You and your family (including son Benjamin Kahrl ’92 MA) are involved in the nonprofit organization Pathfinder International. What does Pathfinder do?
The organization works in reproductive health and family planning, because it is our belief that everybody has the right to a healthy life. And reproductive health is rather fundamental to that. My father became interested in family planning back in the ’20s. He knew that middle-class families had access to family planning, but many poor people did not. In 1957, we as a family started a small foundation that eventually evolved into Pathfinder International.

Family planning is a controversial topic. How do you approach it?
A lot of listening has to be done. Especially in this area of life, which is so personal and so controversial, it is extremely important to get an understanding of people’s sensitivities and their culture, and how they think about having children and sexuality and HIV/AIDS and women.

What is the scope of Pathfinder now?
I think it’s important to realize that Pathfinder does far more than just family planning. It has to do with maternal and newborn care, HIV/AIDS, and working with adolescents. We do advocacy work both in this country and internationally. We help local organizations figure out how to advocate for reproductive health care in their country. Pathfinder now works in 25 countries in the developing world.

What sort of conditions do mothers face in the developing world?
The stories are incredibly dramatic. One story: A man had to run two hours to get somewhere where he could radio for help. They finally found an ambulance that couldn’t get all the way to the house where the woman was [in labor], so she had to be carried for 45 minutes.

The government of Peru recently recognized your family for your work in preventing maternal mortality. How did that come about?
My daughter, Sarah, came on a trip to Peru where we visited the maternal hospital in Lima, where they had just opened a special ward for young adolescent mothers. She was very moved by these young girls. She established an award, which is now called the Anonymous Heroes Award. [It honors organizations that] have done something extraordinary to save the life of a mother, overcoming economic, cultural, and geographic barriers. Sarah started it, but the rest of [the family] took on some of the responsibility for raising the funds to make the grant every year. 
 
We are very excited that the award has had a ripple effect. Not due to our award directly, but due to this raised consciousness about this award, maternal mortality rates have dropped in Peru. So lots of people and organizations become very aware of what a serious issue maternal morality is in Peru. And it’s a very serious problem around the world.

Has your degree in photography helped you with your work?
It has really sharpened how I can discern what’s going on in different places. It also helped me with my job with diversity coordination at Columbus Academy. Much of my work there at the beginning was seeing where we needed to pay attention to gender issues and diversity issues and working with the faculty [to] bring some of those things about. [That] gave me an appreciation of intricacy of the work that Pathfinder does, because they work in all kinds of different cultures.

Interview by MELISSA CURRENCE