As part of its mission to save more lives through organ and tissue donation, Mid-America Transplant is pleased to welcome six new members to its governing Board of Directors, as well as two new members to the Mid-America Transplant Foundation Board of Directors.
“We are excited to welcome this group of talented leaders from across the region to the Board. We look forward to their contributions as we strive to create a world where organs and tissues are always available to those in need,” said Joan Magruder, Chair of the Mid-America Transplant Board of Directors and Group President at BJC HealthCare.
Mid-America Transplant’s Board of Directors will include the following members.
- Dr. Alison Gildehaus, Trauma Medical Director, Mercy St. Louis. Dr. Gildehaus serves on the Mercy EMS Officers’ Committee along with several other committees at Mercy Hospital.
- Marie Moore, Chief Nursing Officer at Mercy Hospital, Springfield Communities. Moore also serves on the board of the Springfield-area Discovery Center and volunteers with Make-A-Wish and the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce.
- Angelleen Peters-Lewis, PhD, RN, FAAN, Vice President, Chief Operating Officer, Barnes-Jewish Hospital. Peters-Lewis received the highest recognition in the nursing profession when she was inducted as a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing (FAAN) and was named in 2020 to Modern Healthcare’s “Minority Leaders to Watch” list.
- Jacque Richmond, Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, Mercy. Richmond joins the Mid-America Transplant Board after previously serving on its Foundation Board of Directors as the Secretary/Treasurer.
- Lori Weatherspoon, Vice President and Chief Nursing Officer, Christian Hospital. Prior to taking on this role in 2018, she served as the Chief Nursing Officer at HCA Regional Medical Center Bayonet Point, in Hudson, Florida.
- Dr. Tessa Woods, Acute Care Surgeon, Farrell-Duncan Clinic, Cox South Hospital in Springfield, Missouri. Dr. Woods is also Assistant Professor of Clinical Surgery at University of Missouri School of Medicine, Springfield Clinical Campus, and a Clinical Adjunct Instructor at A.T. Still University.
"The new board members represent some of the leading medical care facilities across St. Louis and Springfield, Missouri,” said Kevin Lee, CEO of Mid-America Transplant. “They will help us provide the best possible support to transplant patients, donor families and communities across the region, while also providing valuable insight to help Mid-America Transplant continue to lead the way in innovations in the organ procurement industry.”
The Mid-America Transplant Foundation, which works to reduce the need for organ and tissue transplantation, increase the availability of organs and tissues, and improve the lives of recipients and donor families, will add the following members:
- Emily Givens, Senior Development Associate, Bryan Properties in Springfield, Missouri. Givens previously served as Executive Director of the Lost & Found Grief Center, a partner of Mid-America Transplant Foundation that provides grief counseling and support for donor families.
- Paster Ron A. Young, Founding Pastor of Impact Church St. Louis, serving the Metro East area in Cahokia Heights, Illinois. Pastor Young and his congregation are leading efforts and expanding their footprint in the areas of juvenile justice, education, health awareness and addictions.
The new members will be joining 15 returning members on the Mid-America Transplant Board of Directors and eight returning members of the Mid-America Transplant Foundation Board of Directors. A full list is available online.
About Mid-America Transplant
Mid-America Transplant enables adults and children to receive lifesaving gifts through organ and tissue donations. For more than 40 years, it has facilitated and coordinated organ, tissue, and eye donation, and now serves 84 counties covering eastern Missouri, southern Illinois and northeast Arkansas that together are home to 4.7 million people. It saves lives by providing expert and compassionate care for organ donors, recipients and families, and transforms the clinical processes required to recover and transplant organs and tissues. Mid-America Transplant was the first such organization in the U.S. to use an in-house operating room for organ recovery and pioneered innovative models of increasing donor registry enrollment to provide organs and tissues to those in need. It is federally designated as one of 56 such organizations in the U.S. and is the first organ procurement organization (OPO) to be recognized as a recipient of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award for Performance Excellence, and the only two-time recipient. For more information, visit www.midamericatransplant.org.