OneLegacy, the nonprofit organ procurement organization (OPO) serving seven counties in Southern California, announced earlier this month the promotion of chief operating officer and chief information officer Prasad Garimella to the position of chief executive officer. Concurrently, longtime CEO Tom Mone has assumed the role of chief external affairs officer and vice president of foundation operations, overseeing the OneLegacy Foundation and community investments as well as government, community and media outreach for OneLegacy.
“It has been a privilege to lead this organization for the last 22 years, and I look forward to OneLegacy’s continued success under Prasad’s stewardship,” Mone said. “Our OneLegacy team has always been uniquely focused on serving the most diverse community in the nation, and with my new role, we’ll be able to expand on that work, building relationships and educating Californians to Donate Life.”
The transition and continued partnership at the helm of one of the nation’s leading OPOs is designed to build on the work Mone and Garimella have led to innovate, change, and improve the practice of donation. Across their tenures, OneLegacy has doubled organ donation, tripled tissue donation and ushered in countless innovations that have rippled across the industry. Last year alone, despite a global pandemic, OneLegacy enabled the transplant of 1,688 organs from 591 donors – an 8% increase in organ donation from the prior year, marking the seventh consecutive year of record-setting organ donation and transplantation. During that same timeframe, more than 155,000 lives were healed through tissue donation and transplantation and 1,037 vision-restoring corneal transplants were enabled thanks to the OneLegacy Eye Bank.
“Together, the work of Tom and Prasad has led to continuous innovation while prioritizing empathy and dedication to waiting transplant recipients,” said William I. Chertok, chair of the OneLegacy Board of Directors. “This seamless transition will strengthen relationships with our hospital partners and communities while increasing our commitment to innovation, and service to families and transplant partners, ultimately allowing us to connect more recipients with life-saving organs.
Garimella joined OneLegacy 15 years ago, bringing with him a sophisticated understanding of organ donation, the systems and skill sets it requires, and a clinical background as a physician.
Prior to joining OneLegacy, Garimella was the director of donor services for Tissue Banks International, a nonprofit, network of eye and tissue banks and also served as executive director for Doheny Eye and Tissue Transplant Bank.
“OneLegacy has firmly established itself as one of the nation’s leading OPO’s, acting as a national leader in research and innovation and working hand-in-hand with local communities to continuously improve organ donation for one of the most diverse regions of the country,’ Garimella said. “As we look to the future, there is still work to be done in connecting with communities of color, increasing the number of registered donors, and working with hospitals to improve the number of organs that are viable for transplantation — and we are dedicated to continuing to do just that.”
OneLegacy takes on the emotionally delicate, logistically complex and medically precise process of organ donation across Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara and Kern counties. It works with more than 200 hospitals and 10 transplant centers – as well as sheriffs’ and coroners’ offices – to serve a diverse population of 20 million donors and families across the region and waiting recipients across the country. The organization’s 350 team members, who mirror the diversity of Southern California, enable OneLegacy to respond to 100 percent of donor referrals — 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
For more than 50 years, OneLegacy has pioneered best practices that have gone on to be adopted by other OPOs in the field, including co-development of the Donate Life California registry, which has registered 17.8 million Californians to be donors, developing web-based organ offers, and implementing the first real-time testing for the Hepatitis C and HIV viruses. OneLegacy is at the forefront of data-driven donation operations with its digitalDonor EDR system that includes real-time geo-tracking data referral response to every one of the 90,000 potential tissue and organ donor referrals it receives each year.
Later this year, OneLegacy will be relocating its offices from downtown Los Angeles to a new state-of-the-art headquarters and Donor Recovery Center in Azusa that will serve as a critical connector for Southern California’s regional healthcare system. The new offices will provide the space and resources, and most of all state-of-the art diagnostic, telemedicine and surgical capabilities needed to save and heal even more lives through donation.
Also to be housed in the new facility will be the OneLegacy Foundation that has helped champion and improve organ, eye, and tissue donation and transplantation through public education and scientific research aimed at increasing donor registration, improving transplant outcomes for donors, their families and recipients and inspiring people to take action in support of organ and tissue donation.
OneLegacy reminds everyone that the opportunity to donate and to receive a lifesaving transplant knows no national, racial, ethnic or religious boundaries, nor sexual orientation. One organ donor can save up to eight lives, and one tissue donor can help as many as 75 others heal.
To register to become an organ, eye or tissue donor, visit OneLegacy.org/Register.
Return to 2022 Nonprofit & Corporate Citizenship Awards main events page
