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2 Million Smiles | This is my personal blog and is not affiliated, with Smile Train, Op Smile, or any charity. 

Brian Mullaney's Blog

Big Think: Saving 35 million blind.

Cleft· Video

20 Million People Worldwide Are Blind Because They Can’t Afford a $35 Surgery

Brian Mullaney, founder of organizations that provide free surgeries for millions of children worldwide, says we need to be solving the “little” problems first.

Brian Mullaney has worked for or founded several organizations that offer free surgeries to people in need around the world. He is currently CEO of WonderWork, a company he co-founded.  Previously, Brian co-founded Smile Train, the world’s largest cleft charity and served as its CEO for 10 years.  At Smile Train, Brian and his team pioneered a new approach to providing free surgery in developing countries by empowering local doctors to solve the problem themselves.  He also leveraged his 30-year marketing background to build one of the most cost-effective fundraising programs in the nonprofit world, raising more than $750,000,000 for clefts in less than 10 years. Today, Smile Train has more than 2,500,000 donors and has provided free, life-changing surgery for more than 900,000 children.  Brian is a graduate of Harvard University.  He co-founded Schell/Mullaney advertising in 1990, a high-tech marketing agency which was sold in 1996 to CKS, America’s first publicly-held, interactive advertising agency.  He served on the board of Smile Train from its inception to June 2012.  Currently he serves on the board of the International Center for The Disabled.  In 2008, Brian was executive producer of the Oscar-winning Documentary Short, Smile Pinki and in 2004, he was the first foreigner ever to be awarded the prestigious Soong Ching Ling Camphor Tree award in China.07 May, 2015 Transcript 

Every year, America spends $30 billion on “big name” diseases like AIDS, TB, polio, and malaria, but makes very little progress toward curing them worldwide. For Brian Mullaney, founder of Smile Train and WonderWork, this is tragic, considering that children and adults with easily curable problems like cleft palate and some forms of blindness lack access to low-cost surgeries that could significantly improve their lives.

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