Rising Stars: Meet Molly of Bingham Farms

Today we’d like to introduce you to Molly

Hi Molly, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Pink Fund was founded and launched in the fall of 2006, a year after I completed treatment for early-stage breast cancer.
The organization came about as a result of my early-stage breast cancer diagnosis in April of 2005 at a time of job transition. While my diagnosis was unlikely to take my life, it took my livelihood as I was transitioning between jobs.
Without an income, our family experienced “financial toxicity” eight years before the term was coined by Doctors Yousuf Zafar and Amy Abernethy at Duke University.
Since then, multiple studies have been conducted with respect to the financial challenges cancer patients face when in treatment for the disease. These studies have resulted in various interventions to help mitigate the financial fallout patients and families face like treatment non-adherence, prescription abandonment (prescriptions that are never picked up at the pharmacy due to lack of transportation or inability to cover the co-pay), medically related bankruptcy and in the most egregious cases, earlier mortality because patients stop treatment and return to work because they are at risk to lose everything.
Pink Fund has worked with several highly esteemed breast cancer radiologists and others to conduct these studies with women and men we have helped.
In the beginning it was very slow going. No one really believed that I could pull this off. I started speaking anywhere an organization needed a free speaker. Women’s groups, churches, synagogues, Rotary, Kiwanis, Optimists clubs. . . . you name it I would go. In 2012 Ford Motor Company Warriors in Pink picked up Pink Fund and took us national. Their multi-million dollar investment in our mission over the last 14 years was a game changer. Since then we have other national partners, a national board of directors and recently acquired a national publication called Breast Cancer Wellness Magazine, which publishes digitally, quarterly.
The magazine is free to subscribers, and more importantly goes to hundreds of breast cancer centers in the United States through our partnership with the National Consortium of Breast Centers.
By the end of this year, Pink Fund will have delivered just under $10 million in financial assistance, making payments to patient’s creditors for housing, transportation, utilities and insurance.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I have overcome numerous challenges in launching Pink Fund, thanks to the support of my husband and co-founder.
Initially, I started an organization under a different name with two people I trusted implicitly, one my surgeon, the other a good friend. When I conceived of this idea and needed help I asked each of them to join me and they readily agreed.
Within a year, for reasons I can only speculate, they took over my organization and had a courier deliver a letter to my home indicating they were severing their relationship with me. I have never been more stunned.
In retrospect they did me a favor. In releasing me I have been able to build a highly respected national organization, sit on two boards of directors, speak nationally at highly esteemed conferences and most recently been featured in Forbes.com under Women’s Leadership.
Within a few days of receiving this notice, my husband Tom came up with a new name Pink Fund and on October 2, 2006, we launched in The Detroit Free Press with a front-page story in what was then the women’s section. Free Press Medical writer, Pat Anstett Kiska wrote the story which was picked up by 27 newspapers.
Another significant challenge was building our first board of directors. I asked three friends and my husband. One of them became insistent that we have office space and signed a lease which obligated Pink Fund to a year. Under our bylaws no one can indebt the organization to a legal contract except the President which is me. In violating the bylaws, it became clear to her that she personally was legally and financially obligated to pay the lease, at which point she resigned. Fortunately, my husband found a commercial real estate attorney to help us get out of the lease and worked with us at no cost.
Another board challenge was a director whose behavior was such during meetings that we had three resignations from the board.
One of the craziest challenges was very early on we learned that someone in Colorado was raising money nationally at sporting events selling t-shirts for cash using our name as the recipient of the funds. We were alerted by a bar in Texas who became suspicious and later a reporter from the Chicago Sun Times. The case went to trial, and I was subpoenaed. We learned he had taken a total of $4.5 million. We received a settlement of $50,000 which for us was a lot of money in 2012 and this individual went to jail.
We have also found other organizations copying our mission and much of our content word for word from our website. And trademark infringements using Pink Fund and other marks which we have legally registered. We know some of this is innocent, but we do have to shut it down.
Other challenges are fairly typical, raising money, budgeting ,managing cash flow.
 

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
My primary role in the organization is to represent us in the community and nationally. I have been invited to keynote conferences, moderate panels, and sit on panels as a subject matter expert. Pink Fund also participates in research studies with illustrious research institutions like The University of Michigan, Emory University and Northwestern Medicine in Chicago. These studies are published in highly regarded publications like the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Additionally, I am on the board of the National Breast Cancer Coalition, the Advisory Board of Value Based Insurance Design out of The University of Michigan and a member of the American Cancer Society’s National Breast Cancer Roundtable. I have also served as a novice Consumer Reviewer at the Department of Defense Congressionally funded Breast Cancer Research Program, where I reviewed research proposals for consideration for funding.

Any advice for finding a mentor or networking in general?
I am a mentor and I have mentors. Everyone on our team mentors me in various ways and everyone I meet is my teacher.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.pinkfund.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thepinkfund/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ThePinkFund
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/3035820/
• Twitter: https://x.com/ThePinkFund
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/thepinkfund