Inside the Melanoma Research Alliance: How to Scale Impact | Stephanie Kauffman (Podcast 563)

COOs so often get bunched into that, oh, it's finance, it's audit, it's governance. Those are always telling stories. Early on in my career, I was moved into a partnership sponsorship function, and I would have team members who would say, oh, I'm on the account management side. I'm not really a salesperson. I could never do sales. And I would tell them, you're selling every day to the existing account relationship that you already have. You're convincing them to step into this movie. You're convincing them to maybe upgrade what their investment is going to be. So think about what that story you're going to tell. And then I think one of the biggest pieces of advice I got early in my career is remember your audience. Know who your audience is going to be and how are you going to get to that yes in terms of that storytelling has been invaluable to me in my, in my career.

Our guest today is Stephanie Kaufman, the President and Chief Operating Officer of the Melanoma Research Alliance, the largest nonprofit funder of melanoma research in the world. Stephanie's career sits at the intersection of strategy, operations, and impact. She's led partnerships and communications at major mission-driven organizations from the Breast Cancer Research Foundation to Americares, and now drives the strategic and operational engine behind MRA's groundbreaking work in accelerating progress toward better treatments and ultimately a cure. In this conversation, we explore how storytelling can become a secret weapon for partnerships and leadership, the 3 Bs for translating up and aligning with your CEO and your team and across the board if you have one, and what it really means to think boldly and bring your team along for the ride. She shares a really cool story actually of a huge win that they had at the Breast Cancer Research Foundation that just gave me goosebumps. So I'm excited for you to hear that. And if you are in general just wanting to learn from a world-class operator who blends heart, vision, and execution to mobilize millions and millions of dollars for impact, you are going to love this episode with Stephanie Kaufman. Let's dive in. We are live with Stephanie. Welcome to the show.

Thank you so much. It is so fantastic to be with you. Big fan of the pod, and it's an honor to be with you and, and hopefully we can share some wisdom and nuggets of information with my fellow chief operating officers.

Absolutely. I know that this is going to be a good one just from our little 10 minutes of prep here. I kind of want to throw it back to you of the same question I asked earlier because I loved your perspective on it, but I asked why you were interested in being on the show. Would love to hear your answer to that.

No, absolutely. I, I love this idea of second in command because it's really dual in command in so many respects. And I don't think that the COO community gets showcased in, in such an incredible way in terms of what is really lifting up that vision of a board, of a CEO. How does that get translated into reality? What are all the different parts and frameworks that you have to bring alive in order to realize that vision? You know, how do you bridge the idea with the moonshot and then operational reality? And to have these types of insights from such a diverse community of COOs, you know, across sectors, across industries, really inspired me to want to be a part of the conversation. And I think it really helps bring about some great knowledge in this increasingly difficult and complex world where COOs have to be at this intersection of what's happening from technology to new finance measures, to what's happening from people, people and talent culture, to also also making sure that the organization is thriving and humming every single day. And so, I really love the conversation that this pod creates for all of us who are just navigating our way to realize a mission, but everyday success.

Absolutely. I totally agree with you. One of the things that we are going to get into today is around the topic of storytelling and how, as you mentioned, there's so many pieces in the COO role, and how you believe storytelling is so important for all of those pieces. So we're going to dive into that. But first, going back to mission, as you mentioned, tell us a little bit about the mission of your company. What do you do and who do you serve?

Well, I have the great privilege of serving as the, uh, chief operating officer for the Melanoma Research Alliance. We are proud to serve as the largest nonprofit funder of melanoma research in the world. Melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer. It's gonna impact about 100,000 people here in the US this year. And what a lot of people don't realize about melanomas, so often skin cancer and then melanoma sometimes gets marginalized to, oh, it's just skin cancer. You could just take it out and you're fine. And that's not the case. Uh, skin cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in the US, but melanoma accounts for 80% of the fatalities um, in, in terms of that diagnosis. So what we do at the Melanoma Research Alliance is we provide investment funding to researchers and scientists across the world who are looking for better treatments, better early, uh, detection and diagnosis for the disease. We're really proud we've invested $175 million in research projects, about 500 research projects across 19 countries. If you are diagnosed with melanoma, Prior to our founding in 2007, an advanced case, you were more than likely had a less than 10% chance of survival. There were no treatment options really available, maybe two. And today, thanks to the investments that we've helped bring about in partnership with, you know, across the horizon of science, pharma, biotech, and other organizations, today you, a melanoma patient now has 17 FDA-approved treatments that's available to them, which is really exciting. 50% of people now have really amazing survivor opportunities, but obviously we've got a lot more work to do. So I get to oversee really our business, our impact across the organization from resource mobilization, communications, storytelling, and then obviously everything that lifts that work up in terms of operations. Who I serve, actually what we say is the heart of everything that we do is the patients, the patients and the caregivers who are impacted by this insidious disease. But we serve a board, and in my particular case, the Melanoma Research Alliance board, I have the great benefit of having some of the most legendary leaders of finance that convene on our board. So the fact that I have access to these legends in finance, private equity, that can really help guide us through financial resiliency investment strategies is a tremendous gift. We also have leaders across media, retail, pharma, biotech. So it gives me an opportunity to tap into our board in terms of a panoramic look at all the different levers of what our business does. Have an incredible CEO. We have— this is our second journey together. We were collaborators previously at the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. So a big fan, a big fan, a big, big fan of his vision and his bold reality. And I also, I play in service to the team members. That we have at our organization. We're very small, we're very agile. We have 10 colleagues. So I would say we have several people that I am proud to be in service to.

