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Maria Kefalas
Founder and Executive Director
The Calliope Joy Foundation
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Maria Kefalas studied economics at Wellesley College and earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago. She worked at the Brookings Institution, held a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania, and taught at Barnard College (Columbia University) before joining the faculty of Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. Kefalas is the author of numerous books and articles, and has received grants from the William T. Grant Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Department of Justice.
Her life took an unexpected turn in 2012 when her husband, father, and father-in-law were all diagnosed with cancer. That same year, on the fifth of July, she learned her youngest child, Calliope “Cal”, suffered from a fatal degenerative neurological disease called metachromatic leukodystrophy (or MLD). Leukodystrophies are in the same family as Tay-Sachs and Canavan diseases. Cal would lose the ability to walk, talk, and feed herself within months. Cal was not expected to survive beyond the age of six.
Kefalas gained fifty pounds and struggled with depression and grief. A year after her daughter’s diagnosis, her nine-year-old son PJ suggested that the family start selling cupcakes “to raise money and to help kids like Cal.” This idea for a bake sale would change everything. Then, she started blogging under the name “The Recovering Supermom” and published essays in Slate, The Mighty, and The Huffington Post.
Over the next several years, the family would sell 50,000 cupcakes. That money would help establish nation’s first Leukodystrophy Center of Excellence at the world-renowned Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She has become a nationally recognized parent advocate for gene therapy who has spoken at the NIH, NORD, and the FDA.
Cal continues to beat the odds and will celebrate her 11th birthday in December. Kefalas has embraced a healthy lifestyle and now runs two miles every day and is “in the best shape I have been in for a decade.”
Tragically, Kefalas’s husband, Rutgers University sociologist Pat Carr died from multiple myeloma on April 16, 2020. This has provided Kefalas and her family with the unique vantage point on grief in the time of Covid-19.
With her late husband, Pat Carr, Kefalas is the co-founder of the Calliope Joy Foundation and Cure MLD.
The story of Cal and the cupcakes has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning with Jane Pauley and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Kefalas’s work was funded by the Philadelphia Eagles, and she received the 2018 Rare Impact Award by National Organization of Rare Disorders (NORD).
Her latest book Harnessing Grief: One Mother’s Quest for Meaning and Miracles will be published by Beacon Press in January 2021.
Her life took an unexpected turn in 2012 when her husband, father, and father-in-law were all diagnosed with cancer. That same year, on the fifth of July, she learned her youngest child, Calliope “Cal”, suffered from a fatal degenerative neurological disease called metachromatic leukodystrophy (or MLD). Leukodystrophies are in the same family as Tay-Sachs and Canavan diseases. Cal would lose the ability to walk, talk, and feed herself within months. Cal was not expected to survive beyond the age of six.
Kefalas gained fifty pounds and struggled with depression and grief. A year after her daughter’s diagnosis, her nine-year-old son PJ suggested that the family start selling cupcakes “to raise money and to help kids like Cal.” This idea for a bake sale would change everything. Then, she started blogging under the name “The Recovering Supermom” and published essays in Slate, The Mighty, and The Huffington Post.
Over the next several years, the family would sell 50,000 cupcakes. That money would help establish nation’s first Leukodystrophy Center of Excellence at the world-renowned Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She has become a nationally recognized parent advocate for gene therapy who has spoken at the NIH, NORD, and the FDA.
Cal continues to beat the odds and will celebrate her 11th birthday in December. Kefalas has embraced a healthy lifestyle and now runs two miles every day and is “in the best shape I have been in for a decade.”
Tragically, Kefalas’s husband, Rutgers University sociologist Pat Carr died from multiple myeloma on April 16, 2020. This has provided Kefalas and her family with the unique vantage point on grief in the time of Covid-19.
With her late husband, Pat Carr, Kefalas is the co-founder of the Calliope Joy Foundation and Cure MLD.
The story of Cal and the cupcakes has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning with Jane Pauley and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Kefalas’s work was funded by the Philadelphia Eagles, and she received the 2018 Rare Impact Award by National Organization of Rare Disorders (NORD).
Her latest book Harnessing Grief: One Mother’s Quest for Meaning and Miracles will be published by Beacon Press in January 2021.