NMDP Executives

The management team of the National Marrow Donor Program^® (NMDP) provides the vision, expertise and experience necessary to successfully operate the NMDP and guide us into the future.

Chief Executive Officer

Jeffrey W. Chell, M.D.

Chief Executive Officer, National Marrow Donor Program  (2000 - present)

Executive Director, Center for Blood and Marrow Transplant Research (CIBMTR) (2004 - present)

 Contributions at NMDP include:

• Led NMDP through its first strategic planning process and through transformational growth:
  • Size of adult donor registry doubled from 3.5 million in 1999 to 7 million in 2009
  • Number of transplants facilitated tripled to nearly 5,000 annually in 2009 
  • Revenues tripled from $80 to $240 million
• Established CIBMTR, a combined research program of the NMDP and the Medical College of Wisconsin (2004). 
• Drove organizational support for initiatives that increased donor recruitment from an annual average of 325,000 per year to 450,000 per year, including introduction of buccal swabs for testing (2006), online donor registration (2006), and changing the name of the registry to Be The Match Registry^SM with a new, rebranded awareness campaign (2009). 
• Invested in emerging use of umbilical cord blood for transplant and established Center for Cord Blood at the NMDP (2005). Today, NMDP is the global leader in facilitating transplants using cord blood, with over 1,200 a year in 2009.
• Secured award and renewal of Health Resources Services Administration contracts entrusting the NMDP to operate the C.W. Bill Young Cell Transplantation Program as well as funding from the Office of Naval Medical Research, the Center for Disease Control and the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute.
• Established the Radiation Injury Treatment Network^SM (RITN) in support of NMDP’s secondary mission to prepare to respond to a national emergency involving mass casualties with marrow-toxic injuries (2006).
  

Previous experience includes:

• President, Allina Medical Clinic
• System Vice President of Clinical Services, Allina Health System
• Physician, internal medicine, private practice, Minneapolis, and before that in the U.S. Air Force Medical Corps
• M.D. from University of Minnesota; internship and residency in internal medicine performed at University of Wisconsin; undergraduate degree, University of Miami

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Chief Strategy Officer

Michael Boo, J.D.

Strategic Development Officer, National Marrow Donor Program (2001-present)

 

Contributions at NMDP include:

• Redesigned and implemented a new strategic planning process based on balanced scorecard principles that has helped guide the doubling of growth at NMDP over the last four years.
• Guided the creation of the Center for Cord Blood in 2003, significantly expanding NMDP growth in cord blood in the United States from 15% of the market to 75%.
• Identified and developed new products and services that have had significant bottom line revenue impact.
• Developed new relationships within the extensive NMDP Network of national and international partners that have added new registries to the NMDP and expanded cord blood access by over 300%.
• Working with network partners, established a new federal funding program for cord blood inventory growth, providing over $45 million to date, and pursued other strategies to continue and expand government funding sources.

Previous experience includes:

• Vice President of Strategic and Corporate Development, Allina Health System
• Associate General Counsel, Health Central, Inc.
• General Counsel, American Redevelopers, Inc.
• Juris Doctor, William Mitchell College of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, and Bachelor of Arts, Urban Studies, University of Minnesota, Duluth

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Chief Financial Officer

Gordon C. Bryan

 

Chief Financial Officer, National Marrow Donor Program (1994-present)

 

Contributions at NMDP include:

• Led financial transition of the organization from $11 million to over $250 million.
• Guided financial transition of Be The Match Registry and CIBMTR.
• Standardized pricing and reimbursement systems for all operational activities.
• Management and oversight of 14 government contracts including primary contracts to operate the C.W. Bill Young Transplantation Program as well as Navy contracts.
• Responsible for all financial aspects of the organization as well as leading the legal, tax, risk management, contracts, audit, facilities and administrative services departments.

Previous experience includes:

• Controller, Sysco Foods
• Accounting Manager, Continental Foods
• Accounting Manager, Fingerhut Corporation
• Accounting Manager, Minnesota Fabrics
• BSB, Account Major, University of Minnesota

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Chief Medical Officer

Dennis L. Confer, M.D.

