1959  I was born on May 5th to Joe and Rosemary Mullaney at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. Air Force ROTC paid my Dad’s way through Holy Cross College and Harvard Law School.

1963 – 1970 My dad paid $19,000 for our first house on Derbyshire Road in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. His grandmother loaned him 10% for the down payment. He was making $5,000 a year as a junior partner at the law firm, Jones Day Reavis and Pogue.

 

1970 Our 2nd house on Gainsborough Road, Potomac, Maryland. My dad worked in the White House for Donald Rumsfeld and President Nixon. He’s in the back row on the right.

1971 My little sister Maura Anne Mullaney contracts a rare illness called Stevens Johnson Syndrome. When her temperature soars to 107+ degrees she suffers third degree burns and almost dies.

1972 Our 3rd house on Goose Pond Road, Lincoln, MA. We leave D.C. and go home to Boston. My dad got a great job as General Counsel at The Gillette Company. 26 years later he rose to become Vice Chairman and a board member.

 

1973 After many years of cutting lawns, shoveling snow, babysitting, pulling weeds, and delivering newspapers, I got my first “real” job in 9th grade. I worked as a dishwasher at Willow Pond Kitchen Restaurant every Saturday night from 5 till midnight for $2 an hour, a free cheeseburger and a Coke. That $14 felt like a fortune.

 

1973 After my parents spent two years trying to save her, my little sister Maura Anne Mullaney dies at 10 years old. I am 13 years old. Her death leaves a void in our family that is never filled. 27 years later my wife Cricket and I name our first born daughter, Maura Anne Mullaney in her memory.

 

1975 Tried parachuting. (once.)

 

1977 Win New England Prep School, Class B pole-vaulting championship.

1977  Graduated from one of the best, all-boy, prep schools in America, The Belmont Hill School in Belmont, Massachusetts.

 

1977 Admitted to Harvard College, Class of 1981. I play on the freshman football team, but one month into it, the sports physicians discover I have one cracked vertabrae and another vertabrae with a bone spur, from high school football. This ends my football career. I switch to the Harvard track team to pole vault but overall was pretty miserable at Harvard. I decide to withdraw for a year.

 

January, 1978 I sold my stereo and speakers for $635, to finance my relocation to Los Angeles, which was about as far away from Boston as I could get. I spent $300 on a used Honda 350 motorcycle, rented a ” furnished” apartment in Hollywood, and I found a job as a bank teller in Beverly Hills for $7,000/year.

1978 Worked every Tuesday night, 10:00pm to 4:00am, as a volunteer, Crisis Suicide Counselor at the Suicide Prevention Center of Los Angeles.

 

November, 1978 After almost a year in Los Angeles, I get mono and lose my job and my apartment. I move into the Hollywood YMCA which is all I can afford. I have no savings, no income, and can’t find another job, so I return to Boston and go back to college. Shipped my belongings home in a trunk, and rode my motorcycle from LA to Florida to Boston. No credit card and down to my last $186, so I slept outside two out of three nights in a sleeping bag, third night in a cheap hotel for a shower and shave.

January, 1979 While waiting to start college in the summer, I work as a loan collector at Shawmut Bank of Boston.

June, 1979 Re-enrolled in Harvard College, began with summer school.

February, 1980 Drive through a blizzard with my mom in a two-seater MG convertible to Lake Placid for the Winter Olympics. Car broke down for 3 hours, but we made it to our front row seats for the beginning of the 2nd period, for the “Miracle On Ice” when the American hockey team beat the Russians.

 

LORIBROWN

1980 Sole witness for the prosecution during a landmark rape trial in Los Angeles. My friend Lori Brown Nelsen was attacked.her rapist, Gary Wayne Brown, was sentenced to 10 years.

 

1981 Founded student-run advertising agency at Harvard: HSA Advertising.

1982 Leaving Alhambras, a nightclub in Westport, MA, my brother Sean, Tony Polestra and I are assaulted by group led by Mafia hitman Joe “The Animal” Savitch from Fall River, MA. We refuse to press charges for obvious reasons.

 

1982 Got to meet and shake the hand of Mother Teresa at Harvard Commencement. In her speech, she urged us to , “Go find your own Calcutta!” 15 years later, I did, when I founded Smile Train.

