National Race to End Women’s Cancer

Clearity Foundation at the National Race to End Women’s Cancer-Nov 6, 2011, Washington, D.C. By Marissa Maybee

I work in biotech, so when my mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer this May, my thoughts immediately turned to clinical trials, cancer vaccines and personalized medicine. Determined to face the situation head-on, I googled the disease’s 5-year survival rate and steeled my family for a fight. So, when the doctor told us my mom did not qualify for any clinical trials, and that he recommended standard-of-care, the disease’s 70% reoccurrence rate flashed through my mind like strobe-light, harsh and relentless.

More Internet searching led me to the Clearity Foundation and the realization that my mom had treatment options—we just had to advocate for them. After switching doctors, my mom enrolled in a clinical trial and is doing well today.

Our family’s experience proves how OC patients—and some doctors even—have little awareness of the treatment options at their disposal. The Clearity Foundation is empowering these patients, one family at a time, and I wanted to help them.

I signed up to run the 8K National Race to End Women’s Cancer and recruited some of my girlfriends to run and train with me. They told their boyfriends, and suddenly we had a group of 16 runners and 10 dedicated fundraisers! We held a strategy session where we decided to paint our nails teal to raise awareness for ovarian cancer in general, but also as a marketing tactic for our fundraiser.

The team used Razoo’s website to create a page explaining the reasons for our run and our fundraising goals, and Razoo’s software allowed us to direct our proceeds right to Clearity. We put the link to our fundraising page on our Facebook profiles and gchat statuses and told our coworkers about our goals. And anytime someone commented on our teal fingernails, we brought up the Clearity Foundation and our race. In three weeks, the power of social media had helped us raise over $2,500 for the Clearity Foundation, $500 over our initial goal!

Race day was crisp and sunny in our nation’s capital, and our team, sporting matching Clearity t-shirts, took 3rd place out of 53 teams. We mingled with supporters and survivors, answered questions about our shirts and took team pictures.

Based on the overwhelming support we received, we are planning a fundraising event in D.C. in the near future. Overall, I cannot believe how easy it was to raise money using a purely online platform. I have never run a race or led a fundraiser before, but Clearity’s cause got me to step out of my comfort zone, with fantastic results!