Leah Eshraghi champions patient advocacy at Exact Sciences, integrating patient voices into every phase of clinical trials to foster inclusivity and relevance. By involving diverse patient advocates early, Leah’s team ensures trials address real patient needs, creating studies people want to join. “It all comes down to including the patient voice from the beginning,” she emphasizes.

Brooklyn Olumba joined the RadComp clinical trial during her cancer treatment, highlighting both the personal benefits and the power of contributing to future therapies. She encourages others, especially those from underrepresented groups, to consider clinical trials, asking, “Why take medicine that hasn’t been studied in someone like you?”

LaToya compares her efforts running a clinical research site to being a conductor of a great symphony. As a site owner, she is responsible for identifying locations, onboarding physicians, training staff, and supporting all stages of the studies that take place at her sites

Having triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) and being PD-L1 negative, Michelle knows that she’s got limited options for treatment, especially when it comes to immunotherapies. By participating in a clinical trial examining different chemotherapies, she’s able to expand the options that are available for her specific diagnosis – and contribute to the development process for these treatments that allows them to be made available to other people just like her in the future.

Like many people in their current positions, LaTisha moved in to her analyst role after life threw her a 180. As a parent, she had been laid off from her previous role and was able to get a new position with a central laboratory organization that provides lab services for clinical trials.

While we often think about clinical trials as a way to compare whether a potential new treatment is as good or better than other current treatments, there are a lot of other types of clinical trials available.

If you had asked me over 30 years ago if I would be doing what I’m doing now as a career, I think I would have done an about-face and said “What? No way!”. Actually, I believe there is footage where I was asked, “Lisa, where do you see yourself in 10 years”? I think I responded with, “I want to be traveling the world!” While I have done some traveling, it is probably not what I was envisioning at the time.

Shakisha Davis is an active Tigerlily Foundation ANGEL Advocate that wants to highlight her experiences with the power of advocacy – especially when it comes to advocating for one’s own health.