Delois Greenwood is one of the most selfless, hardworking and compassionate people I have ever met in my life.
Our paths first crossed in the 90s when I merged my charity, Operation Smile in New York with Operation Smile in Virginia.
Delois had helped start Operation Smile and actually went on its very first mission to The Philippines in 1982. She started out as a O.R. scrub nurse but quickly rose through the ranks to become Op Smile’s best senior manager.
When I decided to leave Operation Smile to start Smile Train, Delois agreed to come with me. It wasn’t an easy decision for her because she had been with Op Smile for almost 20 years and was by far their best manager and most valuable employee.
But Delois really believed in our new strategy of empowering local surgeons and hospitals instead of sending volunteers on 2-week medical missions so she took a chance.
I am so grateful that she did. Delois was a critical member of the small team of us that built Smile Train from scratch, into the worlds largest cleft charity, in just a few years.
Delois was a great manager, solid leader, and quality person that made everyone around her better. For many years she was my “right hand man.”
As COO of Smile Train, Delois oversaw remarkable growth and success.
Our surgeries soared from 2,000 a year to 120,000 a year.
Our donors grew from 200 to more than 2 million.
And our revenues skyrocketed from $500,000 a year to more than $100 million a year.
Of yes, we also won an Oscar in 2009 for a movie. we conceived, produced and distributed.
And in 2007, around the same time the New York Times wrote that the Smile Train was “the most productive charity, dollar per deed, in the world.”
Delois was always a great role model for our young staff who looked up to her and admired her just as I did.
Whenever I had an important donor meeting I would always try and bring Delois along. Her medical background and decades of experience were always appreciated and respected by donors and our partners.
When I started WonderWork after leaving Smile Train, I was very lucky AGAIN to have Delois join me.
For a variety of reasons, starting WonderWork was ten times harder than starting Smile Train.
Our small WonderWork team – most of whom came from Smile Train – had a lot of experience and determination, but not much else. We didn’t have any money. We were being sued and threatened all the time. And it was very difficult to start all over again after we had built Smile Train into a billion-dollar charity.
One minute we were raising $10 million a month at Smile Train and the next minute we were lucky to raise $10 million a year, at WonderWork.
Needless to say, it was very demoralizing.
But Delois never complained and she never quit.
We all swallowed our pride and focused our energy on the new, much larger problems of club foot, burns and blindness. We travelled to burn wards, clubfoot clinics and blindness camps all over the developing world.
Little by little, we found partners, we found donors, we found a way to help enormous numbers of children and adults no one else would help. Against all odds, we succeeded in building a charity that was really making a difference. Within five years, we scaled up to almost 100,000 surgeries a year.
That’s 100,000 life-changing surgeries a year. Not bad for a tiny staff of just 8 full-time employees working out of a small office in New York City.
And not bad for a scrub nurse who helped make it all possible.
Over 4 decades, Delois Greenwood selflessly helped create, build and lead three of the largest and most successful surgical charities in the world: Operation Smile, Smile Train and WonderWork.
None of them ever built a statue for her – but they should have.
