Brendan Parent, JD, is director of transplant ethics and policy research, and assistant professor of bioethics in the division of medical ethics with joint appointment in surgery at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. He is Principal Investigator on nonprofit and government funded grants studying ethics and regulation of transplant research. Parent serves as an independent living donor advocate, an advisory board member for the National Kidney Foundation, and a member of the national donation leadership council for The Alliance. He provides ethics consultation for transplant and medical research programs across the United States. Parent’s current work also focuses on ethics challenges surrounding determination of death by neurologic criteria, research on the deceased, and big data and artificial intelligence in health research. He has published academic articles in peer reviewed journals spanning law, medicine, science, sports, and ethics, and his work has been featured in the Washington Post, The NY Times, Wired, Chicago Tribune, The Guardian, and on NPR. Previously, he was a legal fellow for the New York Task Force on Life and the Law, the first Rudin Post-Doc in the NYU Division of Medical Ethics, and received his JD from Georgetown University Law Center.

Stipendiary Lecturer in Public Law
Pembroke College, Oxford

Dr. Farrah Raza was awarded the Minerva Fast Track Fellowship in January 2020. She leads the Minerva Research Group entitled The Ethics of Exchange: the Regulation of Organ Donation and Transplantation at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Department of Law and Anthropology, in Halle (Saale), Germany, since September 2020. Dr. Farrah Raza is also a Stipendiary Lecturer in Public Law at Pembroke College, University of Oxford.

State Manager/Nursing Director
DonateLife Queensland
Princess Alexandra Hospital

Tina Coco has over 30 years’ clinical experience in organ and tissue donation, establishing the statewide organ and tissue donation service in Queensland in 1999.

She is a Registered Nurse and holds a Master of Donation of Organs, Tissue and Cells for Transplantation and Health Management qualifications. She is also a certified European Transplant Coordinator. She has delivered training workshops on communication and family approach both nationally and internationally. Tina has been a lecturer for the TPM Advanced Training Course in Transplant Coordination since 2007, specialising in family approach.

In 2017, she was awarded an Order of Australia (AO) for distinguished service to community health as a leader and advocate for, organ and tissue donation and transplantation organisations, nationally and internationally.

Executive Director, Mohan Foundation
Gurgaon, India

Ms Pallavi Kumar is the Executive Director of MOHAN Foundation, a National NGO that has been working for 25 years to promote deceased organ donation and transplantation in the country. She was instrumental in setting up the NCR (National Capital Region) office of MOHAN Foundation in 2011. She has subsequently provided support to start the program and Foundation offices in other states namely Rajasthan, Manipur & Uttrakhand.

Pallavi’ skills lie in working closely with hospitals (both government and private) to help them put systems in place promote deceased organ donation. She has been closely and passionately involved in the unenviable task of speaking to families in their time of grief and loss, encouraging them to consider organ donation to save other lives. She is one of the main trainers of the Foundation and has been part of capacity building programs across the country.

Pallavi is also the current President of NATCO (Network and Alliance of Transplant Coordinators), a membership-based organization representing transplant coordinators.

Pallavi has scaled Everest Base Camp (17,600 feet) in 2018 & Mount Kilimanjaro (19,341 feet) in 2019 as her tribute to organ donor and their families.

Consultant Physician and Nephrologist
Head, Dialysis/Transplant Unit and Clinical Director
St Nicholas Hospital, Lagos, Nigeria

Dr Bamgboye has been employed at St Nicholas since February 1998. Over the years he has developed one of Nigeria's most prestigious and functional dialysis units, which receives referrals from around the world. He is also the head of the St Nicholas renal transplant unit. The renal transplant unit has been running for 25 years now and was the first unit in Nigeria and the sub-region to perform successful kidney transplants and has performed over 400 transplants to date.

As the Clinical Director he has been responsible for developing the hospital staff strength to what it is today. He has also been a major influence in the recent expansion of St. Nicholas Hospital, with the opening of their new clinic SNHC, Victoria Island and SNH Mainland.

Dr Ebun Ladipo Bamgboye is past President of both the Nigeria Association of Nephrology and Transplant Association of Nigeria.

Dr Bamgboye despite his extensive clinical work is also involved in academic work, training resident’s doctors from various units and is widely published in various articles in respectable journals and contributed chapters to at least 3 International books. He is also widely sought after as a resource person at various local and international conferences and symposia.

He is the leading authority in transplant Nephrology in Nigeria and the sub-region.

Consultant Surgeon, Transplant Unit
Subspecialist in Critical Care
Groote Schuur Hospital, University of Cape Town

David Thomson is a consultant surgeon in the Transplant Unit and a subspecialist in the Critical Care Department at Groote Schuur Hospital and the University of Cape Town. He completed his undergraduate training in 2002 at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal and went on to specialise in surgery at the University of Cape Town completing his FCS(SA) in 2011 and MMed(Surgery) in 2012.

Awarded the Garron Caine Travelling Fellowship he attended the Harvard Centre for Surgery and Public Health, Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston in 2014.

He completed his sub-specialist qualification in Critical Care in 2015 and currently is the head of the Transplant Centre of Excellence at Groote Schuur Hospital while still working in the ICU, directing the ECMO program and assisting in kidney and liver transplantation.

David has an interest in medical education and promoting organ donation and transplantation creating the massive open online course Organ Donation: From Death to Life hosted on Coursera.org and running ECMO training workshops nationally. He currently sits on both the Transplantation Society and the International Society for Organ Donation and Procurement Councils as the regional representative from Africa.

Associate Professor Helen Opdam is the National Medical Director of the Australian Organ and Tissue Authority. She is a Senior Intensive Care Specialist at the Austin Hospital in Melbourne and Director of Warringal Private Hospital Intensive Care Unit.

Helen has been involved in organ donation since 1998, initially in developing an audit to determine the potential for organ donation. She was the inaugural Victorian State Medical Director for Organ and Tissue Donation at the time that the National Reform to boost donation in Australia began in 2009. She is a Council member and president-elect of the International Society for Organ Donation and Procurement. Helen participates on key Australian committees including the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society (ANZICS) Death and Organ Donation Committee and the National Health and Medical Research Council Expert Advisory Group for the development of ethical guidelines for organ transplantation from deceased donors.

She is a regular invited speaker at national and international conferences.