Chief Medical Officer, National Marrow Donor Program (1999 - present)

Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of Minnesota (1997 - present)

Associate Scientific Director, Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research (2004 – present)

Contributions at NMDP include:

• Published NMDP’s evidence-based donor-patient matching guidelines (2003, 2008) and supported development of a new donor-patient matching algorithm, HapLogic^SM (2006), to rapidly identify matched donors.
• Established research agenda of the CIBMTR (2004) and the Blood and Marrow Transplant Clinical Trials Network (2003), to advance the science of transplant, improve patients’ lives and share research results with the medical community.
• Principal investigator for development of A Growable Network Information System^® (AGNIS^®, 2006) to improve standardized clinical data exchange to speed delivery of research results worldwide.
• In challenging donor searches, helps identify donors to provide patients the best chance for a successful transplant.
• Vice president, North and South America, World Marrow Donor Association

Previous experience includes:

• Medical Director, National Marrow Donor Program
• Director of Blood and Marrow Transplantation, University of Oklahoma
• Medical Degree and internal medicine residency, University of Nebraska Medical Center; fellowship training in hematology and oncology performed at the University of Minnesota
  

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Chief Recruitment and Marketing Officer

Claudio Garcia, MBA

  

Chief Recruitment and Marketing Officer, National Marrow Donor Program (2007-present)

 

Contributions at NMDP include:

• Led development and introduction of the Be The Match^® brand, which transforms the way the NMDP attracts, retains and motivates the public to engage in our mission, and launched a supporting, rebranded awareness campaign (2009)
• Expanded nationwide recruitment processes and teams to more effectively recruit adult donors to the registry and provided leadership instrumental in the shift to a pay-it-forward recruitment fundraising model.
• Elevated strategic role of marketing within the organization, together with a more integrated approach with recruitment and fundraising.
• Drove new engagement communications with registry members toward improving retention and availability.
  

More than 20 years of management experience includes:

• Chief Marketing Officer, Pure Fishing LLC
• Senior marketing management positions at Nestle, Diageo and The Pillsbury Company, including time working in Europe, the Far East and Latin America
• MBA, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a Bachelor of Arts in economics and sociology, Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pa.
  
  

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Chief Information Officer

Michael Jones, MBA
 

Chief Information Officer, National Marrow Donor Program (2007-present)

 

  

Contributions at NMDP include:

• Leading NMDP’s business process transformation initiative focused on re-engineering the donor and patient management processes to promote more optimal transplants (in progress)
• Established first ever NMDP Information Technology (IT) strategic plan to align technology objectives with organization-wide strategies (2007)
• Established the Project Management Office (PMO) to achieve alignment between IT initiatives and NMDP strategic/operational goals (2007)
• Implemented a Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) to improve IT’s ability to more consistently and reliably deliver strategic projects for the organization (2008)
• Deployed Enterprise Architecture (EA) to promote greater stability, scalability and resiliency of NMDP’s technology infrastructure (2007)
• Drove selection and relocation of NMDP’s new state-of-the-art data center (2008)

Awards and recognitions include:

• Featured guest speaker – June, 2009 CIO Leadership Network Executive Summit
• Minnesota High Tech Association Tekne Award 2008 - Finalist in the Technology User Category
• Featured in CIO Magazine – February 2008 cover story: Strategic Planning in The Real World

Previous experience includes:

• Chief Technology Officer, Express Scripts
• Chief Information Officer, Cigna Behavioral Health
• Consultant, Deloitte Consulting
• MBA, University of Texas McCombs School of Business, Austin, and a Bachelor of Science in civil engineering, Iowa State University, Ames

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President, Be The Match Foundation 

Christine Fleming

President, Be The Match Foundation^SM (formerly The Marrow Foundation^®), fundraising partner of the National Marrow Donor Program (2008 - present)  


Contributions at Be The Match Foundation include:

• Extended the reach of the foundation to support critical areas of financial need, including supporting research, financial assistance for patients and adding new members to the registry (2008).
• Expanded the national presence of the foundation, headquartered in Minneapolis, with offices in Charlotte and Atlanta, and reached out to work with Be The Match donor centers and recruiters across the country.
• Redesigned the foundation’s giving programs with an emphasis on major gifts and annual fund to more fully engage individuals who support our mission (2008).
• Introduced the foundation’s new name, Be The Match Foundation, to more than 60,000 current contributors and thousands of new friends (2009).
• Initiated a new focus on bringing together community leaders in our hometown, Minneapolis/St. Paul.

Nearly 20 years of political, academic and fundraising experience includes: 

• Vice president of TGen Foundation, Scottsdale, Ariz., where she raised funds for the Translational Genomics Research Institute, a nonprofit biomedical research institute
• Assistant dean of development of The University of Texas at Austin (UT) College of Natural Sciences
• Director, UT Business School Foundation
• Bachelor of Business Administration degree, The University of Texas at Austin

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