Latest / We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits / 509. Reimagining Philanthropy: How American Cancer Society's BrightEdge is Pioneering a New Model of Philanthropy - Alice Lin Pomponio

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509. Reimagining Philanthropy: How American Cancer Society's BrightEdge is Pioneering a New Model of Philanthropy - Alice Lin Pomponio · We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Hey, I'm John.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: And I'm Becky.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: And this is the we Are For Good podcast.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: So welcome to the Good Community.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: We're nonprofit professionals, philanthropists, world changers and rabbit fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: So let's get started.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: What's going on, Becky?
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: I hope everybody's ready for this conversation, because our guest today is going to knock your socks off with her ideas.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: I know I love this so much because, you know, we started off the year talking about business as usual is over, like it's just so in the past, and we wanted to find examples of people that are like doing this out loud, living it in their real time.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: And so Alice is here with us today and I cannot wait to tell you a little bit of her story and walk you through how ACS is really reimagining the way that philanthropy can move so much faster.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: And so it is my huge honor to introduce you to Alice Lynn Pomponio.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: She's the managing director of Bright Edge, which is American Cancer Society's venture capital and impact investment arm.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Y'all did y'all realize this existed?
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Because, if not, I'm ready to rock your mind a little bit.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Alice is this impact investor, social innovator, entrepreneur and a patient advocate.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: She has this extensive experience in life sciences and business and, following her graduation from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, go MIT.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: With a bachelor's of science and biology.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: She completed a master's of public policy focusing on science and technology from the Harvard Kennedy School just a little casual degree over there.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Her career began with a basic research through the US Human Genome Program.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, you've had your hands, wow.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: It's incredible things, alice, and we're so delighted to have this conversation.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: So she started to really channel all of this lived experience, her professional experience and her passion, her lived experience with her family that has really been impacted by cancer in a really direct way, like many of us on the call today has as well, and so this work with Bright Edge is really leading edge of how do we take philanthropy, how do we take passion, how do we take investment and partner with business and partner with entrepreneurs and break down some of the traditional walls to speed impact.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: And we are so here for this conversation.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Alice, it is great to have you on the podcast.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: Thanks for being here today, thanks for the invitation.
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: Look forward to it.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: Alice, take us back if you wouldn't mind and tell us a little bit about growing up, what it looked like, and maybe some formative experiences that led you into wanting to pour into this work.
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I've often joked about how I'm like the force gump of biotech, like I ended up in places that I really don't know how I got there, and so you know it's growing up first generation from an immigrant family.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: My family came from Taiwan in the 60s.
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: I was a doodleful daughter, was going to be pre-med and just, you know, kind of live the American dream and honestly, I stumbled onto biotech.
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: You know biotech had not really emerged fully as a sector at the time and was just so fortunate to be in the hub of life sciences here in Cambridge Mass and and yeah, that just sort of took off well beyond my expectations.
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: You know I had always been interested in the science and the technical side, but then I really started getting curious about the issues and I like to think I have a molecular biologist mind still, but it's more at a systems level.
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: And so that was when I had the opportunity to pivot and move into more science and technology policy and so my career is kind of tracked with where the sector has gone.
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: So initially it was more around R&D funding, then it became more around regulatory, then around how are we going to afford and pay for these novel, you know, biologics and therapeutics and, sadly, my family mid-career became impacted by cancer.
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: In one family we've had 14 battles over 12 years and, oh, alice, yeah, seven different types of cancer.
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: So you know, really different outcomes.
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: We have survivors who have gone through breast cancer battles, and then we had others who had brain cancer or, like my mother, were uninsured and it just feels so unfair, right, that some people can have really great outcomes and other people are left behind.
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: And so that was, that was kind of my aha moment.
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: I came out of the medicine cabinet and realized, you know, especially since cancer is genetic, if I'm only here for a limited period of time, I really want to use my powers for good.
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: My platform for good, that's what you guys are called.
