President and CEO

Richard (Rick) Hasz, Jr., MFS, CPTC, is president and CEO of Philadelphia-based Gift of Life Donor Program, one of the oldest and largest of the 57 organ procurement organizations (OPOs) in the U.S. He joined Gift of Life in 1993 as a transplant coordinator and served as the program’s vice president of clinical services for 22 years before assuming the role of president and CEO on January 4, 2022.

Mr. Hasz is also the president of the Gift of Life Transplant Foundation, president of the Gift of Life Institute, an international research and training center for donation and transplantation professionals, and president of Gift of Life Howie’s House which opened in 2011.

Mr. Hasz’s career features more than 30 years of life-saving work in the organ donation and transplantation field including oversight of Gift of Life’s clinical programs that encompass Transplant Coordination, Hospital Services, Organ Preservation, Eye Bank, Donation and Transplant Analytics, Quality Assurance and Tissue Recovery.

Under Mr. Hasz’s leadership, Gift of Life’s Clinical Services team is widely recognized for developing the nation’s best practices in organ and tissue donation. This team works 24/7 to address the critical need for organs for transplant, working daily with donor families, medical professionals, hospital administrators and others in the donation and transplant community to promote and increase opportunities for donation.

As a respected expert, Mr. Hasz has delivered lectures and education sessions for more than 60 organizations and professional societies in the United States and internationally and has participated in publishing hundreds of scientific papers and abstracts about donation and transplantation during his career. He also serves as a faculty member at Gift of Life Institute which trains best practices to OPO professionals worldwide. 

In addition to his outstanding clinical outcomes and scholarship in the field, Mr. Hasz has worked jointly with numerous investigators from a host of prestigious government, academic, medical and nonprofit institutions on innovative research aimed at advancing health science and saving lives. Mr. Hasz served as lead investigator for Gift of Life and played a vital role working with the National Disease Research Interchange (NDRI) on the Genotype-Tissue Expression Project to produce biospecimens for a National Institutes of Health research initiative to investigate how genetic variation may relate to gene expression and its correlation with disease.

Working in collaboration with leading academic medical centers, Mr. Hasz played an important role in facilitating pioneering protocols to support vascular composite allograft donation and transplant initiatives involving bilateral pediatric hand transplants, uterus donation, the first U.S. African American face transplant and the world’s first successful face and bilateral hand transplants. 

For years, Mr. Hasz has continued to provide valued input as a member of many national donation and transplant leadership committees. He was recently elected to serve as a member of the Association of Organ Procurement Organizations (AOPO) Executive Committee and has served as president of the American Board for Transplant Certification. In addition, Mr. Hasz has contributed to numerous United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) committees including the Disease Transmission and Advisory Group, Liver and Intestinal Transplantation Committee, and the Membership and Professional Standards Committee. He also chaired the UNOS Operations and Safety Committee. 

Mr. Hasz has shared his knowledge and expertise with government and other national organizations. He served as a faculty member for the HRSA Breakthrough Collaborative and has provided expert testimony for National Academy of Sciences on Organ Donor Intervention Research, Donation after Circulatory Death, and, most recently, on a Fairer and More Equitable, Cost-Effective, and Transparent System of Donor Organ Procurement, Allocation and Distribution. He also provided testimony to the HHS Advisory Committee on Blood & Tissue Safety & Availability. Mr. Hasz recently served as a technical expert panel member for the CMS Kidney Transplant Initiative.

Mr. Hasz holds membership in the North American Transplant Coordinators Organization, The American Society of Transplant Surgeons, and The American Association of Tissue Banks. He is a member of the City of Philadelphia Department of Public Health Institutional Review Board. He served as a board member of Community Blood Center/Community Tissue Services and has served on the Transplant Alliance’s Donor Management Leadership Council. 

Mr. Hasz has a Bachelor of Science in biology from Pennsylvania State University and a Master of Forensic Science from George Washington University. He holds certifications as a certified procurement transplant coordinator (CPTC) and a certified transplant preservationist (CTP).