“It wasn’t enough to sit at the table,” said Nancy Brinker, founder of the Susan G. Komen Foundation, “we wanted to be the table.” Brinker, a 2005 Lasker Laureate, tells the story of how a small startup nonprofit came to lead the effort to increase funding for breast cancer research.
When Nancy Brinker’s sister, Suzy, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1977, people did not talk about cancer, which could make receiving a diagnosis especially isolating and frightening. After Suzy passed away, Brinker started the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. Her goal was to spark a cultural and a clinical change by bringing the disease into the open, jumpstarting research, and improving patient care. In this 2005 interview, Brinker talks about her sister, about the early struggles of getting the Foundation off the ground, and about the hard-won success of what is now the world’s largest nonprofit funding source for the fight against breast cancer.