Amazing. The, uh, stats that you gave me a few minutes ago, I just wanna recap to make sure I heard them correctly. Sure. You say in about 20 years it's gone from 10% survival to 50%?

If you have an advanced, uh, case of melanoma, there are now treatments available that push that survivorship for about 50% of those patients, which is great, but we still have 50% of the patients who don't have an option. But what I would tell you that a lot of people don't realize is that melanoma research has actually unleashed a whole new era of oncology. It used to be if you had a cancer diagnosis, you had three standards of care. You had surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, and melanoma actually pioneered, uh, immunotherapy. So using your body's immune system to fight cancer back, and as a result of all the breakthroughs that we've seen as a result of melanoma research, um, it's now informing the treatments for 30 other cancers and diseases, everything from lung cancer to bladder cancer to kidney cancer. And that's as a result, um, melanoma is a fast-moving, but that's what a lot of people don't realize. They're like, oh, you cut it out and it's done. It's not the case. It's a very fast-moving cancer. So we're able to get those answers quicker as opposed to a slower-moving cancer. And it's really exciting that all these new breakthroughs in oncology, chances are melanoma research has been the launchpad for, for that disease. So it's, it's really exciting to see what has been accomplished, to your point, in less than 20 years. And with really, if you stack it up in terms of all the different cancer research funding that's out there, it's actually been a fairly large return on investment in terms of the impact that it's had across the entire field.

And you're so right about the, maybe the under— what's the word I'm looking for? Like not as big of a focus on melanoma. Uh, I mean it, like I've heard that like, oh, that's like the one you least need to worry about. Like if you do get skin cancer, it's like not that big of a deal. It's like the highest survival rate. Um, that is actually the, coming into this, the, the thing that I've heard circling in my mind, cuz that's like the latest and the most frequented thing that I hear about it. So this is really impactful for me to just have more awareness around, and I'm sure for other people too. And we are gonna get into the operations, but I am curious, are there any like 1 to 2 things that maybe outside of sunscreens, like, yeah, wear your sunscreen, um, you found to be like something that the everyday person can do or keep in mind that can prevent melanoma?

No, it's a great question. 90% of melanomas are are as a result of UV exposure. So the sun essentially. So yes, sunscreen is one of your first line defenses, but there's also an opportunity. So if you're, if you're out and about during the day and you know you're gonna be outside for a long time, wear a wide-brimmed hat, maybe some UPF apparel clothing that you could, you know, possibly tap into if you're gonna enjoy the beach for the day, or if you're gonna go do something sports-related, or you just know that you're gonna have multiple hours in the sun. So those are some very quick things that you can do, and certainly I do. Also, I think what a lot of people don't realize, one of the tips that I learned when I stepped into this space was if you're on long-haul airplane rides and you're by the window, you need to have sunscreen on because you're at a higher level of, of, you know, UV exposure. And unfortunately, commercial airline pilots and flight attendants and flight crews actually are at a much higher risk for melanoma. So I would say if you happen to be in an office space that has you know, wonderful, beautiful windows, which is great, lets that light in. You probably should take a, you know, just have some sunscreen, sunscreen on. So that's a real practical tip. So some sunscreen, wear a hat, sunglasses. If you're on a long car ride, definitely, you know, make sure that you have your skin protected because that UV exposure comes in. We see it in truck drivers. We see truck drivers who, you know, long-haul truck drivers, they tend to have melanoma that will be— or skin cancer that'll be diagnosed on their left-hand side because that's where the window is the driver's side. So it's just really important to, to protect your skin and there's a lot of easy ways to do it. And so often I get asked, what sunscreen should I use? And I will tell people it's the one that you will actually apply. So something that's broad spectrum, SPF 30.

