Paula Schneider – President & CEO of Susan G. Komen
Episode 99
Paula Schneider, president and CEO of Susan G Komen, joins me on this episode. Susan G Komen is a philanthropic organization that provides resources and research for women going through breast cancer. Paula is a breast cancer survivor and an experienced executive. On the show we discuss the importance of positivity for your mental and physical health, the link between happiness and doing something for the greater good, how the mind can be a powerful tool in self-healing, and much more. I hope you enjoy this episode of The Kara Goldin Show.
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Transcript
Kara Goldin: Hi everybody, it’s Kara Goldin and I’m here today with my friend Paula Schneider who is the president and CEO of Susan G. Komen. I’m so excited to have you here today, Paula, to really just chat with all of us during the month of October, which is breast cancer awareness month and more than anything, just wanted to have a conversation with you and really share your wealth of everything that you’re working on at Susan G. Komen and all the great stuff that’s going on. So welcome.
Paula Schneider: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me and it’s lovely to see you.
Kara Goldin: Yeah, you too. You too.
Paula Schneider: Sorry about my dog. He’s barking in the background but that-
Kara Goldin: Okay. What’s your dogs name?
Paula Schneider: Oh, well which one? I have three-
Kara Goldin: You have three dogs?
Paula Schneider: Yeah, I have Cooper, Bugsy and Chanel. Cooper is the one that usually sits in here all day with me but I thought it would be quieter if I made him go but evidently not so we’ll just deal with it. Sorry [crosstalk 00:01:13].
Kara Goldin: That’s okay. It’s life, right? Anyway, so tell us a little bit about you, Paula, and how you got to Susan G. Komen? Because you’re not brand new to the organization but you’re fairly new.
Paula Schneider: Three years now. So I can’t say new anymore. You know what’s funny, Kara, is then you don’t know this. The day that I actually met you was the day that I made the decision to become-
Kara Goldin: Oh you did?
Paula Schneider: Yeah, we met, I was in retail for many, many years and my whole, whole career. I was, let me see, I was being honored as one of the top female CEOs for retailers in the country at this women in retail summit and that’s where you were speaking and I was speaking. That morning literally I sat with a friend of mine and I said to her, “I don’t know how much longer I want to do this because I really want to do something that is more meaningful to me.” I’m a breast cancer survivor and so we literally had that conversation at breakfast, I got up to give my speech and you’re supposed to give a speech and of course it was a women’s group and it was about empowerment, right? I was trying to bring it back to retail but I had nothing. So I literally got up and I started talking about how I was the most empowered when I was the least physically powerful while I was going through breast cancer treatment. The reason being is especially if you’re used to being large and in charge and doing things for everyone and running companies.
I’d run publicly traded companies and I was running one at the time. I just … Having to be able to succumb to something like this because you have no choice and then being able to accept with grace that other people are there to help you and that you have a support system. Luckily I did. So I gave my speech and it was very much from the heart. Then I sat back down not at my table that I had rented with all of my people but back down with my friend because we hadn’t had much time and I wanted to have a little more time with her that day, which was another sort of unusual thing. She said to me, “Okay, while you were up there speaking a friend of mine who’s a recruiter in Dallas sent me this note and they’re looking for a new CEO of Susan G. Komen. Would you ever be interested in that?” I said, “Yes, I would.” It was literally that day. She said, “Oh, okay, well if you’d really be interested let me … I’m going to tell them I have found you.”
Now, I had zero background in philanthropy but my mom had died of breast cancer. I had had breast cancer. I have two daughters so it was kind of enough said. I literally, that was Thursday. On Friday I went out to breakfast with my husband and said, “What do you think?” He said, “What do you think?” I said, “I’d like to go for it.” He said, “Then I think you should go for it.” I said, “Well it requires us moving from LA to Dallas.” I mean, there’s lots of changes that go with this. I said, “And I’d have to quit my job on Monday.” He said, “You don’t even have an interview.” I said, “It doesn’t really matter because if I’m running a publicly traded company I can’t actively interview for anything because that’s not fair to the shareholders and stakeholders and that company.”
Kara Goldin: Right.
Paula Schneider: “But I can make an exit plan and I can leave.” It was not so quick that it happened, they actually brought me down to Dallas three times in the summer and if anything would stop you from taking a job in Dallas, that would be it. This one was meaningful for me so I moved there and now because we’re completely virtual I’m back in LA doing my thing here but it was … That was the day. I met you that same day.