 

1983 Graduated from Harvard College with an A.B. in Business Economics.

 

1983  began work as a Junior Copywriter for $15,000 a year at Young & Rubicam New York. Clients include Jell-O, Birds Eye, Ruffles and Kodak.

 

1985  Hired as a Senior copywriter for $50,000 a year at J. Walter Thompson. Clients include: Miller Beer and Burger King.

1987 Promoted to Senior VP, Creative Director at J. Walter Thompson. Salary raised to $100,000 a year. Pitched and won a mainframe software account for a client called Computer Associates. I had never used a computer before but was anxious to learn.

 

January 1, 1990 Co-Founded Schell/Mullaney with my art director partner and best friend, Mike Schell. Schell/Mullaney was one of America’s first high-tech ad agencies. I used my life savings to start it in my apartment which was our office for the first six months, Schell/Mullaney’s clients include: Dow Jones, Wall Street Journal, Ziff-Davis, Standard Micro Systems, Polaroid and Computer Associates.

 

1990 Schell/Mullaney wins the $10 million Computer Associates account. Within a few years, we replaced all of Computer Associates’ ad agencies across Europe. We opened a Schell/Mullaney office in Paris to service those clients. A few years after that, we were responsible for all of CA’s advertising around the world. And then started handling all of their trade shows, direct mail, branding, etc.

 

1991 Started doing pro bono work for The Andrew Glover Foundation, an alternative-sentencing charity working on New York City’s lower east side.

 

1992  Started doing pro bono work for Church of Our Savior, Park Avenue, New York City.

 

1992 My business partner Mike Schell and I co-found Operation Smile. A charity that provided free surgery for poor children in New York City.

 

1994 Created the great software giveaway, FREE MONEY, for Computer Associates’ new personal finance software, SimplyMoney. This ad generated so many phone calls it broke MCI’s 1-800 number and helped CA acquired 1 million new users in just weeks.

 

1995 Merged our Operation Smile charity with another charity called Operation Smile based in Virginia. I joined their board, began going on medical missions and fundraising.

 

1996  Travel to Gaza City on Op Smile medical mission. Toured refugee camps, interviewed Hamas fighters, mothers of martyrs, etc.

1996  Sold Schell/Mullaney to CKS at the beginning of the internet gold rush. A life-changing event for me because it enabled me to start my non-profit career after I was done running Schell-Mullaney. My 20+ year non-profit career which was focused on providing surgeries for poor children and adults in developing countries was much more interesting, challenging and rewarding than my advertising career.

1997 Created a popular new Wall Street Journal ad campaign for Computer Associates featuring customized Dilbert comics from Scott Adams.

1996 Produced an Op Smile fundraiser on the Intrepid aircraft carrier in New York, raised $1.2 million.

 

1997 Travel to Hong Kong, China, Vietnam on Operation Smile missions. I met this 9-year old girl in China, her name was Beautiful Cloud. I got to watch the 45-minute cleft surgery that she had been waiting 9-years for and carry her into the post op area and wait for her to wake up. When she did and a nurses handed her a mirror, 9 years of tears came gushing out of her eyes. That surgery changed her life. And it changed mine too.

 

1997  Came up with idea for Smile Train after I had an epiphany on Vietnam medical mission with Operation Smile. Why not empower local doctors and nurses to do cleft surgeries instead of sending American volunteer surgeons on 2-week medical missions that help 100 children at a time?

 

1997 Pitched Smile Train idea to my ad agency’s richest client: Charles Wang, who was the highest paid CEO in America for 4 years in a row and received a $700 million cash bonus. When I asked Wang for a start-up grant to launch Smile Train, his company Computer Associates pledged $10 million.

 

1997 NBC Anchorman Tom Brokaw arranged for us launch Smile Train on The Today Show. Lucky for us, it was the same day Hillary Clinton was on and makes right-wing conspiracy allegations. More than 6+ million viewers were watching and hundreds called the NBC switchboard asking about The Smile Train.

 

1997 President George H.W. Bush presents Smile Train project to Chinese President Jiang Zemin who likes it and promises to help.

1998 We travel to China to discuss Smile Train project with Chinese Minister of Railways. He tells us our idea of a surgical train is “impossible”. We drop the train concept but charge head with our idea of empowering local surgeons and we decide to keep the name, Smile Train.

1998 Produced a major Smile Train fundraiser in NYC, raised $10 million, and during the dinner, we showed live cleft surgery on Smile Train Patient #1: 9-year old Wang Li via satellite-feed.

