Board

In 2010 I was diagnosed with primary angiosarcoma of the breast. At the time, I was just about to graduate with a Ph.D. in biochemistry from The University of Massachusetts Medical School. In 2011, after two surgeries and a few rounds of chemotherapy, I made it back to the lab and defended my thesis. I went on to conduct postdoctoral studies in cancer immunology through a grant from the Cancer Research Institute before taking a position at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. As the Associate Director of Operations and Scientific Outreach, I combine my scientific background with my patient experiences to launch and oversee several direct-to-patients genomics initiatives, including the Angiosarcoma Project (ASCproject.org).

Shortly after my diagnosis, I met Lauren Ryan, who had started a facebook support group for angiosarcoma cancer. She was also at the beginning stages of founding Angiosarcoma Awareness, Inc. We partnered up and decided to move forward as a team. As the Vice President, my principal responsibilities are initiating contact with and providing funding for clinicians and basic researchers who are interested in conducting angiosarcoma research. The goal of our organization is to foster a collaborative atmosphere between the researchers that we fund in order to generate data and reagents that can be shared by the sarcoma community as a whole. Feel free to contact me if you'd like to learn more about our research initiatives.