Expert Interviews for Abundant

The nation’s leading experts and activists in the field of kidney donation have agreed to interviews for Abundant.  With their insight, the series will explore all facets of the living kidney donation issue.  Each of Abundant’s eight episodes will be framed with interview content from commentators from a variety of fields including business, the arts, psychology, spirituality and more.  These commentator’s informed perspectives will illustrate the roles generosity, altruism, sacrifice, compassion and empathy play in achieving an abundant state of being.

Abundant has attracted a spectacular line-up of experts and activists from the kidney donation field because they all recognize a glaring need.  To reach the audience necessary to eliminate the national kidney deficit, a new, different, disruptive way of communicating about living kidney donation is necessary.  Abundant is that new approach.

“Living kidney donation is safe and you only need one kidney to lead a full life - we need to grow the number of living kidney donors to make up the shortfall in kidney donors.  We desperately need a program like Abundant to get out the word about living donation to the broadest possible audience, to educate them while entertaining them.”

 Ned Brooks, Donor to Donor

What Our Experts Say About Abundant

"By exploring organ donation through our human capacity to give, Abundant has the ability to attract a much wider audience and bring them into our cause. To increase organ donation we must deliver our message beyond existing donation supporters. Abundant can do that and make a huge difference."

“With close to 100,000 people in America waiting for a kidney, their lives literally hang in the balance. What stands between life and death is the generous gift of another’s kidney and the key to finding those kidneys is education and public awareness. Abundant has the capacity to reach millions of viewers and start conversations that can save countless lives.”

“Kidney disease is somewhat unique in being a serious and often fatal illness for which there is a known and highly effective cure that we often can't provide because the cure lives inside another human being. And so making that cure available requires getting the word out that most of us have within our own bodies an organ that we could live without and that could save the life of another person. Not everyone who learns this can or will want to donate, but some of them will. A surprisingly large number of people respond with extreme compassion when they learn about the need for kidneys, as my own research shows. That's why it's so important to make sure that anyone who might consider donating has the chance to consider doing so.”

“There are almost 100,000 people on the U.S. waiting list for a deceased donor kidney transplant, and many of them—and the people who love them--may not be aware that kidney exchange offers a way for them to receive a living donor transplant, if they have a willing but incompatible donor. So, publicity that increases public awareness could save lives.”

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Alvin Roth, PhD

Al Roth, PhD is the McCaw Professor of Economics at Stanford University, and the Gund Professor Emeritus at Harvard University. He shared the 2012 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for his work on market design. Among the markets he has helped design are those through which American doctors get their first positions, and school choice systems used in many American cities. He is one of the designers of kidney exchange in the United States, which helps incompatible patient-donor pairs find kidneys for transplantation.
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Abigail Marsh, PhD

Abigail Marsh, PhD is a Professor of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Cognitive Science at Georgetown University. Her research aims at the questions: How do we understand what others think and feel? What drives us to help other people? What prevents us from harming them? She is the author of the trade book FEAR FACTOR and her 2016 TED Talk relating her work to living kidney donation exceeds two million TED.com views.
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Ary Synter, PhD

Ari Sytner, PhD is a licensed social worker, therapist, author, inspirational speaker, rabbi, Huffington Post contributor, organizational strategist, and living kidney donor. As a proud kidney donor he is the author of The Kidney Donor’s Journey, which details his personal experience, questions, struggles and revelations while donating a kidney. 
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Joshua Whitfield

Fr. Joshua J. Whitfield is a Roman Catholic priest serving as the Pastor of St. Rita Catholic Community in Dallas. A former Episcopal priest trained for ministry in England who converted to Catholicism, Fr. Whitfield is married with children. An alum of Texas Tech, the University of Leeds, and Duke, Fr. Whitfield is an author of several books and a frequent contributor to The Dallas Morning News.
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Amy Waterman, PhD

Amy D. Waterman, PhD, is a transplant innovator and a Professor in Residence at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) in the Division of Nephrology. She is Director of the Transplant Research and Education Center (TREC), the Deputy Director of the Terasaki Research Institute and a Senior Quality Researcher for the UCLA Kidney Transplant Program. She received the 2018 ClearMark Award of Distinction from the Center for Plain Language for her interactive digital application, My Transplant Coach.
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Garet Hil

Garet Hil donated his kidney through the National Kidney Registry's Voucher program in 2015, generating a Voucher for his daughter and facilitating eight transplants in a Domino Chain. Garet is the Founder & CEO of the National Kidney Registry which has organized more than 3,600 paired exchange transplants and protects more than 1,000 living donors annually with comprehensive Donor Shield protections.
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Gloria Campos

Gloria Campos is among the most respected broadcast journalists in Dallas/Fort Worth media history. She anchored newscasts at WFAA-TV and produced the station’s Wednesday’s Child segment for more than twenty years. In her 40-year career, Gloria’s numerous awards include the American Women in TV/Broadcast News Award of Excellence.
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Amy Johnson

Amy Johnson owns and teaches at Eastside Karmany, a donation-based yoga studio in East Dallas. Amy teaches flowing, yet powerful classes that create a sense of community and connection students need to grow and explore without fear or judgment. Amy has presented at the Telluride Yoga Festival, Texas Yoga Conference, Austin Yoga Festival, OYUSA, and the I AM Festival.
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Robert Montgomery, MD

Robert A. Montgomery, MD, DPhil, FACS, is the Director of the NYU Langone Transplant Institute and a Professor of Surgery and served as the Chief of Transplant Surgery and the Director of the Comprehensive Transplant Center at Johns Hopkins. He was on the team that developed the laparoscopic procedure for live kidney donation. Among other major milestones, he and the Hopkins team conceived the idea of the Domino Paired Donation and performed the first chain of transplants started by an altruistic donor.
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Ned Brooks

Ned Brooks was inspired by Alvin Roth’s work on the design of the kidney chain. At 65, Ned donated a kidney to a stranger and found the experience so powerful, he created Donor to Donor, a non-profit organization that helps people interested in becoming a donor to do so as effectively as possible. The Donor to Donor team has more than thirty donors and recipients who counsel potential donors and patients seeking a donor.
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Tynesia Boyea-Robinson

Tynesia Boyea-Robinson leads and writes about enterprises that “do well and do good,” helping individuals and institutions change how the world does business. At CapEQ, Tynesia leads strategists, social change agents, investors, consultants and more to make an impact. The CapEQ team has led successful efforts from The White House to Fortune 50 companies.
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Tom Mone

Since 2000, Tom Mone has led OneLegacy, the largest organ recovery agency in the U.S., serving more than 20 million people, 200+ hospitals and 11 transplant centers.  Tom has led numerous innovations at OneLegacy including the creation of LivingDonationCalifornia.org and the world’s largest public promotion of donation: the Donate Life Rose Parade Float that has more than 100 national and international partners and is seen by more than 30 million people each year. 
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Harvey Mysel

Harvey Mysel is a two-time kidney recipient and is considered one of the most informed activists for living kidney donation. He is the founder of The Living Kidney Donors Network, a non-profit working to educate people in need of a kidney transplant about living kidney donation.  Harvey moderates workshops and webinars to help them network for themselves and  communicate their need to family and friends.
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Rafael Parry

Noted director and actor Raphael Parry is the Executive & Artistic Director of Shakespeare Dallas. In his Shakespeare Dallas tenure, he has directed and performed in more than 35 plays. Raphael also serves as the Director of Texas Bound - Arts and Letters Live, a literary series celebrating the art of the short story presented at the Dallas Museum of Art.