Breaking Ground

Heidi Kühn’s lifelong commitment to fostering peace and raising awareness has been a driving force—from her early days as a student at the University of California, Berkeley, to her time as a reporter in Juneau, Alaska, covering the Exxon Valdez oil spill and US-Russia relations. After overcoming a potentially terminal cancer diagnosis that threatened everything she held dear, Heidi became determined to rid the world of another form of cancer that has plagued the world for decades—landmines—in regions as far-flung as Croatia, Vietnam, and Afghanistan. Inspired by the work of the late Princess Diana, Heidi began the humanitarian organization Roots of Peace from the basement of her Northern California home. She gained the support of famed Napa Valley vintners Robert Mondavi and Mike Grgich, and soon her mines-to-vines mission began to take hold. In this powerful memoir, Heidi tells the Roots of Peace story, guiding the reader from the early days in which she built her vision to her current presence on the global stage, where she has worked with presidents, prime minsters, landmine survivors, and religious leaders from around the world to spread a message of peace and recovery. In the years since the founding of Roots of Peace, its agricultural projects have made tremendous progress in the fight against landmines, revitalizing devastated land and uplifting the lives of countless people in the process. Through recalling her journey, Heidi reveals the remarkable change an ordinary person can inspire. Her story is one of faith, healing, and the compassion needed to grow a more peaceful world. Breaking Ground will encourage you to do the extraordinary and help plant the seeds of change for a brighter future.