For years, he had dreamed of being a symphonic orchestra director. But his father, a well-known pulmonologist in the Dominican Republic, had different plans for his son. So D’Oleo went along with his father’s wishes and started medical school. In this third year, he dropped out. 

At the time, he underwent surgery to alleviate chronic knee pain. While recovering in a hospital bed, he saw a TV news report about the dearth of children’s hospitals in the Dominican Republic. The camera cut to a long line of patients waiting outside an emergency room—including a little girl who caught his eye.  

“She was crying, and she was rubbing her left knee because she had a lot of pain,” D’Oleo recalled. “And when I saw that, I thought to myself, Maximo: You are a privileged boy coming from a family that is wealthy. You have a health condition, but you had surgery in a good hospital. You have your loved ones surrounding you, taking care of you.” 

He reconsidered how he wanted to spend the rest of his life. That same year, he returned to medical school on crutches. 

“To experience sickness made me better understand people who are suffering,” he said. 

D’Oleo is now a 52-year-old general pediatrician at Saint Joseph’s Medical Center in Yonkers, New York, and a student in the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education’s advanced certificate program in spiritual direction. 

“I was trained to take care of physical conditions, like asthma, ear infections, throat infections, abdominal pain, and anemia,” he said. “But I started seeing more and more kids with a lot of emotional problems—problems related to family dynamics, the environment, social issues … I thought to myself, these people need something different than what we are offering here right now.”

Life and Death in the ICU

Over the past two decades, D’Oleo has been practicing medicine in the Dominican Republic and the U.S., where he now resides. He recalled several memories that shaped the doctor he is today. 

In his final year of medical school, he was working at a children’s hospital when he found a girl crying in pain. A nurse explained that the patient had a spinal tumor and the painkillers weren’t working. The girl was crying so loudly that nearby patients couldn’t sleep. So D’Oleo picked her up and wandered throughout the hospital, carrying her on his back. He brought her back to her bed, where she fell asleep—and stayed asleep for the rest of the night. 

“That event was a confirmation that I was on the right path,” D’Oleo said. 

In 1993, he graduated from Universidad Iberoamericana with his medical degree and treated patients in his native country and new home. He cared for children in pediatric intensive care units whose conditions faltered “in a snap” and couldn’t be saved, he said. He treated children attached to ventilators who, to his surprise, survived. He learned how to talk to the parents of young patients who passed away. But perhaps most importantly, he said, he learned what it means to be a good doctor. 

“To be a great doctor is to stay with the patient—to be there for them. That they feel that you are really taking care of them, accompanying them,” D’Oleo said. 

Tending to Spiritual Needs of Patients and Families—Especially the Mothers

To better “accompany” his patients, D’Oleo is learning to tend to not only their bodies but also their spirit. 

His motivation begins with his family. D’Oleo was raised by religious parents, including a Catholic mother who showed him the value in caring for people’s spiritual needs. And a practicing Catholic himself, he understood the power of prayer. 

D’Oleo said the program is teaching him how to be a better listener, especially with his patients’ mothers. Historically, women have been marginalized, he said, and have spiritual needs that many people don’t know how to treat. He is now learning to pay more attention to the mothers’ narratives, including small words and expressions that hint at what’s happening in their lives. 

Through the GRE program, he said he also learned the importance of avoiding proselytizing. 

“You are a companion to allow people to discover [themselves],” D’Oleo said.  

At the end of the program, he said he will be a certified spiritual director who can better serve his patients and church community members. D’Oleo said he will live the rest of his life in service to others, just like his wife Denise Jimenez-D’Oleo, who passed away last year after battling breast cancer. 

“You have to do something in your life to be useful to others. Your life is not only focused on you,” D’Oleo said. “While you are here on this planet, on this Earth … make a better world.” 

It wasn’t long before they were doing just that. The following summer, during a service trip to the Dominican Republic, Rose spoke with some local artisans who planted an idea: “They said, ‘You should take some of our stuff and go try to sell it to your friends. You should take more of this back to America with you,’” Rose said.

