This Week in Advocacy
Stages, Service & a New Beginning
Every week I get to do something that genuinely fills me up: tell the world about people who are out here doing the work. Not the glamorous, headline-grabbing kind of advocacy, though sometimes it is that too, but the showing up, the training, the speaking when it’s hard, the listening when someone else needs it most. This week’s three advocates are proof that patient advocacy looks different in every disease community, and that every single form of it matters. Pull up a chair.
Tamika Felder — Cervivor, Inc. linkedin.com/in/tamikafelder
Tamika Felder has been a force in cervical cancer advocacy for longer than most people have known what HPV even means. This week she’s got something special on the horizon: she’s been selected as a speaker at the American Cancer Society’s 2026 Virtual State Engagement HPV Summit, running July 21–23. And on July 23rd, she and Virginia Marable will share the Cervivor story together — for the first time, in this way, as a pair. That detail matters. Tamika has built something real with Cervivor, a community rooted in survival and powered by sisterhood. To see her take the stage alongside someone who has walked that same road, to share not just a mission but a bond, that’s not just a presentation. That’s testimony. That’s what it looks like when you build something that outlasts the moment you were diagnosed. If you’re anywhere near the HPV or cervical cancer space this week, this session is not one to miss.
Michelle Reed, CSCA — Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network linkedin.com/in/michelle-reed-csca
Michelle Reed was diagnosed with non-muscle invasive bladder cancer at 43. Eight years later, she just completed training as a Survivor to Survivor volunteer with the Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network (BCAN). Let that sink in for a second. Eight years of living with a diagnosis, of navigating scans and scopes and uncertainty, and her response is to turn around and say, “Okay — who else needs to hear that they’re not alone?” That’s not a small thing. That is the entire engine of patient advocacy. The Survivor to Survivor model works because it’s not clinical. It’s human. It’s someone picking up the phone and saying, “I’ve been where you are, and here’s what I want you to know.” Michelle is now that person for newly diagnosed bladder cancer patients — listening, sharing, and doing the quiet, essential work of making a terrifying experience feel less isolating. I’m so glad she shared this milestone publicly, because it deserves to be celebrated out loud.
Vanessa Ghigliotty, CPN — GI Cancer Advocate linkedin.com/in/vanessa-ghigliotty-cpn-69974736
When a brand-new conference is being built from scratch, one designed specifically to empower patients and providers living with and after gastrointestinal cancer, and the organizers are choosing their keynote speaker, they picked Vanessa Ghigliotty. That tells you everything. The inaugural Empower Patient + Provider GI Conference lands in Washington DC on October 3, 2026, and Vanessa will be front and center. If you know Vanessa, you know she brings both credentials and lived experience to every room she enters, and she doesn’t let either one outshine the other. (Plus she was recently a guest on our podcast!) As a Certified Patient Navigator, she understands the system. As someone who has walked through GI cancer herself, she understands the human side of that system in a way no textbook can teach. Keynoting an inaugural conference means helping set the tone for everything that follows. That’s a responsibility, and it’s clearly in exactly the right hands.
These are your people. Go follow them, cheer them on, share their work in your communities.
And if you know someone doing advocacy work that deserves a spotlight — a caregiver, a community builder, a newly trained volunteer, a keynote speaker, anyone — nominate them for next week’s edition. Just reply to this email or find me at advocacyatwork.com. This newsletter exists because of people like the three above, and it only grows when you help me find them.
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