Marcus Martinez Set to Lead the National Foundation for Transplants as Board Chairman

Marcus Martinez was elected chairman of the Board of Directors for the National Foundation for Transplants in May 2020.  Martinez is a 27-year FedEx veteran who is Vice President, Global Operations Control and Service Quality & Assurance.  In this role, Martinez leads two distinct organizations and plays a pivotal role in making sure flights and packages arrive as scheduled around the world.

His GOC department maintains the safe and legal dispatch of the airline, tactically executing the airline schedule and network control, and managing service at a macro level while leading the company through holiday volume surges, as well as operational, weather, and geo-political related contingencies.  Martinez has a birds-eye view of much of this activity through a floor-to-ceiling digital world map providing color-coded information about the location of FedEx aircraft, and what global challenges the operation might face.

For GSQA, the focus is on global service goal setting, monitoring, and coordinating with business partners to deliver a superior business performance and providing an outstanding customer experience. Martinez oversees the achievement of these goals by optimizing processes that minimize waste, effort, time, and cost, which effectively reduces risk and improves profitability.

Martinez’ leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic was recently highlighted by The Daily Memphian where reporter, Wayne Risher, wrote, “Martinez was instrumental in helping to develop strategies to move coronavirus test specimens from remote testing sites to labs seven days a week.  FedEx launched a special operation in the early days of COVID-19 to cover 50 remote testing sites in 12 states, including some of the hardest hit, and it has been moving 15,000 to 21,000 specimens a day ever since. FedEx is one of the private companies that agreed to work with departments of Health and Human Services, Homeland Security and others to speed up response to the public health crisis caused by COVID-19.”

In the article, Martinez pointed out, “We were able to put together a plan that in short order set up a whole line haul system for a weekend activity with many moving parts.” The operation moved more than a million COVID-19 test kits in one week.

Martinez has a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Business Administration Management. He also holds a Federal Aviation Administration Flight Dispatch License from the Sheffield School of Aeronautics. Martinez is the son of a U.S. Veteran and was born in Germany.  He lived in Germany, Ireland and several states in the U.S. before making Memphis his home. He and his wife are the proud parents of five children.

Martinez was preceded by Gina Castellaw as chairman.  Castellaw, is president of Access Data Network Solutions, Inc., a regional provider of data network solutions, data security, cabling, HVAC, intercom and other related services.  Castellaw has served NFT for many years and continues her service to the transplant community as NFT’s immediate past chair.

Although he has served on NFT’s board since 2018, we still extend to him a heartfelt, “Welcome aboard Marcus as NFT’s newest board chairman!”