Save the Children can’t seem to avoid controversy. The billion-dollar organization infamously made global headlines for grossly mishandling employees’ harassment complaints. And in 2024, law enforcement raided its offices in Guatemala as part of a child abuse investigation. Now, Save the Children U.S. has been exposed for letting wealthy corporate executives with ties to child labor hold top leadership positions.
ANNE GATES
Child labor. Addicting families to opioids. Price-gouging people during the pandemic. Anne Gates has perhaps the worst track record of all Save the Children Board members. Fortunately, Anne’s reputation of cruelty and callousness has finally caught up with her.
CRUSHED TO DEATH
Anne Gates was head of Disney’s division responsible for making Disney-branded merchandise for 20 years. In April 2009, under Anne’s watch, a child worker named Liu Pan was tragically crushed to death by a machine at a Chinese factory. Investigations revealed severe labor violations, including underage workers.
DRIVEN TO SUICIDE
In 2011, an investigation into a Chinese factory making Disney “Cars” toys exposed child labor and workers forced to do triple the amount of overtime allowed by law. The toxic working conditions even drove one worker to suicide. All of this occurred while Anne Gates sat in her cushy office looking the other way.
DESTROYING FAMILIES
Anne was also a Board member at Kroger while it infamously fueled the opioid epidemic — something it’s had to pay over a billion dollars for. Anne oversaw practices that addicted parents to opioids, destroying countless kids’ lives and ravging entire communities. In Kentucky alone, the state said Kroger dispensed 11% of all opioids over 13 years.
CHILD LABOR AT KROGER
In 2022, with Anne Gates on the Board, Kroger was exposed for violating federal child labor laws, putting young workers at risk and overworking them.
PRICE-GOUGING PARENTS
While children went hungry, Kroger price-gouged families during COVID, taking advantage of the crisis by overcharging for milk and eggs. Anne Gates remained on the board despite this greedy moral failure. In 2020 alone, she was paid almost $300,000 for her role at Kroger, while the company jacked up prices on struggling families working hard to feed their hungry kids.
Anne Gates is a danger to Save the Children, and her presence on the Board threatens to undermine the organization’s work. It’s time for Save the Children to cut ties with Anne Gates.
MARY DILLON
Given Save the Children’s focus on nutrition, it’s ironic that its own Board Chair, Mary Dillon, helped architect McDonald’s shameful marketing to children, leading to the childhood obesity and diabetes epidemics. Mary Dillon has no business being on Save the Children’s Board.
FUELING CHILDHOOD OBESITY
Mary Dillon was McDonald's Chief Marketing Officer from 2005-2010, during a national reckoning about how the company’s marketing to children caused childhood obesity and other severe health problems. In 2006 alone, the Federal Trade Commission reported that fast-food companies, with McDonald's in the lead, spent $360 million on toys to market children's meals. Mary got paid — and children paid the price. Shame on her.
TARGETING MOMS
Following concerns about McDonald’s ties to the children’s health epidemic, Mary Dillon specifically targeted moms on social media. Her goal? Court their influence to selling more belt-busting food to kids.
CHILD LABOR VIOLATIONS
During Mary’s time as a senior executive, McDonald’s was also cited for federal child labor law violations.
Kids need saving from people like Mary Dillon. It’s time for her to resign as Save the Children’s Board Chair.
ANNE MULCAHY
As Save the Children’s Chairman Emeritus, Anne Mulcahy is the face of a group that’s meant to protect children. But who’s protecting children from people like Anne Mulcahy?
MEDIOCRE MEDICINE
With Anne Mulcahy on the Board, Johnson & Johnson was caught using a factory with a “culture of mediocrity” to make children’s medicine, including Children’s Benadryl and Infant Tylenol. The producer had three major recalls in just eight months, including one involving 130 million bottles of medicine. All the while, Anne Mulcahy looked the other way.
DANGEROUS HEAVY METALS
In 2015, a J&J subsidiary was hit with a massive $25 million fine for adulterated medicines found to contain nickel and chromium – including Children’s Tylenol and Children’s Motrin. This also happened under Anne Mulcahy’s watch.
