Katayoun Najafizadeh - Iran

Katy is a Pulmonologist who established the first Lung transplant program in 2000 in Iran. In 2004, she launched organ donation in one of the Universities of Tehran to increase organ donation rates especially for patients on the lung transplant waiting list, her main concern and focus at that time. With her colleagues, they launched several projects and were able to increase family consent rate to 96%and achieve a PMP of 32.4 in the mentioned center. She was assigned the Director of Organ Donation and Transplantation of the Ministry of Health of Iran in 2014. With her colleagues, they presented several projects to the MOH and organ donation rates in Iran increased significantly. She also established an NGO named "Iranian Society of Organ Donation" to help MOH with social awareness activities, family support, donor teams’ education and activities necessary for the improvement of organ donation in Iran. In 2018 he was responsibile for establishing “Organ donation and Transplantation Registry of Iran” (OTRI) and some other important projects of the MOH were delegated to ISOD which were successfully carried out.

Katy has been a member of ISODP council since 2017. Now, as the leader of the “Developing Donation” working group of the ISODP council, she and her group members are working to address and improve the following concerns:

1. Only 10% of transplant candidates in the world get transplanted
2. Most of the countries which have had the experience of transplant do not have an acceptable donation rate
3. There are some countries with no facilities for transplant.

She believes that the work on these projects, will greatly improve and hopefully, organ donation will be more than ever possible and doable in all countries around the world and accessible to all people regardless of their ethnicity or geographic conditions.

Jeffrey Orlowski - United States

Jeff is President and CEO of LifeShare Network and its subsidiary organizations and is President of the LifeShare Foundation. Jeff has 35 years of experience in organ and tissue donation. Jeff has a long history of Board and community service, and currently serves as a Councilor for the International Society of Donation and Procurement, as a member of the MTF Biologics Board of Directors, as Vice Chair of the Donation Board of Trustees for MTF, and as Chair of the Oklahoma Governor’s Advancement of Wellness Advisory Council. He is a Past President of AOPO and of Donate Life America and will soon complete terms on the UNOS and OPTN Boards as well as both their Executive and Finance Committees. He has been honored with various awards including 55over55 Inspiring Oklahomans, AATB Jeanne C. Mowe Distinguished Service Award, AOPO/Sallop “Excellence in Leadership” Award, AOPO President’s Award, and as the 2020 Top Midsize Business Leader by the Daily Oklahoman Best Places to Work. He has authored or co-authored over fifty peer-reviewed journal articles and has presented more than one hundred scientific abstracts and invited lectures around the world.

Wenshi Jiang - China

Wenshi Jiang is recognized as one of the key advocators in helping develop deceased organ donation program in China. She has been an active contributor internationally with ISODP for over a decade. She contributed remarkably in below areas:

• Since 2009, she was appointed as one of the key designers responsible for the development of national organ allocation policies and its computing system. The successful launch of the allocation system nationwide enhances the fairness of the process.
• She created the educational pathway for OD in China and has organized over 60 national/regional courses on donation to train 3,000+ Chinese professionals since 2015. She helped coordinate 4 European Universities and 7 Chinese universities to implement postgraduate course on Organ Donation in China.
• From 2020, she has been developing the first independent provincial OPO in China & to create the first society of organ & tissue donation at the national level.
• She received professional awards given by TTS & ESOT and joined as editor of local and international journals. The national consensus on family approach she led won the “STAR 2021 Transparence Award “given by WHO Collaborating centre for guideline implementation and knowledge translation & Chinese Journal of Medicine. She also joined many international programs such as International Donation and Transplantation Legislative and Policy Forum.

Avnish Kumar Seth - India

Dr. (Colonel) Avnish Kumar Seth, a transplant hepatologist, pioneered the first successful deceased organ donation program in North India in 2007 as Director, Armed Forces Organ Retrieval and Transplant Authority (AORTA). Currently, as Director Fortis Organ Retrieval and Transplant (FORT), he leads the program in 18 hospitals of Fortis Healthcare India. His Seth-Donation of Organs and Tissues (S-DOT) score is widely used for assessment of hospitals for best practices in the field. He established the IDEAL (Immediate Donation of Eyes After Life) protocol, a nursing and smartphone based system of counseling families for cornea donation. With over 100 publications, he has actively participated in ISODP Congress held at Seoul, Geneva and Dubai. Dr. Seth is the Chair of the Expert Committee of 'Ang Daan Yojna', an organ donation initiative by Government of Haryana, India. He is member of Apex Technical Committee of National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organization (NOTTO) and member of Advisory Board of MOHAN Foundation. Dr. Seth is the Chair and lead author of the Expert Group that developed joint consensus statement on organ donation after circulatory determination of death in India in 2021. He is recipient of Vishist Seva Medal, awarded by the President of India.

