“Luck,” the Roman philosopher Seneca said, “is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

So far, we have enjoyed considerable luck. All the research that the OperationOF team had been preparing since Christmas collided divinely with an exceptional opportunity to attend three consecutive meetings that occurred on two continents. In just nine days, we had the amazing chance to meet the some of the world’s leaders in fistula repair, share our ideas, and rapidly adjust our strategy to best fit a dynamic and evolving industry.

As much as I love thinking of luck as something that we can influence through preparation, I recognize that shear fortune influences one’s access to opportunity. Our fortune came in the form of two surgeons whose decades of experience helping women with obstetric fistula make them esteemed experts: Dr. Lewis Wall and Dr. Steve Arrowsmith of the Worldwide Fistula Fund. We reached out to Dr. Wall in March after reading his comprehensive research on obstetric fistula. After an enlightening conversation, Lewis introduced us to his partner Dr. Steve Arrowsmith and the two graciously shared their insights and experiences with us. Steve mentioned that he planned to attend a meeting at the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva and a meeting in Accra organized by USAID and EngenderHealth. When I expressed interest in the meetings, Dr. Arrowsmith went out of his way to arrange invitations for me to join him on the trip. This is how OperationOF ended up in an expert surgeons meeting at the WHO and at a USAID partners meeting the following week.

As someone with no medical background, I felt slightly unsettled walking through the palatial foyer of the world’s leading health authority en route to an expert surgeons meeting managed by researchers from Johns Hopkins. The purpose of the WHO meeting was to lay out a nine-country, UNFPA-sponsored study intended to improve obstetric fistula prognosis by developing a classification methodology. As I thumbed through the study description and proposed questions, I realized that while I may not have understood the specific detail of some of the questions, I had completed similar exercises as both an academic and a professional. My fading apprehension completely disappeared as I spoke to a few of the surgeons carrying out the study. This delightful group of extremely sensitive men and women from around the world impressed me at nearly every turn. With extensive experience treating fistula patients, these surgeons had some incredible stories. Their deep concern for the women was also quite evident when they passionately debated, reworked and sensitized questions they thought might upset the would-be subjects of the study. Seeing experts devoted to technically improving surgery express such humanitarian concerns and commitment to the whole patient showed me how much these doctors cared about the women.

In Geneva, I met Kate Ramsey, the global coordinator for UNFPA’s Campaign to End Fistula. Besides being impressed with her enthusiasm and breadth of knowledge, I was thrilled when Kate invited me to attend the International Obstetric Fistula Working Group’s (IOFWG) annual meeting scheduled to take place that Sunday in Accra. I had decided to head to Africa a bit early and was overjoyed at the opportunity to participate in these meetings. In a small group setting, the IOFWG meeting really showed me that the areas of prevention, treatment and reintegration should all be included in OperationOF’s mission. We had originally decided to focus all of our efforts on treatment alone, but my experience in Ghana made it very clear that we could contribute significantly to improvement and optimization of prevention and social reintegration services as well.

I started to explore specific ways that we could help the various organizations present at the IOFWG meeting and at the USAID/EngenderHealth’s Fistula Partners meeting that followed it. With a broader focus and some experience communicating OperationOF’s vision, I found the timing of the Fistula Partners meeting could not have been better. The group of attendees was larger than the prior meetings which enabled me to continue some conversations and start many new ones as well. Besides finding solid field-based partners we could help support through fundraising, we also identified organizations that could benefit from our operational services expertise. The discussions enabled us to develop an understanding of critical areas where operations research could help expand capacity and improve efficiency. By the close of the week, OperationOF had an industry-vetted strategy and a swath of potential partners working in countries all over the world. The strides that we made in such a short time were nothing short of miraculous and definitely a testament to some incredible luck.

But the serendipitous fortune fueling OperationOF’s progress surprised us yet again when a conversation on the last day of the conference put us on a path to funding our first surgeries.