Ingrid Tistl & Abby Martfeld – Backup Donors: Balancing patient care with donor experience

Ingrid Tistl is currently a Quality Manager at the Zentrales Knochenmarkspender-Register für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland (ZKRD) in Germany. Originally she received her B.S. in Pharmacy in the United States and worked briefly in hospital pharmacy before relocating to Germany. Here she originally worked in the pharmaceutical industry, both in the areas of manufacturing and in regulatory affairs.

After joining the ZKRD in 2008 as a search coordinator, she switched to workup coordination in 2011 and then to quality management in 2014. She has been a WMDA member since 2010, working in various project groups of the Quality and Regulatory Working Group, primarily with the focus of audits and regulatory aspects. She has also been a WMDA adhoc reviewer since 2011. In 2016 she joined the Standard Committee, and in 2022 assumed the position of Chair of the Committee. She is also the chair of the Backup Donors Project group.

Abby Martfeld, NMDP-BeTheMatch, has a Bachelors degree in Biology, Society and Environment from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She has been working at the National Marrow Donor Program for 12 years where a majority of her time was in the pre-workup and search activities. She has been the Manager, Case Management and International Operations team for just over 2 years.

Currently, she is a member of the WMDA Search & Match and EMDIS User Group and a part of the WMDA Reviewers Training Programme.  She recently also joined the Backup Donors Project group.