Welcome!

I am Tracey Hulick, Founder of Kidney Donor Athletes. 

As I take a step back and look at how far this organization has come, I’m humbled and filled with gratitude. The amazing, big-hearted individuals who make up our community are the backbone of this organization and our mission. 

Back in 2017, when I was going through the process of donating a kidney to a stranger, I was surprised at how little grassroots support there was. I googled ‘ultra runner kidney donor’ and found exactly one story. (That person never made it to the starting line of their goal race due to changing priorities and insufficient training.) 

I was surprised at the pushback I received from friends, acquaintances, and even some family members as I prepared for my donation. It made for an incredibly lonely experience, as even my partner at the time didn’t want me to go through with it. 

As much as I didn’t want to talk publicly about my donation, I had the feeling that there were other people out there just like me who were searching for examples of athletes who donated and came back to their full athletic capabilities. 

With that first Instagram post about my donation in 2017, I documented my progress. It only took a week to receive a comment from a woman in Australia who donated around the same time as me! Our shared experience made us fast friends even though there was an ocean between us.

Little did I know, this was just the beginning.

As the months unfolded, more and more people commented and sent messages of appreciation. They were grateful to see someone sharing the details of their experience, particularly as it relates to getting back to working out and endurance running.

In the spring of 2018, I started to feel that there was something bigger that could come out of these organic interactions I was having. Perhaps if I built a platform for people to share their stories on, more people would step up to talk about their donation. A few months later, on a summer afternoon in a coffee shop, I pulled up the Colorado Secretary of State website and officially formed Kidney Donor Athletes, Inc. The organization was officially born!

I created the social media accounts and started building the website right away. I dreamed of finding 50 kidney donor athletes who would be willing to write their story and share it on the new platform. 

Soon came the IRS Determination Letter granting us 501(c)3 status, our very first printed t-shirts, and our first in-person event in Denver in the summer of 2019!

Spring of 2020 brought about our very first Board of Directors, planning of our inaugural One Kidney Climb up Mount Kilimanjaro, and the creation of the private Facebook group that would foster a place for community members to interact and start building relationships in real life!

Now, KDA-based friendships span the globe, and athletes will spot another KDA with a branded shirt on at an event and make an instant connection. We’ve sponsored multiple climbs up Kilimanjaro, up and over volcanoes in Guatemala, various domestic events, and Zoom webinars. We have featured the stories of more than 150 different kidney donor athletes, and we even have an Executive Director!  

My heart overflows as I take stock of the countless meaningful connections people have made here, the donations that happened because of our shared stories, and the change in the landscape of living organ donation. People are sharing their own stories far and wide and joining together to dispel the myths of what it means to be an organ donor. 

And most importantly, to me, is that anyone who is considering donating and finds KDA knows they are not alone. The is a welcoming, warm-hearted organization that I wish had already existed back in 2017. That loneliness I felt was an absolute gift, because it inspired me to do something about it for those who would donate after me. 

Thank you for reading this, thank you for being here, and thank you for being a part of this community. You belong here.

With appreciation, 

Tracey Hulick