Kara Goldin: What were you doing prior? You said that you had left your role.
Paula Schneider: Yeah.
Kara Goldin: What were you doing?
Paula Schneider: I was living in LA and I had run most of the Pager Fashion Offices here. I was president of BCBG, I was president of Laundry By Shelli Segal, I was president of the Warnaco Swimwear Group which had Speedo and majority of swimwear in the country. Then the most highest profile I guess was the bucket of crazy when I was the CEO of American Apparel. Then I left after American Apparel and I tapped out. I went to … I was the CEO of 7 For All Mankind and Splendid and Ella Moss, which was a whole group. So most of the people that are women of our age group or younger have had something of mine in their closet for years. I hadn’t been in philanthropy but I had raised a lot of money because I was a survivor. Then I worked in private equity. I bought companies for a while and private equity so I have sort of a varied background. Then I decided, “Okay, I’m going to go for this.” But I remember distinctly telling the board, “If you find somebody you think is going to be better than me, I think I’d be awesome, but if you find someone who you think is going to be better than me, go with them because this is so much more important to me personally than me just having a role in your organization.”
Kara Goldin: Wow.
Paula Schneider: I ended up with the role and its been the best, best career move I’ve ever made.
Kara Goldin: That’s amazing. So you really … That’s interesting because I could see how that would be something that I would say, right? You’re so passionate, obviously you’ve been through it, you want-
Paula Schneider: I want no one else to go through it.
Kara Goldin: Right and you want the best person in that position so that’s amazing.
Paula Schneider: Yeah.
Kara Goldin: For thinking on it. So what were some of the challenges going into a nonprofit after you just hadn’t … You had never done this before.
Paula Schneider: Yeah, oh, oh my God. Think about it, right, because I remember … I had breast cancer so I knew a bit about it, I knew a bit about my mom’s breast cancer but I’m a lay person. I’m a business woman. I am not a doctor, I am not a scientist and now I am completely surrounded about doctors and scientists and we have a rockstar scientific advisory board that’s made up of the head of oncology at Stanford and Vanderbilt and Sloan Kettering. All of these places that are really, really super impressive people and one of our chairs, our co-chairs, is a doctor that … Dr. Sledge, who I adore but at that point I just met him. We went out to dinner and he said during dinner, “So Paula, if you’d like …” He’s the sweetest man ever. “If you’d like I could give you a little tutelage on all the verbiage and the different terminology and breast cancer.” I thought to myself, “Okay, how do I answer this?”
I said to him, “You know what, George, let me tell you how that would go, okay? First of all it’d be like me learning Chinese and then dealing with the highest end of the government because no one is going to take me seriously. They all know where I came from. I’m fashion girl, fashion background, business woman yeah but not scientist so why don’t I do what I do really well which is bring the best people in the room to get things done and work together, create the culture, then you come with me to those meetings because you have the credibility that I will never have?” He went, “Okay,” and we made a really dynamic team doing that because I think it is, you got to know what you don’t know but you don’t have to be afraid of, and this is what I love about your story, too. You don’t have to be afraid of trying new things because you don’t have to ask for permission for everything you do because if you did, people would try and talk you out of it right and left.
Kara Goldin: Totally and I fundamentally think that if there was a rule book or sort of, “This is exactly what you were supposed to do, this is the way that you were supposed to ultimately build it,” then it would have already been done, right?
Paula Schneider: Yeah.
Kara Goldin: So I think bringing in new ideas and people with different types of experience and people with passion. I often say, “Passion trumps experience,” right? Where that clearly is you and somebody who’s really having and understanding for this illness, too, and some of the challenges.
Paula Schneider: And business, right, because you know when I first started there and I would talk about it as if it were a business and they would say, “No, no, no, you cannot say it’s a business,” and I’d say, “You know what? It is a business. Money comes in, money goes out. You can’t spend more than you make, you have to figure out how to make more.” So it’s just different product that you are marketing and that you’re selling.
Kara Goldin: Well I think the partnership, so just to share with the audience for those of you who don’t know, Paula and I met as she was mentioning a few years back but Hint actually came on as a proud sponsor of Susan G. Komen starting last year. We’re in our second year where if you’re buying a case of our breast cancer packs either online or in stores then we’re giving money from each of those sales to actually research and just overall just supporting Susan G. Komen and October is the breast cancer awareness month-
Paula Schneider: Yeah, might not have been aware of that in case you haven’t seen pink or ribbons or anything anywhere.