1998  Wang and I resign from Operation Smile board after two young children die needlessly in Beijing on a botched Op Smile mission.  

1999 Wang and I spin off Smile Train project from Op Smile as an independent charity and we take the $4.5 million we raised at Operation Smile.

 

1999 Eloped with the prettiest, smartest, nicest girl I ever met: Cricket Milani.

 

 

2000 Our daughter Maura Anne Mullaney is born on September 14th.

2001  I agreed to serve as “interim” President of Smile Train, to stabilize the charity, after we fired 2nd executive director in two years. First year’s cleft surgeries: 2,000.

 

2001 Our son Charles Brian Mullaney is born on October 10th.

 

2003 Our son Quinn Hayward Mullaney is born on December 22nd.

 

2004  I’m honored to be the first foreigner to ever awarded the prestigious Soong Ching Ling Camphor Tree award in China.

 

2004 1,800+ Smile Train donors come to New York to celebrate our first 100,000 surgeries.

2004 My mom, Rosemary Mullaney dies suddenly and unexpectedly at the age of 70.

 

2005 President George H.W. Bush and wife Barbara come to China to help us. Their visit gets Smile Train on the front page of every newspaper in China and a private meeting with China President Jiang Zemin.

 

2007 To increase awareness of clefts and Smile Train, we produce a documentary about clefts hoping to win an Oscar. We hire two directors and to produce two movies to double our chances of winning an Oscar. But the Chinese Minister of Propaganda refuses to let us film in China, so we produce only one movie, and we finish the movie one week after the Oscar deadline. So we stick it in a closet for a year and then take it out and enter it in a bunch of film festivals. We enter it into the Oscar competition, and Smile Pinki wins the Oscar for the Best Short Documentary in 2009.

 

2008 NY Times calls Smile Train “perhaps one of the most productive charities, dollar-per-deed, in the world.”

 

2007 I’m honored to be awarded the Christmas Angel Award from Father Patrick Burns and Bishop DiMarzio with Irish Tenor Ronan Tynan at St. Michael’s Catholic Church in Brooklyn, New York.

 

2009 Speak at The Asia Society in New York.

 

2009 Smile Pinki, a documentary we conceived, produced and distributed wins an Oscar. Smile Pinki helps us raise tens of millions and dramatically increases awareness of the problem of clefts worldwide.

 

2010 I give a speech at Syracuse University, Newhouse School of Public Communications

2010 I deliver the commencement address at Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School(founded in 1764) at Lincoln Center.

 

2011 After we start running out of clefts at Smile Train, my team and I look for bigger global health problems to solve. We find three problems that like clefts, can be solved with a quick, safe, inexpensive surgery. I step down as President of Smile Train, to start WonderWork, a new charity to help children suffering from clubfoot, burns and blindness. Virtually all of my senior team at Smile Train join me along with hundreds of Smile Train major donors and supporters.

2012 We create BurnRescue, a program that helps provide free surgeries for severely burned children.

 

2012 I speak at Columbia University School of Public Health.

 

2012 We create FirstStep, a program that helps provide free surgeries for children born with clubfoot.

 

2013 I give a speech at MIT: Sloan School of Business.

2013 We create 20/20/20, which provides surgeries to restore the eyesight of blind children and adults.

 

2015 Our WonderWork video about blindness, FirstSight is the most popular video on the National Geographic website for more than a year. After it goes viral, more than 25 million people see it as donations to WonderWork pour in from 92 countries including Kazakhstan.

 

 

2016 I join one of the boards at NewRoads Church in Belmont, MA.

 

2017 I deliver the commencement address for my alma mater, The Belmont Hill School, founded in 1923. I graduated in 1977, my son Charlie graduated in 2020.

 

2021 My Dad, Joe Mullaney lived a remarkable life that came to an end on January 22nd, 2021, two months before his 88th birthday. He was smart, active, sharp, generous, funny, healthy and happy from his childhood right up to 3 weeks before his death, when he had a bad fall which sent his health into a steep decline. By luck, my wife and I, and our three kids got to spend the last six months of his life, looking after my Dad. We saw him every day, in Westport, MA during the summer and then we flew him down to Vero Beach, Florida for his last Christmas. It was an honor and privilege to be with him during the last days of his life – if I can be half the man my Dad was, I will be a very lucky guy.