Operation Smile Opp

I am by no means a wealthy person able to fund my recent and current global adventures. Much gratitude is owed to the USC Institute for Global Health for providing the research grant that allowed Mel and I to live in Shirati for 5 weeks and to later casually hop over to Nairobi and Cairo on the way back home.

I recently started a new position. Funny thing is that is since it’s so unstructured, I have no clearly defined roles or employers yet. Basically my boss, Dr. Bill Magee, decided to create an ad hoc position and recruited me while developing it. Bill is a plastic surgeon at Childrens Hospital LA (CHLA) that specializes in craniofacial and cleft lip/palate deformities in children. He is also the son of the founders of Operation Smile. So I will be the International Operations Manager under his International Programs directorship at CHLA. We will work heavily with Operation Smile on missions.

My duties are sometimes as random and creative as Bill’s thought process. I meet up with him a few times a week and otherwise work wherever. I’ll have some opportunities for international travel to Operation Smile mission sites if the occasion calls for it. Right now I was sent via my job to Guwahati, India to primarily observe the Op Smile mega mission happening here and assist with any small research projects from MPH students here. After India, I plan on hopping over to Thailand and visit families in Bangkok and Chiang Mai.

Just prior to traversing halfway across the globe to India, Bill sent me to Norfolk, VA to the Operation Smile headquarters for a staff conference and lodging at his parents’ large Hotel Magee house. It was truly awesome being able to meet everyone working in the Op Smile headquarters. All of the staff pretty much go through stringent interview processes and are hand-picked to create the down-to-earth and motivating culture found within the organization.

Bill and Kathy Magee are the founders of Operation Smile and their story and success amazes me. They took their first trip outside of the country to the Philippines in the 80s and were moved by the children with cleft lip and palates and the overwhelming need in the world. Today, they have a multi-million dollar non-profit with international missions running constantly and support by celebrities. I was able to chat with Bill Sr. about how they grew their company from a small beginning to a great giant. We referenced the book “Good to Great” by Jim Collins, a fantastic business read about how businesses and organizations should recruit who they want to work with before defining what it is exactly they need to do. Its nearly impossible to motivate unmotivated workers but more constructive to hire already motivated individuals. I asked Bill Sr. about the organization that Melody and I are trying to start to help our Shirati community and ascertained some useful advice such as focusing on the individual you are trying to help rather than some large ideology. I’m also part of another wonderful new start-up called Global Adolescent Project (GAP) primarily working with secondary school children in Haiti. I often ponder what steps and luck it will take to grow these initial good intentions into great organizations.