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: So I started volunteering and that's actually how I came to ACS, wax and Galas, you know, fund raised and then ended up serving on area board, national can board, and got tapped on the shoulder to see if I could do something with bright edge.
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: So that's, that's it in a nutshell.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: That is a very quick nutshell for such a big story.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: Like I'm literally seeing you lighting the luminaries on the ACS walks, of which we've been a part of that too, and just to make sure that we're clear ACS American Cancer Society we talk about it in nonprofit, you know like we just know those acronyms, but I just don't think there's anybody listening to this podcast who has not been affected by cancer, which makes your story so personal to all of us and I want to thank you for just sharing it.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: And I think it's always interesting when we turn on this microphone and we meet people and their life is going in one trajectory and something hits and they just fill this nudge to pivot and to pivot, and I think you pivoting and listening to that nudge and to volunteerism one.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for being an active part of change.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: But I mean you're taking it to the next level.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: And what we really want to talk to you about today, with the understanding that we have this bank of people, of your people, standing behind you, who are walking in lockstep with you in this work, but we want to talk about bright edge and this is a really novel concept to us.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: I assume it would be to our community as well.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: So maybe just start out by telling us an overview of what you're doing here, because I had not heard of venture capital and impact investment arm in a nonprofit, but I'm thinking well, everybody needs one of these in this day and age.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: So kind of talk about why it was created and what it's unlocking for the American Cancer Society.
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, and I think that that tension, or identifying those gaps and making the connections.
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: Having come from the sector, I was in biopharma for the bulk of my career doing pricing, reimbursement, launching some of the most expensive treatments that are out there, and then isn't it ironic that my mother passes because she was scared of what it would cost to get here.
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: I'm so sorry.
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: So the irony of that?
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: And then, at the same time, that really we have these organizations that play such a foundational role in our society.
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: They're funding basic research, they're providing safety net services like free launching, free rides, they're issuing public health guidelines, they're advocating for patients in 50s state capitals, and yet we just sort of assume that they're going to be funded right and the philanthropic funding of these really important you know entities, I think during COVID just highlighted how these are also at risk and they're also not scalable.
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: So that was my kind of aha.
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: And the society had already, back in 2019, launched Bright Edge, initially, really with the sole purpose of diversifying revenue.
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: So they figured well, there's a lot of money being made in cancer deals.
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: We know something about cancer.
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: Let's start venture capital investing with everyone else.
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: I think what the difference is and when I came in in 2021, which was just in the sort of dark ages of the pandemic is we're not like other disease foundations where, let's say, it's a rare disease or it's a rare type of cancer.
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: You know, american Cancer Society is mission is to end cancers.
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: We know it for everyone.
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: So health equity is a really important part of who we are.
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: We don't want anyone to be left behind, and that was actually my reason for wanting to step laterally and move into a full time staff role.
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: A charity that I volunteered for was.
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: You know, we really need to be thinking more strategically about how we deliver mission, and ACS has so many opportunities that are not available to other disease types or organizations, because, you know, we look at pan cancer, all cancers, we're across the entire US.
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: We care more about, you know, at risk patients and, of course, we're funding the most novel scientific breakthrough, but we can't conveniently ignore that health disparity is widening, and so how can you essentially hack the market to do the good that it should be doing all along right and also generate new financing models for important social work at the society?
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: And so that's really the sort of the thinking of bright edge.
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: It's these theories of change around we can invest and generate alternative revenue.
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: We can actually deliver mission through the portfolio, meaning, if the companies are successful, they may even achieve the same, if not better, outcomes than what we do on the charity side.
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: And, you know, maybe we can be catalytic and encourage more innovation in parts of the cancer care continuum where we don't see great commercial product development and business models.
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: So it's a triple, sometimes quadruple, bottom line and we get really, really excited when it works.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: I have so many questions about this, but the one that I want to ask you the most is what is your mother's name?
