In December 2024, Kimberly Stanphill, an actress and longtime member of the Television Academy’s Performers peer group, stopped by the Academy’s Saban Media Center in North Hollywood to donate to a blood drive organized by the Performers Peer Group Executive Committee (PGEC). “I wanted to help save a life,” she says.
As it turns out, she did — her own.
Stanphill, a former PGEC member herself whose credits include Lifetime movies and Gilmore Girls, had the required onsite screening to make sure her blood’s hemoglobin level was normal. When it turned out to be slightly low, she was told she was unable to donate.
“I was disappointed,” she says. “Everybody said, ’You’re probably just low on iron. But check with your doctor.’” At her annual physical in April, she told her physician, who ordered blood tests. Eventually Stanphill, who had no other symptoms, was diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), a blood cancer that, if untreated, can also lead to leukemia.
Kimberly Stanphill
In November, after being matched with a suitable donor the previous month, she underwent a stem cell transplant at City of Hope to replace her damaged blood cells with healthy ones. While the procedure itself was a painless intravenous infusion, it required preparatory chemo, a three-week stay at City of Hope — most patients need four to six weeks, but Stanphill made unexpectedly quick progress — and a long recovery period with side effects, some potentially chronic.
“I’m 10 months old inside,” Stanphill says. “On November 25, I’ll be a year old.” Still recovering, “I’m getting stronger and stronger,” she adds, “getting back to my normal self — or, if you will, forward to my normal self.”
That 2024 blood drive had come about via the efforts of actress-producer Meredith Thomas and her fellow members of the Performers PGEC; Thomas had organized blood drives elsewhere and brought up the idea to the PGEC as one more way the Academy could contribute to and connect with the community.
Having previously partnered with the UCLA Blood & Platelet Center in Westwood, she recruited the facility for this project and worked with Academy Membership department staff member Victoria Smart, who secured the necessary approvals and coordinated the Academy aspects of the blood drive.
Meredith Thomas
The drive took place in the Wolf Theatre Lobby at the Saban Media Center in early December. “We slipped it in before the holidays,” says Thomas, whose credits include numerous Christmas movies, among them Netflix’s The Merry Gentlemen and Lifetime’s “Wrong” franchise, such as The Wrong Blind Date. “What better gift to give than blood?”
Also in the lobby: space where members and other donors could socialize; a membership table where eligible attendees who had not yet joined the Academy could get more information and/or sign up; snacks; and an Emmy statuette to pose with for photo ops.
The event was so successful that for the second drive, held the following October, Thomas reached out to governors she knew from the Children’s Programming, Documentary and Writers peer groups, who encouraged their members to participate. And this year’s blood drive, to be held Monday, October 19, from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., has become an Academy-wide event for all peer groups.
Academy staff members also donate, says Smart, the Academy’s senior director of membership and acquisition. And, she says, “We’ve made it a local community event — we put up flyers in restaurants and the apartment buildings around us. It’s a place for everybody to get together and give back.”
Appointment sign-ups are preferred, but walk-ins are welcome. As in the previous years, the Facilities team and Event Production department are involved, along with Membership. “It’s a terrific event,” Smart says. Last year, she adds, in a scenario similar to Stanphill’s, an Academy member discovered through the pre-donation blood testing that they had hepatitis C, and went on to receive treatment.
Reasons other than illness can disqualify someone from donating blood, Thomas notes, such as taking certain medications or weighing less than 110 pounds. (There is no upper weight limit.) Those who aren’t sure if they are eligible can call UCLA’s Community Liaison Terri Hill at (310) 825-0888.
Such concerns aside, “I don’t think people realize how easy it is to give blood,” Thomas says. “It takes about 15 to 20 minutes, sometimes less. A one-pint donation can save as many as three lives.” Those lives can include people involved in the traumatic incidents that are part of living in a major city. “It’s often taken for granted that what is needed to save these people's lives will be there and readily available,” Thomas says, “and the only reason it is is because of donors.”
It has been said that members are the lifeblood of the Academy. In the case of Kimberly Stanphill, it might be said that an Academy blood drive extended a member's life.
“I’ve been given a second chance because of the Television Academy,” she says. “The blood drive started the whole process.”
To make an appointment to donate blood, sign up here.
