Highlight: Leslie & Brian Coefield
As VisionGift walks alongside families who choose donation, we are continually humbled by the compassion and strength we witness. In a handful of cases, these relationships grow into lasting connections rooted in a shared commitment to helping others.
One such connection is with Leslie Coefield, a dedicated VisionGift Board Member and the mother of Brian, whose life ended far too soon in 1993. While coping with grief, Leslie made the decision to honor Brian’s life through donation. Because of that choice, three people were given a second chance—two with restored sight, and one whose life was saved through a heart valve transplant.
In the years since, Leslie has poured her energy and compassion into becoming an advocate for organ, eye, and tissue donation through her involvement with VisionGift, Donate Life NW, and her 30+ years in the field of Social Work. Through her passion and leadership, Leslie continues to transform personal loss into hope and healing for others—ensuring that Brian’s legacy lives on.
As she explains, “I could not control whether Brian lived or died, but what I could control was the decision for him to be a donor. It was empowering and a privilege—a decision I have never regretted.”
Recap of Gala – pictures, thank sponsors
2025 saw VisionGift celebrate our 50th Anniversary with our inaugural gala, “Looking Forward, Reflecting Back”. Thanks to the incredible support of our community, together we raised over $230,000 to further our mission. This is a huge accomplishment, and it would not have been possible without the dedication of our staff, board, and volunteers.
At our gala, we heard from two speakers deeply affected by VisionGift’s mission- Lindsey Petersen and Patrice Morris-Ball. Lindsey is a cornea recipient that avoided developing blindness in one eye through resources provided by VisionGift, while Patrice is widow to a man who was able to restore sight to someone in need through tissue donation. They both reflected on VisionGift’s role in making it possible.
Click here to experience the gala for yourself in these photos capturing the event!
VisionGift is proud to share the sponsors that also made this event happen.
Profile: Kari Kunkel
The journey of a tissue donation to transplantation begins at our Donor Referral Line (DRL)- the team that directly reaches out to the family of the deceased for their permission to start the process. Kari manages the team and this process, a delicate and extremely time-sensitive endeavor. The DRL must work within the complex guidelines from multiple regulatory bodies involved with organ and tissue donation while showing utmost care and compassion for the families.
Currently, she is streamlining processes and workflow to allow better time for the part that really matters to her- supporting her team emotionally through these potentially distressing interactions. Kari comes from a background of social work, and through her experience both with the DRL and the other closely related departments she has forged an intent, a plan to support her team in the future.
“What I bring to the table is looking at the whole picture and industry awareness from working with these different organizations and within the different teams involved with the DRL”
Profile:
VisionGift is exploring new artificial intelligence (AI) tools to help advance the fields of eye banking and corneal transplantation. One current project focuses on using AI to help predict clinical outcomes for transplant procedures used to treat keratoconus, a condition in which the cornea progressively thins and bulges into an irregular cone shape, causing distorted vision. While these procedures are highly successful at improving vision, the degree of visual improvement is difficult to predict before surgery. Our goal is to develop tools that help surgeons better anticipate outcomes and plan treatments more precisely for each patient.
In collaboration with clinicians and data scientists, machine learning models will be trained using tissue graft parameters provided by VisionGift, preoperative measurements of patients’ eyes, and postoperative outcomes from thousands of clinical cases collected over the past decade. By bringing these data together, we hope to create models that improve surgical planning and ultimately lead to more predictable visual outcomes.
