Podlaski, Ron (1946– )

US veteran and social activist. As a volunteer Green Beret, he conducted special operations in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. In 1986 he became vice-president of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation (VVAF) and began working with Southeast Asian refugees and Amerasian children in the USA In 1991, under the auspices of the VVAF, he established a prosthetics clinic in Cambodia, especially for Cambodians injured by land mines laid down during the wars there. In 1992 he began an agricultural and fish-farming programme for which the amputees are responsible.

Born in New York, New York, into a single-parent welfare family with seven siblings, he joined the US Army in 1966. After his stint in southeast Asia, he returned to the USA in 1969 and, after working at several jobs, studied child psychology at the University of Maine (1977–79). He then worked at the Maple Hill School (Vermont), a school for abused and troubled children. A 1994 Petra Foundation Fellow, he lived with his family in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.