MEET ADRIENNE BERGER
Foundation Matriarch
Adrienne married Hillard Berger in 1957 when she was eighteen and he was eighteen-and-a-half. Adrienne was by Hillard's side from the very beginning. Long before he was Dr. Berger, Adrienne worked to put Hillard through undergraduate at UCLA, graduate school at Vanderbilt, and post graduate school at Stanford.
The Inventor's Wife
While Hillard advanced his career at Johns Hopkins under the team who discovered DNA, Adrienne worked to raise their family in Baltimore.
NOW IS THE TIME
Beyond Dialysis
By 1975, Hillard had become very sick. He suffered from Type 1 diabetes from the age of 13 and developed end stage renal disease by the time he was 36.
For the eight months preceding his death, Dr. Berger bravely was his own guinea pig. Testing his own invention to absorb large amounts of fluid from a body that was no longer able to process fluid on its own.
50 YEARS LATER: PRESENT DAY
A New Chapter
Dr. Berger died in 1975, two months before his 37th birthday. His doctor put him on dialysis, and it killed him. Adrienne was responsible for patenting his original work and securing his legacy for her children.
Half a century later, and Adrienne considers her role at the Cardio Renal Foundation to be the culmination of her life's work and represents a tremendous opportunity to finally tell her husband's story.