Lori Price: Cleft Care is a Cause for Everyone

From an early age, Lori Price saw the impact that proper cleft care, or lack thereof, can have on individuals and families.

Her father had a cleft. As a boy, he had to get help from his mother’s side of the family to pay for his cleft surgeries because his own father refused. Whatever the reason for that may have been, Lori believes he must have felt rejected for not being the “perfect son” his father had hoped for.  

“It shaped his personality,” she remembered. “When you see photographs of him, there’s often a kind of sadness about him, and a sensitivity.”

As she grew up, Lori kept her father’s experience stashed away in the back of her mind. She moved around a lot as a child and ended up in San Francisco, where she built a successful career working with tech startups. She enjoyed the excitement and adrenaline of getting new companies off the ground, but couldn’t escape the feeling that something was missing.

In her fifties, Lori took a test to help her choose a new career path. The results were not what she expected. “I was this high-powered kind of tech person, and what came up really surprised me. The tests indicated that I would be happy  working as a preschool teacher, an interior designer, or a speech therapist.”

Lori realized she didn’t know what speech therapy entailed. So she began observing speech therapists and taking classes in her free time.

“I fell in love. And so I made the jump.”

During her training, Lori went to a talk by a faculty member who volunteered for a  cleft charity. The cause resonated immediately, even if that organization’s model did not.  

“My husband, Bill, and I have two causes that we’re really passionate about. One is the environment, and the other is children,” she said. “Because my dad had a cleft, I know how important Smile Train’s work is. And when I learned more about their model, how they train and empower local experts instead of flying in short-term missions of outside doctors, it just seemed so powerful.”

Lori and Bill made their first donation to Smile Train in 2011. They’ve been giving yearly ever since.

“The global reach of Smile Train is phenomenal,” she explained. “The way they’re building capacity on the ground is very forward-thinking. It’s about making a lasting impact. The ripple effect of treating a child with a cleft is just huge. It’s not just affecting one kid. It’s affecting a whole family. It’s affecting a whole community.” 

In 2015, Lori and Bill got to see that ripple effect up close. As part of Smile Train’s inaugural Journey of Smiles, they traveled to Tanzania, where they spent time with Smile Train patients, families, and medical partners.

“When you see on the ground what Smile Train is doing, it helps you understand the ‘why.’ You see what your money is going towards.”

Lori and Bill observed how Smile Train uses radio ads in Tanzania to spread awareness about cleft treatment to the widest audience possible. “Hospitals just aren’t optimized to do that kind of outreach work,” she said.  

They also visited a coffee plantation where they met a farmer who, thanks to those ads, discovered he could obtain Smile Train-sponsored cleft care for his adolescent daughter. “Otherwise, it’s just not something he would have had access to.”

In her work as a speech therapist, Lori feels especially close to Smile Train. She emphasizes the value of a comprehensive approach to cleft care, where multiple avenues of treatment and healing reinforce one another. She points to the impact feeding support has on language development because “it’s strengthening all that musculature for speech production.”  

When kids lack that level of comprehensive care, they fall behind. She remembers one of the children she met in Tanzania, who didn’t get her cleft treated until she was 10 or 11. “I just think about all the things that she lost in her life, all the catching up she needs to do.”

Between her father’s experience, her professional life, and the impact she’s seen firsthand, Lori has become an outspoken advocate for Smile Train and the cleft community. She and Bill hope to embark on another Journey of Smiles soon.  

“It’s so meaningful to see a child be integrated back into a community and given a life and a future. How can you not love that?”