Simone McMahon

Organ donor advocate

2008 WA Young Australian of the Year

Born with poor kidney function and suffering chronic renal failure at age nine, Simone McMahon was on dialysis ten hours a day and received a kidney transplant when she was eleven. She has been passionately promoting organ and tissue donation ever since. Simone is Western Australian State President and a national director of Transplant Australia, a volunteer with the Kidney Health Foundation, and a wish granter with the Starlight Foundation – spending much of her time encouraging seriously ill children and helping to grant their wishes. She is a Churchill Fellow whose scholarship allowed her to identify successful international models of organ and tissue donation and assess promotion strategies that provide support to transplant recipients, donor families, and living donors. Simone’s story inspires people to consider organ donation as an act of kindness that replaces despair with hope, giving people on transplant waiting lists the courage to face an otherwise unbearably uncertain future.