We are privileged to be nominated as a candidate team for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s (LLS) 2024 Nashville Student Visionaries of the Year campaign. Student Visionaries of the Year is a seven-week leadership development program from January 14th to March 3rd to raise money to help blood cancer patients survive and thrive after treatment. We are writing today to ask for your support of my campaign and LLS’s mission to find a cure for blood cancers and improve the quality of life for patients.

Team Secure The Cure is a group of committed friends and family partnering with us on this journey. The money raised helps LLS, the largest nonprofit dedicated to creating a world without blood cancers, fund research to advance lifesaving treatments, drive advocacy for policies that protect patient access to these treatments, and provide patients and families with hope, guidance, education, and support. Our candidate team is particularly passionate about research and will represent this area of LLS during my campaign.

LLS funds the most promising blood cancer research globally and forges collaborations to accelerate new discoveries, treatments, and cures. With a more than 70-year track record, LLS has supported virtually every advancement in blood cancer treatment, including previously thought-impossible approaches. LLS has invested more than $1.5 billion in cancer research since 1949, leading to immunotherapy, genomics, and personalized medicine breakthroughs that improve and save patients’ lives.

Our motivators include one of our best friends, Ansley McEvoy, a lymphoma survivor, and Sophia’s uncle, Bobby Crockett, who sadly lost his battle at 11 years old to leukemia. Sophia’s dad, Dan Crockett, was the youngest bone marrow donor in the country at the time of his brother’s treatment. Running for and hopefully winning Student Visionaries of the Year would allow us to bring awareness to unheard stories and adversity that millions have experienced. This campaign also gives us opportunities for mentorship through philanthropists in our community and advocating for those who are enduring these diseases day by day.