Bernie I. Citron, a partner specializing in land use in the Chicago office of Thompson Coburn, needed a kidney transplant or he was going to die—likely within a few years. 

While Citron, 68, was on the national transplant waitlist for a kidney donation, he asked for help from people he knew and various communities to which he belonged, including members of his law firm.

To his surprise, Hope A. Watson, a 30-year-old associate in the Washington, D.C., office whom Citron had never met, offered him one of her healthy kidneys. 

The transplant surgeries took place at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago in July, and both Citron and Watson are grateful that the process was successful. In honor of April being National Donate Life Month, Citron and Watson are discussing their experience to potentially encourage others to consider living kidney donation.

“Our hope with sharing our story is not to promote or glorify ourselves,” says Watson, who specializes in regulatory issues and compliance for institutions of higher education. “Our intention is to inspire others to generosity.”

Watson adds that she’s “grateful” she could give one of her kidneys to Citron, even though it was a painful process, particularly in the first few days post-surgery.

Afterward, she says, “it felt like we had pulled of the biggest project of our careers."

“I had a tremendous feeling of achievement,” Watson says.

Both Watson and Citron said the firm supported them throughout the process. Last fall, Thompson Coburn gave Watson the firm’s Total Commitment Award in recognition of her going “above and beyond” in her commitment to her colleague and community.

“What Hope did for Bernie is an extraordinary act of generosity, but it’s also true to who we are as a firm,” Christopher M. Hohn, chair of Thompson Coburn, said in a statement. “We have a deeply collegial culture, and we look out for one another, both professionally and personally.”

The firm also donated $25,000 to the National Kidney Foundation in December.

National Donate Life Month was established in 2003 by Donate Life America and its partnering organizations. Observed in April, National Donate Life Month helps raise awareness about donation and encourages registration as organ, eye and tissue donors.

Kidneys donated by individuals who are still alive, called living donor kidneys, often last in the recipient for 20 years, according to the National Kidney Foundation. In the U.S., more than 90,000 people are on the waiting list for kidney donations from deceased donors. 

Donors can live a normal life with one kidney, according to the National Kidney Foundation.

Citron says that his health was deteriorating and his kidneys were failing when, in January 2025, he put out a plea to his law firm via email for a living kidney donation. The subject line was “I need a kidney.” The text included a URL for people to see if they were a possible match.

“The statistics say that the wait for a kidney transplant from a deceased donor is at least five years,” Citron wrote in the email. “The doctors have told me that in five years I may not be alive or may not be healthy enough for a transplant. So I am seeking people who would consider becoming a kidney donor.”

Watson had for several years been contemplating donating a kidney after she learned about the process. Further inspired by Citron’s story, she flew to Chicago, and Northwestern tested her to see if she was a match.

“I have always felt pretty strongly that we all deserve quality of life,” she says. “I am fortunate enough to have such an abundance of quality of life that I had enough to give some of it away.”

In February 2025, Watson sent Citron an email in which she told him she was a match. The email, formal in its approach, stated that she didn’t have any “prying questions,” just a “desire” to introduce herself and learn more about where Citron was in “this process.”

They set up a video call and, Citron admits, their first conversation was “a little awkward.”

“There’s a difficulty there, asking someone to give you a body part,” he says.

But they continued communicating and going forward with the kidney donation. Watson met Citron’s girlfriend, Sara Manewith. Citron married her week before the twin surgeries. His first wife died in 2015.

Watson describes how their families met up in the waiting room, celebrating together when both surgeries were successful. Watson says her mother “loves Bernie.”

Citron and his wife have become “part of our family,” Watson says. “We wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Meanwhile, Citron says he’s back at work and playing the electric bass. 

During a recent video interview, Citron, from his remote office, called Watson “amazing.”

“For someone you have never met? Who is younger than my kids? To do this?” he said. “It’s just out-and-out amazing that there are people like Hope out there who would do something like this.”

“Thanks, Bernie,” Watson said from her desk in Washington, D.C., ducking her head briefly and then looking back in the camera.