Breast Cancer Awareness
One of the things that I learned when I was writing about these awesome female leaders in Final Four Leadership, is that each of them is always on the lookout for ways in which they can contribute to their profession. It might be sitting on a committee, it might be conducting a clinic to show others how they do what they do, or it might be a simple hand-written note to a new colleague who’s risen in the ranks and has assumed a position of leadership.
In the interest of giving back, I was searching for a way to say ‘thank you’ to the eight coaches and their colleagues who gave so much of their time to me to get the book written. Over the past three years, cancer has had a big impact on my life and on my family and on my friends. My wife is a cancer survivor, my sister is a cancer survivor…each of my three daughters has had to watch a classmate bury a parent who’s died from cancer in the past three years. And right now we’ve got a close friend who’s been battling both breast and ovarian cancer during this past year. She’s had surgeries and treatments and she was able to get back into the classroom this fall (she’s a high school teacher) and she’s been very inspirational to me. So with that as a backdrop, and having difficulty coming up with a way to give back, when Kay Yow, the long-time coach at North Carolina State, passed away from breast cancer last winter, the light bulb went off in my head. When I finished writing Final Four Leadership, I contacted the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association and signed a licensing agreement with the Kay Yow/WBCA Cancer Fund. It is affiliated with The V Foundation (after Jim Valvano) and it provides research grants specifically to those scientists and doctors searching for cures for women’s cancers. I’ve got a crazy number in my head that I’d like to donate to the Yow Fund, but I’m going to have to sell a lot of books. October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
So, one of the smaller lessons I learned from these successful female leaders is to find a way to give back. Writing this book was a team effort, so this is my way of recognizing everyone who had a part in this coming together.
Tags: women and leadership