Alumna Susan Stuart Receives Lifetime Achievement Award

President and CEO, Center for Organ Recovery & Education (CORE), Susan Stuart, received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of Organ Procurement Organization (AOPO) at their annual meeting held on June 13, 2023. The award recognizes exemplary contributions to the organ procurement organization community.

For over three decades, Stuart has made remarkable contributions to the donation and transplantation community right here in Pittsburgh. At CORE, she has fostered a culture of donation by saving and healing thousands of lives while offering hope to grieving donor families. Stuart’s leadership has garnered recognition from across the globe. She leads groundbreaking initiatives such as the
routine referral program, now recognized as federal law. Under her leadership, CORE received the Malcom Baldrige National Quality Award and achieved record-breaking years for organ donation. Stuart has fostered new and innovative practices at CORE, which led to ground-breaking procedures, including recovering the oldest organ donor in U.S. history at age 95 and the first-ever donation after a circulatory death (DCD) heart transplant. As a former AOPO president and a member of several boards, Stuart’s tireless efforts have saved and transformed countless lives, making her a stand-out figure in the donation and transplantation community.

Stuart’s extraordinary career began long before she even set foot on Duquesne University’s campus. At a young age, Stuart recognized that a career in nursing would provide her with the opportunity to make a difference in others’ lives. Her mother and two older sisters were nurses, and she had several family members working in health care. Stuart had a front row seat to see just how important and foundational nurses are to the health care system. She also realized that nursing would provide her with numerous professional opportunities such as research, education, clinical and leadership to name a few. She was looking for a career where she would have the ability to be a continuous learner and identified nursing as a path that would allow her to fill her life with purpose and meaning. Stuart elaborates, “Nursing is a purposeful profession that provides great happiness and satisfaction.”

When the time came to choose a school, Stuart was immediately drawn to Duquesne University’s School of Nursing. “Duquesne’s values align with my personal and professional values: sense of community, Christian service, concern for the poor, global vision, academic excellence, openness to the spirit and personal development,” Stuart stated. Entering Duquesne as a freshman, Stuart saw that Duquesne’s faculty was committed to gearing their teaching to prepare students for real-life. “They all were committed to each student’s success, and this made you strive to be the best you could be,” she went on to say.  

As for a career in health care, Stuart believes that Duquesne prepared her for the future she was seeking. “The philosophy of the body, mind and spirit taught me to look at the whole person and not just the body. If we are mindful of the entire being, we will have much better outcomes and a healthier community. I believe the body, mind and spirit are totally integrated, and our overall health is dependent on the whole person and not just the body. I have carried this throughout my career as a nurse and leader.”

Throughout her thirty-plus year career, Stuart has had no shortage of success.  She has changed countless lives through her work at CORE. A true change-maker in donation and transplantation, Stuart believes a person should never “settle for the status quo. I believe in continuous improvement and identifying opportunities for improvement to make processes and individuals better.” To achieve real success, she believes a leader must surround herself with a diverse workforce that will require “you to change to assure the team members are engaged and satisfied in the workplace.” Stuart attributes her success to being surrounded by professionals who share this philosophy and are always striving for excellence.

Stuart also knows that when it comes to change in health care, leaders must be ready for anything. With technology and innovation constantly improving, Stuart believes practitioners will have the opportunity to heal and save even more lives. She’s also quick to note that one constant will always remain: “We will always need the nurses to deliver the care to patients and to support the caregivers.” While COVID-19 took a toll on many in the health care industry, especially nurses, Stuart maintains that to avoid burnout in such a difficult and stressful field, nurses must “stay true to your values and your true north. Love what you do and surround yourselves with professionals who share your values.”

Clearly, Stuart’s passion, leadership, innovation and philosophy have paid off.  Since 2004, Stuart has led CORE and more than one hundred employees who share her mission and belief that donation is the right choice for grieving families as well as for the recipients who receive the previous gift of life.  In fact, in 2019, CORE had a record-breaking donation year in Western Pennsylvania and West Virginia, making 661 life-saving organ transplants.

Stuart’s leadership has heralded a period of exceptional successes and progress at CORE, which has catapulted Pittsburgh into a destination for life-saving transplantation and donation surgeries.  Still, Stuart is humbled by receiving the 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award from the AOPO saying, “It is truly an honor to receive this award; however, this is not my award alone. No accomplishment happens alone. This is an award shared with every professional I have worked with along my career journey. I have learned from colleagues, leaders, mentors and friends who have helped to shape the leader I am today. If you surround yourself with bright, dedicated and passionate professionals, you will have many successes that are shared and not individual successes. I was just the one who had the honor to stand on the stage and receive the award. This Lifetime Achievement Award was only possible with the support of my family, friends, colleagues, patients and donor families that have walked with me my entire career.”

Even so many years after choosing Duquesne for its values, Stuart has continued to maintain the Spiritan tradition in her every day life and work. Her future goals still revolved around being an authentic leader who serves with the goal of making a difference for future leaders, continuous learning, living life to the fullest, giving back to her community and church and continuing to save and heal lives through organ and tissue donation.  To future Duquesne School of Nursing Students, Stuart advises, “Commit to a vision and recognize it will require resiliency and agility. There will be difficult days, but the good days will always outweigh the bad days. Wake up every day and know, regardless of your specialty, you are making a difference to every patient and family in your care. Nurses are the silent giants. Always be in pursuit of excellence and respect those who came before you.”  

In closing, Stuart added, “As a leader, never ask anyone to do something that you are not willing to do yourself. Also, remember everything you say and do speaks, and you want your words and actions to represent the professional you want others to remember. Try and leave your own legacy. Lastly, I’m reminded of a great quote from Maya Angelou: ‘I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did but people will never forget how you made them feel.’”