On a Wednesday in September, Jen Brady, MA, RD, scheduled her surgery to give her mother one of her kidneys. Then she registered for her third Boston Marathon.
Signing up to run the April 2026 race six months after donating an organ was a quiet declaration: Brady could make a life-changing gift to her mom while holding onto one of the parts of herself that mattered most.
"Running is my way of keeping control of my thoughts, and giving myself something to work for, and reaching my goals, and doing hard things," she said. "That's something that I never want to not have."
Brady's work as the director of benefits and well-being at Penn Medicine is rooted in a simple truth: When people come to work, they don't stop being caregivers, parents, and human beings. Her own "whole-person" story-how she supported her mother through kidney donation, using Penn's living donor paid leave benefit herself, and then trained for a marathon just weeks after-exemplifies the very employee well-being and caregiving support she works to make possible.
Her care team with Penn Medicine's Center for Living Donation assured Brady that after a short period away from running to allow her body to recover from the surgery, she could expect to return to her pre-surgery fitness levels. Nephrologist Amanda Leonberg-Yoo, MD, the medical director of Penn Medicine's living kidney donor program and a runner herself, even offered to be a training buddy.
