Iván Velez on the Joy of Helping Others

When Iván Velez thinks about generosity, he thinks about his parents.

He grew up in Medellín, Colombia, in the era of Pablo Escobar, when the drug trade and its spoils held a vice grip on the city. As a teenager, he watched friends get lured in with the promise of easy money and fast cars. Many of those friends did not survive to adulthood.

“What you see in the movies, we lived,” he says.

Despite dangerous surroundings, Iván enjoyed a warm and supportive home life. His mother and father worked minimum-wage jobs, but they always sent him to good private schools. He always received gifts at Christmas. Years later, with the perspective of adulthood, he marvels at his parents’ efforts.

“When I was able to talk to my dad man-to-man, I told him, ‘You’re a magician. How did you manage everything?’ And he said, ‘Well, we had your mom, too,’” Ivan remembers.

“My mom is 85 now, and she just gave up her driver’s license. She’s a strong, strong woman. She and my dad are why I believe in persistence, discipline, and hard work.”

Thanks to a loving home and a good head on his shoulders, Iván avoided the fate that befell so many other young men and women he knew in Medellín. He went to college, earned a degree in business, then settled into a job in the city.

Expanding Horizons

When Iván was in his late 20s, he got a phone call. It was his cousin in Los Angeles, who offered an idea.

“Come stay with us for six months,” he said, “Take an ESL class.”

Sounds fun, Iván thought. He packed his bags and booked a flight, looking forward to his first taste of the US.

He stayed for 15 years.

“I had trouble learning the verb ‘to be,’” he laughs.

Iván loved LA. He was smitten with American culture and values — freedom, democracy, equality. His aunt, a social worker with the city’s youth, became like a second mother. She reinforced his parents’ ethos of generosity and kindness.

Working for American companies, Iván realized the kind of professional he wanted to be: dedicated, driven, invested in others. He describes the lessons he learned during this time as “treasures.”

“A Higher Purpose”

Iván returned to Medellín in 2008 a changed man. He landed a job as an English teacher at the Winston Salem Institute. His bosses recognized his commitment to his students right away. Before long, he was promoted to general director.

Iván proved to be a fierce advocate for transforming people’s lives through education. The Institute received municipal funds to focus teaching in crime-afflicted neighborhoods, and Iván soon found himself sitting down with gang leaders to discuss helping local kids. Children, some as young as eight or nine years old, would walk into these meetings and pull weapons out, setting them on the table before getting down to business.  

“I would come in to meet with the ‘bad guys’ and they would ask, ‘What would you bring to this community?’” Iván recalls.

“My answer was always the same: ‘A brighter future for the kids.’  Then I explained: ‘We’ll bring in language, music, IT programs. Let’s show them a different path. If they see it, they’ll take it.’

“We changed the lives of many children that way,” he smiles.

Teaching at Winston Salem taught Iván a lot about himself. It made him realize that he liked work that had a higher purpose and he liked empowering others, allowing them to live with greater fulfillment.

So when he discovered a job opening at Smile Train 10 years later, he felt the promise of another exciting opportunity to do what he loves most — change people’s lives for the better every day.

His dedication and enthusiasm rang loud and clear in his interviews, even over Zoom. In October 2020, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, he hit the ground running as Smile Train’s new Program Manager for South America.

On Call

In this role, Iván oversees Smile Train’s local medical partners offering cleft care in Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela.  

Partnerships like these are at the heart of Smile Train’s sustainable model. Rather than fly outside doctors in for one- or two-week “short-term programs,” Smile Train provides local doctors and medical professionals in 75+ countries the ongoing training and resources they need to establish permanent, sustainable centers of cleft care in their own cities and towns.

Iván ensures that his partners always have what they need to run smoothly. He stays in regular communication with them, conducts quality-of-care oversight, helps to implement new programs, and assists with whatever issues may arise.

It’s a non-stop job. Which is why Iván’s first move was to let every partner under his purview know they could reach out to him 24/7, and he would answer.

“I understand surgeons and practitioners have different schedules,” he says. “They respond to emails and make calls after hours, on holidays, on Sundays.

“I always tell them — there's never too early, there's never too late. I am always a click away.”

He begins every week by doing his “rounds,” checking in with all of his doctors and teams, even if it’s just a brief call or message.

“I let partners know that we’re here and we care,” he says.

Iván prioritizes in-person visits whenever possible. For partners within traveling distance of Medellín, he goes as often as he can, whether to help with Smile Train’s regular safety audits or to assist with special events such as Journeys of Smiles or Smile Train Choir performances.

For partner centers farther away, he tries to visit at least twice a year. When a new partner center joins, he goes immediately.

“The virtual world is important,” he notes. “But when you shake hands or share a hug, that’s something else. You can achieve a lot more together.”

Spreading Smiles

One of Iván’s proudest accomplishments is helping to significantly expand non-surgical cleft care offerings across his region, like the lifesaving nutritional support that makes surgery possible, as well as post-surgical orthodontics, speech services, psychosocial counseling, and more.

“Cleft surgery partnerships are just the beginning of the path,” Iván observes. “When you add other comprehensive care into the equation, you get far greater results.

“Let me tell you a beautiful story. We had a patient at Fundación Clínica Noel, our amazing partner here in Medellín. He was in his 50s, and he was single. He had lived his whole life with a cleft. Then he fell in love, and he decided to seek cleft treatment. He came to Clínica Noel, received surgery plus comprehensive cleft care, and at the age of 60, he finally got married.”

Iván could go on and on telling stories like this. There’s the young patient who brought Dentsply Sirona executives to tears with his speech of thanks. There’s the Venezuelan doctor who performed cleft surgeries pro-bono for years, undeterred by the political instability that made it impossible for Smile Train to transfer money into his country. For Iván, each story is living proof of why the work matters: the courage of patients, the dedication of medical teams, the human spirit that brings them all together.

Spreading the Message

Even with all he has achieved, Iván has ambitious plans for the future. He wants to do more outreach to rural areas where internet connection is sparse and cleft-affected people are far less likely to be aware of Smile Train. Colombia is also home to indigenous populations who live autonomously in remote regions and often hold distinct cultural beliefs about clefts. He believes reaching these communities and educating them about clefts would be an absolute game changer, saving lives.

“Awareness campaigns are extremely important for us,” Ivan says. “We have a lot to do in this area.”

No matter the challenge, Iván is up for it. He will continue to be on call unconditionally for patients, partners, and the wider cleft community.  

“I’m very grateful to be here doing this.”