Good Reads: Before and After by Brian F. Mullaney, Co-Founder of Smile Train and WonderWork.
Before and After: Chapter 1 – Rosa
Back in 1990, when all of this got started, I don’t think anyone—least of all me—would have predicted that one day, I’d end up traveling the world, visiting hospitals and patients as I do today.
At age thirty, I didn’t look anything like your typical do-gooder. I wore Armani suits and a Rolex watch on my wrist. I lived in a penthouse apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. I was a Madison Avenue ad man, and a successful one at that, spending my evenings going on dates at the Four Seasons and my weekends riding around in my brand new triple-black Porsche. I had no wife, no children; it was just me. I was totally unencumbered. My heroes weren’t Mother Teresa or Mahatma Gandhi; they were anyone on the Forbes 400 list. And my worldview definitely didn’t extend to India or Africa; it pretty much stopped and started with the bubble of Manhattan Island.
Although I had only arrived on Madison Avenue six short years before, thanks to a lot of hard work, a little luck, and many, many late nights, I had climbed all the way up the ladder. From my lowly beginnings as a junior copywriter, I had recently cofounded my own ad agency, and we were already turning over more than a million a year in revenues. To anyone else looking in from the outside, I had made it. But scratch below the surface, and it was another matter. I knew something wasn’t right. Lying awake at night, I felt a kind of strange and inexplicable longing. But for what? I tried to fill the gap with more new toys: an expensive motorbike, another overpriced watch. But it was like the proverbial itch I couldn’t scratch. The sense of yearning just wouldn’t go away. Maybe everyone experiences this kind of unexpected emptiness at certain points in life. Maybe it’s part of being human. But for reasons I found very hard to explain, my rapid success only emphasized the feeling that something was missing.
I began to suspect that the “something missing” was really just my Irish Catholic guilt setting in now that I was doing well for myself. I grew up in a family who went to church each Sunday and with parents who drilled into me the importance of service and giving back. My father had been the top lawyer for Gillette and had started a pro bono program for indigent clients. His mother, Beatrice Hancock Mullaney, was the first female probate judge in Massachusetts and when she began her practice during the Great Depression, her clients were so broke that they often paid her with tomatoes, chickens, or corn. My mother, meanwhile, was one of the most empathetic people I’ve ever met. She was always speaking up against the world’s injustices, always cheering for the little guy or the person without a voice or a seat at the table. She had a favorite phrase that she recited regularly to her children: “Never resist a generous impulse.”
And so with my mother’s words—“never resist”—ringing in my ears, I started going to services at a local church, volunteering to help them set up their first computer network. Then, together with Mike Schell, my partner in the ad agency, we decided to put together a pro bono fundraising campaign. We learned about an alternative sentencing program working with young offenders on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and began working with them to attract more donors to their cause. This work introduced me to a world of poverty and hardship only a few miles from the glamour of Madison Avenue, one in which judges routinely locked up disadvantaged fifteen-year-olds. It was inspiring, but I’d wanted to do something else that would be more substantive and hands on.
I’d read an article in the newspaper about Mayor Koch’s Office on Volunteerism, so I set up an appointment with a counselor at City Hall. On the day of my appointment, I was ushered into a large office where a little old lady wearing wire-rimmed spectacles sat perched on a chair behind a giant desk.
“I’m thinking maybe I could work with young inner-city kids,” I told her. “Maybe I could help coach a sports team or volunteer at a Boys Club.”
The lady behind the desk peered over her glasses.
“You want to work with black people?” she sneered. “What a waste! You went to Harvard! How about I set you up teaching English to Japanese businessmen?”
At that, I quickly made my excuses and left. I was shocked. I couldn’t believe someone could actually think that way in 1990, in New York City, let alone say it out loud.
And so, as I made my way back to my office Madison Avenue, it occurred to me that if I couldn’t find a good cause to help, maybe I’d just have to build one.
They say that serendipity happens when you find something you weren’t really looking for in the first place. Well, that same spring of 1990, I happened to be riding a New York City subway car to visit some of my clients at the agency, a group of plastic surgeons on the Upper East Side, when serendipity struck.
I’d been working with these clients for a couple of years now, since the late 1980s. Back then, cosmetic surgery procedures like facelifts, tummy tucks, nose jobs, breast enlargements, and liposuction were just becoming more popular. We’d already had a lot of success with a campaign I’d created with headlines like: “Look like a million dollars for a couple of thousand!” and “Plastic surgery that doesn’t leave you looking plastic!” Every time one of the ads would appear on TV, the surgeons’ offices would receive hundreds of calls—so many that their phone system would regularly break down from the overload. In a short period of time, we’d more than doubled the surgeons’ revenue, taking them from two million dollars to five million dollars a year.
