Career & Education

Cancer for College Presenters on October 2024 community call

HopeCam – for college students who need laptops or tablets

Connecting Champions – mentorship for young adults with cancer based on passions and career interests

Claiming Your Calling: From Vision to Reality Notes

Thank you to everyone who joined our latest community call! We had a powerful session focused on how to move from discovering your “why” to actively executing your “how.” Turning a vision into reality doesn’t happen in a vacuum; it requires intentional action and a community to support your growth.

Below is a summary of the key frameworks we discussed, specifically how to build the right support system to champion your goals.

Mentorship: Not “One-Size-Fits-All”

When we think of mentorship, we often picture a single, older professional guiding us through our careers. But at Connecting Champions, we emphasize identifying specific roles that support the different facets of your life, goals, and wellbeing.

To truly thrive, you need a diverse board of advisors. Here are the core mentorship archetypes you should look to build into your network:

The Mentorship Archetypes:

• The Craft: This is traditional mentorship. It focuses purely on professional development and skill-building from someone with significant experience in your field.
• The Co-Pilot: A peer-level mentor closer to your age who is on a similar journey. They offer support, solidarity, and current perspectives through shared experiences.
• The Anchor: Rooted in shared interests, this relationship focuses on your “whole person.” Moving beyond just friendship, they provide intentional guidance and accountability to ensure you maintain work-life balance and stay grounded.
• The Role Model: Someone who shares your values or background. They serve as inspiration and proof of possibility, helping you actually visualize your path forward.
• The Connector/Sponsor: A powerful advocate with the influence to open doors, recommend you for opportunities, and help you get noticed. (Note: Building deep trust is the prerequisite for this relationship.)
• Exploratory Mentorship: A low-pressure approach for when you are unsure of your next steps. Use this to investigate different fields to discover not just what you want to do, but also what you don’t want to do.

Your Actionable Roadmap for Execution

To build the bridge between where you are and where you want to be, you need an intentional plan. Apply this three-step framework to get started:

1. Visualize the Horizon

Imagine yourself six months from now. Don’t be afraid to dream big. Visualize your specific accomplishments to anchor your goals and give yourself a clear target to work toward.

2. Audit Your Needs

Recognize that career-based needs are only one part of the equation. Look at your life holistically. Ensure your support system addresses your personal growth and mental wellbeing, not just your professional output.

3. Establish Intentionality

Mentorship requires a clear, defined commitment. At Connecting Champions, we utilize a 6-month minimum requirement to establish a strong foundation, though we find the average successful partnership lasts about 9 months. Be clear about your timeline and expectations from day one.

Access Slide Deck Here

Claiming Your Calling: Turning Passion to Purpose Notes

In this session, we focused on the steps needed to turn your passion into purpose and work that leaves a lasting impact. Below are the key takeaways, exercises, and tactical strategies Annie shared to help you turn your passion into a concrete purpose.

1. Start Inward: Understand Yourself First

Before looking at job boards or career paths, you have to understand what makes you tick. The strongest alignment comes when your mission matches your personal journey.

• The Power of Lived Experience: Some of the best career paths and businesses are built on problems you have personally lived through and are trying to find a solution for. Your unique story is your greatest asset.
• Drafting Your Vision Statements: Don’t limit yourself to just one. Segment different areas of your life and goals, and write multiple vision statements. Ask yourself:
  • What do I truly love?
  • What energizes me and gives me life?
• Get Granular: Avoid broad generalizations. Write down highly specific details about what an aligned life and career look like for you.
• Find Your Voice in Service: We often find our truest, most authentic voice when we begin using it to advocate for and serve others.

2. Leverage Modern Tools & Technology

Finding your calling is easier when you use the digital tools at your disposal to organize your thoughts and fast-track your research.

• Brainstorm with AI & Google Drive: Use AI tools to help you organize your thoughts, draft vision statements, or refine your ideas. Create a dedicated folder in Google Drive to keep all your reflections, resume drafts, and resources in one centralized place.
• Test Your Strengths: Take advantage of self-assessments to get an objective view of your natural talents. (Keep an eye out for assessment links shared in our community channels!)
• Deconstruct Job Descriptions: Use AI to analyze target job descriptions. Paste a description into an AI prompt and ask it to highlight the core skills required, then compare them against your personal strengths to see where you naturally align.

3. Shift from “Tasks” to “ROI” (Return on Investment)

When showcasing your value—whether in an interview, on a resume, or through a portfolio—shift your perspective from what you did to the impact you made.

• Focus on the Return: Don’t just list a series of daily tasks. Talk about your ROI (Return on Investment). Frame your experiences around the success, outcomes, and value you delivered.
• For Creative Fields: What you made is your proof. Focus on building and showcasing a portfolio of work that reflects your truest skills and passions.
• Embrace the Journey: Building a purpose-driven life is rarely a straight line. It is often filled with rejection, pivoting, and uncertainty—but learning to navigate those twists is incredibly rewarding.

4. Tactical Execution: SMART Goals

A vision without a plan is just a wish. To bridge the gap between passion and reality, you need to set SMART Goals that are highly tactical rather than broad.

Specific • Measurable • Achievable • Relevant • Time-Bound

Don’t just say, “I want to find a new job.” Instead, say, “I will update my portfolio with three core projects and reach out to two potential mentors in my field by the end of this month.” Be concrete, set clear deadlines, and map out a realistic timeline.

The Next Step: Invest in Yourself & Stay Agile

The job market and our own personal lives are constantly evolving. The best thing you can do is commit to continuous learning, stay agile, and keep investing in your own growth.

Claiming Your Calling: Discovering Your Why Notes

This session kicked off Part 1 of our three-part Claiming Your Calling series—a program designed specifically to help AYA participants uncover what truly drives them and transform those insights into meaningful, purpose-driven work. Through guided reflection, practical tools, and real-world strategies, we are exploring how to align your values, strengths, and lived experiences with your future.

