Leaves a 36-Year Legacy of Healing Lives Through Tissue Donation
ST. LOUIS (Oct. 6, 2025) – After impacting the lives of more than 2 million tissue recipients over 36 years, Linda Martin, Vice President, Tissue Services, will retire from Mid-America Transplant at the end of 2025.
Martin joined the organization in 1990 to support tissue donation, hospital development, and orthopedic and corneal transplant surgeons. Over the years, she took on increased responsibility for tissue and corneal services and the organization’s quality department. In her current role, she oversees Mid-America Transplant’s tissue clinical services, eye bank, call center, in-house laboratory, donor family support, and community engagement.
Under her leadership, the number of tissue donors at Mid-America Transplant grew from 75 in 1990 to 2,632 in 2024. In 2024 alone, these donors provided more than 197,000 healing transplants of skin, bone, veins, ligaments, tendons, heart valves, corneas, and other tissues that treat disease, restore mobility and sight, and extend lives.
“Linda has been one of the tissue donation industry’s strongest leaders for more than three decades, and it has been an honor to work alongside her,” said Kevin Lee, President and CEO at Mid-America Transplant. “Her compassion, vision, and commitment to excellence helped set the standard for tissue recovery agencies across the country, and her impact will live on in the staff she has trained and the hundreds of thousands of recipients she has helped heal. What a truly inspiring career she has led.”
Martin has been a champion for quality and continuous improvement at Mid-America Transplant. She served as the project manager for the Baldrige application process, which resulted in Mid-America Transplant being the first OPO in the nation to win the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in 2015 and the first to receive the award for a second time in 2021.
In 2023, Martin received the industry’s most prestigious honor, the American Association of Tissue Banks’ (AATB) Jeanne C. Mowe Distinguished Service Award. She has chaired and served on numerous committees for AATB and the Eye Bank Association of America and mentored upcoming professionals for The Art and Science of Leadership program through the Gift of Life Institute. In addition, she served as a member of the Board of Examiners for the Baldrige Program.
The need for tissue donation is great. Ninety-eight percent of all U.S. transplants are tissue; tissue grafts heal and save 2.5 million people each year. The gift of tissue provides many forms of healing, such as lifesaving grafts for burn victims, restored mobility following injury or illness, restored sight, and more. One tissue donor can heal and save more than 75 lives through donation. Register to be a donor at www.SayYesGiveLife.org.
About Mid-America Transplant
Mid-America Transplant enables adults and children to receive lifesaving gifts through organ and tissue donations. For more than 50 years, it has facilitated and coordinated organ, tissue, and eye donation, and now serves 84 counties covering eastern Missouri, southern Illinois, and northeast Arkansas that together are home to 4.7 million people. It saves lives by providing expert and compassionate care for organ donors, recipients, and families, and transforms the clinical processes required to recover and transplant organs and tissues. Mid-America Transplant was the first such organization in the U.S. to use an in-house operating room for organ recovery and pioneered innovative models of increasing donor registry enrollment to provide organs and tissues to those in need. It is federally designated as one of 56 such organizations in the U.S. and is the first organ procurement organization (OPO) to be recognized as a recipient of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award for Performance Excellence, and the only two-time recipient. For more information, visit www.midamericatransplant.org.
