First Transplant Administrator to Serve as Board President
United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) welcomes 19 new members to its 42-member Board of Directors, who will begin their term on July 1, 2023. With elections held annually, terms range from one to three years. All board members are volunteers elected by the national organ donation and transplantation community.
New board officers:
President
Dianne LaPointe Rudow, ANP-BC, DNP, FAAN, who is a nurse-practitioner and currently the Vice President/President-Elect, will assume the presidency, becoming the first transplant administrator in the role. She will serve a concurrent one-year term from July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024, as President of the Board of Directors of United Network for Organ Sharing and of the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN). As President, Dr. LaPointe Rudow will serve as the Chair of OPTN Executive Committee and UNOS’ Corporate Affairs Committee. She previously served on the Board of Directors as Transplant Coordinator Representative from 2004 to 2006, and as Secretary from 2016 to 2018.
In addition to her board service, Dr. LaPointe Rudow has served on the OPTN Policy Oversight, Living Donor, Membership and Professional Standards, Ad Hoc Disease Transmission Advisory, Finance, and Executive committees. She chaired the UNOS Labs Liver Paired Exchange Pilot Project Education Subcommittee in 2021. While serving on the Membership and Professional Standards Committee, she led its Living Donor Education Workgroup.
Dr. LaPointe Rudow is a Professor of Population, Health Science and Policy, and Director of the Zweig Family Center for Living Donation at the Recanati/Miller Transplantation Institute at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City.
She began her career as a transplant coordinator at NYU Medical Center. Dr. LaPointe Rudow joined Mount Sinai Hospital in 2010 as Director of the Living Donor Program. She is a past president of The Organization for Transplant Professionals (NATCO) and served as the first non-physician member on the Board of Directors of the American Society of Transplantation (AST). In recognition of her exemplary work, she received the AST Clinician of Distinction Award in 2013. Dr. LaPointe Rudow founded, served as the first President, and is currently Treasurer of NYKidney.
She has previously served on the Boards of the American Society of Transplantation, the New York Center for Liver Transplantation and the American Board of Internal Medicine’s Gastroenterology Board.
Dr. LaPointe Rudow received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing and earned a Doctor of Nursing Practice from Columbia University.
Vice President/President-Elect
Richard Formica, M.D., will be the Vice President/President-Elect from July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024, and President the following year. As Vice President/President-Elect, he will also serve as the Chair of the Nominating Committee and Vice Chair of the OPTN Executive Committee and UNOS’ Corporate Affairs Committee. Dr. Formica has served on the board representing his region since July 2021. He previously chaired the OPTN Kidney Transplantation Committee, MPSC Performance Monitoring Subcommittee, Simultaneous Liver Kidney Implementation Group, and Kidney Paired Donation Workgroup. In addition, he served on the Ad Hoc Committee on Geography and the Policy Oversight Committee.
Dr. Formica is a Professor of Medicine and Surgery at Yale University and serves as the Director of Transplant Medicine and the Medical Director of Adult Kidney Transplantation at Yale New Haven Hospital.
A past president of the AST, Dr. Formica earned his medical degree at Boston University School of Medicine and his bachelor’s in chemistry at Boston University.
Treasurer
Andrea Tietjen, M.B.A., CPA, will serve a two-year term as Treasurer of UNOS and the OPTN. In that role, her responsibilities include regularly reviewing the finances of the OPTN, serving as Chair of the Finance Committee, and reporting to the Board of Directors regarding the financial condition of the OPTN. The Treasurer ensures that an annual audit and report on OPTN finances are completed. Ms. Tietjen began serving on the board in July 2021 and has been a member of the OPTN Finance Committee since. She also currently serves on the Transplant Administrators Committee Fiscal Impact Advisory Workgroup.
Previously, Ms. Tietjen has served on the OPTN Transplant Administrators and Finance committees. In addition, she was part of the UNOS Labs Liver Paired Exchange Finance Subcommittee and the UNOS Transplant Management Forum Planning Committee.
Ms. Tietjen is Assistant Vice President for Transplant Administration at Cooperman Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, New Jersey. She has been an Adjunct Professor at Caldwell University since 2002, teaching accounting, finance and healthcare administration.
She presently chairs the AST Transplant Administration and Quality Management Community of Practice (COP), serves on the American Foundation for Donation and Transplantation Living Donor Education Planning Committee, and is a member of the AST Living Donor COP Finance Workgroup.
Ms. Tietjen, who received a Bachelor of Arts from Douglass College, a Bachelor of Science from Upsala College, and a Master of Business Administration from Regis University, is a licensed certified public accountant in New Jersey.
Minority Transplant Professional Representative
Silas Norman, M.D., M.P.H., will serve a two-year term as the Minority Transplant Professional Representative to the Board of Directors. Dr. Norman filled the same position from 2009 to 2011. He has been involved in transplant policy since 2004 when he joined the OPTN Minority Affairs Committee, serving as Chair from 2011 to 2013. He has also been a member of the Policy Oversight and Kidney Transplantation committees.
Dr. Norman is a transplant nephrologist at the University of Michigan, the Co-Medical Director of Kidney and Pancreas Transplantation, and the Director of the Transplant Multi-Specialty Clinics.
Dr. Norman previously served as Chair of AST’s Inclusion Diversity Equity and Access (to Life) Taskforce, is a member of the Minority Organ Tissue Transplant Education Program Detroit Foundation Board, Chair of the American Kidney Fund Board of Trustees and serves on the Board of Directors for the National Kidney Foundation of Michigan.
Dr. Norman received his medical degree from Wayne State University School of Medicine and holds a master’s degree in public health from the University of Michigan.
Continuing board officers:
Valinda Jones, M.S.N., RN, will continue in her role as the Vice President for Patient and Donor Affairs and Linda Cendales, M.D., will continue serving as Secretary until June 30, 2024.
About UNOS
United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) is a non-profit, charitable organization that serves as the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) under contract with the federal government. The OPTN helps create and define organ allocation and distribution policies that make the best use of donated organs. This process involves continuously evaluating new advances and discoveries so policies can be adapted to best serve patients waiting for transplants. All transplant programs and organ procurement organizations throughout the country are OPTN members and are obligated to follow the policies the OPTN creates for allocating organs.