Thus was born Radiate Market, their web-based business that sells the artisans’ jewelry, art, and personal accessories to customers across the United States, providing the artisans with more consistent customers and sustainable incomes.

Running a business while carrying a full course load is hard work, but they love what they’re doing. “It has been an incredible learning experience and life experience so far,” said Maloney, who along with Rose is a Fordham College at Rose Hill senior.

They launched Radiate Market by using Indiegogo, the crowdfunding site, to raise funds for their initial wholesale orders of jewelry and other items. Rose and Maloney are majoring in anthropology and economics, respectively, but they picked up entrepreneurial skills with the help of the Fordham Foundry, a business incubator run by Fordham’s Gabelli School of Business in collaboration with the New York City Department of Small Business Services.

They worked with nongovernmental organizations to find out which artisans would be most receptive to working with them. They’ve both taken part in Fordham’s worldwide Global Outreach service program, and their approach was informed by its emphasis on cross-cultural understanding and solidarity.

They’ve found a ready market for the distinctive handcrafted items, which evoke the stories of artisans who invest time in making them and benefit greatly from the sale. All four of the wholesale orders they’ve placed within the past year have sold out.

The business reflects their belief in changing current consumption patterns to benefit the developing world—in this case, by helping the artisans find a wider market for their culturally distinct creations. Their Dominican partners include a fair trade cooperative that produces seed bead jewelry and splits the work and profits equally among the artists; a Haitian immigrant who produces metal art; and a mother of three who makes rugs out of rice sacks and recycled fabrics.

“If we’re able to give someone the feeling that they can be creative and work hard at something that they actually get satisfaction out of, and provide for their family, that’s the most satisfying thing,” Maloney said.

Shown below are some of Radiate Market’s goods: bracelets, a necklace, and a platter: 

They’d both done service trips throughout high school, and in that first year at Fordham they talked a lot about sustainability and ethical consumerism. Then, during a summer service trip to the Dominican Republic, Rose spoke to local merchants who planted an idea: “They said, ‘You should take some of our stuff and go try to sell it to your friends.’”

Today they’re doing that and more, selling the merchants’ locally produced jewelry all over the country through Radiate Market, a web-based business that reflects their belief in changing current consumption patterns to benefit the developing world.

And they’re running the business in the midst of junior-year coursework, maintaining an inventory and handling all the bookkeeping and shipping themselves.

“We spend a lot of time at the Fordham post office,” Rose said.

The two have sold dozens of items since launching the business in August, driven by a belief in helping developing-world artisans earn sustainable incomes in ways that preserve and celebrate their cultures. With startup funds raised through Indiegogo, the crowdfunding site, they’ve bought three wholesale orders of jewelry and have a fourth in the works.

They’re finding a ready market for the handcrafted items—bracelets, necklaces, Haitian metal art—that evoke the personal story of a merchant whose life was tangibly improved by the purchase.

“The ultimate goal would be to have people feeling fulfilled by the work that they’re doing,” Maloney said. “If we’re able to give someone the feeling that they can be creative and work hard at something that they actually get satisfaction out of, and provide for their family, that’s the most satisfying thing.”

Neither student is a business major; Maloney studies economics and Rose, anthropology. But they’ve picked up business savvy with help from the Fordham Foundry, which connected them with a business coach and a student who provided accounting help.

And their business approach was informed by their service trips with Global Outreach, Fordham’s cultural immersion and service program. Last summer they made an extended trip to the Dominican Republic to build connections and show their commitment; they also worked through a few nongovernmental organizations to find out which artisans would be most receptive.

“A huge part of our model is definitely being aware of what’s going on in the communities that we’re working with,” Maloney said. “We don’t just want to come in with a set structure and say, ‘This is going to work for you.’”