POISONOUS PRODUCTS
J&J waited until 2023 to stop selling talc-based baby powder, after it was hit with tens of thousands of lawsuits claiming that asbestos in the talc had caused mesothelioma, ovarian cancer, and other cancers. In 2025, J&J was ordered to pay almost a billion dollars from just one of these lawsuits. Meanwhile, Anne Mulcahy got richer and richer.
Anne Mulcahy is clearly no friend to children. She’s profited over and over while children are put at risk. It’s time for Save the Children to ditch Anne Mulcahy.
BRAD IRWIN
With ties to child labor and dangerous products marketed to children, Brad Irwin’s past has finally come back to haunt him. He must resign from Save the Children’s Board of Trustees.
CHILD LABOR
Amidst outcry about working conditions — including slavery — in the global cocoa supply, Brad Irwin was a top executive at Cadbury. Ironically, while Brad’s company was sourcing cocoa from Ghana, a Save the Children employee met with kids forced to work in Ghana’s cocoa fields in 2006. "They talked about being hungry while they worked,” she reported. “They spoke about working long hours in the sun, about the pesticides they had to use, [and] their fear of being bitten by snakes.” Yet somehow, Brad is still allowed to serve on Save the Children’s Board.
EXPOSED AND SUED
In 2009, while Irwin was CEO of Welch’s, Consumer Reports exposed the company for high levels of arsenic and lead in its grape juice, which Welch’s marketed to young children and their unsuspecting mothers. And in 2015, Irwin’s company was sued by parents who accused it of deceptively marketing gummy candies as healthy, putting countless children at risk.
PUTTING THE LIVES OF BABIES AT RISK
And in 2025, with Irwin on the Board, Church & Dwight had to recall its Orajel baby teething swabs over a life-threatening fungus.
Whether overseeing child labor or life-threatening food contamination, Brad Irwin is no friend to children. He’s the last person who should be on Save the Children’s Board.
THE LIST GOES ON…
Anne Gates, Anne Mulcahy, Brad Irwin, and Mary Dillon are just the tip of the iceberg. One needn’t look far to find other STC Board members with extremely troubling pasts.
JEREMY KOHOMBAN
The Children’s Village is an organization that’s supposed to serve the most vulnerable youth — those in foster care, the juvenile justice system, undocumented children, and homeless teens. But with Save the Children Board member Jeremy Kohomban as its president, the Children’s Village has been plagued with problems — including one employee recently convicted of child rape.
MICHELLE PELUSO
Under Save the Children Board member Michelle Peluso’s watch as Board member, Nike came under fire for refusing to cut ties with Daweoo – a cotton supplier using slavery.
DAVID JONES JR.
David Jones Jr., a Save the Children Trustee, was a Board member of the health insurance giant Humana from 1993-2023. His company was ordered to pay $80 million after it abruptly terminated its managed care program for 100 catastrophically ill children in Florida – in violation of its own policies. With Jones at the top, Humana even wrongfully denied physical therapy for a 6-year-old child with cerebral palsy. The trial also uncovered widespread fraud at Humana, including the payment of bonuses to physicians and nurses based on the number of medical claims they denied each month.
JUDEE ANNE WILLIAMS
As a global executive in the sports division of the talent agency CAA, Judee Ann Williams looked on while her company tried to bury details about an employee who sent menacing and blackmailing emails to try to protect his client, a football player suspended under allegations of child abuse.
Save the Children’s leadership is tied to one scandal after another – including those involving cruelty to children. It’s time for Save the Children to raise its standards.
Is Save the Children about helping kids, or raking in cash?
For president Janti Soeripto, having a bunch of rich corporate cronies on the board pays off. She rakes in $650,000 each year in compensation — that’s a staggering $25,000 per paycheck.
KNOW OF A CHILD ABUSER ON SAVE THE CHILDREN’S BOARD OR EXECUTIVE TEAM?
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