Perfect. Thank you for sharing that. Okay, well, let's get into some operational things. I want to circle back to the financial piece that you had just mentioned around your board. You said, I've been able to learn some things from financial legends. What have been some of those financial pieces that you've learned from these legends?

No, absolutely. I think the first thing I would share is we actually look at when we go to invest in, you know, what, what, where's the science that we wanna invest in? I would tell you we take probably, a very private equity approach to our investment strategy and really understanding, you know, how private equity looks at the acquisition, you know, of a company and then how, how they bring that about. So I think we— I've learned a lot about how do we take a nonprofit grant model and then how do you mirror that to finance or in our case, you know, private equity By employing this, you know, very rigorous, high-impact model focused on, you know, maximizing returns, you know, obviously in our case it's, you know, how much science can you advance and how can that improve the outcomes for patients. So not, you know, we have kind of that return on impact, that's our ROI. And I think we look at it as how can we build a transformative portfolio of science. So how do we strategically identify the most promising research projects in the way that, you know, a finance company or private equity company or M&A kind of strategically identifies companies with high growth potential. We really look at our research portfolio as what will have, maybe it's high risk, but maybe has the biggest potential to create those breakthroughs across the spectrum of melanoma research. You know, that early detection, prevention, treatment breakthroughs, survivorship, quality of life. Then we do our own rigorous, you know, process in terms of how do we vet those proposals, bringing around, you know, cross-collaborative synergistic experts much in the way that, you know, a private equity firm might rely on market analysis and management assessments. And then once our funding is allocated, we stay very engaged. We monitor the progress, we foster that collaboration, and again, we're looking to generate outsized impact. And I think our model over these last several years has certainly proved that out, but not not just for the melanoma patients for today, but for future generations of this disease. And I think, you know, really having a view into that real high-level investment strategy that really amplifies every single dollar has really been a great learning process for me in terms of how you rethink your investment strategy as someone who invests in cancer research, where you may not see that outcome tomorrow in the way that other mission-based organizations may be able to say, okay, well, we built this and you can see this. You know, cancer research, you know, you're probably gonna see the next impact of, uh, a new treatment option 10 years from now. But how, how do you track that to, to give success?

What are the lessons that you've learned in that process? Because I would imagine the way that you guys are raising money for people that are like, please fund our projects, is different than a CEO who might be in more of a B2B or an agency, it could be really anything, but they might be interested in doing partnerships from a marketing or revenue generating standpoint. What are the lessons that you've learned in your career thus far in what you're doing with the Research Alliance that could transfer to a COO who might not be like raising money for research, but is wanting to create partnerships? For general marketing or other revenue ideas that they have?

No, absolutely. You know, there— I— my, my background initially was always in kind of that marketing communications partnership space versus the quote-unquote traditional operational space of finance, governance, administration. And so often there would be these two chambers of, oh, it's marketing and sales partnerships over here doing their thing, and are they really kind making sure that there's diligence behind those deals and vice versa. Sometimes you would see the operations role as going to your operators is, okay, how many, you know, guardrails are they going to put up to get in the way of that deal? And so the opportunity for me to now bring that experience I've had in marketing and sales and now with a very forward-thinking operational lens, I think first things first is, as a COO now, I really look at where are their values alignment? So what does this partner want to, what are they looking to get out of a partnership, let's say with the Melanoma Research Alliance? Does it align with what we're, what we're doing? Is it at cross purposes? Is that partner asking a lot of our organization that I now have to balance the bandwidth of, again, a very small and agile team. Are they looking for me to become— are they looking for MRA, I should say, to become their de facto cause marketing agency? You know, where are those balance, where are those tension points, where are those friction points? And so I think to the extent that a COO really can get into the marketing speak of where the brand values alignment, what are the— what is that partner looking to activate, what resources is it going to really absorb within the organization, and then what, what's going to be the opportunity? So often I would hear, and I just used this reference a couple days ago with some friends of mine who are in marketing and entertainment, which is initially my background. And it was this idea like, well, it's this partnership. We don't know exactly what it's going to do, but it's a little bit like chicken soup. We know it'll do something good. I do think when you're the operations leader, in that case, fine, you can talk about the chicken soup model. But, you know, again, how do you partner up with your other colleagues to say, okay, let's really look at that holistic look. It may be a win that will satisfy one aspect of our board member's wish, another key stakeholder's wish, but what is going to be the entire impact on the organization? Then how do you balance that out? And I think in this particular case, as you're looking to scale those partnerships where you may be serving multiple stakeholders who really want to do this, but maybe the diligence isn't there and they want to have you move with velocity. I think in those moments is, as you're thinking about partnerships and you're thinking about how you bring those together, particularly again, if it's more of a consumer-facing or even B2B-facing partnership, like how do you tap into your emotional intelligence around these deals? How do you figure out the diplomacy that is needed to kind of navigate what everybody is looking for at the table and then have the courage to push back where it's needed? Because ultimately, Ultimately, you have to ensure that the organization is sustainable, that there are safety and guardrails back, but not always to say no. I don't want to be the land of no. I always want to figure out how do we shape the answer yes very responsibly. And that's some of the filters that I think about in my approach to balancing the tensions that sometimes in terms of what we have to do operationally, what we have to do to balance our team's capacity, and is it going to be a win. And I will tell you in our space, the nonprofit space, not everything will be a yes. We will absolutely say to people who come in, oh, I want to work with you. And it's not going to be a win for our mission. It's not going to be a win for us. It feels a very one-sided value prop. And where it would be a scenario where we're going to have you do all this and at the end of the day, it's going to be maybe a $3,000 return on investment. Well, that's not a good use of our time, or, and it certainly dilutes our mission and our team.

