Robin Smalley

Robin Smalley enjoyed an award-winning career as a television producer/director/writer before recognizing that the legacy she wanted to leave had nothing to do with entertainment. Turning her attention to the non-profit world, she became the Executive Director of The Media Project, incorporate healthy messaging around reproductive health into America’s most popular television shows. A partnership with long-time friend, Mitch Besser, led her to uproot her family to South Africa to follow their dream of ending pediatric AIDS. As m2m’s first Executive Director, she played a pivotal role in establishing m2m’s first office and staff, scaling the Mentor Mother Model in her first year to 73 sites in three countries. Moving back to the Los Angeles as the Director of m2m U.S she expanded m2m’s funding base and developed key global programmatic partnerships. Robin’s work on behalf of Africa’s mothers has been documented in a number of books, including Laura Bush’s memoir “Spoken from the Heart,” Kenneth Cole’s “Awearness,” and Harriet Cabelly’s “Living Well Despite Adversity,” highlighted at the White House Conference on Literacy and the Clinton Global Initiative Conference, and recognized with a number of prestigious awards and honors. In her current position as Chief Connector, Robin supports fundraising, partnership development, advocacy, program strategy and serves on the Board of Directors of m2m U.S. Like the Mentor Mothers who continue to inspire her, Robin takes her greatest pride in her children, Hannah and Sophia.

I'm passionate about educating, empowering and employing women and making sure every child can look forward to a future with health and hope. I'm also passionate about my two daughters, about the adventures we share all over the world, and about spending whatever little time I have left from work with friends and family. Life is too short and I'm passionate about living. Life should be an E-ticket!

Where you live should never determine if you live. Putting the health of the family in the hands of mothers can be a game-changer for any healthcare system, whether it be in Africa, India, or the U.S. : mothers2mothers (m2m) is an organization that unlocks the power of women to eliminate childhood AIDS and create healthy families. m2m trains and employs HIV-positive women in sub-Saharan Africa as "Mentor Mothers". Through their training and employment, they become role models who help women and families at health facilities and in their communities access essential services and medical care, start on any treatment they need, and continue with their health journey. From an initial focus on stopping HIV-positive mothers from passing on the virus to their unborn babies, m2m now delivers a range of services for newborns, children, adolescents and families, to ensure the whole community thrives, not just survives. Mentor Mothers are armed with the knowledge of how it feels to be in their clients’ shoes and are trusted members of their community - a simple, but incredibly effective, model of sisterhood. m2m has created jobs for over 10,000 HIV-positive women in sub-Saharan Africa since its creation in 2001, and these Mentor Mothers have reached over 11M women and children. The power of the model is measurable and remarkable – for the fifth year in a row, m2m helped to almost eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV among their enrolled clients with a transmission rate in 2018 of just 1.3%.

Being quiet and relaxing.