Ellen Agler

"I loved journalism," said Agler. "But I realized that I got to be a jack of all trades and a master of none. I wanted to find a way to have a more profound and permanent impact on people’s lives."

Agler is graduating from HSPH with an MPH in international health, after which she will return to a career at Operation Smile, an organization that provides free reconstructive surgery and follow-up care to children with facial disfigurements in developing countries whose families cannot afford the operation. The organization is best known for helping children born with cleft lips and cleft palates. Operation Smile also donates equipment and supplies to increase local capacities for care.

One in every 700 to 1,000 babies born in the U.S. has a cleft lip or cleft palate, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. Estimates for developing countries range from one in every 300 to 800, depending on the region. Operation Smile says that it has provided free reconstructive surgery to tens of thousands of children and young adults in 22 years.

Cleft lips and cleft palates are birth defects that can impair speech and undermine self-esteem, said Agler. Although most clefts can be repaired with a fairly simple surgery, many families in developing countries cannot afford the operation or are unaware of the surgical option, she said.

Agler is not a surgeon herself but has found fulfillment through managing Operation Smile’s medical teams, raising funds, and advocating for children who do not have access to care. After leaving the newspaper, Agler started out in Operation Smile’s office in Norfolk, Virginia, and then moved to Bogotá, Colombia, where she worked for two years. There, she set up Operation Smile’s first permanent, integrated care center run wholly by Colombian volunteers and staff. The initiative, she said, has set a model for the organization’s efforts in other regions.

Called to serve as executive director of Operation Smile United Kingdom, Agler moved to London in 2001. While working full time, she earned a master’s degree at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Agler estimates that she so far has helped arrange for medical teams to provide care to more than 5,000 children in over 20 developing countries in the Middle East, Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe.

The work can be rewarding and emotionally charged. In gathering children to assess them for operations, the surgical teams often serendipitously provide the children’s first chances to meet others with facial birth defects.

At one assessment, Agler recalled a child who went "around the room and touched her cleft, and then touched another child’s cleft, and then touched her own cleft again."

Agler plans to use her HSPH training to help Operation Smile increase its role as a global advocate for child rights and improved child health systems in developing countries. She is also putting her skills to use as a founding member of a new nonprofit organization, the World Healing Institute in Hawaii. The organization is dedicated to helping children with extremely severe facial deformities receive surgery and extended post-operative care.

--CH