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: Oh, Jean, Jean.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: It is so important to say their names out loud because I think that something like cancer is so big and we know so many people that are affected and I think we get numbed by that and we need to put the person's face in front of us and remind us.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: So I thank you for sharing that and I want to just channel Jean's love into this conversation as we move forward.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: John, take it away.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: I would just say you know, you've given us such a good context and we're going to get to.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: How do we start to apply some of these principles into our nonprofits?
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: Because we want to set this model really on fire.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: But can you talk about what Bright Edge's impact has been?
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: You talk about that quadruple almost bought online.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: What does that tangibly look like?
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: What has been accomplished?
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and we are not impact by association, right, like we are really at the core and the same rigor and again coming more from medicine's development that we would approach.
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: You know, some of our product development and FDA regulatory or public health guidelines those are all things that are available to ACS, right.
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: So when we say impact, we are talking about really delivering American Cancer Society's mission, and that can be measured through the number of lives touched.
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: So the ACS Impact Venture Fund, which is what we invest through, has, through its 20 portfolio companies 21 portfolio companies has the potential to touch 1.5 million patients.
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: Then we might look even further down as to what types of patients.
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: Are they ones who you know otherwise would have poorer outcomes?
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: Are they the types of cancers that maybe the market, you know, seems unfavorable?
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: Or types of technologies, you know, diagnostics instead of therapeutics, and so that's how we would think of impact through the lens of mission delivery.
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: We also look at, obviously, financial performance and then I think we look at activation within the ecosystem and is there more durable systemic change?
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: You know even us educating people who can make really important and more responsible decisions.
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: I like to say, you know, strategy is all about making choices make the better choice, and in product development across the value chain, making the better choice at all points is really critical to how we deepen impact.
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: So that's how we think of impact, and then, obviously, the scalability and the sustainability of ACS as an organization.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: Okay, that was so succinct and so well put and I'm like that is how y'all are building the movement, especially that last piece right there, because you can measure life's touch, you can measure your dollars, but measuring how you're activating people into the cause, around the cause, awareness, getting their voice, their lived experience, their perspective, their network, their story in it, makes it such a richer movement.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: And again, the more diverse it is, the more it begins to look like all of us, the more it begins to feel like all of us.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: We start to feel and see our stories in there.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: So I just really applaud, not even just the bravery of starting this really diverse revenue model, but for making it so palatable and easy for other people to come in and lock their arms with you.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: So I wanna dive into this venture capital model because I just think it's so fascinating and you're sitting in this really unique purview it feels like, where you have all these experiences in your career, but, yes, you're also bringing in this personal mission.
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: You have this passion you have.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: I wanna know about your perspective of the current philanthropic landscape in terms of how does venture capital, how does this model represent and this sort of new next level approach to philanthropy.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: What are the opportunities that are there for the seizing oh?
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: my gosh, it's just.
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: I think we're really the tip of the iceberg.
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: This feels a little bit like biotech in the 90s, as things were just taking off, and there's a lot of terms that are being used interchangeably venture, venture, philanthropy, philanthropic venture capital.
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: Which bright edge is not?
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: We are actually pretty ruthless with our donor dollars.
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: We want both financial returns and we want mission performance, which I think surprises sometimes people.
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: Clearly, we're willing to take more risk in areas of known impact, which is where we have our 11 mission thematic areas, but absolutely I think that on the investing side.
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: So what is available to us through venture capital investing, it is very strategic, at least in life sciences, for us to be investors, impact investors, through venture capital.
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: Cancer is a little different than other diseases, like I mentioned, because it's so vibrant, with a lot of innovation, scientific discovery.
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: It's also pretty competitive.
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: So for us to show up and say, hey, we're doing something that no one else is doing, we're essentially gleaning bits and pieces of other parts of the ecosystem or just building enough critical mass and putting together a specialist network.
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: That's the value add For us.
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: That is not our starting point.
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: Our starting point is a really competitive deal-making environment where people want to make money and there's loss aversion, they don't want to give up making money to deepen impact.
