Tenaya Wallace- People You Should Know

Community News, Entertainment, Health and Safety — By Buddy Sampson on August 30, 2022 at 9:58 pm

A Beacon of Change in How We View Organ Donation, And How Vital It Is in Saving Lives

By Buddy Sampson

People that have change at the center of their lives are those that transform the paradigm of society. Instead of waiting for change, they inspire it, using action, instead of words to make sweeping changes in what we’ve learned to expect from the societal institutions that have been in place for decades. Tenaya Wallace is at the beacon for change, changes in how the organ donor process is widely misinterpreted, a center of reluctance from needed organ donors that can save the lives of others.

Tenaya Wallace, a true Angelino born in Silverlake, has the spirit of Los Angeles written across her heart. When pointed out that she should get a medal for being a true Girl Scout, in what is expected from someone that is so giving of her spirit she had a novel response. “I was a Girl Scout, too,” laughed Tenaya Wallace. No surprise there.

She grew up in the entertainment industry, with a father that was a stage hand and a mother that was a studio teacher. “I vowed to never work for the entertainment industry,” she laughed. “So, I went and worked for different causes. I worked for the environment and then I worked for organ donation.” As the Communications Manager at OneLegacy, the nation’s largest organ procurement organization (OPO), she discovered research that illuminated that organ donation as a storyline in television shows and television presentations had storylines that were largely inaccurate, which made people unwilling to be organ donors. “The researchers said that the donation community needed to have a stronger voice in working with the entertainment industry,” she said. “I saw the research and I was like ‘we need to do something about this.’”

OPO’s (Organ Procurement Organizations), according to www.cms.gov are non-profit organizations responsible for the procurement of organs for transplantations. Because of Tenaya’s background, designing programs for non-profits and the organ donation community and her involvement in the entertainment industry, OneLegacy, encouraged her to take on an ambitious project. “OneLegacy encouraged me to create a project that would be that liaison and that bridge between the organ donation community and the entertainment industry,” said Tenaya, who was also the former Communications Manager for OneLegacy. “And that’s how Donate Life Hollywood (DLH) was created.”

DLH, according to the website, https://accessdlh.org, “helps Hollywood tell authentic and empowering stories about donation and transplantation.” And because of Tenaya’s persistence and influence as Founder and Director of OneLegacy’s Donate Life Hollywood project, she’s been able to inspire incremental change in how Hollywood presents organ donation stories. “Donate Life Hollywood is really a public education campaign specifically for the constituency that is the entertainment industry or Hollywood, since it falls in OneLegacy’s service area. I decided to have kind of a positive reinforcement where we’re looking for storylines that get it right, that do a good job and award them with Inspire Awards and that way, we’re able to build stronger relationships with the writers that are doing these storylines. This last year we’ve had some amazing recipients.”

Recently, DLH honored, through its DLH Inspire Awards, six productions, including one that featured television luminary Robin Roberts at the Taglyan Complex in Hollywood in August 2022. The award is named for two-time transplant recipient, author and inspirational speaker Joe Lafferty, who was instrumental in building up DLH and who died suddenly earlier this year.

Designed to honor great storylines in Hollywood that inspire and encourage public participation in the donor process, the honorees included Daniel Sinclair, a co-executive producer on “Chicago Med,” for his writing of the episode of “When You’re a Hammer, Everything’s a Nail,” Joy Blake and Dr. Daniela Lamas for the writing of the episode “The Long and Winding Road” for the television program “The Resident,” for the webseries “Letters of Hope,” considered by DLH to be the best episode ever written about organ donation. “It was a very, very powerful episode,” said Tenaya,” “It was very emotional, but it also got the technical side of brain death, and brain death testing right, they got so many of the technical details so correct. It was very powerful and really the best episode to date written about organ donation.”

Also honored at the Inspire Awards was Mark Driscoll, an Emmy Award winning screenwriter and co-executive producer on “Grey’s Anatomy” for his writing of the episode “Legacy,”  Shannon Powers and Dan Snook, Creator and Executive Producers for “Last Chance Transplant,” a docuseries following the journey of people waiting for organ transplants at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee; Colleen Wood, a documentarian, for “JOE 238,” which documents the death of 24-year-old Sacramento police officer Joseph “Joe” Chairez, and Valen Keefer, a dual-transplant recipient, for the docuseries, “Letters of Hope.”

In addition, DLH presented its first annual Joe Lafferty Award to co-anchor of ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Robin Roberts’ production company, Rock’n Robin Productions, helped to bring 2022 DLH Inspire Award winner “Last Chance Transplant” to life. Roberts appeared in the TLC series speaking with transplant candidates about their wait for a second chance at life.  Each year the award will honor an individual who works in the entertainment industry and helps to promote organ, eye and tissue donation.

DLH and Tenaya Wallace have a very important message the public should know. “The hospitals are actually not in charge of organ donations,” Tenaya emphasizes. “The number 1 fear that people have of organ donation is tied to a sense that hospitals won’t work hard to save you if you’re an organ donor, that is, you have that dot on your driver’s license about being a donor, that when you’re in the hospital that the hospital is more interested in saving your organs than saving your life.  The people that are caring for you have nothing to do with the people that are getting transplanted. The hospital is there to really focus on saving your life. The nurses and doctors aren’t thinking about organ donation, because it’s not their job.” Organ donations are handled by the OPO’s, which are separate entities from the hospitals. The systems are designed that way to prevent potential conflict of interests, promoting equity and objectivity in the organ donation process, and a primary reason why people should elect to be organ donors.

Change across our communities is not an easy task. However, there are those in our communities that magnify the necessity of sweeping changes in industries, for example the entertainment industry, in their portrayals of how the organ donor process is implemented, and why people should elect to be involved in the organ donor process. Tenaya Wallace is one of those people. “When storylines are inspiring and they’re accurate then it encourages people to become donors,” said Tenaya Wallace. “We really need every person who is able to be a donor to say yes to donation in order to save lives.” Tenaya Wallace may have started as a Girl Scout, but her determination, drive and ability to inspire change has made her into much more. It is for her spirit, honor and devotion to her community that makes Tenaya Wallace one of the People You Should Know.

If you or your family members want to be involved in being a donor, visit https://www.onelegacy.org.

For more information about Donate Life Hollywood (DLH), visit https://accessdlh.org.