Maloney and Rose both love the feeling of providing opportunity to Dominican artisans, one of whom used the income to hire neighborhood boys to help fulfill the orders. The two students plan to return this summer to learn more about how the artisans’ communities have benefited from the business.

They might expand the business to artisans in Guatemala or even in the immigrant communities of New York City, and they hope to work at it full time after they graduate.

The company name comes from a conversation they had on the 4 train as freshmen, Rose said: “We were talking about people that radiate these qualities that we really admired, and we really enjoyed meeting people who we had felt lived in a way that radiated things that they love.”

Launching the business has changed their lives. “(Because) we’re doing this thing that we love, people want to share the thing that they love with us too,” Maloney said.

On Tuesday, Dec. 15 at 6 p.m., Fordham will host a panel discussion on the many legal issues that have exacerbated the crisis, its human rights implications, and its humanitarian imperatives.

Dominicans of Haitian ancestry have been pouring over the border into Haiti since 2013. That’s when the Dominican government ordered that all Dominican Haitians must prove Dominican lineage with ancestral birth certificates dating from before 1929, or be expelled.

“An estimated 200,000 people are at risk of being rendered stateless,” said Marciana Popescu, PhD, an associate professor in the Graduate School of Social Service (GSS).

Popescu said that birth certificates aren’t issued as rigorously on the island as they are in the United States. She said that the timelines for appeal were rigid and the process was not clear. Lack of information, in some cases, and low literacy levels in other cases, plus the difficulty of obtaining proper identification explained the decision of many to not challenge the Dominican laws.

In August, Popescu visited Haiti at the invitation of Fordham student Kara Lightburn and saw the crisis firsthand. Lightburn is earning her master’s degree from the University’s Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs (IIHA), and simultaneously spending time on the ground in Haiti. In 2010, she founded Social Tap, a New York-based nonprofit providing services through Haitian partnerships. The group is assisting Popescu with research on the refugee camps forming at the border.

The two women will present an assessment of findings next week.

The ambiguities created by the new laws, the political tensions, and the limitations of international definitions of refugees further complicate this situation. In the absence of a refugee status, no official refugee camps were set up. The haphazard arrangement has left the displaced population living in flimsy tents partially covered with tarps vulnerable to the elements.

“The rain comes in through top and bottom,” said Popescu. “The day after I left, the entire camp was flooded.”

Several people have already died of cholera, she said, since the refugees were not educated on the dangers of drinking untreated water.

While the Dominican Republic has not officially started deportation proceedings, Popescu’s research has shown that an overwhelming 86 percent of Dominican Haitians are returning to Haiti “spontaneously.” Additionally, the military and police have been routinely putting people in cars, taking them to the border, and leaving them there.
The refugees are heading to a country experiencing over 70 percent unemployment, so getting them out of the camps and integrated into the society will not be easy, she said. Further complicating the situation is that the tiny nation is in the midst of a national election.

“Until there is a new government, it’s not clear who is responsible for what,” she said. “One thing is certain, people want to move out of the camps. And while they believe that either the Haitian government or the international organizations should take responsibility, they don’t put much trust in either… and with the ongoing elections, they are left waiting. And for some, especially the infants and the elderly at camp, time is running out.”

The event is being co-sponsored by the IIHA, GSS, and the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice.

Graduate students Patrick Gallic and Matias Pablo Mangas were chosen by the United Nations Department of Public Information to attend the conference, held in the Dominican Republic from Oct. 28 to Oct. 31. The conference provides a diplomatic forum for youth to debate global issues related to the UN Millennium Development Goals, and will be attended by approximately 1,500 students, primarily from Latin America.

Mangas is a first year student from Argentina who received his bachelor’s degree in international studies from American University in 2009. Gallic previously worked for the Catholic Medical Mission Board in Southern Sudan. As part of their trip both students will have the opportunity to meet with the president of the Dominican Republic, Leonel Fernandez. Last year at this time, Fernandez was a guest of the IPED Program and drew an overflow crowd to the Keating First Auditorium.