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: So the rarity in the room is that we represent health equity and venture is really interesting because of the stage of the companies.
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: So what we found and this is my own lived experience working in larger companies where 70% of drugs launched by pharma come in from smaller biotech companies and those are founded out of academic labs and they're surrounded by more financially oriented venture capitalists at the beginning, and by the time they get to the larger companies that do know something about clinical trials or know something about how patients are gonna access and afford, it's kinda too late to change a lot of those decisions earlier.
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: You know the indications already been selected, the clinical trials already in motion, and so the idea that we can come in at the earliest stages and I tried to do this as a consultant, you know get early-stage private biotech companies to care about what type of you know formulation with that being, what would their pricing strategy be?
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: And Even if the CEOs understood it and wanted to do it, sometimes the boards Felt that it was someone else's problem to fix.
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: If it was cool science, it was gonna get paid for.
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: So us showing up as an investor on the cap table with, you know, even a board observer seat, and diversifying the perspectives at those critical product design phases, I think it's gonna be transformational.
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: It's it's, you know, allowing more ethical and rational product design and it's just making it more seamless so that then, like American Cancer Society, cancer Action Network, which is our Advocacy arm, doesn't have to rally, you know, to get things covered After you know they've already been FDA approved.
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: So early is important.
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: And then, on the fundraising side, you know I would say that we're supported by a group of really magnificent, visionary donors we call them our founders circle and many of them are themselves entrepreneurs and they like to see their donor dollars working in a more Entrepreneurial fashion.
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: So they get that of those donors.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I really love those donors.
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: Yes, they're amazing, yeah, I mean.
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: I just it's just shocking to me that they probably identify a little bit in us from their own journey.
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: Like, hey, there are these scrappy emerging fund managers, they've got big, bold ideas.
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: Let's give them the early boost and they're gonna go Change the world.
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: And some of them are just more practical, you know with.
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: They want a more endowed model.
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: They don't want to grant and then see money just go back out and granted.
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: They want to see right, the returns get reinvested.
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: So we're really optimistic about the, the way that the philanthropy community, philanthropists are thinking about blended giving, both granting as well as Impact investing, and we think we're a really great partner for that.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that you defined and you're you and lit up when you talked about your donors that come to you in this way, because we all have people in our own communities that are wired like that, that are maybe successful at business, that would understand the language of business, and so I feel like y'all have this, y'all figured out how to come to the table with something that just makes sense to them and gets them excited, that connects to a deeper passion.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: So I'm curious, like what are those conversations look like?
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: Because I think it's like how this becomes transferable.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: How do you have those kind of investment level conversations with somebody that's so business?
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: But I love you being this mediator that like gets the full picture.
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: I know I'm like she is.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: She is the great like, like connector between the two groups.
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: We need more connection.
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: We need more connectors like that in this work.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, how are you approaching these conversations?
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: I just love to you know kind of get your wisdom in that.
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: With the donors you mean or yeah yeah, with the donors.
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: You know I think it has to start with the mission alignment right, because and we found this people who want to see us like a traditional venture capital firm will have, you know, very ambitious expectations for us on the financial return side and we absolutely want to be market rate.
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: Where we need alignment is essentially that safe invention zone for the more catalytic investing right.
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: So they they would be ones donors who would already Identify with the mission, believe in it and then see Bright edge as an alternative way to finance and fund ACS's mission and deliver the mission and get excited about these novel technologies that, if they were pointed in the right direction and Really infused with an intentional impact strategy, we would have just a completely different model of healthcare moving forward.
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: And cancers again so unique in that, you know we're one of we're there's not that many diseases where you can really Prevent, you know, through wellness and lifestyle don't smoke you can Screen early and intervene early.
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: You can have a range of therapeutics or treatments and you can triage based on, you know, molecular biomarker and then you can continue to Sort of aim to be cancer-free, because cancer is pretty tricky and it continues to mutate.