Kara Goldin: Yeah well I’ve done a few walks this month already in my area of Marin County. I have a few friends who are breast cancer survivors and so I’ve really tried to support them as well but I think that the interesting thing is that people get really, really excited that we’re supporting you guys because many of them already linked Hint and were drinking it but as I always share with people, maybe you aren’t affected by breast cancer but we all know somebody who has either had it or has it in their family or friends and I think it’s just something that it’s just pretty easy to go and support not just Hint but other products that are also supporting this initiative because it’s so important and also all of the things that you guys are doing at Susan G. Komen. So share a little bit about where some of that money goes towards? What is some of the stuff that you guys are doing?
Paula Schneider: You know, when I came in here, of course I had seen the walks and runs before and I was a breast cancer survivor so I knew a little bit about it but I’m really amazed at the breadth and depth of all of the things that Komen does. It’s an amazing, amazing organization. So it’s sort of a 360 view, right? You have research and research is the most important thing that’s going to cure cancer. Then when people ask me, “How are you going to cure cancer?” I’m like, “Cash. Cash cures cancer,” because in order to keep researchers working they have to have the money to do it. It’s not the most lucrative of professions, let me tell you that. It’s amazing how these people are so dedicated and if we don’t continue to fill the pipeline with people that are doing research on breast cancer, then you will not have the break [inaudible 00:12:38] part of what we do, which is research. We devote a lot of time and research into better understanding the recurrence of metastasis, right? Because if you get breast cancer you don’t die from breast cancer, you die when it metastasis, most the time.
It’s when it spreads throughout your body and that’s the cancer that kills. So we have literally pivoted almost all of our research dollars into the cancers that kill, which is metastatic breast cancer. So trying to figure out how do we stop it from spreading, how do we stop it from going into different parts of your body? We’ve got all kinds of clinical … Right now we have 254 research projects going so there’s a massive amount of information that’s out there. A recent clinical trial that we had was testing a new drug to see that we could help prevent recurrence of metastasis for what is called a hormone receptor positive, HR2 negative patients. That’s a very common type of breast cancer and the results were incredibly positive. That means it’s promising for patients with that type of breast cancer and could prevent the breast cancer from coming back which is what you want. I have in the back of my head every day, “I hope it never comes back.” Especially because I am hearing cases about people every single day that it’s recurred.
You got to stop it from recurring and I had a type of breast cancer that’s called triple negative. Triple negative is one of the most difficult to treat. When I say that, why it’s called triple negative is because of the three things that it’s not. It’s not hormone related, so it’s not progestin or estrogen and it doesn’t make too much of the protein that is used for HR2. If you think about it like a house, the doctors and researchers now have different keys for a lot of these types of breast cancer which are the treatments and they’re very effective but triple negative doesn’t have very many. The only thing it has is chemo or one of the few things that it has is chemo. It’s a really destructive type of cancer and we are now working on an immunotherapy drug that is for triple negative breast cancer, which is pretty incredible because immunotherapy essentially teaches your body’s immune system to use your natural defenses to fight diseases like cancer. We know that the cures of breast cancer, there’s a lot of excitement around immunotherapy and whether the body can be taught to recognize and destroy the cancer cells that come back.
For patients that have received this drug the tumors shrunk so much that the doctors can’t detect it anymore and that’s really incredibly promising results.
Kara Goldin: Wow.
Paula Schneider: Of course, I will tell you me personally, and this is Paula Schneider, friend, and then there’s Paula, CEO of Komen that I think nutrition plays an incredible part in this. I was a huge Hint fan before I met you which is why I went, “Oh look, that’s the woman that created Hint.” That’s why I ran up to introduce myself. It wasn’t because I was going to try and say, “Hey, we should do a partnership.” It was literally because you were one of my favorite products. I can’t drink enough water unless it has a little flavor in it and I know how important that is for staying healthy. So there’s your plug and it wasn’t even asked for and I’m just letting you know that it is real, right?
Kara Goldin: That’s very, very nice and I feel like we ended up, as you and I have shared over the years, that we end up hearing from a lot of our Hint customers that they’ve been challenged by breast cancer, as well, and many of them have actually shared with us that Hint has helped them get through chemotherapy and masking the metallic taste that they get when they’re trying to get through it. It’s something that I think a lot about when we’re thinking about this company that we’ve built. The idea that we’re helping people not just drink water or potentially control a disease like type two diabetes but also actually get through a challenge in their life that seems impossible and then they drink a simple product like Hint. It’s something that for me, just it’s all part of our mission and what really excites me when I think about founding a company like that that helps so many people.