What is an example of a partnership that you've set up that was a huge win?

This was during my Breast Cancer Research Foundation days, which is where I was prior to joining the Melanoma Research Alliance. So my first half of my career, I was in, um, media and entertainment. I was the senior vice president of global alliances for Universal Studios, which basically worked with brands who had an interest in having a long-term relationship with the studio, product placements and marketing in Universal's films and theme parks. So I knew from that experience that gaming is huge and the ability of gamers and how loyal they are to their games. And I realized through a partnership that we were doing— see, I think it was Mafia Wars, one of those games back in the day— that gamers were really excited to purchase this avatar avatar of the Scarface suit to put as their avatar. I think it really was Mafia Wars. And it was making the studio a ton of money every single month, like just, you know, evergreen revenue that was coming in from people who were willing to spend $14.99 to basically have their character have this, you know, this costume, if you will. They called it skin in gaming. So I knew that there was something there. And when I was at the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, we had some conversations with Blizzard Entertainment. And as it turned out, they had a number of employees whose loved ones, family, had been impacted by a breast cancer diagnosis. And so we worked with them on their Overwatch game, in which gamers, consumers could purchase a skin for the character Mercy, which very much aligned with our organization because she was a healer. And you could do— it was a pink ribbon-influenced skin. And I knew that that could work, but I had to work with board members and even some internal colleagues that wasn't sure about getting in the gaming industry. They had their own perceptions and I really believed it and, and really said, I will take the hit on this if it's not successful. And so I was asked by our board, well, what do you think it's gonna deliver? And, you know, through our team we said, you know, we're at minimum a quarter of a million dollars. I believe it could go to a million dollars, but at minimum a quarter of a million dollars. And I remember getting a phone call. I was in a boardroom with one of our other partners. And they said, hey, Steph, I need to talk to you about what's going on with our Blizzard Overwatch game. I thought, oh my goodness, are we not even going to hit the minimum I told the board we were going to get? And she shared with me, she's like, we just hit $10 million in 2 weeks. $10 million that was raised for breast cancer research from the incredible gaming community that loved the very authentic space in which we were playing. It wasn't just putting a pink ribbon somewhere, and there was no place for it. The character, Mercy, in this character of Overwatch, her previous life before she got into— before the new story of her life, if you will, she was a surgeon. In this new version, she's this healer that helps heal the other characters in the game. And we netted out $12.7 million over 3 weeks. And we really opened up what it meant to have different partnerships and really pushing the boundaries of that partnership and pushing back against people who weren't comfortable necessarily with the idea. But I knew intuitively that was the right channel. And that's something that I will be forever grateful for, not only to Blizzard Entertainment, but the team that I had alongside with me on our corporate partnerships team at the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, their faith and belief of this idea. And Also, the gentleman who helped me champion it through the organization was Dr. Mark Corbett. He was our Chief Science Officer at BCRF, and he's now our CEO of the Melanoma Research Alliance. And in that moment with Mark, I was like, he gets it. He's a scientist by training, but he gets what we can do here. And he was one of our biggest champions and voices to kind of push that through to people that were maybe initially hesitant about this idea.

