Centralight

Ashley Br own Alum Ashley Brown and her colleagues at Gift of Life Michigan save lives. The Grand Rapids woman, M.A. '13, works with donation coordinators who are dispatched to hospitals all across the state to fulfi ll the wishes of terminal patients registered to be organ and tissue donors. They talk with families and – in cases involving patients who aren't registered organ donors – ask mothers and fathers and spouses and siblings if their loved ones would want to help others. More often than not, the answer is yes. "The number of people waiting for an organ transplant continues to rise, and I have the opportunity every day to help close the gap," Brown says. "It doesn't get any better than that." When it's clear a patient will become an organ donor, the team from Gift of Life works with hospital staff and transplant teams in surgery. Those hearts, lungs, kidneys and livers are then rushed to transplant centers across Michigan and the Midwest where desperately ill patients are already prepped for life-saving surgery. Brown, 29, spent four years in hospitals with grieving families and transplant surgeons. Today, using the skills she learned in CMU's master of science in administration program, she leads a team of six donation coordinators covering hospitals in Michigan's southwest region. "Through Gift of Life (based in Ann Arbor), we are not only changing the life of the person waiting to be transplanted, but each and every person they are connected to," she says. "To be a part of that is truly amazing." Brown's fi rst organ donor case involved the family of a young man in a car accident. "I had the opportunity to learn who he was as a person and all that he gave during his short time on Earth," Brown says. "It was no surprise to me that his fi nal gift to others was to be an organ and tissue donor." Brown was asked to speak at his funeral. "What an honor it was to talk about the lives he saved and to represent the young man I felt I knew after spending so much time with his family," Brown says. "Over the years, I've stayed in touch with them, and I still have his picture on my desk as a constant reminder of why we do what we do." > Someone dies every 18 minutes in the U.S. waiting for an organ transplant 12 centralight winter'14

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