Franz Freudenthal is a medical doctor, an inventor, an entrepreneur and a philanthropist, whose work has focused on healing young children who are born with heart defects. A firm believer that “complex problems deserve simple solutions,” he has developed several patents, including a number of heart occluders that have helped around 50,000 patients across the globe, most of them children. In his native Bolivia, Freudenthal and his wife have established the Funrdación Cardioinfantil La Paz to help impoverished children gain access to adequate heart therapy.