Arlene Samen

The One Heart World-Wide foundation seeks to save the lives of infants and women in need, one birth at a time; it is the mission of the organization and the topic of the Arlene Samen keynotes.

After meeting the Dalia Lama in 1997, he asked her to go to Tibet to help the women and children who were dying during childbirth, which opened her eyes to the alarming mortality rate of the Tibetan mothers and infants. This inspired her to start the One Heart World-Wide organization. Her practices are crafted into a systematic model that has been used to save lives in indigenous communities all over the world. Samen has been a nurse practitioner in maternal child health for 31 years; she studied at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. She has also received several awards, such as the 'Unsung Herero of Compassion' from CNN, and is also a member of the Clinton Global Initiative.