By Caroline Miller, Senior Marketing & Communications Specialist
Josh Brennan remembers the exact day his journey in donation and transplantation began: February 4, 2008.
“I won't ever forget,” he said. “It was the Monday after the Patriots lost the Super Bowl to the Giants and the undefeated 2007 season. Everybody was very, very sad. But I started my career in donation that same day.”
Seventeen years later, Josh is now the Director of Tissue Operations at New England Donor Services (NEDS), where he oversees a team of nearly 30 dedicated people who work around the clock to honor the wishes of eye, organ and tissue donors and their families.
His department handles referral intake, hospital screening, donor authorization and coordination for tissue cases. From EMS dispatcher to director, Josh has witnessed the full spectrum of donation—from the first phone call to moments that forever impact lives.
A path to purpose
Josh came into the field unexpectedly. In 2008, he started his career as a tissue donor coordinator and believed that the job would be a steppingstone to a nursing career.
“I was in EMS services and about five years before that, I was at the Red Cross as a first aid CPR instructor,” Josh said. “I wanted to do something different, and I thought I wanted to be a nurse. I took the job at what was then the New England Organ Bank, thinking it was temporary, but immediately fell in love with the work.”
Not long after starting his job, Josh had the opportunity to observe a recovery on a donor and that solidified his career.
“About two months after I started in 2008, I decided this is the field I would retire from,” he said.
He set nursing school aside and fully dedicated himself to the mission of donation. And while he no longer makes phone calls to potential donor families, those early conversations left a lasting impression.
“I had the fortune to meet two of my donor families I worked with early on,” Josh said. “I can't begin to explain the impact that had on me, getting to meet donor families.”
Early in his career, NEDS and another tissue bank honored two tissue donors during the Rose Parade and afterward one of the donor spouses joined Josh and his team for lunch. When she learned Josh was the person she spoke with the night her husband died, her face completely changed.
“She did not expect to meet me,” he said. “She gave me a huge hug. That moment reminded me–this is the mission. This is why people stay in this field. It was amazing.”
A team built on compassion
Working with donor families will always be a proud moment for Josh to look back on in his career. Today, he leads with a deep appreciation for the people around him.
“I’m fortunate to work with such an amazing team,” he said. “The people around me are so dedicated to the mission and to each other. I get to see people grow and have the same experiences I had. I love that element—being able to learn together and develop together as a team.”
That spirit of teamwork extends beyond NEDS to Eversight, a vital partner in their work to maximize every opportunity for donation. NEDS is also an Eye Bank Association of America (EBAA) Accredited eye bank meaning its technicians can recover ocular tissue and ship the tissue to an Eversight lab for processing.
Partnering with purpose
Josh was first introduced to Eversight in 2017 after NEDS affiliated with LifeChoice Donor Services in Connecticut.
“This was our first exposure to Eversight and getting to know the team. I was super impressed with the process,” he said. “The relationship Ashley [Vanderdonck from Eversight] and the team had with LifeChoice previously was very collaborative, donor-focused, and very focused on getting corneas recovered and to recipients.”
Since then, the partnership has only deepened.
“Ashley is always willing to visit, to talk to my team, provide education, provide learning, answer questions, sitting in the call center, observing how things work with the goal of increasing available corneas,” Josh said. “The entire Eversight team has always been so communicative and collaborative. It makes the working relationship easy.”
That collaboration has real results. Eversight and NEDS meet monthly to discuss error rates, impact numbers, recovery data and how the teams can improve to maximize the gift of donation even more.
“Every interaction, every meeting, every report we receive from Eversight, questions on cases, it's all focused on the mission,” Josh said. “When we first entered a relationship as the New England Donor Services in 2017, questions from Ashley and the team prompted us to look at our internal processes and say, ‘Okay, how can we maximize the gift?’”
The human impact
At the heart of Josh’s work is a profound respect for donor families.
“For me, I put a lot of my learning and education on grief and loss,” he said. “You have to understand what a bereaved family's going through. You have to understand how to support them. That connection to what donation means to these bereaved families, that's what keeps me going.”
During National Donate Life Month in April, a donor wife shared her story with the NEDS team and described the day her husband died as a whirlwind—doctors and nurses, ambulances, clinical chaos. But she said the call from one of Josh’s team members was a beacon of hope. It changed the tone of her experience.
“His presence was calming,” Josh said. “He changed the vibe of what she was going through and offered hope. That's part of her husband's death story. Her grief journey started, and we were part of it, and we were this positive light amongst the sea of sadness. Not to say it changes the loss, but that's part of the story now for her is when she describes to anybody that her husband died, her interaction with somebody on my team is part of that.”
That connection—built in compassion and understanding—is what keeps Josh grounded.
“Grieving people want to talk about their loved one,” he said. “When we do a donor risk assessment interview, we're on the phone for 45 minutes talking about the loved one. If we engage with the donor family, give them a chance to tell stories and ask questions, and respond in a way that's compassionate, the family comes away feeling supported. That's what we want.”
A shared mission
Josh hopes people understand just how many hands and hearts are involved in each successful donation.
“I want people to realize the impact we all have in being stewards of this gift,” he said. “It cannot happen without everyone—the call center, the recovery person, the quality team, distribution, the tissue processor—there’s so much behind the scenes, and every role matters.”
The partnership between NEDS and Eversight reflects that shared responsibility and purpose. Together, they are helping to ensure every donor’s gift is honored and every recipient has the chance to see the world anew.
