Delisa English is president and CEO of The Blood Connection, a community nonprofit blood center headquartered in Greenville that serves more than 140 hospitals in four Southeastern states.
She has served nearly 30 years in the transfusion-medicine sector with prior leadership roles with the American Red Cross Biomedical Services leading both the Carolinas Blood Services region and the South Carolina Blood Services region.
She also serves in key leadership roles within industry groups like the Association for the Advancement of Blood and Biotherapies and Blood Centers of America. Her prior experience includes working on a NATO assignment in Portugal and service in the Alabama Air National Guard.
She holds a Master of Business Administration degree from The University of Tennessee and a Bachelor of Science degree from Auburn University.
She and her husband, Michael, have two sons.
Interview with Delisa English
Q: Why is donating blood so important?
A:
Donating blood is not just important, it is vital to the health and well-being of any community.
Blood is that precious gift that can only be given from one person to another. And I say this all the time, we absolutely cannot manufacture it on an assembly line. For that reason, we must rely on our fellow community members to give of themselves with a blood donation.
And why do we need it? Because every two seconds someone needs blood. That’s an alarming statistic when you think about it. And blood is like milk — it has a shelf life — so we have to replenish it constantly and that’s why we are always asking for it.
Q: Can you describe the effort and logistics involved in getting a pint of blood from the donor to where it’s needed?
A:
In order for blood to make its way from vein to vein, so to speak, we have to get it from the point where the donation was made, back to our processing site, get the blood tested, get it separated into components, then ready for storage (and) then ultimately shipped by courier to one of our hospital partners.
On a daily basis, we need to collect over 1,000 pints of blood. We do that by deploying roughly 40 mobile operations on our bloodmobiles as well as operating 17 blood-donation centers across our service area.
We do all this work with our amazing team of close to 900 employees.
Q: How responsive is the community to calls for blood donation?
A:
Community response to calls for blood donation can be really tricky.
The interesting thing is when we ask for people to step up and donate blood, everyone thinks ‘Well, someone else will do it, they don’t mean me.’
In all my years of doing this, I’ve actually never met this “someone else.”
In all seriousness, what usually happens is it takes some sort of emergency like a hurricane or tragic event to get people to really hear and then take action on the need for blood and then take the next step of coming out to donate.
To help counter that, what we have tried to do at The Blood Connection is really lean into thanking our donors with our donor-rewards program to make sure they understand how much we do appreciate that blood donation.
Q: What role does the business community play in helping meet blood-supply demand? What are the steps a business can take to coordinate a blood drive with TBC?
A:
The business community plays a very critical role in helping TBC meet the ongoing blood supply needs.
On a daily basis, we ask businesses to host blood drives so that their employees can have the opportunity to donate blood. This is important because making blood donation easy and convenient for donors is critical to making it top of mind for people to donate.
It also gives TBC the opportunity to get to larger groups of people where they are and creates the very best donation events. We are immensely grateful for all the businesses in this community that host blood drives and encourage any business that wants to do so to engage with us immediately to do so.
We make it easy and it’s a great way to boost employee morale and build team spirit. Interested businesses can learn more about hosting a drive on our website (thebloodconnection.org/donors/host-a-drive).
Q: What do you find most fulfilling about your role leading The Blood Connection? Similarly, what do you find most challenging?
A:
The most fulfilling part of my role is that I get to work every day with an amazing team that doesn’t take no for an answer — we work relentlessly and with a great sense of urgency each day to make sure that patients and our hospital partners have the blood they need.
That, of course, comes with all kinds of challenges, but one of my favorite quotes from Theodore Roosevelt that resonates with me is, “Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.”
Our work is challenging but is most certainly work worth doing, and I am grateful to have made it my life’s work.
Q: If readers remember nothing else, what’s the one thing you want them to take away about the work of The Blood Connection?
A:
The one key takeaway about the work of The Blood Connection is that we are your community blood provider.
The blood collected by The Blood Connection supports local hospitals right here, saving the lives of your family, your friends and your neighbors, and it’s been our honor to do so for over 60 years.
The Blood Connection
435 Woodruff Road
Greenville
TBC by the numbers:
The Blood Connection’s more than 900 employees need to collect on average 1,000 pints of blood daily to supply 140 hospitals through mobile blood operations and 17 blood donation centers in 4 southeastern states.
