ML (Matt) Cavanaugh, PhD, Lieutenant Colonel (ret.), serves as the President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Kidney Donation Organization, having recently retired after 25-years of service in the US Army. He is a Professor of Practice with the Arizona State University, and twice earned the Bronze Star Medal, as well as the Combat Action Badge, for his service in Iraq. He has also been the youngest recipient of the Army Strategist Association’s professional award, the Order of Saint Gabriel the Archangel (2015), in addition to earning West Point’s faculty-wide Apgar Award for Excellence in Teaching (2014), and was once named the US Army’s Athlete of the Year (2009). 

A proud living kidney donor, Matt gave his left kidney at Walter Reed in 2021 to a stranger in Seattle, kick-starting a chain that catalyzed seven more kidney transplants, the last of which benefitted a recipient back at Walter Reed. In 2022, he ran self-supported across 1,000 kilometers of the world’s worst deserts in Racing the Planet’s 4 Desert Grand Slam series, where he won the leg in Antarctica and finished as the fastest American to ever run the series (with one kidney or two).  His writing’s been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Sydney Morning Herald, and in the Salt Lake Tribune, among others. For more, please visit MLCavanaugh.com.