Today so many people, hopefully people that are listening are also challenged with either being a survivor and thinking about the same things that you mentioned or just kind of getting through this. What words of encouragement would you send to those people just trying to really go through this super challenging time?
Paula Schneider: Yeah, no matter what it’s challenging and right now during the COVID pandemic it’s even more challenging. I can’t imagine getting a diagnosis now where you have to be really careful who you see or family and your support system and going into treatment and all of those things. It’s very, very difficult. What I will say is right now that there’s about a 50% decline in diagnoses of breast cancer. That does not mean that there is no diagnosis. That means people are not going to get their mammograms. So you got to do that, ladies. Step up, it’s time. What could happen is if you did have a finding and you let it go until next year, I literally was one year in between mammograms and when I found mine and it was extremely aggressive. If I had waited another six months I wouldn’t be here talking to you. You got to take the shot of making sure that you’re going and getting your screenings because that’s the number one way to find it because literally to have 50% less diagnosis means 50% less people are being treated which means there’s going to be a very big cancer boom and we don’t want that to happen.
The hospitals are some of the safest places that you can be right now because they are working it out because they don’t want anyone to come in there and get sick, either, but you got to go. I think if you understand that and I also believe that, and I live in this sort of metaphysical space where I believe that you have to stay positive and do the best you can. And I know, you know I speak with woman all the time that are like, “Yeah, I was the most positive person in the world and now I’m stage four metastatic so tell me how I’m going to stay positive.” The bottom line is, your mind is really powerful and you can also help yourself as much as you can. Even if that’s just living a happier life every single day that you have, it’s worth it for you because you never get those days back. For me it was always creating the mantra that, “I am happy, I am healthy.” I said it probably 1000 times a day when I was sick until I was happy and healthy. I am also, I continue to do that. You got to stay on the bright side. Put one foot in front of the other and knowledge because knowledge is power.
80% of breast cancer diagnosis are happening not in teaching hospitals, not in rural areas where there might be one oncologist who treats all kinds of cancers and not just breast cancer. You got to be your own health CEO. You got to figure out what treatments are there for you. There are ways to find out more information. We have a help line. If you go to Susangkomen.org you can find our help line. We will help with that. We’ll help you figure out what questions you need to ask so that you get the very best treatment. The last part which is really sort of relevant right now probably more than it has been is just the racial inequities. We’ve been dealing with it and watching it for years and years in our African American Health Equity Initiative that we’ve done that was way before any of the recent crisis that’s been happening. This is the crisis that’s been going on. We could stop about a third of the deaths that happen if we could just get people to the care that exists today. It has really nothing to do with making another medical breakthrough. Just give people …
Get screening, get into treatment, get the people to the help that exists and we can help you with that at Komen. There’s that whole community side. We have the community side, we have the research side and then the third part for us is the advocacy side. Huge advocacy organization. We passed about nine to 10 Komen state led bills for women’s health in the last year. There’s a tremendous amount to be said about women in pink with pitchforks. You can make stuff happen.
Kara Goldin: You can make stuff happen. I love it. When do you think people should ultimately be getting tested?
Paula Schneider: Well it depends because there is what is the status that used to be 40, then it moved up to 50. I would be dead if I hadn’t had a mammogram between 40 and 50, I can tell you that because I was in my 40s. First of all, know your own body. If you ever feel anything that is untoward or you just feel something. Like I felt my own lump and I went, “Hmm, that doesn’t feel right.” So you’ve got to be your biggest health advocate and if you feel there’s … If there’s history in your family you need to go earlier. Now it’s right around 45 but I still think that women should probably be tested if there’s any family history earlier than that but you got to talk to your doctor and you got to have a good doctor. If you don’t have a good doctor, you have the opportunity to change your doctor. Make sure you have medical health that listens to you and be loud and bossy. You can do that.
Kara Goldin: Yeah, absolutely. I was … It’s funny because a friend of mine caught her breast cancer very early and I was like, “What made you ultimately go in?” She said, “You know it’s interesting, my dad actually was listening to somebody on a news segment talk about breast cancer and he said, ‘have you had a mammogram?'” I said, “Your dad said that to you?” She said, “Yes. I went in and luckily they caught it very early.” I don’t think it’s just the individual’s responsibility. Sometimes you need a little nudge-
Paula Schneider: That’s right.
