Paul T. Conway
Mr. Conway serves as the Vice President and Chair of Policy & Global Affairs for the American Association of Kidney Patients (AAKP), the largest and oldest U.S. kidney patient organization. AAKP works to transcend high-mortality, status quo kidney care and its associated negative impacts to patient economic security and taxpayers through more timely disease screening and intervention, greater access to organ transplantation, and innovations including precision medicine, xenotransplantation and artificial organs. He is Co-Chair of the Annual Global Summit on Kidney Disease Innovations, an AAKP partnership with the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences that engages kidney stakeholders in over 100 countries. He has managed kidney disease for 45 years, including 3 on peritoneal dialysis and 28 with a transplant. He was transplanted in 1997 at the Medical College of Virginia/Virginia Commonwealth University (MCV/VCU) Hume-Lee Transplant Center. He has advanced the principles of patient consumer care choice, patient-centered care and greater use of patient insight data in policy, research and innovation across the federal government and, globally, before the United Nations, the European Parliament and the World Health Organization.
His honors include the ASN and AAKP President's Medal for policy work before Congress and the White House and a 2022 President's Lifetime Achievement Award for volunteer service to the kidney community. In 2023, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin named him Chair of the Commonwealth of Virginia's Renal Disease Council. He is the Chair of the Board of Directors for Quality Insights and serves on the contract management board of the U.S. Renal Data System, the Observational Studies Monitoring Board for the NIH/NIDDK Kidney Precision Medicine Program and the Rare Kidney Disease Foundation board. He has previously served as the inaugural Chair of FDA's Patient Engagement Advisory Committee, on the American Board of Internal Medicine's Nephrology Specialty Committee, the Board of Directors of the Kidney Health Initiative and as a Patient Editor for the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. Over the past decade, he has co-chaired multiple technical evaluation panels for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Assistance related to new quality measures, participated in several FDA Advisory Committees, and has been involved in patient-centered kidney research efforts for the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Professionally, he has served under four presidents, four Virginia governors and in support of five presidential transitions. Since 2017, he has served on successive Presidential Rank Review Boards to evaluate the performance of Senior Executive Service members of the U.S. Civil Service and make recommendations to the White House for presidential recognition. His federal awards include the Department of Homeland Security Secretary's Silver Medal for exceptionally meritorious service to America. Prior federal posts include: Chief of Staff at the U.S Department of Labor and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management; Interim Federal Coordinator and Chief of Staff at the DHS Office of Gulf Coast Rebuilding; Acting Deputy Director, National Gambling Impact Study Commission; Special Assistant, White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and Confidential Assistant at the Department of Education. In Virginia, he has served as Deputy Secretary of Health & Human Resources and Chair of the HHR Secretary's Council on Audit and Control and has been a member of the Board of Health Professions and the Secure Commonwealth Panel.