When our CEO publicly shared the news of his cancer diagnosis, he received an outpouring of personal stories and support. He learned firsthand that, in addition to being scared for their health, cancer patients were too often scared for their jobs and hid their illness.
Our objective was to remove the stigma and support affected employees by not only raising awareness, but by creating real change. We started by pledging concrete actions to make our employees feel safe, including securing jobs, salaries and benefits for a year and providing career support to patients and caregivers. Then we challenged the global business community to do the same. To eradicate the stigma of cancer at work, we didn’t need just one partner, we needed hundreds. We rallied major media vendors to make meaningful donations, providing unprecedented scale–$100M in pro bono, high-impact media–behind a challenge for companies to commit to policy change.
