An Unlikely Pairing (Maria Tadd and Karen Newton) with a Common Mission

In 1993, Maria moved to Chapel Hill from Massachusetts, looking for warmer climes and for an area that was progressive, one that embraced diversity and a holistic approach to life. Oddly, she found it difficult connecting with others who practiced meditation or holistic health so in 1994 she and a friend started the first IONS (Institute of Noetic Sciences) chapter in the Triangle. For the first few years, the group met at her house having as few as 6 and as many as 30 participants. After a few years, she passed the torch.

When she moved here in 1993, it was for a job that turned out to be something very different than promised. And she found herself unemployed as she was laid off a few days before Christmas in 1994. Finding work was challenging and in 1995 she took a job as a contractor, editing catalogs and books for Instrument Society of America (ISA), now called the International Society of Automation, a company that produces books on engineering. She knew she had stepped into a different “world”, but little did she know how much of a mismatch it would be.  She worked in their satellite office in Raleigh in a little cube surrounded by support staff and a few engineers. Needless to say she found very few kindred spirits as her heart was more aligned with natural healing, esoterics, meditation, and medicine. One day, on her way to the lunch room, she stuck her head in the doorway of a small office that housed the graphics department. One of people, Karen Newton, who did book layout as a contractor, introduced herself.

Karen moved to NC in the spring of 1985, a few months after graduating from Bowling Green State University in Ohio. Early interests in astrology and reincarnation led her to explore more meaningful aspects of spirituality and life purpose. Regular trips to the local new age bookstore, then called Aquarius Rising which changed to Dancing Moon in 1990 under new ownership, broadened her curiosity and interests. In the early 1990s, Karen attended the Religious Science Church of the Triangle, and studied Ernest Holmes and the Science of Mind under Rev. Pat King. At the time we met, Karen was a regular reader of a local magazine called Connexions, which focused on holistic health and spirituality.

We started to get to know each other and out of the blue we lamented the fact that Connexions was no longer being published. Actually, it seemed that the publisher just vanished. Maria had written some articles for this pub and had even discussed with her mom how disappointed she was that the magazine just came to a screeching halt. With encouragement from her mother she contemplated starting her own magazine, but doing such a big project alone seemed daunting. However, oddly enough, Karen too felt the void that had been created by the absence of this magazine and was also interested in creating something to take its place. We knew virtually nothing about each other, but we both got excited about the idea of creating our own publication and decided to call it Innerchange. Our meeting and discovery of our shared interest was amazingly serendipitous as it is highly unlikely that our paths would have ever crossed under any other circumstance.

At the time, Karen lived in West Raleigh and was married with a 1-yr old. Maria lived in Chapel Hill, was not married, and was not a mom. Karen is 15 years Maria’s junior. Neither one of us knew anything about starting a business or a magazine. But we had enthusiasm and that seemed to be enough to overcome any doubts and shaky skill sets we might have had. We culled the names of advertisers from past Connexions, put out a call for articles (Maria wrote one about ISA, Death of the American Soul), and published our first issue on a shoestring in January 1996.

Lest people should forget, there wasn’t an internet in 1995 and we didn’t own software to do page layouts. Karen laid out all the pages by hand. She didn’t even have a light table. Distribution was also something we knew nothing about. We started out by boxing up magazines in Karen’s garage, sticking on labels and mailing them to distribution sites that were too far to drive to. Karen’s husband Carl was a Godsend as he took our boxes to the post office and, between the three of us, we delivered bundles of magazines to sites throughout the Triangle. Somehow we didn’t get singed by our initiation by fire approach. We learned from our mistakes, realizing after the first several months that putting out a monthly pub was way too much work since we both had real jobs. We no sooner got one pub to the printer and it was time to start all over again. So, in August 1996, Innerchange became a bi-monthly pub which gave us a little breathing room. We also discovered that we could pay someone to distribute our magazine, thus alleviating us of the arduous task of boxing, labeling and shipping the pub ourselves.

We attended expos and had a stable of writers who contributed to Innerchange on a regular basis, but with printing and distribution costs we only got to remunerate ourselves once – we paid ourselves $500 for a gazillion hours of work! So we guess you could say it was a labor of love. We believe then and we still believe now, that we made a difference in contributing to the evolution of a greater presence of alternative medicine, spiritual practices, energetic healing and even some ecological concerns.

After just two and a half years, Maria had to give up the magazine. She had landed a job in medical advertising and just didn’t have any spare time as advertising was very demanding of her time. Karen continued along without her for another 10 years, hiring a part-time office assistant as well as someone to regularly update the website she started. At one point, she tested the waters by moving the magazine out of her home office and hiring a couple of part-time ad sales reps, but this was a failed experiment. Downsizing back to herself in her home office and keeping on a few key contractors for the website and magazine distribution was the winning formula. In early 2008, battling a strong case of burnout, she passed the magazine on to a friend.

Aside from exchanging Christmas cards, we weren’t in touch that much until Maria wrote a book on aging at home and needed someone to lay it out. She had already had it laid out in Framemaker, but the guy didn’t do a good job. And since very few people use Framemaker these days, she gave Karen, an “expert” with Framemaker, a call. And so, we were reunited. The next serendipitous encounter was this past spring when Maria decided to have her book converted into an e-book. She actually was interviewing a possible vendor who had worked for ISA as well. She called Karen during the meeting as he was going to need the Framemaker files. And low and behold, just that week she was talking with ISA about learning how to convert books to e-books. Well, of course she would prefer to work with Karen, and Maria’s book is now available as an e-book on Amazon.
Then this August, Karen invited Maria to join her on a trip to Seagrove. During the drive we hatched our new venture, KiConnections.  Since then we have worked tirelessly to create our online, free-to-consumer, consumer-reviewed, directory with a focus on holistic health and conscious living. 

The number one place to search for a product or service or service provider is on the internet. More and more businesses can attest to the fact that the majority of their new business comes from an internet search. With the growth of smart phones and people having the internet always at their fingertips, this will grow exponentially. KiConnections is positioned to take advantage of that. Our listings are low cost, our website will have fresh content via blogs and regular changes based on SEO research, and we’ll be continuously expanding our web presence through online social media and search engine networks.