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Kelsi Kolle

AGACNP
In 2026, I am answering the call to... leave no organ behind and no life unlived.
Job Title: Advanced Practice Clinician
Organization: Nevada Donor Network
Age: 33
Years in Donation and Transplantation: 7
What makes your career in organ donation and transplantation special?

The core values of Nevada Donor Network—relentlessness, selflessness, and joyfulness—ground my everyday practice. I am relentless in my pursuit to save lives through evidence-based practice, interprofessional collaboration, and innovative process improvement. As an advanced practice provider, I am dedicated to joyfully elevating the role of nursing within donation and transplantation by serving as a clinical leader, patient advocate, and trusted interdisciplinary partner to expand access to life-saving care. I am committed to being selfless in my role and to helping my team grow and thrive so we can continue to move donation forward.
My time at Nevada Donor Network has been defined not only by firsts, but also by several hard saves. I served as primary coordinator for the first DCD heart recovery west of the Mississippi, and I have personally transported lungs across the country to ensure a gift was honored. Those experiences remind me that this work demands both clinical excellence and a willingness to do whatever it takes to maximize every donor’s gift.
What makes my career special is the chance to build something lasting—to advance the standard of care at the often-overlooked intersection of critical illness and end-of-life medicine, while honoring each donor and their family and advocating for every transplant recipient who is waiting.

Biography

Kelsi Kolle, AGACNP, is an acute care nurse practitioner who has dedicated more than seven years to organ donation and transplantation at Nevada Donor Network. Early in her nursing career, she cared for patients with end-stage liver disease and saw, up close, what the waitlist really meant—an experience that ignited a relentless commitment to shifting the narrative around donation from “why” to “why not.”

In 2023, Kelsi identified a critical gap in clinical practice support and proposed the novel role she now occupies as Nevada Donor Network’s first advanced practice clinician. She built the program from the ground up, and the team now includes four advanced practice clinicians, with Kelsi at the helm of future innovation. Known for her strong clinical judgment in complex donor management and advanced expertise in heart and lung optimization, she has helped drive increased organs transplanted per donor and lung utilization rates above 34 percent. She serves on the American Board for Transplant Certification exam-writing committee, the OPTN Region 5 planning committee, and actively mentors emerging professionals.

She was nominated for The Alliance 40 Under 40 by Angela Borror, Manager of Quality & Regulatory Affairs at Nevada Donor Network. Borror described Kelsi’s deep commitment to maximizing every gift—“even when it requires boarding a plane to personally transport an organ across the country”—and her tireless advocacy for quality, outcomes, and accountability.