Jennifer Keeling, MSN, RN, PCCN, is an experienced healthcare executive and transplant operations leader with more than fifteen years of progressive leadership in cardiothoracic and solid organ transplantation at UPMC. She currently serves as Director of the Cardiothoracic Transplant Center at UPMC Presbyterian, where she holds round-the-clock accountability for operations, quality, regulatory compliance, and financial performance for a complex, high-acuity service line.
Jennifer has driven significant regional program growth through strategic planning, physician alignment, and the development of innovative transplant outreach clinics that expanded access to care. Under her leadership and in partnership with multidisciplinary teams, the Heart Transplant Program achieved perfect 90-day patient survival across four consecutive reporting periods, and her work as Interim Program Administrator led to CMS recertification with zero citations. She continues to contribute nationally as Co-Chair of the Professional Growth Sub-Committee for The Alliance National Transplant and Donation Growth Collaborative, and holds a Master of Science in Nursing from Robert Morris University.
She was nominated for The Alliance 40 Under 40 by Yawah Nicholson, Director of Transplant Quality and Performance Excellence at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. “She does not simply follow best practices, she creates them,” Nicholson wrote, noting Jennifer’s central role in a landmark bloodless combined heart-kidney transplant and a risk-based triage pathway that reduced referral-to-waitlisting time by 203 days for the highest-risk patients.