Bell Employee

Kasey Kier 
Minneapolis

Recipient

Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity

The Need

The shriek of a power saw and the rhythmic pounding of hammers punctuated the air – interspersed with calls and laughter from the busy builders at work on two new homes in the Twin Cities suburb of Maplewood.

Kasey Kier was working alongside several colleagues from Bell Bank, where she is national community development manager for the mortgage division.

It wasn’t Kasey’s first foray into affordable housing issues, as she spent decades with the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency before joining Bell in 2021. For Kasey, helping people achieve homeownership is a “real passion” – and her work with Habitat for Humanity is just one part of that. The Maplewood homes were the third Habitat project she’s worked on in the last few years.

“New construction is extremely expensive,” explained Dan Peinovich, VP/construction sales manager, who also worked on the build. “A program like this that gives consumers and future homeowners the opportunity to have something new or completed renovated, at a very reasonable expense for them, that’s a good thing.”

The Impact

It was clear to Kasey that she wanted to create a special Pay It Forward experience, combining pooled Pay It Forward funds with a chance to work on an upcoming build – during National Homeownership Month, no less – through Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity.

About two dozen Bell Bank team members joined Kasey at the build – and pooled Pay It Forward donations from employees totaled $25,000.

Those gifts all went to Twin Cities Habitat, one of the largest affiliates in the Habitat for Humanity network. Since 1985, Twin Cities Habitat has put more than 1,700 families into homes of their own. With projects including a huge Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project in October 2024, the group is also working to close the racial gap in homeownership rates.

“With all of the great work they’re doing, I just really wanted to be a part of it and support it,” said Kasey.

Although a build day can be exhausting, Kasey and her colleagues felt the rewards as well, with Kasey relating, “You walk away knowing that what you’re building is going to be somebody’s home someday.”

Through the Pay It Forward program, Bell gives employees money each year to donate to people in need and causes they care about.