Yeah, that was such a cool story. I got full body goosebumps. I mean, to go from people saying we'd be lucky to hit 250 to 12 million, that's insane.

And I think it's a good— I think it's a good example of even if you're— in this particular case, even if you're not a gamer, uh, and I'm not necessarily a day-to-day gamer, but I knew the power of it. I have my sister who's a definite gamer. So I knew the power of it. Even if you're not in the space where you believe that you can tap into a new, a new audience, a new customer base, take the time to learn about it. Put aside your own preconceived notions about what that may be and realize with the research, I knew, I knew that research was there. I knew that if it was the right thing, the gaming community would completely come out and support it. They've shown it time and time again. And as long as you have this very authentic conversation, and I think this is true whether you're leading the operations of an organization, if you're creating new conversations with vendors, with employees, if you show authenticity, if you show some vulnerability in those conversations, you're going to have some pretty phenomenal wins, 1,000%. And I think that that proved that out.

I think this is a total golden nugget. Like if I had a bell on here and for every time I was like, I think anyone who's listening is probably thinking, wow, that's super applicable to me, uh, I actually just got back from Hawaii from an event that I actually like heard a girl on a podcast. I was like, who is this? I need to get around her. She's amazing. And cold emailed her. And part of the reason why was she's from an industry that I have no idea about yet. When I was listening to her on the podcast, there were so many things that still values-wise and how she kind of looks at business and life were very similar, but in a completely different space. I've been in a bubble for quite some time, so I felt this desire to just get around people who are talking about things that I have no idea about. So I went to this event and got to be a part of some of the craziest, coolest conversations with people in spaces that, you know, are using acronyms that I have to ask, what, what does that mean? And to them it's like, you know, how do you not know what this is? But being able to pick up on those those new pieces has given me totally different ways to think about the challenges in my life currently. So much so that actually tomorrow morning I created a, I have an event going on with a group of friends called a podcast walk where everyone picks a podcast that is of interest to them. But then at the end we're gonna be sharing what were the key pieces that we picked up on because what my friends are gonna pick or I'm just, I'm inviting people that I barely know. They're gonna bring in different ideas and things that I wouldn't have picked myself, but are things that I can still kind of expand, um, outside of my own echo chamber with. So for anybody who's listening, I think this is a, a key point of in business. What Stephanie's talking about is being able to find these little avenues or partnerships and different ways of thinking that can kind of get you outside of of maybe what's already been done in the past and really try something new. And there's two things here I want to ask you, Stephanie, that stood out to me is one, you were bold and courageous by saying, hey, if this doesn't land, and some of those more risky moves, you know, they could be potentially really negative. So being able to really stand in your belief that it's gonna be a huge success That's the first thing. And then the second part is being able to have your board and your team all buy into it despite them not being a fan of it and getting them on board too are both really important to that. So I wanna ask, what advice do you have to a COO who maybe has some outrageous ideas or wants to try something from a different industry, but their team isn't really onboard with that? What advice do you have about being bold?

