ICCBBA Board of Directors

Francine Décary is a physician specialized in hematology from the University of Montréal, Canada, who further obtained her Ph.D. in immunohematology from the University of Amsterdam. Several years later, after reorienting her career in management, she obtained an MBA from the University of Sherbrooke in Canada.

After spending twenty years in the Blood Services of the Canadian Red Cross, she was asked by the Quebec government, in 1998, to set up a blood service for the Province. She created and is still the President and CEO of Héma-Québec, the blood products (labile and stable), tissue and stem cell supplier for the population of the Province of Quebec in Canada.

She is the author of more than eighty scientific articles and her name is associated with over a hundred abstracts. As well, she is an invited speaker at numerous conferences in Canada as well as internationally.

Diane Wilson is the Chief Operating Officer of Community Tissue Services.  Diane has more than 20 years experience in Tissue Banking.  She has held numerous positions in the American Association of Tissue Banks “AATB” (Board of Governors, Chair of the Standards Committee, Accreditation Inspector, Chair of the Membership Committee, and Chair of the Tissue Bank Council). She also served as a Member of the Committee for the Coalition on Donation.  She has been an educator for the AATB Certified Tissue Bank Specialist Training Course for the past 10 years.  She is a member of the American Association of Tissue Banks, the National Association of Orthopedic Nurses, The Ohio Transplant Recovery Council, The American Association of Operating Room Nurses, and American Association of Blood Banks.

Diane Wilson is currently a board member of ICCBBA and serves as the Treasurer, a Board Member of Life Connection of Ohio, a Board Member of Mid-South Tissue Bank, and is the Chairman of the Board for Joint Restoration Foundation, Inc.  She is a Registered Nurse and holds an Associate of Science in Nursing degree from Everett Community College and a Bachelors of Science in Nursing degree from the University of Phoenix.

Secretary:

Suzanne Butch, MA, MT(ASCP) SBB

MICHIGAN, USA

Ms. Butch is the Administrative Manager of the Blood Bank and Transfusion Service of the University of Michigan Hospitals in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree from Central Michigan University.  She is certified as a Clinical Laboratory Scientist and Laboratory Director from the NCA, as a Medical Technologist and a Specialist in Blood Banking from the ASCP and as a Certified Quality Auditor from the American Society for Quality.

She has been active in state, national and international professional societies and edited books on irradiation and information technology in transfusion medicine.  She currently serves as a member of the  AABB Coding and Reimbursement Committee, the AABB Annual Meeting Program Unit, and as chair of the Management Examination Committee of the National Credentialing Agency for Laboratory Personnel. She has served as a member and advisor to the CLSI Committee on Automation and on the US Technical Advisory Group for ISO/TC 212 and ISO/TC 76.

Richard E. Brown has spent over 35 years in the clinical laboratory, blood banking, and executive administration positions.  He is a retired US ARMY Colonel who started his career operating and managing military hospital laboratories in small hospitals to Army Medical Centers including the largest US military medical center in Europe.  He specialized in blood banking and had an extensive career technically and administratively directing blood collection first in hospitals and medical centers and then for the entire US Army Medical Department.  He became the Army Blood Program Manager responsible for the collection and transfusion of blood and blood products Army wide.  He was the Alternate Responsible Head for the US Army FDA license, setting up the compliance structure in place 10 years later. He served as blood banking consultant to the US Army Surgeon General for nearly 6 years.  In his final military assignment he directed the individual training of all Army Medical Laboratory Technicians (MLT), Pharmacy Technicians and Radiology Technicians.  He was recruited by the American Red Cross to restructure their manufacturing operation in Atlanta, GA and then went on to their Los Angeles region.  He helped design, build, commission and place into operation the largest blood processing laboratory at that time in the American Red Cross system.  Currently he is Vice President for Global Laboratory Operations at StemCyte Inc., an umbilical cord blood stem cell bank.

Deirdre Fehily is a biologist who has worked in the field of blood and tissue banking since 1987.  She recently developed, and now leads, the Italian National Transplant Centre's (CNT) programme of inspection of tissue and cell establishments. In parallel, she is technical co-ordinator of a European Commission funded project (EUSTITE), led by CNT, which aims to harmonise the inspection and surveillance activities of EU Member States in the field of tissue and cell banking.

Prior to moving to Italy in 2003, she was Head of Tissue Services for the English National Blood Service.  She has held positions such as President of the British Association of Tissue Banks, Vice-President of the European Association of Tissue Banks, Member of the UK Blood Services Standing Advisory Committee on Tissue Banking (SACTB) and Standing Advisory Committee on Information Technology (SACIT).  She has represented the UK and Italy at various expert and regulatory committee meetings related to the development and implementation of the EU Directives on Tissues and Cells and has provided technical support to the WHO in the definition of minimal global requirements for tissues and cells for transplantation and to EU-funded training programmes in Spain, Slovakia and Poland.

Dr. Faten Moftah is currently the Director General for the National Blood Transfusion Services, Ministry of Health and Population (MOHP) in Egypt since 1999.  Not only is she the Director General, she also sits as the Chairperson on the Board of Directors.  She is a member of ICCBBA’s Middle East and European Technical Advisory Group (MEETAG) and the International Society for Blood Transfusion (ISBT), where she served as the Regional Director from 2002 to 2006.

Merlyn H. Sayers, MD, PhD, BSc, MB, BCh, FCP

President and Chief Executive Officer, Carter BloodCare

TEXAS, USA

Carter BloodCare’s Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Merlyn H. Sayers, is a physician with 25 years experience in blood banking and transfusion medicine. 

He was born in Reading, Berkshire, England, and received his medical degree and Ph.D. from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg in 1978. 

He held position of President and Chief Executive Officer at Carter BloodCare in Dallas/Fort Worth/Waco since its formation in 1998. 

Before coming to Texas, Dr. Sayers spent 15 years in Seattle with the Puget Sound Blood Center where he was also on the faculty at the University of Washington in the Department of Medicine. 

He has previously held positions of Chairman of the Food and Drug Administration’s Blood Products Advisory Committee, Vice Chairman of the Washington State Board of Health, committee member on the Health and Human Services Advisory Committee on Blood Safety and Availability, and Vice Chairman of the American Association of Blood Bank’s Scientific Section Coordinating Committee. 

Ineke C.M. Slaper-Cortenbach is the Director of the Gene and Cell Therapy Facility and the Stem Cell Transplantation Laboratory in the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands. She has more than 20 years of experience as laboratory director of a stem cell lab and is currently the President of JACIE (Joint Accreditation Committee of ISCT* and EBMT**).

She has been involved in the field of stem cell transplantation, since the beginning of ISCT (formerly called ISHAGE) as chairperson of the Educational Affairs Committee and is currently the chair of the European Legal and Regulatory Affairs Committee. She is also a member of the Mesenchymal and Tissue Stem Cells of the ISCT, editor of the journal Cytotherapy and Board member of ISCT-Europe. She is involved in AHCTA (Alliance for Harmonisation of Cellular Therapy Accreditation) and is currently a member of ICCBBA’s Technical Advisory Group (TAG) for Cellular Therapy.