The Moment Everything Changed
When Liz Healy was hit by an out-of-control skier on a Vermont mountain in February 2022, she had no idea that a broken tailbone would lead to a diagnosis that would redefine her life. The imaging revealed kidney cancer—but that was only part of the story. When she consulted with four different surgeons in the New York City area, the fourth doctor at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center saw something the others had missed: stage four colorectal cancer that had spread to her liver and lymph nodes.
At 45 years old, colorectal cancer wasn’t on her radar. Neither was the 10-hour emergency surgery to resect her colon and liver, or the hepatic arterial infusion pump that would be placed to fight a disease that had already metastasized. With an initial 7% chance of living five years, Liz faced not just a medical battle, but a profound question: What does it mean to live when you’ve been told you might not?
Three and a half years later, Liz has not only defied those odds—she’s built an entire mission around turning her pain into purpose through advocacy.
What Does Advocacy Really Mean?
When asked to define advocacy, Liz doesn’t offer a simple answer. She talks about layers—about the essential work of being your own health advocate, learning everything you can about your disease, and advocating for family members as a caregiver. But then she goes deeper.
“Advocacy is turning pain into purpose,” she says. And for Liz, that purpose emerged from shock.
In the first six to nine months after her diagnosis, Liz was in survival mode. The mental, physical, and emotional toll of treatments like FOLFOX and managing an infusion pump consumed her days. She wasn’t thinking about raising awareness or inspiring others—she was focused on living through the next round of treatment.
Everything shifted when Colontown invited her to attend the Cologuard Classic in Tucson, Arizona, a colorectal cancer advocacy event and golf tournament for the Champions Tour. There, for the first time, Liz met others who had been fighting colorectal cancer for years. She met people who showed her that life after a stage four diagnosis wasn’t just about surviving—it was about fighting strategically, finding hope, and building community.
That weekend planted a seed. Within months, Liz wasn’t just receiving support—she was giving it.
The Four Pillars of Her Advocacy
1. Movement as Medicine
For four years, Liz has channeled her lifelong athletic passion into fundraising and awareness campaigns. She’s run the New York City Marathon for Fred’s Team at Memorial Sloan Kettering, raising money for colorectal cancer research. She’s done half marathons for the Colorectal Cancer Alliance, climbed mountains for Climb for Cure with Fight CRC, and participated in Cycle for Survival.
What makes this remarkable isn’t just the physical feat—it’s that she’s done most of it while undergoing cancer treatment.
“I may go out to a mile, under two-five, may do 26.2, but whatever it is, it’s a win given what our family is facing,” she explains. But it’s more than a physical achievement. These events fill what she calls her “fight tank”—the psychological and emotional fuel that keeps her going through the darkest days.
This year, she ran the NYC Marathon with a team of 20 people whose lives have been touched by colorectal cancer: stage four patients, caregivers, family members, and friends. They’re targeting 40 runners next year.
2. Sharing Your Story Can Save Lives
Before her diagnosis, Liz was a private person—not on social media, not one to overshare. She was a global executive at IBM and Deloitte, traveling the world, too busy to prioritize medical checkups. She was exactly the kind of person who would skip a colonoscopy because she “felt fine.”
Now she understands the power of telling her story.
“If sharing a little bit of my story can change someone’s mindset—someone like me who says, ‘Oh, I feel okay, I don’t need to go to a doctor’—that gives me something I can do to save one life and one family from going through this,” she says.
She’s learned that awareness isn’t just about statistics or medical facts. It’s about connection, about hearing from someone you relate to that a simple screening could have changed everything.
3. Advocating for Research and Clinical Trials
With two different types of cancer from completely different primary tumors, Liz faced a reality that most patients don’t: finding a clinical trial that could help her was extraordinarily difficult.
But she’s learned something crucial that she now advises other stage four patients: don’t wait until your treatment options are exhausted to start researching clinical trials. Start immediately.
“95% of the trials I’ve been researching, I’ve learned from other advocates that I shouldn’t wait until I’m out of treatment options to look for a trial,” she explains. “Look for it now, especially if you’re stage four.”
