Hillary Sunderland and Colin Craig discuss our aim to invest in “Shining Light companies” – organizations that are meeting real needs in ethical ways, demonstrating strong servant leadership, and creating value beyond just profit.

This Shining Light Spotlight highlights TransMedics, a company that has developed technology to keep organs alive for longer during the transplant process, increasing organ utilization rates and helping save more lives.

Watch the video to learn more about this Shining Light company!

Transcript

Hillary Sunderland:
Hi, my name is Hillary Sunderland and I’m the Chief Investment Officer of Beacon Wealth Consultants and LightPoint Portfolios. And I’m pleased to have with me today Colin Craig, who is one of the portfolio analysts on our team. As you know here at Beacon Wealth, we like to occasionally highlight Shining Light companies, and Colin recently did a video explaining what these shining light companies are. So I thought to start out, maybe you could just give us a quick recap, Colin, of what is the concept of Shining Light companies all about?

Colin Craig:
Yeah, absolutely. Hillary. So our listeners haven’t watched our prior video where we explained this concept of shining light companies in more detail. I’d encourage you to go back and check it out. But the basic idea is that as investors or as part owners of companies, we want to lean into companies that are meeting real needs in ethical ways with good products and services.

These companies tend to demonstrate strong servant leadership. They live out the golden rule in their business practices. They take care of creation, they demonstrate strong corporate governance, and they create compelling value through the products and services that they offer. In other words, there’s a lot more to these companies than just increasing the bottom line.

Hillary Sunderland:
Well, that’s a really helpful explanation, Colin. One of the sectors where I think faith-based investors can have the most impact is in the healthcare and biotech sectors. And as you know, we intentionally include these themes in our portfolios from time to time for our clients. I was wondering if you could give me an example of a company that we hold in the portfolios that you believe is really creating value by helping society to flourish.

Colin Craig:
Yeah, sure thing, Hillary. So many of our listeners are familiar with the concept of organ transplants. The basic idea is that when an organ donor passes away, doctors will try to use the deceased person’s organs like their heart, their liver, their kidneys, and they’ll attempt to transplant those organs into another patient who needs them in order to live.

But the problem is that the majority of these organs harvested are placed into static cold storage, which is basically just a cooler full of ice. Using this method. Some organs like the heart can only last for a few hours, maybe up to six, and other organs like kidneys might last a day or a little bit longer. The result is massive under utilization of these organs that are being transferred from donors to recipients because of this time constraint.

So recognizing this problem, one of our portfolio companies that is called TransMedics, they developed an integrated system that allows transplant teams to keep organs alive for longer by keeping these organs warm and fed with nutrients. Transmedics technology helps keep the organs alive between the donor and the recipient. In other words, this process of keeping the organs alive means that there’s no longer really a race against the clock for these transplant teams.

Hillary Sunderland:
Well, that’s really interesting, Colin. So it sounds like this technology really helps increase the organ utilization rate because it’s able to keep the organ alive for longer. One of the questions I have though is I’ve heard that sometimes it takes too long to transport the organs from a donor to a recipient just because of geography. Are they doing anything in the area of transportation to try to help with organ utilization rates as well?

Colin Craig:
Great question. The organs are transported in a portable device that is called the organ care system, or OCS for short. The OCS is this device that is basically the size of one of those carts that the flight attendants wheel down the aisles of the plane. It’s not big, and since it isn’t big, this means that it can easily be transported to help get these organs from point A to point B.

TransMedics has developed their own transportation logistics network equipped with a fleet of modern jets and their own dedicated flight crews. TransMedics even has their own logistics command center where they track and coordinate the process from the donor all the way to the recipient. In other words, we’re coming a long ways from just sticking the organ in an icebox and hoping it makes it in time.

Hillary Sunderland:
Well, Colin, thanks so much for taking some time to give us that update. I know that I’m leaving this conversation really encouraged, and I hope that our clients are encouraged too about how their investment dollars are being used to make a positive impact on the world. Thanks so much for joining me today.

Colin Craig:
Thanks, Hillary. Thanks for having me.

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