No, it's a great question. I think first things first is how do you build credibility within your organization? And that's not just the upward credibility, but also the credibility across the organization and key stakeholders. So when you say, listen, I'm going to take the hit on this, you got to stand behind that. And I was prepared to stand behind that because I believed in the conviction. I also had What I would tell you in those bold things, you need to make sure you have data-driven storytelling and convincing. Like, here's what the data is going to tell us, and here's the story I'm going to weave around this. So my story in this particular case was Universal Pictures. I've seen gaming. It's this type of industry. It delivers this, this, this purchasing of, if you will, a virtual good. From my studio days, we were, you know, we were bringing in this much revenue for little lift. Very little lift in terms of just licensing that out. Here's what we're seeing in the nonprofit space. We believe that there could have a different conversation. There was also, you know, there's this perception that gaming writ large is a male or, you know, male-driven space. And that may be true for very specific games, but if you look at casual gaming, it's actually, you know, 50-50 split. And it's also bringing in that in that data. So I think when you want to be bold and try to bring other people along, you have to do it under the lens of data-driven storytelling. I see. I think the other thing that I've also learned through my career, I certainly have been given feedback that I like to peek around the corner to the future. I tend to be a very future-forward thinker, which I do think is very important to have, particularly in a COO role. So honoring the legacy and what you've learned, but what's coming next. And so one of the things I've had to learn in my career is if I explain my vision and I've done the great data-driven storytelling, is really to look at the room and find out, okay, where is everybody on the curve of understanding that vision? Where is their hesitation? And to take a pause and to say, I see you're not quite with this vision. Where's your hesitation? And whatever level that person may be occupying, whatever, I feel like leadership comes from every seat of an organization regardless of where you are in your career. So to create a very safe space to say, I notice you're not quite there with me yet. What's giving you pause? Is there a friction point that I'm not thinking about? Is there a blind spot that I'm not considering? Is there something operationally that makes us feel, you know, you're excited by the vision, but you're hesitant because of, you know, help me understand where are those things that we're gonna have to kind of think through in a deeper way that maybe You know, big thinkers don't always have an opportunity to, and having that pause moment, something I've learned, cause I used to be like, this is a vision we're going to pause, understand also helps you kind of make sure that there's not too many, too many situations that you did not anticipate. Like, okay, there's a system. And then everybody at the table then feels brought along into the process and they create their own sense of ownership. And they also respect that you're willing to listen to how does this impact their to-do list. So now I'm asking, you've got 900 things on your to-do list. I'm now asking you to move this up to number 2 or number 1. How do we then think about prioritization, balance, and then removing some of the hurdles that may be giving you pause? Hearing that feedback is incredibly important. And some of the feedback I heard on this was, how do we think about if gamers are going to give us money, we may not get all of their data. And then how do we mine that relationship? How is, you know, is this game going to represent our values in such a way, you know, that sometimes people would have some hesitancy around brand safety in these spaces. And I think once you go through that in a very thoughtful way, in a very kind of collaborative way, you're going to get that feedback that you need to make that successful. So definitely take a pause, particularly if you're noticing, you know, people who are they're, they're struggling to understand the vision. They want to understand it, but they're not there yet, and take a pause to do a little bit of a deep dive as to why.

What advice do you have for the storytelling piece specifically from CEO or anyone else who might be, you know, in a different position than you, that you are translating that vision all the way down through the company, the different personalities, the different roles, goals, how does storytelling impact that transferring of vision?

No, absolutely. I, I, I like the fact that some people have called me a little bit of a professional translator. I'm not a PhD in science, so a lot of times I have to translate very high, highly complicated science, you know, to something that a board member may be understanding because they're on the board because maybe they've been impacted by the disease, or to a corporate partner you know, helping our team to be able to explain that or helping to translate, you know, the vision. And again, I think as a COO really does become that multilingual translator, it, the COO role ends up being the translator of here's the board's, board and CEO's vision, and here's how I have to translate it down into an operational roadmap that the team can understand. They can understand, you know, where, where we're going, where we're headed. The why. So you've got that. You also need to be the professional translator up to your board or CEO. Like, great vision, but right now our ambition may be stretching us out a little bit further than what we have capacity or reality for. So not saying no to this. How do we get to that yes responsibly? But here are the things on that vision that we're going to need to solve for. Here's how we believe we can solve for it. Or here's how we're going to have to, you know, lay out that roadmap. So this is going to be a phase 1 that we'll be able to do these things, phase 2, and then making sure that that translation, that everybody in theory at the board nods their head to understand that, the CEO nods their head, and then the staff nods that. And I think the, you know, the third translation that you have is then making sure if you're communicating, if you're rolling out a new product, If you're rolling out, you know, a new experience, whatever the case may be, is making sure that however that's being messaged to whatever audience that's being messaged to, does that translation line up to what you believe is the vision and the operational roadmap? And pressure testing that so that, again, the team members who are going to have to execute that vision, like, they get it, they understand it, the stakeholders understand it and the reason why. And, and if you don't go through those kind of translation steps and serve as a hub as a COO, then that's probably gonna be more challenging if you don't. And I really feel it's important that COOs so often get bunched into that, oh, it's finance, it's audit, it's governance. Those are always telling stories. And I would tell you, early on in my career, I was moved into a partnership sponsorship function, and I would have team members who would say, oh, I'm on the account management side. I'm not really a salesperson. I could never do sales. And I would tell them, you're selling every day to the existing account relationship that you already have. You're convincing them, in this case, it was theme parks or movies. You're convincing them to step into this movie. You're convincing them to maybe upgrade what their investment is going to be. So I would say in the case of COO, we're all in the communication, translation, and influence business. And then to to think about what that story you're going to tell. And then I think one of the biggest pieces of advice I got early in my career is remember your audience. Know who your audience is going to be. So in the case of a board, and certainly my board, I've got 2 seconds to get their attention. So for them, it's quick headlines. I happen to know if it's a major supporter of our work, they may like the narrative and getting into the narrative and they want a long read. Another audience may like the pre-read, with 5 bullet points. And I think it's also that emotional intelligence, business intelligence of who is your audience, how do they like to be communicated to, and how are you going to get to that yes in terms of that storytelling has been invaluable to me in my career.