The surgeons’ offices were on Park Avenue on the Upper East Side, in one of the wealthiest enclaves of Manhattan. This was a part of town where the mostly female clientele showed up for their appointments wrapped in fur coats and dusted in gold jewelry. To get to my meetings with the surgeons, I’d usually ride the 4 or 5 train—the same lines that take you up to Harlem and the Bronx, and neighborhoods that are traditionally much more disadvantaged. New York City has always been a place of both extreme wealth and extreme poverty, and nowhere is this more evident than in the subway, where everyone, from Wall Street bankers to homeless panhandlers, comes together on the level playing field of the subway car.
That day—while I was going to visit my surgeons with their super-wealthy clients on Park Avenue—riding alongside me was a group of schoolkids taking the subway home to some of the toughest neighborhoods in the city.
One kid sitting directly opposite me stood out. He was about twelve years old, skinny, with pants that were scuffed at the knees. And I couldn’t help but notice that he was missing his right ear. I didn’t want to stare, but even so, I wondered what had happened to him.
Later that day I asked one of the surgeons if he’d ever seen a kid without an ear before.
“Oh yes,” the surgeon replied. “It’s a congenital condition called microtia. The ear doesn’t develop fully in the womb. There’s reconstructive surgery to repair that.”
“You can create a new ear?” I asked, surprised.
“Brian,” the doctor said patiently, “plastic surgeons aren’t only trained to do nose jobs and tummy tucks. We perform reconstructive surgery as well. We correct birth defects and marks, remove tumors. We work on people with severe burns and scarring. All kinds of important and sometimes life-saving procedures.”
Truthfully, I had always assumed that plastic surgeons did only do nose jobs and tummy tucks. But I was glad to be corrected. This was one of the things I loved about the advertising business: you got to learn about all kinds of things you otherwise never might have known about. When I worked on the Ruffles account, I learned why some potato chips have green spots (if the potatoes are exposed to light during production, chlorophyll forms and causes the spots). When I was working with Miller, I learned why one kind of beer is a darker color than another (lighter beer uses rice as well as hops and barley malt). When I worked for an engineering client called ABB, I learned firsthand what the inner workings of a nuclear power plant look like (pretty terrifying, especially if you’re standing next to the tank that holds the spent fuel rods!). Now, thanks to my cosmetic surgery clients, I was learning that plastic surgeons could also save lives! Incredible.
After that conversation with the surgeon, each time I rode the train, I kept looking out for the boy with the missing ear, hoping I’d see him so I could let him know about treatment. I never did see him, but as often happens when you’re made aware of something for the first time, once I knew about reconstructive surgery, it seemed like every time I got on the subway, I saw another kid riding uptown with some physical problem that could probably be fixed. One day it was a little girl with a large port-colored birthmark across her face. Another time it was a teenager with a burn scar on his neck. I wondered: What was stopping these kids from getting the medical assistance they needed?
And that’s when I had my light-bulb moment. Why not connect my cosmetic surgeons on the Upper East Side with kids from lower-income families who needed their help? These surgeons were routinely performing cosmetic procedures for wealthy people who, at the end of the day, probably didn’t need the surgeries at all. And meanwhile there were all these kids who truly did need surgery but weren’t able to get it. It just didn’t seem fair.
So I decided to go to my clients with a hypothetical question. If I could set up with some kind of a program to help these children, would the surgeons donate their time and provide free surgeries? To my surprise, two of the surgeons said yes. Initially, I had no idea what form my program would take, but I thought I’d start trying to figure it out.
The first challenge was how to go about pairing up doctors with patients. I thought about handing out business cards on the subway to kids I happened to meet there, but that didn’t seem like the most reputable way to go about it. Instead, I wrote a letter to the chancellor of New York City public schools explaining that I was the co-owner of a prominent Manhattan advertising agency and I was interested in doing some pro bono charitable work. My idea was to launch a program offering free reconstructive surgery for New York City kids who needed these services, but whose families didn’t have access or were unable to afford them. The chancellor responded positively, saying that he was interested in exploring the idea further.
I enlisted my friend and business partner, Mike, to help me out with the project. When I explained what I was trying to do, he saw the glaring injustice and got on board immediately. And so the schools program became our side project. We gave the program a name—Operation Smile—and Mike designed a logo. We worked nights and weekends to come up with a working plan. We were both convinced this was a great idea. What school wouldn’t want to participate in a free program like this?
Looking back, it’s clear we were somewhat naïve. We were new to the world of charity work. We had no idea how difficult a road we were embarking on. Mike and I started going to meetings at the Board of Education’s offices to explain more about our program. We already had a lot of the pieces in place: a commitment from two plastic surgeons on the Upper East Side to donate free surgeries to schoolkids who needed them, as well as free cameras donated by Polaroid for the program, so that staff at the schools could take photos of children who needed help. (I can remember telling Jim Hawkins, a senior VP at Polaroid, that this was a brand-new program and we had no idea how many kids would be helped. He said, “Brian, if this program helps just one kid it will all be worth it.”)
All we needed was for someone at each of the schools involved—maybe a counselor or a school nurse—to inform families about the availability of surgeries, and send us a short application including a photo of the child, so they could be considered for surgery.
We presented all of our research and planning to the administrators, principals, and lawyers assembled to meet with us at the Board of Education. From across their desks, they eyed us with suspicion.
