Our Mission
World Children’s Initiative “WCI” is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving and rebuilding the healthcare and educational infrastructure for children in developing areas both domestically and worldwide.
WCI firmly believes that only through adequate health and educational initiatives will the bodies, minds and hearts of destitute children worldwide be properly nourished and prepared for successful and productive lives.
Our Philosphy
WCI seeks to accomplish this goal through strategic partnerships with U.S. and foreign corporations, leading universities and academic institutions, and governmental and non-governmental entities, who are operating to serve this population.
WCI helps children play harder and live longer.
History
Inspired by their trip to Sri Lanka to assist the victims of the December 26, 2004, Indian Ocean Tsunami, three close friends from college, founded World Children’s Initiative. The men founded the organization with the mission to build medical and educational infrastructure for children in developing areas across the globe.
Board Profiles
Sanjay Daluvoy, MD
Founder & Executive Director
Plastic & Reconstructive Surgeon.
He currently practices at Specialists in Plastic Surgery, PA in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Sanjay was born in Brooklyn, New York and grew up in Los Angeles, California. He attended Brown University (B.A. Business Economics) in Rhode Island and Jefferson Medical College (MD) in Philadelphia.He completed his general surgery residency at George Washington University in Washington DC and spent a year at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York for a surgical research fellowship. He, then, completed his plastic and reconstructive surgery fellowship at Duke University in Durham, NC.Most recently, he completed “Innovative Healthcare Leader Program” at Stanford’s Business School – Executive Education in Palo Alto, CA.Prior to medical school, he founded a healthcare IT company in the Bay Area named, Infinity Markets. He has also worked in healthcare consulting at CSC Healthcare (formerly APM) in Chicago as well as for Department of Health & Human Services at the Agency for Healthcare Policy and Research in Washington DC.
Deep Gulasekaram, Esq
Founder & Director of Operations
Deep Gulasekaram was born in Sri Lanka and grew up in Los Angeles, California. He is currently Professor of Law at Santa Clara University, where he teaches constitutional law and immigration law. He has also taught at Stanford Law School, UC Berkeley Law School, NYU School of Law, and Loyola New Orleans School of Law. He attended Brown University and Stanford Law School, and clerked on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. After law school, he practiced as a litigator at O’Melveny & Myers LLP and Susman Godfrey LLP in Los Angeles. Prior to law school, he was a middle school teacher in New York City.
Manu Harish
Board of Directors of Operations
Secretary
Manu Harish grew up in Charleston, West Virginia. He is a Product Management leader currently working at GoDaddy, where he has spent over a decade driving innovation and building customer-focused digital products. Previously, he held roles at PepsiCo, Visa, and Intuit, gaining Strategy and Product Management experience across various industries. Manu attended The George Washington University, where he earned a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, concentrating in Finance and Information Systems along with a minor in Mathematics and a Master’s degree in Information Systems Development. He later received his MBA from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, with concentrations in Finance and Economics . He lives in Los Gatos, California, with his wife and three children.
Operations
Mickie Okamoto-Tsudama, MPA, PHR
Operations Manager
Mickie is a Human Resources professional with a previous career in event planning and fundraising. She earned her Masters in Public Administration from Cal State Northridge with an emphasis on Non-Profit Organization Management. She manages the day to day operations of World Children’s Initiative.
James Hwang, MD
Clinical Manager
Dr. James Hwang is the director for emergency ultrasound at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, CA. He completed his emergency medicine training at UCSD, his emergency ultrasound fellowship at Yale, and has passed the AEMUS-FPD. He is an experienced POCUS instructor and serves on the POCUS governance board at Scripps. His primary area of interest is POCUS echocardiography and resuscitative TEE.
Christy Sakamoto
Project Specialist
Christy has always centered her work around driving positive impact through community based organizations. She has both her BA and MLIS from UCLA. In addition to the project work she assists with at WCI, she is an advisory committee member of Southern Nevada Arts Coalition and Leadership Las Vegas alumnus.
Maya Harish
Intern
Maya Harish is an 11th-grade student at the Thacher School. She was born in Chicago Illinois, and currently lives in Northern California. Maya enjoys being a part of her school’s dance and horseback riding programs. She has a strong interest in learning about women’s healthcare rights and how we can improve healthcare access worldwide.
Forever Our Brother
Kanishka Ratnayaka, MD
1974-2021
Founder & Director of Programs
Kanishka Ratnayaka was born in Sri Lanka and grew up in Athens, Georgia. He attended Brown University where he met Sanjay and Deep as first-year students. Kanishka earned his medical degree at Emory University School of Medicine before completing his pediatrics residency and chief resident year at Children's National Medical Center in Washington DC. His medical education includes sub-specialty training in pediatric/congenital interventional cardiac catheterization and interventional cardiac MRI. His clinical practice focuses on congenital and structural heart interventions. Dr. Kanishka Ratnayaka is a board-certified interventional pediatric cardiologist at Rady Children's Hospital-San Diego and an associate clinical professor of pediatrics at UC San Diego School of Medicine. He has authored over 50 peer-reviewed manuscripts and holds several patents for novel cardiovascular devices.
WCI started because best friends from Brown University shared the drive to make a positive and lasting impact in the world. Many of WCI’s supporters knew Kanishka personally and know that WCI would not exist but for his vision and dedication. His leadership was special because it was authentic. His sincere and generous spirt made him an immediate friend to all, a comfort to the children in his care, and a role model to the physicians he trained.
The size of his smile was matched only by the size of his heart, which shone in his desire to treat children and heal families. He was an exceptional clinician, teacher and researcher who was responsible for fixing thousands of children's hearts around the world. His legacy lives on in smiles and embraces of the countless families that now thrive because of his talents. Especially notable was his tireless work in Uganda for WCI's Project Heart. As documented in medical journals and in the testimony of the doctors he mentored there, he left an unforgettable mark that forever advanced the field of global health.