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: So what if cancer care could be sustainable.
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's like health disparities and health care costs are like the climate change question of healthcare right, the global climate change of healthcare why can't we bring some of those concepts to our investing?
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: And that that's what we're trying to really Educate and build a community of practice around?
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: Okay, so we talk so often about we shouldn't be asking better questions.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: We should be asking bigger questions, and to me you all asked a much bigger question and because you can cast that vision and it's something that people want, I want to live in a world like that.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: I want global health equity For me, for the person I don't know, I know it's going to help us thrive in economies and communities.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: It's going to help elevate every good public health marker by investing in that.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: And so one issue we have on this podcast that I want you to kind of break down for us is we have a lot of small shops and the bulk of nonprofits are small shops and we're talking about people in organizations that make less than a million dollars a year on their gross revenue, and they're probably listening to this saying oh, we're not in ACS, we don't have a name like that, we don't have the depth of support that they have.
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: But I think what you're saying and I'm kind of just feeding this to you is there's a much bigger question here than I'm not ACS, I don't have this funding.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: Break this down for our small shops about how they can embrace this mindset or maybe what's a step or two they could take to start even exploring this as a possibility.
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: I mean, I would say be clear about what end you have in mind, just like you all asked us.
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: We had to pilot bright edge and then formalize it, and I think how we did that is actually goes back to the courageous leadership that you just talked about, meaning we have impact in our operating mission pillars, patient support, research, advocacy where we, as bright edge, actually sit, is in the portfolio.
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: So imagine you're already doing stuff off of your balance sheet with your annual budget.
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: That is like 1000% mission, and now you're getting your investments to work towards mission as well.
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: Right, so good.
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: That's pretty no brainer.
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: It's a no brainer.
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: And so we're part of the responsible investment strategy for American Cancer Society Inc at the board level.
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: So we screen out from an ESG standpoint, no tobacco.
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: And then we are the mission driven manager of investing through bright edge, and so I think that that's the conversation it's probably bigger players like us that will want to have with, let's say, corporations who are granting through their CSR platforms like why aren't they thinking about how their investments can work towards social good as well?
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: And we believe, through things like our cancer impact investment framework, the ability to generate evidence can be an expert's and drive consensus and then informed decision making.
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: We do that already on the public health guideline front, so payers and clinicians look to ACS.
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: So you know, now 45 is when you should be getting your colon cancer screening.
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: Why can't we bring that seam rigor to decision making and investing for impact and also unlock new dollars to grow the impact economy?
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: And so that, I think, is work that needs to be done from a market building standpoint.
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: I mean, when it comes to operationalizing this model for the smaller nonprofits, I would just encourage them to consider whether there are again blended models.
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: Maybe it's something we talk a lot about.
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: These smaller cancer nonprofits, could we serve them by being the aggregator and bring them into our ecosystem, and then they're on the moving walkway and then they have critical mass.
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: So we don't know what that looks like yet.
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: But I would say don't assume anything.
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: Do your homework and be crystal clear on what it is that you want out of the experiment, because it can be a costly experiment if you don't.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's why I think you need an Alice.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: And I'm not saying that we all have an MIT Harvard graduate in our back pocket, which I wish we had, but I'm saying that you have believers within your nonprofit mission and organization.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: You have people who work in the investment space.
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: You have people that work in the adventure space or in the financial markets, and those people are connected to you already.
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: They're already investing in you, whether through their financial guess, whether they're showing up to your events, whether they're your friend on Facebook or whatever it is.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: That is a show of allyship and I think is there an Alice out there waiting to say we need your help?
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: We have this idea.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: Can you help bring it to life?
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: Are there a couple of Alice's?
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: So that's my challenge I'm just going to throw out to the community today.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: It's such a good throw down, and I feel like Alice is just primed and ready for this moment, and so I really appreciate that we can set your ideas on fire.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: But I wonder, how has this experience, how has this work, changed you?
