President Diane Wish

Diane Wish is the founder and longtime Board Chair of the Ohio Renal Association (ORA), whose members operate over 310 outpatient dialysis clinics throughout Ohio and serve over 18,000 Ohioans who rely on their dialysis services to live.

Wish was the President and CEO of the regional, independent nonprofit Centers for Dialysis Care (CDC), a position she held from 1983 until her retirement the end of 2018. CDC operates in northeast Ohio. She became President of the ORA as of January 1, 2019 following her retirement from CDC after 35 years.

Wish, a registered nurse, spent the bulk of her career as a nephrology nurse and administrator and is a recognized expert in the field.

After obtaining her nursing degree, Wish spent three years as a coronary intensive care nurse in Kettering and Columbus, OH before becoming head nurse at the Central Ohio Dialysis Center (CODC). After three (3) years, she was promoted to Administrator and Director of Nursing. She worked at CODC from February 1975 until August 1983

In 1983, Wish moved to of Shaker Heights, OH., a suburb of Cleveland and was named President & CEO of CDC, headquartered in the Cleveland. During her tenure, CDC was the largest provider of out-patient dialysis services in Northeast Ohio. Wish stepped down as President in July 2015 as part of the non-profit’s succession plan and retained her role as CEO until her retirement in 2018.

Wish is an expert in dialysis treatment – both in patient care and the administrative side of treatment. She authored a 2009 article for the Nephrology Nursing Journal titled Revisions in the End Stage Renal Disease Prospective Payment System: Implications for Nephrology Nurses. Wish was recognized with the 2002 National Renal Administrator Association’s Mark Zawiski Memorial Award for outstanding leadership, and in 1989 with the Outstanding Nephrology Professional of the Year award from The Renal Network, ESRD Network 9. In 2019 she received the ORA’s Lifetime Achievement Award. In addition, she was a two-time past president of the National Renal Administrator Association (NRAA – currently the Renal Healthcare Association – RHA), and previously a board member of the NRAA, NRAA Renal Services Exchange Board, Kidney Care Partners, Kidney Care Council, Non-Profit Kidney Care Alliance, and University Circle, Inc. She also served in various capacities for End Stage Renal Disease Networks 22 and 9. Wish also served her community in a volunteer capacity as a board member of the Minority Organ Tissue Transplant Education Program of Cleveland – (MOTTEP), and the Kidney Foundation of Ohio (KFO) where she was a board member for 35 years and a past president.

Wish received her nursing degree from the Kettering College of Medical Arts, a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Ohio Dominican University, and an MBA from Case Western Reserve University.