Assistant Executive Director, External Affairs
Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, UNOS Foundation

Vicki Sauer is Assistant Executive Director of External Affairs and Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the UNOS Foundation. She oversees all fundraising and development activities of both organizations. External Affairs supervision includes staff and activities of the UNOS Communications Department, which includes media relations, member communications and patient information resources, including all privately funded activities such as the Transplant Living Web site for patients and their families and other publications and resources for organ donation education. She is also responsible for the activities of the UNOS Patients Affairs Department and UNOS Community Relations Department, which include the National Speakers Bureau and public education programs and activities of the National Donor Memorial. Ms. Sauer provides oversight and strategic direction to Tii, UNOS' data services subsidiary.

Ms. Sauer has been with UNOS since 1990. She began her career as a cardiovascular and visceral angiography technician at the University of Florida Shands Teaching Hospital in Gainesville. In 1973, she joined the Nalle Clinic Kidney Center in Charlotte, NC, one of the first kidney dialysis facilities in the Southeast. She was a dialysis technician for several years and then became administrator, responsible for the staffing and operations of 90 professionals in seven kidney facilities. These facilities provided direct pre- and post- transplant care to more than 600 patients.

In 1983, Ms. Sauer established V. Haas and Associates, opening three dialysis clinics in Raleigh, Charlotte and Monroe, NC. This involved obtaining certificates of need for these facilities through local, state, and federal agencies. Ms. Sauer served on the American Kidney Fund's Board of Directors from 1980 to 1982, and subsequently became the group's fundraising consultant from 1982 to 1985.