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Bryan McDonald

New Position: Chief financial officer, LifeLink Foundation, Tampa. Previous Position: Controller, LifeLink Foundation, Tampa

By FRED W. WRIGHT JR.
Published April 25, 2005

For the past several weeks, Bryan McDonald has been overseeing three separate entities in his new position as chief financial officer for LifeLink Foundation.

Perhaps most widely known is the organ recovery branch, which coordinates the harvesting of donated organs. In addition, there is a tissue bank and a 17-physician practice that provides transplant medicine.

McDonald said he manages the finance and accounting operations, "providing the business structure of a service base in our community."

The LifeLink HealthCare Institute, which McDonald said is "probably the largest transplant physicians practice in the state," performs most of its transplant procedures at Tampa General Hospital.

"LifeLink has been trying to make sure that (Tampa General) remains an active transplant center," McDonald said. "There is a correlation between an active transplant center and a community willing to donate organs."

Lifelink has three organ procurement organizations that help acquire organs: in Florida, Georgia and Puerto Rico. LifeLink of Florida covers the west coast from the Tampa Bay area to Fort Myers, McDonald said.

The foundation's tissue-typing service helps determine "the matching criteria that indicate whether or not a transplant will be successful," McDonald said. "In some cases, organs can be imported from another area, and we'd type and make sure the match is valid."

As a result, McDonald said, he is "juggling three separate corporations and the LifeLink Legacy Fund," a fundraising organization. "Many times I help out with some of the business planning . . . to provide stability and structure to prove these services."

McDonald, 42, grew up in an Army family. He was born at Fort Belvoir in northern Virginia, near Washington, and moved to Tampa as a child.

McDonald served four years in the Air Force. He then earned bachelor's and master's degrees in accounting from the University of South Florida, and became a CPA in 1993.

While working on his master's degree, McDonald went to work for Arthur Andersen in Tampa as an auditor in 1992. In 1995, he became controller at LifeLink.

His accounting career grew out of his military duty, McDonald said. "It was weird. I scored high on an aptitude test and they (the Air Force) put me into the accounting department. I learned my study skills and focus in the military.

"I've never regretted the path I took," McDonald said. "I like being part of an organization that provides a service to people."

And accounting is crucial to a nonprofit organization like LifeLink, McDonald said. "It's important to have structure in place to provide those services, so without effective accounting, you can't have that," he said. "I'm not providing the actual transplant service, but I get to be a part of that.

"I think psychic income counts - being rewarded in other ways than cash. It's service."

McDonald is also chairman of the board of directors for the Suncoast Community Health Center, an organization that provides primary care health services to the uninsured and underinsured.

He and his wife, Tracey, live in Tampa and have one child, Courtney, 10. McDonald said the family enjoys hiking out West, taking day trips into national parks.

In his spare time, McDonald said he is a voracious reader, preferring history and fiction. McDonald said he thinks all that reading helps him at work. "I try to make my memos more readable," he said.

[Last modified April 22, 2005, 18:45:03]