Cameron has a great book called Vivid Vision, which is about getting your whole team on the same page with where you're going and the importance of that because because if your CEO and your COO aren't clear on the vision, how are you ever gonna translate to your team where they're going and how they should know what tasks to be focused on? Which is something that you mentioned about your team maybe bringing up, well, I have to move my tasks, or this is gonna mess up like the flow that I thought I was gonna be doing. How do you give feedback to your team, or what is the feedback that you give to your team about how they should re-prioritize tasks? Do you teach a flow to your team on how to be prioritizing the right things in their day?

Oh, absolutely. Because that is the question. I think it doesn't matter how big an organization is or smaller organization is, right? There's not enough time in the day. There's multiple priorities coming down from different audiences, different key stakeholders. So first things first that I'd like to do with our team is obviously you have your weekly check-in. Check-ins to talk about. And I like to frame up our weekly check-ins of, all right, more than just the status report, it's more what's working, what are the hurdles that I can move out of your way, and is there anything that's getting bottlenecked? And then the last piece is where's the prioritization balance? And a couple of things that I always like to look at with the team is, okay, we know that this project has now moved into a pole position because we have to do it because there's a board direction for us to go is because we're having to shift. So let's take a look at what are all the projects. What are those projects that quite frankly, if we get them done in second quarter, third quarter, it is fine. We are not, as much as urgent as our mission is in cancer research, and it is definitely urgent, I also like to think we're not the firemen, right? So not everything is a fire drill. Not everything has to be done in the same second. And I think certainly, you know, the immediacy of, Teams chat or Slack or text messaging, a couple of things that we look at is, okay, what do we really do need to get accomplished today or this week or this quarter? And what are some of the things if we push it back, it's going to make a difference, but it doesn't have to make the difference in this moment because we have this other priority. So we do a lot of like, let's have real radical candor around where this project is. And then every 6 months, we'd like to just get into a room, phones down, pencils down, and like, what's working? What is not working? And can we pull up 3 or 4 legacy workflows that we've been doing just because it's the way we've always done it? And does that legacy workflow work for us today? Or where are we missing technology? Or what are we getting in the way of ourselves? So we like to do kind of that audit of workflows that maybe that was done 5 years ago, it sound like a good idea, but it doesn't make sense today. So I, I do think you have to, as a leader, and particularly in operations, what's gonna move the business ahead today? What is the prioritization and what are things that can shift? And it's not— it, it will have an impact, but it's a longer-term impact and it's gonna be perfectly okay. And I have this conversations every single day with our team members.

I like that you actually have like a moment for people to bring what are the things that we've been doing for a long time Um, I find start adding that into some of my workflows too with my team because I've noticed I do these time trackers with, especially when I come into a new company for fractional work, I'll have the team do these time trackers for all 5 days of the week. Every 15 minutes they're logging what activities they did. And it's been mind-blowing how many times I'll go in and look at a tracker and I'm like, oh my gosh, what is this? Like, I didn't even know that you were doing this. And they'll say, well, Well, you know, this is a part of my daily process that I was told to do since the day I came in. I just always do it. And I'm like, we're not even using that, you know? So being able to have a pulse on what things, like you said, are just maybe unnecessary, but team is just kind of like doing habitually is really important. And then the second thing is the delay. Uh, I teach my team the 4 Ds, which is on Sunday I plan my week. I tell everybody to plan their week, uh, on Sunday if they can. And you write out just a brain dump of all the things that are taking up mental space in your mind, all the projects, all the things you just need to figure out. And the 4 Ds are delegate, do, delete, or delegate. And I still do this with myself. It's, it's amazing how many things I'll just start doing because I'm like, oh, it's on my mind. I need to close the loop. Loop when in reality it is not an urgent thing. It could totally be delayed. And so many of those things I end up delaying end up not even being necessary because we figure out something else that's even better, or delegating, you know, like, do I really need to do that, or could I give this— just that mental extra check of the 4 Ds and you're going through your priority list can be super helpful. Um, I wanted to ask about one of your mottos that you had mentioned in your preform, which was translate up, simplify down. Can you unpack what that means?

