Happy Birthday Kathy Magee, It's a Wonderful Life

Kathy & Bill Magee with my three boys in NYC this past May

Happy birthday to one of the most inspiring, gentle and determined women I know -- Kathy Magee, co-founder of Operation Smile.  I first met Kathy Magee just over four years ago when I went to my first Operation Smile gala in Los Angeles.  Since that day, I continue to marvel at this small woman's enormous impact on the world around her.  Kathy has accomplished so much in her life, but what I admire most about her is that she is always striving to accomplish more, and more.  As a mother of five incredible children, many grandchildren, Kathy has that unique quality to make everyone she interacts with feel completely at ease, like you have known her for ages.

Even though I'm sure it could not have been easy developing an international charity, raising her children, being a devoted nurse and I'm sure, incredible friend and relative, Kathy always makes what she tackles look easy. When I was a young woman starting out my career, there weren't many happy, successful women with families that you could look up to.  Kathy was accomplishing it all back when not many women were able to work and raise their families.  What she has achieved is something I truly marvel at.  To be so successful, helping so many people, a wonderful wife and mother, and a gracious woman is rare indeed.

Too often in our society we value money as our only means of measuring success but if we could measure all of the lives that been changed forever by Kathy and Bill Magee, we would have our own modern It's a Wonderful World times 100.