Health Care | Biotech | Pharmaceuticals 2025: MAUREEN McBRIDE

Since 2023, McBride has been CEO of UNOS, the nonprofit that has managed the national Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) for more than four decades.

UNOS has come under congressional scrutiny in recent years, and a law signed in September 2023 authorized the Health Resources & Services Administration to break the OPTN management contract into separate awards. In September 2024, for the first time in its history, HRSA awarded separate contracts to multiple vendors for OPTN modernization work.

The HRSA also held special elections to create a separate board that was seated July 1. Previously, the OPTN board and UNOS’s board were made up of the same people.

In April, news surfaced that UNOS had reduced its staff —by roughly 10%, according to one report.

Although some of UNOS’s woes — including Senate and White House investigations in recent years — predate McBride’s tenure as CEO, she has been with the organization since 1995, when she took a position as senior biostatistician. In 2014, she became its chief operating officer overseeing the federal OPTN contract. She was named interim CEO in 2022 and became the nonprofit’s permanent head seven months later.

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