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: I mean, you talked a little bit about your personal life that tugged your heart in this different direction in your journey.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: How has it changed you being part of this?
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: In many ways, acs is a nonprofit.
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: My charity of choice saved me obviously from despair, and it sort of saved me from divorcing this industry and this profession that I had known for 20-something years before I came here, because I was getting pretty disenchanted with the fact that the innovation was only going to novel areas.
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: The disparities continued to grow, no one felt any sort of self-accountability or responsibility, and what really frustrated me was that we didn't have a voice or representation for the beneficiary voice, the end user.
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: Innovation in life sciences to date has really been in these ivory tower universities and then surrounded by venture capitalists and physicians, and so I was desperate, especially as I pivoted into more teaching and working with tech-enabled solutions that we're looking at patient access and adherence and navigation.
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: There's so much that we could be doing directed at system-level barriers that isn't wrapped up in a novel pill or cellar gene therapy.
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: So I definitely, I think, had my lifeline and stayed in the industry.
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: I am now an impact investor, which is a new set of skills, but, coming from policy right, there's a lot that policy has been in.
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: All the folks that listen to your podcast who have advocacy arms, it's actually not that big of a crosswalk when you think of the analysis and the impact you're trying to deliver through legislative or other public policy changes.
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: To just pivot that one more step and think of what would a commercial, market-based approach look like?
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: And how do we incentivize more people or make it so that the incentives are aligned and they don't know that they're doing great social impact work, and just make it easy and frictionless.
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: And so, you know, my Chinese name is Lin Minghui, so if you break it down, it's like the family name.
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: And then Ming is Mingguang, which means bright, moonlight, and then Suhui is more like engineering.
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: And so a lot of people, when they hear the name, they sort of can read between the lines because your parents kind of like hope or charity, they need their children, sort of their aspirations and their wishes, and so people are like, oh, your parents like obviously hoped that you would be bright academically, but then what they're saying is that you can run a household and you'd be a good wife.
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: You know, you can be like an engineer.
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: We need more engineers in healthcare right now.
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: We need people to solve problems, not just discover new problems to work on.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: I had tears in my eyes that her name is literally bright, like I just believe in these things, that we are connected in some way, that we are called to our cause, we are called to our full potential.
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: That is a beautiful story and I just like you so much, alice.
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: I literally am just sitting here with so much gratitude that people like you, compounded by you, know thousands, if not millions, around the world who just pour into what they have, into the thing.
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: That really lights them up and you're making it better and I just thank you so much for your time and your energy and putting your vulnerability and your love in that.
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: And we really celebrate story around here and we mentioned, you know, in the intro that we're here for an impact uprising.
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: We believe that philanthropy can reach its fullest potential when everybody has access and when everybody can lean into doing good.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: And I wonder if there's a story of philanthropy that has stayed with you in your life.
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: It doesn't have to be an actual financial gift.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: It could be a little moment of kindness and everything in between.
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: What's bubbling up for you?
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: I think there's an element of trust and sort of shared humanity, right?
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: You know where we're constant.
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: Look, I married into an Italian family, which means that everybody's touching you and they're hugging you.
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: I get it.
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: And they're constantly looking for ways to make connections right, whether it's like you like the same food or you stepped foot on the same block in New York or whatever it is.
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: And I think that we need that kind of leaning forward and leaning in approach to really open up the world to more connectivity, because what's happened is we're all trying to subspecialize and be in our own swim lanes and that's artificial, right?
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: It's really hard to design great models with those constraints and I think when folks air on the side of being skeptical or, you know, critical, then we're never going to find that safe invention zone where people can trial new models and new, you know, collaborations.
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: So my first career in biopharma, I worked a lot on rare diseases and orphan drug legislation and a lot of that was about when it came to health policy and health technology assessment.
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: What is the new set of decision rules that we would use to evaluate, you know, these technologies, these medicines, rule of rescue where does that come in?
