Outside of Work

Life hands you many lemons, its your responsibility to decide if you are making lemonade or just holding a sour fruit. For me, the lemons life handed me started at a very young age. At 10, my little sister was diagnosed with a childhood brain tumor. It was then that I decided I would dedicate my free time to helping other families facing similar journeys. I started by volunteering with Make-A-Wish of Michigan. Then moved to fundraising for Make-A-Wish through a 3 day, 300-mile bike ride called Wish-A-Mile. From there I started volunteering at a cancer support community in Royal Oak called Gilda’s Club - founded in honor of the late (and great) Gilda Radner. It was there that I truly learned to appreciate the phrase “Its always something”.

Cut to: my young adult years, 25 to be exact. My sister who survived childhood cancer once was just about to turn 21 - what a feat! However, right before she could go to the bars and drink she was taken out of remission and diagnosed with DIPG - an extremely rare brain tumor that has a 0% survival rate. Yeah, I was shocked to hear that too. I thought all cancers at this point has some hope associated with it.

When she passed, my family made it our mission to live out her legacy. We immediately started a charity golf outing raising funds for an endowment fund at Oakland University - School of Education and DIPG research through the Koschmann Lab at University of Michigan. To date, we have raised over 600K to ensure her legacy lives on. We have granted 7 full ride scholarships to Oakland University and have helped the Koschmann Lab treat 3 patients, fund a FTE and purchase new research machines.

We have made the sweetest lemonade.