In 2014, we built “Match.com for cancer.” It eventually died. The idea didn’t. Twelve years later, a CancerBuddy retreat sent me looking back at 30 years of survivorship, community, failure, progress, and the shoulders we stand on.

I went to RosettaFest expecting to give a keynote. I left with the Marshall Allen Award and a completely different understanding of employer-sponsored healthcare, patient advocacy, and why the companies we work for may be one of the most overlooked forces shaping American healthcare.

ASCO 2026 delivered extraordinary advances in cancer research, including a standing ovation for a pancreatic cancer breakthrough. Yet the dominant conversation centered on something else: the widening gap between scientific innovation and patients’ ability to access it.