Kara Goldin: A reminder, you know-
Paula Schneider: Well October, this whole month of breast cancer awareness month, is a nudge.
Kara Goldin: Yeah.
Paula Schneider: Right? The reason that it was started to begin with was so that women could go and have a time every single year that they scheduled their mammograms. It was breast cancer awareness month because originally when this organization was started, nobody talked about their breasts. They couldn’t even put … It was women’s cancer. “Oh, shush,” okay? Breasts, boobies, whatever it is, go get them checked.
Kara Goldin: Absolutely. What percentage is men’s breast cancer at this point?
Paula Schneider: It’s very low. I think it’s right around 3-4%, something right in that area, maybe slightly less than that. Men can get breast cancer, too, and you got to … Genetic testing is important. If you have a family history, if you’re of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, you have a one in 40 chance of having the BRCA gene. If you are gen pop, general population, you have about one in 350. To me, again this isn’t Komen talking, this is Paula talking but I think that genetic testing should become just part of what we do for healthcare.
Kara Goldin: Yeah, absolutely. So you talked about finding something that you were so interested in doing and so passionate that you almost talked them out of hiring you in many ways. I think today when there’s so many people that are being furloughed, I was on a CNBC segment the other day and I guess women are 30% higher than they’ve ever been leaving the workforce. What do you feel that you’ve gotten out of actually committing yourself to something that is doing such good for so many people? For people kind of looking for that next step and that next job? What recommendations would you give them?
Paula Schneider: Yeah and I think you and I are incredibly fortunate, right, because we get to do something that we love and we gt to help people along the way. You help with water and the ability to help people drink more water, which you know is a key to health. To me, being in an organization that helps women with breast cancer I think everyone is not going to be that lucky but if you can do something that is for the greater good then your lives are going to be more fulfilled and more complete. At least I have found that and I think I have a whole organization that has found that. That the more that you can do … It’s interesting because there’s all these studies on being happy and sense of community is really important and wealth once you’re over the poverty level and all of that it is not that important but in general, doing something for the greater good is a very big component of being happy. So for me when I was getting burnt out, I could have sold one more pair of jeans to Bloomingdale’s, no problem. I could have done it pretty effortlessly because I knew that back and forth.
Instead, I embarked on something that was brand new. I trusted my gut. One of my best friends said to me, “What the hell? You walk in there first day, what are you going to do?” I said, “You know what? I don’t know but I’m going to listen and I’m going to figure it out because I believe that my skills are transferrable. I’m not sure but I believe it.” I mean, you went from your finance background to this world, right? Your skillsets can be transferrable and you got to trust your gut on that.
Kara Goldin: Yeah, for sure. I think that the other thing that you did was you tried and as you and I have both talked about it’s like if you don’t ultimately go try something then you won’t know whether or not you’re going to go-
Paula Schneider: You could do it.
Kara Goldin: Do it or not. I think that that is so critical. That’s something that you weren’t sure whether or not you would be successful at this but you just thought, “Gosh, why not just go for it?”
Paula Schneider: I think there’ll be a lot of startups that happen in this timeframe out of necessity, right, and the seismic shift of what people are doing and how they’re doing it. It’s a horrific time for the world in so many ways because the division, the healthcare, the people being out of work, the sickness, the death but you have to find joy each day and try to figure out how you’re going to make a little impact.
Kara Goldin: Yeah, absolutely. Somebody had a question about communities and if somebody is kind of dealing with this or I know you mentioned that you guys have a hotline that people can talk to somebody about … I can’t help but feel like community is something where it’s just definitely knowing that you’re not alone, right?
Paula Schneider: Yeah and it’s the definition of community, right? Is community that you live within the boundaries of Toledo, Ohio or is community that you are part of this community of breast cancer survivors that live anywhere? Because we’re working towards more patient-centered services and we don’t care where you live and where you live should not determine whether you live, right? For us, community and being able to scale it because it’s not easy to raise money in this environment either, right, and that’s how we live. That’s how we exist. We had to cut down on what is most important for us. If you’ve ever been to one of our races and walks, nobody’s getting together with 5000 of their closest friends right now. That hurts Komen to not be able to do that. We’re figuring out, we’re going to do the things that are most important to keep people in treatment and to keep them on the path to recovery and to keep research going that will help. Advocacy is also a way to do that because if there are government programs that help more then we will not …
There’s certain things that are just … Coming from the outside world and not in the medical world they just seem so ludicrous to me but now we’re making a dent on all of those things that we feel should just be. Use common sense here, people.
