Her blonde bob sways with her grand gestures, and her blue eyes are wide with enthusiasm.
“Do you guys want to hear about my chimp story?” She digresses to describe her visit to a chimpanzee sanctuary in the desert, where she and her colleagues were greeted by an overly-excited chimp with a toe fetish.
That’s one way to engrain primate behavior in students’ minds. An anthropology professor with a specialization in medical anthropology, Denise Cucurny is always alluring. Her lectures are peppered with anecdotes.
She recalls strolling down the beach only to stumble upon a tibia bone only a matter of yards away, nestled in the sand. “It definitely belonged to a quadruped,” she says.
Only the sharpest of eyes and experienced professionals would be able to identify a bone that joins the knee and the ankle. More specifically, Cucurny cites that it also happened to belong to a creature with four-legged locomotive patterns. With decades of experience in her field and in the classroom, Cucurny is as sharp as a tack.
Not only an expert in anthropology, Cucurny is also the President and Co-Founder of Women for World Health, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing free surgeries to underserved communities in developing nations.
On Thursday, Cucurny will be the recipient of the 2017 Advancement of Women Award by the President’s Commission on the Status of Women at Cal State Long Beach, a commission dedicated to advocating for policies, opportunities and projects that enhance the campus experience for women and men alike. Each year, PCSW honors one student, one lecturer or tenured/tenure-track faculty member, one staff member and one administrator, each of whom have demonstrated a commitment to the advancement of women.
Cucurny has taught at CSULB for over 20 years, leading an array of classes including Intro to Anthropology, Human Variation and Health & Healing, while simultaneously teaching liberal arts courses like human diversity and human sexuality at Laguna College of Art and Design.
Her Maltese Poodle mix service dog, Sammy, is always in tow. A sure cure for her anxiety, he is curled into a ball, asleep during her lectures. Sammy can be considered a seasoned traveler, too, as he’s gone to Spain eight times.
Cucurny calls herself the organization’s “Program Manager,” despite being a co-founder along with Dr. Amy Wandel. Cucurny works as the international liaison and coordinates Women for World Health medical missions, where board certified physicians and ophthalmologists travel abroad to perform corrective plastic surgery pro-bono.
In addition to her roles as a full-time professor, a nonprofit founder and lead organizer, Cucurny is also a mother of two and a colleague and friend to many.
Cucurny’s life-story is as vivid as her brightly-colored nail polish and signature silver bangles.
After traveling the world, falling in love with her husband in Ibiza, an island of Spain, living in South America and Costa Rica for a few years, she recalls where her career began.
“I was a hippie with a backpack,” said Cucurny. “I didn’t go back to school until I was 27.”
In 1977, Cucurny found herself in an anthropology class at Golden West College in Huntington Beach, not knowing its meaning but only that it fulfilled a general education requirement. After becoming enamored with biological anthropology, osteology and the primates, she was hooked.
It wasn’t until the late ‘90s while kayaking through the Huntington Harbor Canals that she crossed paths with Dr. Larry Nichter, a plastic surgeon and founder of Plasticos Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of children in need of reconstructive plastic surgery in underdeveloped countries. He would later become her mentor, the man who “taught her everything she knows.” It was with Plasticos Foundation that Cucurny became the main coordinator for medical missions.
In 2000, on a medical mission to Puerto Viejo, Ecuador, Cucurny roomed with Dr. Wandel, a plastic surgeon with a military background. Having each gone on multiple missions with Plasticos Foundation, they decided to venture out on their own to start Women for World Health in 2006.
Most medical missions with Women for World Health typically last a week, despite taking months to prepare for. The organization’s last mission was to Pisco, Peru where the team performed cataract surgeries.
Patients are pre-screened during the months of preparation. Cucurny says her team usually consists of anywhere from 10 to 18 people, who allocate at least five intense days of working in the hospital.
Women for World Health invites local doctors and nurses to collaborate with them and assist in the specialized recovery process for patients who undergo corrective surgery for ophthalmic cases, burn injuries, in addition to cleft lip palates and lips.
“We don’t want anybody to think that we’re coming in to take over their patients,” says Cucurny. “Not at all.”
She arranges all the travel, a huge undertaking. Beyond the United States, doctors, nurses and volunteers hail from countries such as India, Argentina and Japan.
Dr. Jed Horowitz, a plastic surgeon based out of Newport Beach, describes the intricacies he has seen throughout the years after having participated in medical missions in Ecuador and Peru with both Women for World Health and Plasticos Foundation. In his experience, cases have ranged from cleft lips and palates to burn and limb injuries.
“The first days are dedicated to screening each patient, while the subsequent days are dedicated to surgery and recovery,” Horowitz said.
A friend of more than 15 years, Horowitz first met Cucurny through Plasticos Foundation, naming her an integral part of the team, and a founding member of the organization.
Beyond her exceptional organizational skills to arrange nearly everything on the trips from a full list of medical supplies to assembling a fully qualified team, Horowitz emphasizes Cucurny’s immense passion and influence.
“Denise is a great role model,” Horowitz says. According to Horowitz, all three of his daughters have been inspired by her. The eldest, 32, participated in the inaugural medical mission to Ecuador for Women for World Health, with himself following soon after. His youngest, 20, is traveling to Chile for six months to work with an organization that works toward providing better healthcare to women.
“This is the spin off you get from people like Denise. They influence the next generation,” Horowitz said. “It doesn’t just end with what she’s doing, she has created a great legacy.”
Former student-turned-colleague, Sal Franco, echoes the same sentiments. Franco, 38, has many fond memories of Cucurny, beginning with his time at CSULB. An anthropology graduate from the undergrad and graduate program at CSULB, Franco reminisces fondly of his time as a student, referring to her as his mentor who would later become one of his best friends.
“My first foray with Denise was back in 1998,” Franco said. It was after taking the GE fulfillment, Anthropology 110, that he became a ‘Denise Cucurny believer’,” he says.
“She wasn’t like other professors. She had this way of teaching that wasn’t talking at you, but more so conversing with you,” Franco said. “It came from a very passionate and approachable place.”
After taking several classes with Cucurny, Franco volunteered with Plasticos Foundation, holding a wide-array of roles, from translating and needs-assessment to facilitating rapport and recovery, and even surgical assistant.
Following his time at CSULB, Franco joined forces with Himalayan Health Exchange, a six-week anthropological expedition dedicated to educating students while serving communities in remote areas of the Indo-Tibetan borderlands. By his third expedition in 2008, he became a lecturer in the program, bringing on his mentor, Dr. Cucurny, to do the same.
He continued to work with Cucurny on multiple medical missions for Women for World Health, including trips to Guatemala and Ecuador.
Now a nurse practitioner based in San Francisco, Franco divides his time between Santa Rosa Community Health and the San Francisco General Hospital Family Health Center, specifically with underserved, undocumented patients in the Refugee Center.
“I’m here because of her motivation – she encouraged me personally and professionally to get to this point,” Franco said. “I have so much respect and love for this woman. She changed my life, and she continues to do it day-in and day-out for so many people.”
Like Horowitz, Franco re-emphasizes her ongoing efforts.
“She continues to create these networks of people with passion and fervor to make change, to be responsible for someone aside from ourselves,” he said.
Today, Women for World Health is working on its 17th medical mission and anticipates that it will come to fruition in October in Peru.
“Today’s lecture is on dating,” Cucurny said. “Not dating like meeting a mate.” A low laugh rose from the lecture hall. Smiles spread across faces. She has that effect on people.