Elaine Murray was sitting at her desk at Genentech last year when she got an unusual email from a teacher at her son’s school.
“This may well be the most important letter I write in my lifetime—certainly it is the hardest,” the note began. “I am writing because I am looking for a living kidney donor for myself.”
The author was Kim Saxe, ’80, MS ’80, a design thinking teacher from Los Altos, Calif., who directs the Innovation Lab at the Nueva School, an independently run K-12 school nearby.
Saxe’s kidney function had been declining for a decade, but last year she was in a downward spiral heading toward end-stage renal disease. “I am acutely eager to find a donor,” Saxe wrote in the letter. She pointed out that survival rates for transplants from living kidney donors average 18 years compared with 13 years for a transplant from a deceased donor. “Unfortunately, no one in my family can donate for various reasons. . . . So, I humbly turn to my extended family of the last 26 years, my Nueva family.”
‘I am writing because I am looking for a living kidney donor for myself.’
Murray’s son, now a senior at Nueva, had known Saxe since third grade. Murray remembers being impressed by his experiences in the iLab and in an engineering-focused LEGO program Saxe led.
Murray clicked on the link in Saxe’s email and filled out the donor candidate questionnaire.
She wasn’t the only one. At least 35 people—most of them from Nueva—filled out the forms to be considered as living kidney donors. Saxe says her nephrologist was stunned. “He lowered his glasses on his nose and looked at me,” she remembers. “ ‘Wait a minute. Are you telling me that since we met four weeks ago, you’ve gotten 35 potential donors?’ He had never heard of anything like that before.”
Saxe’s connection to Stanford began in 1965, when her father, Ron Howard, moved with his family from the East Coast to accept a faculty position. (A professor of management science and engineering, Howard co-founded the field of decision analysis, which teaches a systematic approach to making important choices.) After earning her degrees in electrical and industrial engineering, Saxe worked in software engineering for more than a decade. In the 1990s she transitioned to teaching. She joined the Nueva School as an educator in 1997.
One day, Saxe struck up a conversation with a parent who asked what led her to teaching. Saxe described the motivating experience of a Stanford d.school class she had taken, and one exercise in particular in which the students brainstormed and sketched ideas. “They encouraged us to treat it like play and just have fun with it,” Saxe remembers. “I’ve had confidence in my ability to generate options for any problems since.”
That parent smiled and told Saxe that he had designed those experiences. His name was David Kelley, MS ’78, and his work as a professor of mechanical engineering and the founder of design firm IDEO is credited with transforming brands, companies and even industries.
Saxe became the first to teach Kelley’s design thinking ideas to children. Nueva got behind her 100 percent, founding its signature Innovation Lab and naming Saxe to direct it. “It hasn’t been a fad,” she says. “It is taking off. It is preparing kids for the future.”
One of the people Saxe touched at Nueva was Grace Voorhis, MBA ’97, a parent. When she first toured the school, Voorhis observed Saxe’s classroom, where kindergarteners sat at a workbench and used real tools like hammers, nails, drills and saws. “If these kids, at age 5, can use all these tools, who are they making all these plastic toys for?” Voorhis wondered.
Nueva was a revelation for Voorhis. “I’m Korean. I was raised in a very traditional Asian household, which is not the Nueva approach to education. No grades—can you imagine!” she says, laughing. Saxe was Nueva’s “culture keeper”—the embodiment of the compassion, authenticity and intelligence that the school so values, says Voorhis. “Kim translated what the Nueva Way was all about.”
Voorhis recalls volunteering in Saxe’s classroom when a child, perhaps in second or third grade, walked in during a lesson. Voorhis moved to intercept the student. But Saxe immediately halted the lesson to attend to the child, who had lost a stuffed animal on the playground and wanted to make an announcement. “The Korean way would have been to respect your teacher, give her space, ask permission,” Voorhis says. “There was none of that happening. Kim said, ‘It’s so great for their confidence, their self-advocacy, for them to come in the classroom and talk in front of that large group of people.’”
Saxe’s kidneys began to fail just as her influence in the Nueva community exploded. In 2014, her kidneys were functioning at just 18 percent. By 2017, that number had dropped to 10 percent. She knew she needed a transplant soon.
People need just one of their two kidneys, which means a living donor, usually a family member or close friend, is an option. But health issues ruled out most of Saxe’s family. So she made the “big ask” for an altruistic donor who wasn’t closely related. Voorhis stepped up to help Saxe craft her appeal.
Kidneys are in huge demand: 100,000 people are on the waiting list for a donor match, says Steven Deitcher, a Nueva parent and CEO of Medeor Therapeutics, a company working to improve outcomes after kidney donation. Deitcher, too, reached out to Saxe to offer his expertise. “No place I have ever been affiliated with has a tighter, more connected community than this particular school,” he says.
After Murray filled out the candidate questionnaire, she had to do blood tests, collect her urine for 24 hours, complete a “nasty” glucose tolerance test and submit copies of her health records—just to be considered. “I have always carried a donor sticker,” she says. “This is a way to put my money where my mouth is.”
Soon she was invited in for more extensive testing. That included human leukocyte antigen testing, which showed that Murray matched Saxe on five of six counts, making rejection less likely. “I think this is a done deal,” Murray remembers thinking. “I don’t think anyone else is going to be that close.”
‘If it were just some random thing in the newspaper, I probably wouldn’t have responded.’
Surgery took place on November 9, 2017. Although Murray was released in 48 hours, the recovery proved challenging. More than a month later, she was still fatigued and needed regular naps. More than five months later, she couldn’t wear certain pants due to sensitivity in her abdomen. Even so, she and her husband are glad she went through with the gift. They weren’t the most active members of the Nueva community—no bake sales or serving on boards. But here was a way to give back.
“I did look at it from the community point of view,” Murray says. “If it were just some random thing in the newspaper, I probably wouldn’t have responded.”
Six months later, Saxe is responding well to the transplant. She needs to avoid crowds and germs to keep from getting sick, but she now has the energy to walk the Dish trail, a feat that was impossible just a year ago. Ever the passionate problem-solver, Saxe continues to encourage others to explore kidney donorship.
“I know it helped the Nueva community realize the inherent goodness in so many people.”
Christine Foster is a Stanford contributing writer in Connecticut.
