Ryan Kania

On the last day of my volunteer trip to Guatemala in fall 2008, shock overwhelmed me as I watched another man’s life end while his family paced back and forth near me. The physicians, having exhausted their alternatives, were unable to treat the gunshot wound to his chest because they lacked medical supplies. The pain endured by the victim and his family haunted me, and I felt an obligation to help. Like many great causes, Advocates for World Health was born out of misfortune. While volunteering abroad, I witnessed firsthand the hardship resulting from the lack of medical supplies. Upon returning to the US, I started investigating and discovered that copious amounts of medical product are left to expire and end up in landfills. Struck by this disparity, I created AWH as a non-profit to achieve two important goals. The first was to establish an organization that would redistribute surplus medical supplies to under-served hospitals, and the second to reduce the amount of medical supplies entering the waste stream. Today I continue to lead AWH in expanding product distribution to 45 containers to over 40 different countries each year. I have also started consulting with companies in similar industries to reduce their operational efficiency, increase their revenue margin, and incorporate them in philanthropy.