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: You know how do you value, right, pediatric, and these are tough societal questions.
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: But if we don't have more sort of commonality and shared purpose, then the whole opportunity just starts to crumble.
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: So that's why, starting with both donors and even corporate partners that are mission aligned for us, we don't want to work with bullies.
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: I mean, we hear all the time oh, we don't need your money, we're doing you a favor.
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: No, you know, like my, gosh, you don't want to be the charity in the room, right, like we are legit impact specialists and you have to work hard for us to be in your deals One and then two.
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: You know, if we're going to do bright edge, we really want to work with people who share ACS's mission, because if they're in it out of association or for prestige or for even shared returns financially, then it's not.
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: It's not a sustainable or scalable model.
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: I mean yeah it's just like a new wave of philanthropy happening in all different directions in this work that you're doing, and we're just so here for that.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: Love the way that you story tell to.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: So I want to, you know, round out this conversation, asking for a piece of advice from you, alice, and I know you've got a lot.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: You keep dropping the mic over there, but we ask for a one good thing.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: It could be a mantra, it could be a life hack, it could be just a piece of a word that's being lifted that you want to share with the community as we wrap up today.
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: So not that it's a pity party, but in my situation I don't have necessarily the survivor rah rah moments that I know.
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: A lot of people who come to cancer do.
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: So I'm kind of a cancer orphan, if you will.
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: And I say to my team a lot because we see so many opportunities to invest and make money for the society and I always say you know, how can we keep the patient in the room?
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: So when we have events, sometimes there's an empty chair and we're like patients in the room, because when these dollars go to work, what we have to remember is, yes, we might invest them and, yes, they might generate returns.
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: And there's novel therapeutics for people 15 years down the road, but there's someone today who might need free lodging to be able to make it to their appointments, and so that, just like I love policy and I love complexity, I don't mind that tension.
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: I feel like it's.
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: It actually helps you get stronger.
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: You know when you can sit in that very uncomfortable place, because it's role modeling, the behavior for others.
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: We leap too quickly into right things that have worked before or we think that our colleagues expect us to do, but when we pause and we grapple with some hard stuff, like the patients in the room.
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: What would we say to them?
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: I'm sorry you can't have x, y and z, because here's this cool investment we want to make.
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, now I know why Alice is so successful.
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: I really do.
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: I mean, if you can center humanity like that in front of everything that you do, it just feels like you're not walking alone.
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: It's like you're walking with so many who couldn't even be at the table.
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: So thank you for your equity work, thank you for the ways that you show up so tell people where they can connect with you and where they can connect with Bright Edge.
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: Obviously through the American Cancer Society webpage, which is cancerorg, which links to acsbrightedgeorg, and we are out there in the community too.
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: Come find us at Scientific Congresses.
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: We actually have a health equity meetup at South by Southwest.
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: We really want to share diverse perspectives and better understand these problems, because half of the solution is how you define the problem.
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: And then we want to be really bold and leverage ACS's unique platform to transcend all of the barriers and the constraints of the current ecosystem.
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: So come find us.
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: Come find us in your local community or at some of the conferences that we're at.
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: Alice Outstanding.
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: Thank you to your family, your incredible family behind you, to showing up to be a volunteer at this organization.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: That also saw the brightness in you that brought you into this Like what a journey, what a story just here for this.
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: Really grateful for this time.
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: And just honoring Jean and honoring this wonderful legacy that she has left behind, that you can compound.
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: Thank you, alice, keep going.
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you both.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much for being here.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: Friends, and you probably hear it in our voices, but we love connecting you with the most innovative people to help you achieve more for your mission than ever before.
• 37:22
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• 37:24
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• 37:28
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• 37:31
  Speaker 2: Backslash hello.
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: And one more thing if you love what you heard today, would you mind leaving us a podcast rating interview?
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: It means the world to us and your support helps more people find this community.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much, friends.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: Can't wait for our next conversation.