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Old 01-11-11, 08:03 PM   #1
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Default Baja Charity: Children of the California's

Del Mar resident, wanting to ‘do something’ after tragedy of 9/11, finds way to help alleviate suffering

By Arthur Lightbourn/Contributor | Del Mar Times
Tuesday, January 11, 2011


For many Americans, 9/11 became a clarion call to “do something” to make this a better world.

Clint McClellan is no exception.

But the 45-year-old Qualcomm executive is exceptional in how he went about it.

“In 2001, after 9/11,” he recalled, “I decided I wanted to get involved with a charity. I was just working and that was it. I wanted to ‘do something’ on the side.”

What he didn’t want to do was just blindly donate money. And at the time the Red Cross was in the midst of a $1 billion scandal for its ineffective “first responder” response to America’s most devastating terrorist that resulted it the firing of its CEO.

“It kind of frightened me,” McClellan said, “these big faceless organizations where I didn’t necessarily know someone — which is why I wanted to go to a local organization where I could see the work, know the people, and see the results.

“A friend of mine told me about one of his friends, [Canadian-born] Betty Jones, [Dr. Elizabeth Jones], who had co-founded the Foundation of the Children of the Californias to help establish a unique outpatient pediatric medical specialty clinic, Hospital Infantil de las Californias, a half mile from the border in Mesa de Otay, Tijuana.

“So I looked into it and found it was a fantastic organization, [a tri-national collaboration of the US, Canada, and Mexico], headquartered here in San Diego, providing state-of-the-art medical care to mostly needy children in Mexico who have nowhere to turn. A lot of the operations were for club feet or cleft palates.

“What you find in Mexico is if a kid has a deformity, he or she doesn’t leave the house,” McClellan said. “So a simple operation can absolutely transform these kids’ lives.”

Over the past 16 years, the Baja California clinic has conducted more than 300,000 pediatric consultations, several thousand surgeries, serving approximately 2,500 patients per month.

“In 2001, I went down to Mexico and visited Hospital Infantil,” McClellan said, “saw what they were doing, and immediately joined the board of the Foundation.”

Today, McClellan is chairman of the Foundation of the Children of the Californias and is senior director of business development with Qualcomm’s health and life sciences group.

We interviewed McClellan in his Del Mar cottage which he bought in 11 years ago and which he now shares with his bride of a few weeks, Jennifer Morrison, and their six-year-old Labradoodle Harry.

McClellan, who is six feet tall and a compact 185 pounds, keeps in shape working out with a trainer, swimming, and ocean paddleboarding.

He was born in Denver, Colorado. His father was a career salesman for Kimberly-Clark. The family moved to the Bay Area when McClellan was 10. He graduated from De La Salle High School in Concord in 1983 and from the University of California Berkeley with a degree in economics in 1987.

After a brief stint working for an engineering firm and deciding he didn’t like it, McClellan, wanting to experience living abroad, traveled to Kobe, Japan, to learn Japanese. While there for two years, to support himself, he taught English, did marketing for a phone company and taught skiing to high school students.

“It was a great experience,” he said.

He can still order sushi and chat with the chefs in local Japanese restaurants.

He returned to the States in 1993 and joined the Silicon Valley market research firm, Dataquest, as a semi-conductor analyst, later becoming a cellular phone analyst.

“I had to figure out how many cell phones were being sold every year and … and write reports on the differences between the technologies and which technology would win. It was great. I learned an awful lot and I was quoted in newspapers all the time. It was a lot of fun.

“I was quoted once in The Wall Street Journal on the front page and,” he laughed to recall, “my mom said, ‘Who reads this newspaper?”

While working for Dataquest, he also served as a technology news anchor on the Good Morning San Jose show on KNTV, an ABC affiliate.

In December 1997, he joined Qualcomm as director of strategic marketing.

9/11 eventually led McClellan to join the Foundation and that sparked his interest in health, which subsequently led him to transfer to Qualcomm’s health and life sciences group pioneered and founded by his now boss Don Jones, whose mother, Dr. Elizabeth Jones, co-founded the Foundation of the Children of the Californias.

At Qualcomm, he explained, “The health and life sciences group develops wireless health systems and devices using cellular networks and technology to help monitor health better and drive new clinical, diagnostic and therapeutic applications.”

Wanting to raise awareness for the foundation, McClellan enlisted two of his former De La Salle High School buddies: Manhattan Beach direct response marketer and graphic designer Roman Alemania who created graphics for the Foundation’s fundraising, and Cardiff-by-the-Sea filmmaker Tom Telfer who produced videos documenting the plight of the kids in need of medical care.

Both Telfer and Alemania are now also members of the foundation’s board along with McClellan.

Last October, McClellan and his buddies, on a committee, organized the foundation’s 2010 gala at the La Jolla estate of Joan Waitt with 13-time Grammy winner Emmylou Harris as the guest entertainer.
“We knew nothing about throwing events,” he admitted. “So we were kind of thrown into throwing a gala and we were all racking our brains trying to figure out what to do. So we got a consultant to help us and decided to go pretty big. We wanted to expose people on this side of the border to the Hospital…and it was a pretty good year for us.”

The foundation raises approximately $300,000 annually to support the clinic.

The 23,000-square-foot Hospital Infantil de las Californias treats children from both sides of the border at a fraction of the cost of U.S. hospitals for comparable care made possible mostly by physicians, medical personnel and trained volunteers who donate their services. Visiting American doctors also perform procedures at the clinic.

The clinic has a memo of understanding (MOU), a joint agreement with Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego, to share best practices information and, when necessary, to send patients to Rady for specialized care not available at the clinic.

The Tijuana clinic includes a one-day surgery suite, a pharmacy, a dental clinic, and 10 examination rooms, in addition to a physical therapy and rehabilitation center, therapy pool, laboratory, radiology department, education center, library, administrative offices and two outpatient community sites.

Currently, the clinic treats 2,500 patients per month. Patients pay what they can and those who can’t pay are subsidized.

Currently, Hospital Infantil is in the midst of $10 million fundraising campaign in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, for an expansion to provide additional surgery suites, urgent and short-stay hospitalization that will increase its capability to serve 50,000 patients a year.

The most moving moments for him, working on behalf of clinic, he said, is: “Seeing the joy in the faces of a family when they have a deformity fixed and a kid can smile and is happy. Here’s a kid who might not have left his home because he was humiliated and his family was humiliated. It’s just life-changing.”

For more information on the foundation and its work, you are invited to visit its website at Foundation for the Children of the Californias - Hospital Infantil de las Californias


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Old 01-11-11, 08:28 PM   #2
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Default Re: Baja Charity: Children of the California's

Nice story.. good to see some really good folks.. at work...
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