Kara Goldin: Yeah, definitely. Well and all the more reason why healthcare should be … Access to healthcare should be-
Paula Schneider: Be available.
Kara Goldin: That everybody should have and I think access to health and access to healthcare should be available to everybody. Well Paula, this is awesome and I so much appreciate everything that you’ve shared with us today and I really do believe that so often people really want to know who’s the person behind this brand that they see out there and I really wanted to-
Paula Schneider: Well there’s about a million of us.
Kara Goldin: Yeah, well, but you’re leading it.
Paula Schneider: I’m just the leader of the band.
Kara Goldin: Yeah.
Paula Schneider: But it’s an incredible band full of people that are literally giving their time and treasure every day and volunteering for the organization, which is huge. You can volunteer in advocacy, you can volunteer so many different ways and obviously you can raise money for the organization. Like last year I had my birthday party and I raised a significant amount of money, more money than I think anyone would have spent on a birthday present for me but you know what, it was great. There are ways for people to get involved and I hope that people take up the challenge. Do something good.
Kara Goldin: Yeah, definitely.
Paula Schneider: Buy Hint water. That’s a way for you to get involved. You’re doing it for every case that you sell means more money for our organization so I mean, there are partners like you that you get something great and you give something great.
Kara Goldin: Yeah, definitely and I think you also feel great about sort of what you’re committing to and it’s not that hard. It’s not like you’re trying to do something that you don’t appreciate already. I think that that’s definitely true. You guys work … Of course, I would love everybody to support through Hint but you also work with lots of other companies, as well. There’s lots of different ways that you can ultimately support this. This is really, really great and ultimately do something, like I said, that you really feel is important.
Paula Schneider: We have an amazing song that’s coming out with top star talent this week.
Kara Goldin: Oh.
Paula Schneider: Next week we’ll be able to download it and everybody should download our song. It’s going to be called, “Pink,” and it’s amazing.
Kara Goldin: Oh, I love it. Actually you know what? I have one more question. I want to know where the pink ribbon emoji is. I’ve had this conversation with many people. Why is there no … The traditional way of the pink ribbon? How do we-
Paula Schneider: Our is actually the running pink ribbon with the head on it because … That’s probably a really good question.
Kara Goldin: Well I’m very [crosstalk 00:32:36].
Paula Schneider: I don’t have an answer for you.
Kara Goldin: I filled out an application for you to get a pink ribbon but a few of my friends who are breast cancer survivors, I asked them and they said, “Oh, no, there’s nothing and in order to get the official emoji you have to go here,” and so I filled it out but it would be really great-
Paula Schneider: Thank you.
Kara Goldin: Yeah, you’re welcome. But I was wondering if you knew what the answer was.
Paula Schneider: I don’t know.
Kara Goldin: No, so okay, well we will definitely keep pushing.
Paula Schneider: We’re trying.
Kara Goldin: We’ll keep pushing for Komen and for Paula.
Paula Schneider: Thank you.
Kara Goldin: Amazing. Yeah. Where do people find you, Paula? Just in general on social.
Paula Schneider: Well, let’s see, I think I’m private almost everywhere except Twitter.
Kara Goldin: Okay.
Paula Schneider: I think it’s CEO@Komen. Short of that-
Kara Goldin: You guys have a newsletter and all that.
Paula Schneider: Komen.org is literally, we have over seven million people that come to our website each year.
Kara Goldin: Wow.
Paula Schneider: The reason that they do is not because it’s a fun time, right? They’re coming because they know someone or they are diagnosed with breast cancer and they’re trying to help. It’s a great way to get fact based knowledge on what to do and what questions to ask. Then there are opportunities if you are going through it and you need treatment assistance, if you need money, there’s a treatment assistance program that we do where we help with monthly bills for different sorts of things in your household. It can be used literally for a lot of things. It’s just so that we keep you in treatment. We’re here to help and we have very knowledgeable people at our help line. We serve thousands and thousands of people every year on our help line that call to find out. We can give you help, to answer all the questions that you have and to help you along this journey because it does not have to be a death sentence and it is something that we are working towards cures.
Kara Goldin: I love it. Well thank you again and thanks everybody for listening. We’ll do this again very soon so keep checking back with us. Thanks so much.
