Category: Our Leadership

Garet Hil is the Founder & CEO of the National Kidney Registry. Mr. Hil became involved in transplantation when his daughter was diagnosed with kidney failure at age 10. After he and his wife were both deemed incompatible, a difficult and extensive donor search finally resulted in a successful transplant for their daughter. That process …

Dr. Matthew Cooper is the Chief of Transplantation, Director of Solid Organ Transplantation, and a tenured Professor of Surgery at the Medical College of Wisconsin. He is the Mark B. Adams Distinguished Professor of Surgery and a member of the National Kidney Registry’s Medical Board and its Surgical Director. Dr. Cooper chose the specialty of …

Dr. Michael Cecka is the Professor Emeritus at the UCLA Immunogenetics Center, Department of Pathology and Lab Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles. He is certified by the American Board for Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics and an HLA Laboratory Director and holds licenses in California, Hawaii and New York. Dr. Cecka …

Margaret Voges leads the National Kidney Registry Operations Committee in working to improve the living donation process, teaching new centers how to navigate the system, and working with experienced centers on how to make improvements and utilize new technologies. She also serves as an educator for NKR regional training sessions and is the lead educator …

Dr. Amy Waterman is a national transplant innovator and the Deborah C. and Clifton Phillips Centennial Chair for Clinical Research in Transplant Medicine at the J.C. Walter Jr. Transplant Center at Houston Methodist Hospital. In addition to many national transplant leadership positions, Dr. Waterman is a Fellow of the American Society of Transplantation. In 2018, …

Before joining the NKR as Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer, Ryan Meehan co-founded and served as the Chief Executive Officer of Cell Tolerance, Inc. (CTI), an early-stage biotechnology company focused on developing a cellular therapy to induce immunological tolerance in haploidentical sibling transplants. In 2023, Ryan transitioned to the NKR full-time while also …

Samantha Hil is a kidney transplant recipient and the catalyst for the formation of the NKR and ImmunoFree. She manages the microsite product, leads the teams that design and manage all of the NKR’s websites, and is the organization’s chief editor, responsible for writing and reviewing the company’s published material, both online and in print.

Frank Schultz leads the NKR Software Development team, the Quality Assurance team, and the Information Technology group. He is responsible for technical leadership, software processes, and the execution of development projects. With over two decades of software experience and more than 10 years in the life sciences industry, Mr. Schultz has held executive roles at …

Jon Sullenberger is a living kidney donor and leads the NKR’s donor and patient advocacy teams. His first contact with the NKR was in 2019, when he enrolled in the Voucher Program to get his wife off dialysis. During this difficult and challenging process, he identified significant opportunities for improvement and presented his ideas to …

Timothy Wan, Esq., is the NKR’s General Counsel and Chief Litigator. He oversees contracts, leases, intellectual property, employment law, risk management and litigation. Mr. Wan was admitted to the New York State Bar in January 2001, after graduating from Brooklyn Law School with his Juris Doctor, and from Vassar College, with a double B.A. in …