Leadership
Executive Team
Medical Director: Michael Goldstein, MD
Assistant Medical Director: Dana Lustbader, MD
Vice President of Administration & CFO: Jim Aranda
Vice President of Marketing and Communications: James Pardes
Helen Irving, MBA, President and Chief Executive Officer
Helen Irving was appointed president and CEO of the New York Organ Donor Network in September of 2011. She holds significant clinical, administrative, and business expertise coupled with an understanding of New York healthcare and experience in donation.
Prior to joining the Donor Network, Ms. Irving was vice president of hospital operations for eight years at the Mount Sinai Medical Center. In addition to many other areas, she supervised solid organ transplantation, dialysis, and bone marrow transplantation.
Ms. Irving began her career as a critical care nurse and returned to the Donor Network family where, in 1993, she served as a transplant coordinator and was subsequently promoted to clinical manager. She was recruited to NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia Hospital as manager of transplant operations, and then to Mount Sinai as administrative director, managing the Transplant Institute and Dialysis.
Ms. Irving, a native of England, has lived in New York for 17 years. She received her B.S. in Health Administration from St. Joseph’s College in Brooklyn, and her M.B.A. in Health Care Administration from Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey.
Dr. Goldstein has been the New York Organ Donor Network's medical director since mid-2009. He hold this position as well as being director of renal and pancreatic transplantation at Mount SInai Medical Center.
Prior to joining Mount Sinai, Dr. Goldstein was assistant professor and assistant attending surgeon at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center. He served as associate program director of the general surgery residency and surgical director of pediatric abdominal transplantation.
A Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, Dr. Goldstein is a member of the American Society for Transplant Surgeons and the Association of Academic Surgeons.
He serves as a medical advisor to the National Kidney Foundation of Greater New York, as well as numerous pharmaceutical and biotechnical companies for improving transplantation outcomes and patient care.
Dr. Dana Lustbader joined the New York Organ Donor Network in mid-February 2010 as the organization’s assistant medical director. She is a medical intensivist who has served as director of the medical intensive at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, NY.
Dr. Lustbader is chief of palliative medicine and founding director of the palliative care unit at North Shore University Hospital. She is also program director of the Palliative Medicine Fellowship at the North Shore LIJ Health System, and she serves on the Critical Care Leadership Network Steering Committee for the Greater New York Hospital Association. In addition, Dr. Lustbader is an active member of the Ethics Committee for The North Shore LIJ Health System.
She continues in these roles while assuming the Donor Network’s assistant medical director role.
Nationally, Dr. Lustbader serves on the Test Writing Committee for the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM). She is currently one of ten national expert members of the National Institute on Aging (NIA) Advisory Board Program to Inform and Improve the Quality of ICU Palliative Care – I-QUIP. She is an elected Fellow of the Society of Critical Care Medicine.
Jim Aranda, Vice President of Administration & Chief Financial Officer
In addition to overseeing the New York Organ Donor Network's finances, Mr. Aranda also heads the organization's tissue services (including a 24-hour donor call center), the human resources department and IT.
Mr. Aranda joined the Donor Network in May 2001 as chief financial officer. He was promoted to vice president of administration in June 2009.
Previously, he had been employed at Hazelden New York, a nonprofit substance abuse treatment facility, where he worked in various capacities including director of financial operations.
James Pardes, Vice President of Marketing and Communications
Mr. Pardes, who joined the New York Organ Donor Network in January 2011, has more than 15 years of marketing experience across the consumer packaged goods, sports, and health care industries.
Prior to joining the Donor Network, Mr. Pardes served as director of international marketing partnerships at the National Basketball Association (NBA) where he managed and marketed the USA Basketball and Harlem Globetrotters brands.
Before joining the NBA, Mr. Pardes worked at the sports marketing agency Octagon as group director of the NASCAR-Sprint partnership; at Unilever as brand manager for Lever 2000, and at behavioral health care outcomes measurement company DeltaMetrics as marketing manager.