“The chancellor wants us to move ahead, but we need to know more,” they told us. “Why exactly do you want to do this?”
We explained that we wanted to give back to city kids. We just wanted to do a good thing.
But that didn’t allay their concerns. “Why should we give you access to our schools?” they asked, warily. “Are you planning to make money from this? What’s in it for you?”
We’d patiently answer their questions, explaining that we just wanted to help out schoolkids, and that we didn’t have any ulterior motive. Like the surgeons we had recruited, we were donating our time and resources, so there would be no cost to the families or to New York City schools.
We went to meetings like these for over a year. At the time, I was utterly frustrated, but looking back, I can understand the misgivings of the bureaucrats sitting across the table. To them, Mike and I were just Madison Avenue guys in expensive suits. Why would we care about helping public school kids?
Maybe the bureaucrats just hoped if they made it hard enough, we’d give up and go away. But we didn’t. And finally our persistence paid off. A year and half after my light bulb moment on the subway, we got the go-ahead for a pilot program, in 79 of New York City’s 1,200 public schools.
Here’s how the program worked. In each school, we identified a social worker or a counselor who could be our point person. We asked them to find any child that had a birthmark, birth defect, scar, or other problem that could be helped by reconstructive surgery, and then we asked them to approach that child’s family. If the family was interested, then the counselor could help them to submit an application. Along with the paperwork, the counselor also had to submit a photo of the student taken with one of our Polaroid cameras.
Soon, the applications and photos began arriving at the offices of our ad agency on Madison Avenue, first in a slow trickle and then in a steady flow. When we opened the envelopes, we couldn’t believe what we were seeing: birth defects like missing ears and extra fingers, large birthmarks covering faces and bodies. It was mind-blowing how many children needed surgical help.
One day, I opened an envelope and saw a photo that shocked me to my core. It was an eight-year-old girl named Rosa who had been born with a giant black mole across her entire face.
INSERT PHOTO: JulieBeforeSurgery
Her guidance counselor had included a note with the application: “Rosa is a somewhat shy little girl from Queens who is quite brave and needs your help.” The mole was extremely disfiguring, but that wasn’t the most upsetting thing about Rosa’s photo. It was the look in her eyes that devastated me. Those eyes were filled with shame, as if Rosa would rather be anyplace in the world other than sitting in her counselor’s office having her picture taken. I tried to imagine this little girl’s life, looking in the mirror each morning, going to school, other kids staring at her and doubtless calling her names. The courage it must have taken just to leave the house every day. I can still remember kids at my school teasing other kids for wearing glasses or having buck teeth. I could only imagine what they must have said to Rosa.
But the guidance counselor’s letter confirmed that these weren’t the only challenges that Rosa was facing. She lived in a public housing project in Queens; her family had recently emigrated from Peru. Her father had just passed away, and her mother worked as a housecleaner and didn’t speak much English. It was apparent that no one in the family had the resources or the know-how to get Rosa the help she needed.
So we sent Rosa’s application to the top surgeon at Columbia-Presbyterian, and he quickly responded, saying we had to operate as soon as possible. There was a very high chance that Rosa’s mole would turn cancerous if it wasn’t removed right away. So this was not merely a cosmetic issue as I’d first assumed—it was potentially life threatening. We expedited the case, and Rosa received an initial procedure that used tissue expanders to grow skin on her face that would cover up the mole. And then she received her reconstructive surgery.
A few weeks after Rosa’s treatment was completed, we invited her and her mother, as well as her guidance counselor, to meet with us at the offices of our ad agency on Madison Avenue.
All these years later, I can still remember seeing Rosa that day. As she walked proudly into our office holding her mom’s hand, she was unrecognizable as the girl in the Polaroid that had landed on my desk a few months back. She had a pretty bow in her hair and she was wearing her Sunday-best dress. Most importantly, she was smiling—the same eyes that had been filled with shame were sparkling—and her mom and counselor were beaming. It was an incredible moment, seeing what the surgery had meant for Rosa and her family.
INSERT PHOTO: JulieAfterSurgery
That day, I left my offices feeling a kind of elation. We were doing something that was having a real and visible impact on schoolkids in the city of New York, and that impact was coming back to us in the smiles of Rosa and her family in a kind of virtuous circle.
Deep down I was incredibly proud of what we were accomplishing with the program. But even so, I didn’t tell many people about my new sideline. Apart from Mike and my family, I kept it to myself. My group of friends in New York knew me as the guy about town, the one who could get them into all the good parties and nightclubs. When I was with them, I was actually a little embarrassed by my crusade to help these kids. What was wrong with me?
Why was I doing this? Was it really just to feed my ego? Maybe the bureaucrats at the Board of Education were right. Maybe I did have some kind of ulterior motive . . .
Or maybe, if you put me on the psychiatrist’s couch, they’d tell you it all goes back to my sister, Maura.
Good Reads: Before and After by Brian F. Mullaney, Co-Founder of Smile Train and WonderWork.