Yeah, I think it's this idea of you got to translate up in terms of what are the successes, what are the key accomplishments that are happening, and how do you manage upwards, again, to your board and CEO and like, here are the quick wins, here's kind of the things that we're moving forward, or here's where we We need to go up. So we're going to translate up how is that vision being realized in a very kind of quick, dynamic way. I call it the 3 Bs. So I'm going to take your Ds, but now I'm going to turn Bs in. Be brief, be brilliant, and be done. And that's to me how you translate up in terms of we're making progress. Your board and your CEO, they don't need to get into the weeds. They don't. They just want to know it's being handled. I would say in terms of simplifying down is is I like to think of myself as being fairly direct and straightforward. I do not think you need to shroud these big vision plans in mystery. You just be very simple, like, how are we going to get from point A to point B? And here's kind of what we believe the steps are going to be. And where are you in this process? And do you understand that? So take this, what could be seen as this big overwhelming vision, like, how on earth are we going to do that? 6 months. That feels overwhelming. And so it's like, okay, well, it's, you know, it's, yes, it's a big puzzle, but we're going to take this one puzzle piece and we're going to do that. So I really work to like, let's simplify what all of this means and here's what your role is going to be and here's how you're going to make an impact. Here's the expectations and here's the timeline that we're looking at it and make it in a very, not 66-page deck, but like literally just outline it and then go through all the steps together. So again, Translate up with the 3 Bs: be brief, be brilliant, be done. And then simplify it down so everybody can kind of see their role, what their deliverables are going to be, the timing around that, what the lift is going to be. I personally don't like to get into all these different, is it a level 1 or level 2? Let's just talk as humans as to what this is going to be. I get the benefit of that because I am with a smaller organization. I do know in larger organizations you may have to have that type of additional rigor just to understand all of those workflows. So I do acknowledge that, but translate up and simplify down. And I find that it's worked out pretty, pretty successfully in the organizations I've been a part of.

I love the, the 3 Bs. That's super helpful. I'm going to store that in the old noggin for future translation.

Because if you think about everything that's on your CEO's table or even, you know, board member that you may be engaging with that are running, you know, you know, Fortune 100 companies globally, you gotta kind of get them very quickly and you wanna leave them with a message and you want them like, or if you need for them to have a homework assignment, it's gotta be very quick. This is what I need and we're gonna take the time. Like, this is what I need, here's how you're gonna accomplish it and go.

That's so true. And I think a lot of CEOs, including myself, this can be a pain point is overexplaining because is we're the ones that have, we're in the weeds of everything, you know, and we're like, they need to know all the things that are going on so that I can convince them of this. Most times your CEO just wants to know how is this gonna get a better result? You know, explain the result, keep it like you said, brief, brilliant, and then be done with it. I think that's a good way to go. Uh, just to wrap up here, Stephanie, I always like to ask at the end, what are you most excited about in the next 6 months? Months, both in business or personally, whatever you feel like sharing?

Well, at the Melanoma Research Alliance, we're really excited. We're going to be investing, you know, much more across the melanoma spectrum in terms of our research investments during a time when we need as much funding for cancer research as possible. In a couple of months, we're going to be convening almost 300 of the most brilliant scientists in Washington, D.C., sharing their work, breaking down those silos of information share. I'm really excited to— I think what will be some new breakthroughs that will hopefully happen for the patient community. I'm really excited that we are expanding our Leverage Finance Fights Melanoma platform globally, bringing in the private equity leaders who've been supporting our mission since day one and expanding that story and that impact and our influence within London and the UK. And I think the last thing is I'm really excited for the team that we have. We have an incredible team. At Emory. I'm excited for the new opportunities that we're exploring around narrative AI storytelling. I'm excited for them to embrace that. I'm excited for the growth and the confidence that I see building out this team. And at the end of the day, the day I look forward to is when I can shift out of cancer research into something else because we have found a way to solve for that. But we have a lot of great opportunities at the impact that we're, we're having. And I'm really excited how we're scaling it across science, across our partnerships and relationships, and the impact that we're going to have for patients. We're launching a lot of new programs and people can come to, come to curemelanoma.org to kind of see all that great work.

Awesome. Well, this has been so amazing. Thank you for such a unique, unique angle of wisdom around the storytelling and vision, something we talk a lot about. And I think there was a lot of just new ways of looking at that. That and around the partnerships as well. It was really amazing. So thank you so much, Stephanie, for your time.

With pleasure, and thank you for this opportunity. I loved spending some time with you.