An Interview with the Founder of One Heart Worldwide: Arlene Samen

International Immersion

In this episode, I interview Arlene Samen the founder of One Heart Worldwide which mission is to provide assistance to pregnant women on a global basis. Through their efforts, they have made an impact in such places as Tibet, Nepal, and beyond.

Arlene began her career in Utah as a nurse practitioner at age 27, specializing in maternal and fetal medicine. In 1997, His Holiness the Dalai Lama asked Arlene to save the lives of mothers and their newborns in Tibet, where one in ten newborns were dying of preventable causes.

In 2004, she left her clinical practice to found One Heart Worldwide (OHW). While working in Tibet, Arlene developed the “Network of Safety” model, which brings life-saving care to expectant mothers and infants where the need is the greatest. In 2009, OHW extended the model to remote villages in Nepal and the Copper Canyon of Mexico. OHW has now arranged to construct and operate nearly 500 birthing centers in Nepal alone. Over the course of her work, Arlene has endured political uprisings, earthquakes, and the SARS epidemic in order to provide women safe, clean deliveries, touching the lives of hundreds of thousands of women to date.

Arlene has received many awards for her efforts; most recently she received the Global Thinkers Forum 2016 Award for Excellence in Women’s Empowerment. Arlene and her team are hard at work to bring OHW to scale in Nepal and globally. In 2020, OHW was selected as one of six global organizations for a case study by the Gates Foundation on the Network of Safety model. Arlene is now the Chief Visionary Officer with One Heart Worldwide.

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