Brian Ezequiel Alvarez - Spain

Brian Alvarez is graduated in Medicine by Barceló University from Argentina. He later became a Critical Care Specialist and a Hospital Organ Donation Coordinator from San Isidro’s Hospital in Argentina. He obtained a Master’s degree in Organ, Tissue and Cell Donation and Transplantation from the University of Barcelona. With 10 years of experience in deceased organ donation and critical care, he works on international cooperation programs in the DTI Foundation in Barcelona focused on projects to enact donation and transplantation networks in the world, while also participating in training and innovation activities.

Andrzej Baranski - The Netherlands

Prof. A.G. Baranski completed his medical study in 1985 at the Medical University of Warsaw, Poland. As a physician and university lecturer, he extended his experience in the field of transplant surgery in Belgium, the Netherlands and USA. In 2011, he obtained the Honorary Diplomas of the Division of Transplantation of the European Union of Medical Specialists (UEMS) and the European Board of Surgery (EBS) - Honorary European Diploma in Transplantation Surgery in: 1) multi-organ retrieval, 2) Kidney transplantation, 3) Pancreas transplantation and 4) Liver transplantation. Since 1997 he has been working as a senior consultant transplant surgeon and the leader of the liver, pancreas, kidney and abdominal organ procurement program at the Leiden University Medical Centre in the Netherlands.

In 2020, he received the title of full professor in the field of education surgical techniques for abdominal organ procurement, preservation and transplantation for achievements in the field of transplantation.

He is an author of numerous worldwide publications; books, CD-ROMs, e-learning modules, massive open online courses chapters and articles. Since 2012, His book, “Surgical technique of the abdominal organ procurement. Step by step” (published by Springer) and a new e-learning module are being used in various courses.

Prof. Baranski has been a member of ESOT since 2000 and has served ESOT as an active member of the education committee from 2005 until 2018. During that time, he was involved in the development of the newest methods of international transplant education and established different hands-on surgical courses, e-learning modules and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) together with Coursera. He is also a member of various prestigious scientific societies and the chairman and the programme director of various national and international courses in the field of abdominal surgical anatomy and surgical techniques of abdominal organ procurement.

Prof. Baranski is an inventor and co-inventor of different surgical techniques concerning abdominal organ procurement and transplantation. More than 800 surgeons from various countries have been trained by Dr. Baranski in the field of abdominal organ procurement and transplantation.

Alison Hodak - Australia

Alison Hodak has contributed to the organ donation sector in Australia since 2012. First as a Donation Coordinator and now as the National Manager and Director of the Clinical Programs for the Australia Organ and Tissue Authority. She provides strategic direction and leads the team responsible for ensuring the delivery of key national initiatives to support the DonateLife Network and the broader clinical sector in the delivery of the national program for organ and tissue donation for transplantation in Australia. Alison has over 18 years’ experience working in the critical care sector, including roles in education, research and management. She holds both Post-Graduate and Masters’ qualifications in Critical Care Nursing and Management, as well as Company Director training with Australian Institute of Company Directors. Alison is the current National President and Executive Director of the Australian College of Critical Care Nurses and has been a member of the board since 2017. Alison has strengths in governance, risk, financial oversight and education. She is passionate about organ donation, the nursing workforce and innovate concepts in our approach to wellbeing, leadership and nursing.

Michael O'Leary - Australia

Dr Michael O’Leary has been a State Medical Director of the NSW Organ and Tissue Donation Service since 2014. Dr O’Leary also works part-time as an Intensive Care Specialist at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and St George Private Hospital in Sydney. Michael’s interest in organ donation started when he worked as an Intensive Care trainee at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, UK in 1990, a major centre for liver transplantation at that time. Dr O’Leary emigrated to Australia in 1997, and between 1999 – 2008 he was a member of the NSW State Liaison Group for Organ Donation. Between 2006 – 2008 he led the St George Hospital team in the Australian National Organ Donation Breakthrough Collaborative. Dr O’Leary has research interests relating to organ donor evaluation and to public opinions on death and organ donation, with over 15 peer-reviewed publications in these fields. Previously, Dr O’Leary was a Board member of the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society (ANZICS) from 2004 to 2012, and served as President between 2009 and 2011.