Some careers begin with a carefully mapped plan. Others are shaped by moments that only reveal their significance years later.
For Stacey Doll, director of clinical operations for thoracic transplant at Penn Medicine, those moments stretch across decades. They include a grandmother who died needing a liver transplant in the early 1970s in the same hospital where Stacey was born, an unexpected summer job transcribing dialysis reports, and an opportunity to work alongside donation professionals who showed her the profound connection between donor families and transplant recipients.
Looking back, Doll sees a career defined less by coincidence than by a series of connections that gradually revealed where she was meant to be.
“I think many things happens for a reason,” she said. “When I look back, I can see all these little threads that eventually came together.”
Today, Doll oversees clinical operations for Penn Medicine’s heart and lung transplant and ventricular assist device programs, helping lead one of the nation’s busiest transplant institutes. She also serves as chair of the American Society of Transplantation’s Transplant Administration and Quality Community of Practice, was named an AST Fellow in 2026, and continues to contribute to the Organ Donation and Transplantation Alliance (The Alliance) through leadership roles that focus on advancing collaboration across the transplant community.
Her path, however, began far from transplant administration.
Raised in the farm lands of York, Pennsylvania, Doll originally planned to become a secondary school social studies teacher. During college, she accepted a summer job transcribing dialysis records simply because she needed work. The experience introduced her to patients living with kidney failure and the teams caring for them, opening a window into a field she had never considered.
“It planted a seed and I was immediately drawn to the impact I could have in the healthcare field,” she said.
After graduation, she worked in physician recruitment before accepting a position with Gift of Life Donor Program, where she served as a liaison between donor hospitals and the organ procurement organization. The role immersed her into organ donation, working alongside hospital teams while supporting processes that would ultimately give patients a second chance through transplantation.
“My heart started really singing when I was in that role,” she recalled. “I was making a meaningful impact in a space that I wasn’t trained to be in, but I was effective at doing the work. And that effect was helping other people–families of donors, staff in the hospital and transplant recipients. I knew this was where I was supposed to be.”
The work also deepened her appreciation for the people whose generosity makes transplantation possible.
“Nearly every donor belongs to someone’s birth or chosen family,” she said. “You never lose sight of that.”
When Doll was a toddler, her grandmother died from liver failure. Years later, she realized she had unknowingly been part of that moment, standing outside York Hospital while her grandmother waived goodbye from her room wavi at York Hospital.
The memory carries new meaning now. “I didn’t understand it then,” she said. “But later I realized I had been there.” That sense of connection has remained a defining feature of her career.
At Penn Medicine, Doll has had a variety of clinical and administrative roles since 2007. She helped build one of the nation’s earliest vascularized composite allograft programs, which began with bilateral hand transplantation, before national regulatory frameworks for those procedures existed. Working alongside renowned surgeons Drs. L. Scott Levin, Abraham Shaked and Benjamin Chang, Gift of Life Donor Program and multidisciplinary clinical teams, she translated the clinical framework from transplantation and and helped create processes, partnerships and operational structures for a field that was still emerging.
“There wasn’t really a roadmap,” she said. “We had to figure it out together.”
The experience reinforced one of the lessons that continues to shape her leadership: meaningful progress in transplantation rarely happens in isolation. Whether developing innovative programs, improving quality or responding to changing regulations, success depends on bringing diverse expertise together around a common purpose.
That collaborative mindset also explains her longstanding involvement with The Alliance.
Over the years, Doll has served as an Alliance Ambassador for Penn, contributed to initiatives focused on sharing effective practices, and has helped s plan the National Collaboration Forum. She sees The Alliance as one of the few places where professionals from every corner of donation and transplantation can openly exchange ideas, learn from one another and build relationships that extend beyond organizational boundaries.
“The Alliance creates opportunities for people to learn from each other instead of trying to solve the same problems independently,” she said.
For Doll, those connections often become sources of mentorship, partnership and, in some cases, lifelong relationships.
Some mentors have offered technical expertise. Others have challenged her to think differently or encouraged her to step into leadership opportunities she may not have pursued on her own. Just as important, she now sees mentoring others as part of her own responsibility to the field.
She believes leaders should ask good questions, actively seek honest feedback, surround themselves with trusted advisors and recognize that waiting for perfect information often means missing opportunities to move forward.
“You often can’t wait for perfect conditions to make a decision,” she said. “You gather the best information you have, rely on the people around you, take action, and study the results.”
That approach also extends to the large multidisciplinary teams she helps oversee at Penn, where hundreds of professionals contribute to the patient experience every day. Rather than viewing leadership as directing every decision, Doll sees her role as creating conditions where talented people can succeed together.
“I work within a triad partnership,” says Doll. “I partner directly with the surgical and medical directors from each program and together we plan our priorities to to meet the needs of our patients, quality goals and strategic growth. ‘What are our goals for the year? What resources do we need to accomplish them? How are we going to secure those resources? How will we maintain excellent quality and retain/attract new talent?’ And we are always seeking to answer how we can expand access to help more patients through transplant – a lifesaving imperative. I think that is the most important question.”
Outside of her work in Philadelphia, she and her husband spend as much time as possible on Deer Isle, Maine, where natural beauty, maritime history, and community come together in this small coastal island. The Island has a population of 3,200 year-round residents and is connected to the mainland by a large suspension bridge which is the lifeline to the outside world. The Island boasts the largest lobster port in Maine, a vibrant artisan and food scene, and a tight-knit community that thrives on the care and generosity of its island residents. The quieter setting offers space to recharge, remaining anchored in the island community and and grounded in the work that continues to inspire her.
Despite the pace of her career, Doll admits she rarely stops to consider her own professional journey. “Storytelling in leadership is important but it’s rare that I take time to reflect on my own story or share it with others.”
In many ways, that observation captures both her leadership style and the culture that defines donation and transplantation.
The field is built on stories that belong to patients, donor families, clinicians, coordinators, clerks and technicians, administrators and countless others working together toward a common mission. No single person accomplishes that work alone.
Through organizations like The Alliance, those individual stories become a shared body of knowledge, creating opportunities for mentorship, innovation and continuous improvement across the national community.
For Doll, those connections have shaped an entire career.
