About the Author, Jay Feinberg

Jay Feinberg

A 15 year transplant survivor, Jay Feinberg is Gift of Life’s founder and Executive Director. Diagnosed in 1991 with leukemia and told that his only hope of a cure was a bone marrow transplant, Jay, his family and friends embarked on a groundbreaking international search for a matching donor. After organizing 250 drives and testing 60,000 potential donors, Jay’s match turned out to be the very last donor tested at the very last drive. He received his transplant at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington in July 1995 thanks to his bone marrow donor, Becky Faibisoff.

 

Jay serves on the Board of Directors of the World Marrow Donor Association (WMDA) and is the Secretary of North and South America. He also volunteers his time as an inspector for the WMDA’s Accreditation Committee. Jay serves on the WMDA’s Ethnic Diversity subcommittee and on the Cord Blood Committee of the National Marrow Donor Program’s Center for Cord Blood.

 

Jay received his Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa. He has received numerous awards, including the prestigious Charles Bronfman Prize. Other notable honors include the National Marrow Donor Program’s Allison Atlas Award and Hadassah International’s Citizen of the World Award. Jay is the recipient of an honorary doctorate degree (Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa) from Yeshiva University in New York, along with U.S. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.