Winner
Kristie Magee Porcaro
Chief Strategy Officer, Operation Smile
How Operation Smile’s Chief Strategist Is Providing Cleft Surgery to Kids In Locations Where Care Is Scarce
Operation Smile, a US-based cleft surgical organization providing life-changing cleft surgery to children around the world, is focused on training medical providers in local communities to deliver safe surgeries and more sustainable, safer health care. Chief Strategy Officer Kristie Magee Porcaro leads Operation Smile’s global strategy, driving the organization’s commitment to bridge the gap in access to vital surgeries and health care. Her hub-and-spoke strategy to place OS “hubs” in bigger cities and “spokes” in communities where patients live is bringing essential care to kids in more locations. Untreated, the condition can cause an array of issues including feeding, breathing and speech problems, and reaching patients in more locations where access to care is less available is crucial to the strategy. One of those critical OS hub locations was Puebla, Mexico. In November 2023, a partnership with MrBeast (YouTube’s most-subscribed creator with a following of more than 250 million subscribers raised more than 20 percent of the fundraising goal to provide surgery for 100 children in the city.
By Cristina Cala
