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Karen Knudsen: Honored to have delivered the Edward M. Kovach Cura Personalis Endowed Lecture

Karen Knudsen/LinkedIn

Jan 11, 2025, 14:05

Karen Knudsen: Honored to have delivered the Edward M. Kovach Cura Personalis Endowed Lecture

Karen Knudsen, Executive Strategic Advisor and Immediate Past CEO of ACS, shared a post on LinkedIn:

“What a great way to end the week! Feeling deeply honored to have delivered the Edward M. Kovach Cura Personalis Endowed Lecture at Georgetown University School of Medicine and Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center yesterday evening, with a focus on “Making a Difference in the Complicated Lives of Cancer Survivors,” and highlighting two critical areas:

– The urgent need for innovation in the cancer survivor space.
– The pivotal role of policy in creating durable solutions for the challenges faced by cancer survivors.

As a reminder, there are >18M cancer survivors in the USA alone… a number expected to grow to 26M+ by 2040. To address the coming “Survivor Tsunami”, we closed the evening with a highly interactive panel discussion led by visionary Director Louis M. Weiner, alongside the key voices of patient advocate Nicole Faison, CSM + Nina Kadan-Lottick, Lombardi’s lead for survivorship research. What a joy to have so many in attendance from Georgetown University Law Center, which further enriched the policy discussion.

A heartfelt thank you to the Kovach family for making this endowed lecture possible, and to Georgetown/Lombardi for the very appropriate focus on advancing survivorship care. Can’t wait to put some of these ideas into action!”

Karen Knudsen: Honored to have delivered the Edward M. Kovach Cura Personalis Endowed Lecture

Karen Knudsen is the Executive Strategic Advisor and Immediate Past CEO of the American Cancer Society (ACS). Prior to joining ACS, Dr. Knudsen served as executive vice president of Oncology Services and enterprise director for Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson Health.

She also served as president for the Association of American Cancer Institutes (AACI) and on the board of directors of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). She serves on the board of advisors for the National Cancer Institute, on 12 external advisory boards for NCI-designated cancer centers and on Exai Bio.

She is an active member of several committees with the American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO), in addition to serving on other academic and for-profit advisory boards.