About Laurel
Two decades leading operations and programs across nonprofit health, MedTech, and EdTech — and three as a kidney patient.
Where I’ve been
For almost two decades before I focused on kidney health full time, I worked in product, program, and quality/risk management across MedTech localization, EdTech and publishing, and compliance and ethics software, including roles at SAI360, TransPerfect/Crimson Life Sciences, Cheng & Tsui, Macmillan Learning, and Pearson. I've become equally well-versed in operational detail, human-centered design, and wide-ranging systems thinking for the environments those details live in.
In 2022 I co-founded the International Society of Glomerular Disease (ISGD) and spent four years as its founding Executive Director and later Chief Operating Officer, growing it from a concept incubated at NephCure into a self-sustaining global medical society: 2,000+ members in 105 countries, and sevenfold growth as an organization in four years. Along the way I led the PARASOL-FSGS clinical trial endpoint project, organized the 15th International Podocyte Conference, built the ISGD Preceptorship program, and started “GN in Ten,” a glomerular disease podcast that has had more than 15,000 downloads. You can read more about my work in the publications I've coauthored.
I stepped back from that staff role in the summer of 2026 and started Damashek & Co. On a professional level, I’ve always believed that founding leaders have a particular role: to help launch an endeavor, build the early scaffolding, and then make room for the next iteration of leadership. Living as I do in a college town, each year I get to witness confident young graduates making the leap into the wide world of possibilities. Likewise, this was a natural moment for me to move from day‑to‑day management into a different kind of relationship with the society and the kidney space more broadly.
Lived experience
I was diagnosed with focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS) in 1995, and I received a kidney transplant in 2016. My continuing experience informs everything I do professionally: I know what it is to face a lack of answers as a rare disease patient, navigate the complexities of a disconnected medical system, wait for lab results that may change the course of my life, hope for a clinical trial, and also to sit across from a care team that is genuinely listening. It’s part of why patient-centered language and design aren’t an afterthought in my work — they’re the starting point.
What I do now
I run Damashek & Co., an independent consultancy advising nonprofit health organizations — and, on occasion, pharma and biotech companies — on strategy, program management, and organizational scaling, with a focus on glomerular disease and kidney health more broadly. I continue to consult to ISGD on selected projects, and also serve on the Board of Directors of NephCure.
Services
Nonprofit Strategy & Organizational Scaling
Strategic and tactical planning for nonprofit health organizations at inflection points — translating an ambitious mission into a workable operating model, with attention to governance, staffing structure, and the internal controls that let a small team scale responsibly.
Patient & Community Voice Consultation
Structured ways to bring patients and the broader community into program design and communications — advisory input, listening sessions, and review of materials for patient-centered, accessible language, so the people a program serves have a real voice in shaping it.
Program & Project Management for Complex Initiatives
Operational leadership for programs that span multiple institutions, funders, or countries — the project plans, meeting cadences, and day-to-day coordination that keep a complex, multi-stakeholder initiative moving toward its goals.
Data, Impact & Reporting
Designing the KPIs and reporting structures that let an organization show, credibly and clearly, what its programs are accomplishing — built to be genuinely useful internally, not produced only for funder reports.
Have a project in mind?
I generally take on a small number of engagements at a time.
The kestrel
A kestrel is a small falcon known for hovering nearly motionless in the air, reading the ground below, before it commits to a precise dive. That’s how I like to work too: watch carefully, then move decisively.
In 2025, while traveling for glomerular disease work, I crossed paths with both American and Eurasian kestrels within a few months of each other.