with children at a school—many who arrived each day with shoes too big, too small, or with laces frayed and torn. Some kids she saw had no shoes at all.

Like so many of our Connecting Hearts Abroad ambassadors, Krista was deeply affected by her experience. As she shared in an internal blog for our Lilly family:

I can't stop thinking about shoes. I thought of the little boy at school with his toes sticking out of the end of his tennis shoes. Then I thought of all the shoes in my closet. The chasm between these two worlds is mind boggling ... I want to live with an awareness of that other world,