After several busy and exciting days, our annual Leadership Summit and Lobby Day came to a close with a keynote speech by award-winning actor Hill Harper.
Harper engaged the audience of volunteers and staff by telling his own cancer story. Harper noted that the men in his family had a history of cancer. His father, grandfather, and uncle all died from the disease. A few years ago, Harper himself was diagnosed with thyroid cancer – the same type of cancer that his father had.
After having his thyroid surgically removed and becoming cancer free, Harper became a vocal cancer advocate. In 2012, he was named by President Barack Obama to the President’s Cancer Panel, a committee that oversees the development and execution of the National Cancer Program. The panel reports directly to the president on barriers to progress in reducing the burden of cancer. Harper was recently appointed by the president to serve a second three-year term on the panel, saying he “couldn’t be more proud” to continue his work in hopes of making a positive difference in progress against cancer.
During his keynote speech, Harper acknowledged the work that ACS CAN and our volunteers are doing and said it’s making a powerful impact.
While Harper shamelessly admitted he is no scientific expert, he engaged the crowd in a basic lesson on the power of different types of energy. He noted that energy cannot be created or destroyed, that all energy already exists. But, he pointed out the power of the volunteers and staff to harness that energy to overcome the cancer burden. He went on to specifically call out kinetic energy – “energy of action” – is what being a cancer advocate is all about.
Before he wrapped up, Harper led us all in an affirmation that left the audience energized. As Harper recited the words, those in the audience repeated, “I will not allow fear to stop me from doing the work that I know I should do. Instead, I will live with my full energy, with my full heart, with my full courage, and in so doing, give all others permission to do the same. I will win at my life.”
Volunteers and staff appreciated and embraced Harper’s words of encouragement. This type of passion drives our volunteers and all of us at ACS CAN to stay strong, dream bigger and work harder to end suffering and death from cancer.
Mariah Forster Olson, an ACS CAN Ambassador Constituent Team Lead (ACT Lead), traveled to Washington, D.C. this week to share her story as a childhood cancer survivor and to advocate on behalf of other patients and survivors during the 2019 Childhood Cancer Action Days.