This year, she enrolled in a clinical trial at Mass General for her unique situation. While it ultimately didn’t deliver the results she hoped for, she participated knowing that the knowledge gained from her journey could help others. That’s the broader mission of research advocacy—understanding that your participation in a trial isn’t just about saving your own life, but about contributing to science that could save countless others.
4. Serving on Boards and Building Institutional Change
Liz comes from a lineage of service. She attended the Ursuline School in New York, where the motto is “I will serve.” She was captain of the women’s crew team at Cornell University. Throughout her corporate career, she struggled with a tension: she wanted to dedicate herself fully to service work, but she also saw the power of corporations to influence and fund change.
When she was diagnosed, a gift emerged from years of careful financial planning: she had the security to step back from her demanding executive role and focus on service.
Now she serves as a patient advisor with the Colorectal Cancer Alliance, a board member of Sky Hope Angel Flight (an organization that helps medical patients fly to treatment), and a team captain for multiple fundraising initiatives. She and her family are ambassadors for Fight CRC. She fundraises for Camp Kesem and Inheritance of Hope, organizations that care for children of patients with terminal cancer.
She’s transformed what could have been time stolen from her into time given to others.
The Gift in the Grief
What strikes you most when listening to Liz speak about her journey is not despair, but gratitude. Yes, she’s fighting stage four cancer. Yes, the cancer has spread to her lungs, bones, brain, liver, lymph nodes, and glands. Yes, she’s living with brain swelling that has paralyzed her vocal cords, making her voice sound different from the “booming loud Irish woman voice” she’s known for.
But she speaks of cancer as a gift.
“Advocacy is a path of service and giving back to the world,” she says. “It’s a beautiful gift that cancer has given me. It’s something that I always wanted more in my life, and it only took a little bit of stage four cancer to get to it.”
Every good day is an opportunity to put her energy into helping the organizations that saved her life and gave her hope. The Colorectal Cancer Alliance. Colontown. Fight CRC. Memorial Sloan Kettering. These institutions didn’t just treat her—they showed her that she wasn’t alone, that her life had meaning beyond her diagnosis.
And now, by serving them, she’s ensuring that the next person who receives a stage four diagnosis will have the same community waiting for them.
What We Can Learn From Liz’s Story
Liz Healy’s journey offers several lessons that extend far beyond the cancer community:
Be your own advocate. Don’t assume doctors will catch everything or that you know your body well enough. Get smart. Ask questions. Get second, third, and fourth opinions if something doesn’t feel right.
Your story matters. You don’t have to be a professional speaker or writer to make an impact. Sharing your truth—especially the parts that scare you—can change someone else’s life.
Start early. Whether it’s clinical trials or screening, don’t wait until you’re out of options. Research now. Plan ahead. Give yourself every advantage.
Find your movement. For Liz, it was running marathons and climbing mountains. For others, it might be different. But whatever fills your fight tank, whatever gives you a sense of control and hope—pursue it relentlessly.
Turn pain into purpose. You can’t choose what happens to you, but you can choose what you do with it.
Liz Today
As of this recording, Liz is continuing to fight. She’s looking for clinical trials that might offer a “Hail Mary” chance. She’s living with the knowledge that having cancer in her brain means every day is uncertain. But she’s also living with purpose, with community, and with the profound knowledge that her life has meant something to others.
Every marathon completed. Every story shared. Every person she’s mentored through their own cancer journey. Every family she’s helped secure resources they needed.
That’s not just surviving stage four cancer. That’s transcending it.
Liz Healy’s story is one of resilience, but more importantly, it’s a story about choosing service when you’ve been handed circumstances that would justify despair. If you or someone you know is facing a cancer diagnosis, organizations like the Colorectal Cancer Alliance, Colontown, and Fight CRC offer community, resources, and the kind of hope that Liz discovered can literally save lives.
Listen to the full conversation on the Advocacy at Work podcast, where Tim McDonald and Liz dive deeper into the specifics of her journey, the clinical trial process, and what advocacy has meant in her fight against cancer.