For this inaugural session, we focused entirely on discovering your “why”.

Here are the key takeaways and reflective exercises from this session to help you tap into your “why.”

1. “Lived Experience is a Skill”

One of the most profound reframes Samira shared is that your lived experience is a skill. Navigating a cancer diagnosis, treatment, and survivorship forces you to develop deep resilience, problem-solving abilities, empathy, and a unique perspective on the world.

These aren’t just personal milestones; they are highly valuable, professional-grade skills. Your lived experience gives you a unique authority to speak on, design for, and solve problems that others might not even see.

2. Reframing Your Perspective: The Timeline Exercise

To find out what truly matters to you, sometimes you have to strip away the noise of a “forty-year career path” and look at time as a finite resource. Write out your answers to these three challenging prompts:

• If you only had a week left, what would you do?
• If you only had a month left, what would you do?
• If you only had two months left, what would you do?

This exercise isn’t meant to be morbid—it is designed to instantly clarify your highest priorities. It filters out the obligations, the “should-dos,” and the distractions, leaving behind only the people, causes, and activities that hold true meaning for you.

3. The Ultimate Test: “Is It Worth It?”

When you are trying to align your daily work with your calling, there is one simple, diagnostic question you must ask yourself about your job: “Is it worth it?”

If you find yourself constantly wondering if what you are doing is worth it, there is a very high chance that it isn’t.

If that question keeps bubbling up, take it as a clear signal that it might be time to change your job, shift your focus, or pivot toward something that doesn’t make you question its value.

4. Exercises & Next Steps

Ready to take action on what we discussed? Start with these two practical steps:

Draft Your Change List

Take out a piece of paper and physically write it out. Write down 5 to 10 ways you want to see the world change. Don’t worry about how you will change them yet—just identify the gaps, injustices, or problems in the world that break your heart or spark your passion. This list is the raw map of your “why.”

Share Your Story

Don’t keep your experiences locked away. Sharing your story is a catalyst. It helps you process your own journey, but more importantly, it signals to the world what you care about. When you speak your truth, you naturally attract the collaborators, mentors, and opportunities that align with your calling.

We were honored to have Sissy Silva from Cancer and Careers share with us about Balancing Work and Cancer.
Balancing Work and Cancer presentation

Some key notes from the call include:

• Work is a part of our identity, so the idea that cancer takes away the ability or desire to work is often false
• We all have a limited pool of internal resources. Consider and prioritize what matters to you. Ask yourself – how important is work to you personally? What information do you need to make a decision about work?
• An inability to work can create an identity crisis and you might need support to process that.
• Safeguard your privacy online. Develop a disclosure plan, monitor what others post about you and consider how you present any cancer community involvement to employers. If you are sharing online, stick with what you know to be true today and what is relevant now. It is impossible to “unshare” information.
• The goal of a resume and cover letter is to get an interview and sharing your cancer history at those junctures is not going to support that goal. These are also one way interactions and not a reliable way to communicate.
• There may be practical benefits to disclosing your diagnosis including, the ability to request reasonable accommodations or showing your supervisor why your performance may have changed.
• If you decide to disclose your diagnosis, make sure your employer understands that treatment is fluid and you are sharing what you know today but it might change in the future and you will communicate with them any changes to your situation.

There are lots of links in the slide deck with more information and support.

We were honored to have Mona Yaeger, Senior Career Management Consultant, join us to share how to best build and utilize a LinkedIn profile. She shared an incredibly informational and insightful slide deck, LinkedIn – Your Profile & How to Get Back to Work.

Some key information from the call included:

• The goal of LinkedIn is to search for jobs and to showcase yourself as “talent” to recruiters.
• Your profile picture should be only you (no pets or other people) and not include anything distracting.
• You can show more personality in your banner. Canva at www.canva.com has some great free LinkedIn banners.
• Your About section should be predominantly in narrative form and should share about you!
• Your skills can be divided into categories and can also be highlighted in your About section. Repeating is okay because these are key words employers and AI will search for.
• Under work experience, there is an option to add a Career Break. It is totally up to you if you label this medical/health but you should be prepared to answer questions about a resume gap.
• The time to reveal your cancer diagnosis is when you have a job offer.
• In an interview, if asked about a work gap you can say, “I was taking care of myself” or “I was taking care of a family member.” You don’t have to give any more information than that.
• LinkedIn has a mobile app. If you tap the search bar at the top, it will present a QR code and a scan button so you can easily connect with someone you met.
• LinkedIn is great for networking!
• Find employees at the company you’d like to work at and request to connect with them.
• See if you can find a common area of interest in their profile.
• Always include a note when you request to connect.
• If you are looking to switch career paths, make sure to change your headline and your about section to gear toward what you want to do, not what you’ve done.

We were honored to have Cancer for College join us to share about the amazing resources they provide!

There are two main resources they provide that every AYA should check out – scholarships and medical debt relief.

Scholarship Information

• Applications for 2025-2026 scholarships are open from 11/1/2024-1/31/25
• You have to have had cancer at any point in your life
• You must be attending (or going to attend) a US accredited school (university, college, or trade school)
• Gross family income must be under $150,000 annually – if you are under 25, you must provide your and your parent’s tax returns
• Scholarships are available for specific majors
• There are no age restrictions, and graduate studies apply as well
• Welcome to reapply each year
• Scholarships range from $5,000-$10,000
• Medical Debt Relief Information
• You have to have completed treatment prior to applying
• Can apply for debt relief and a scholarship at the same time
• They partner with a patient advocacy service
• If accepted into the program, you get them all your bills, they connect you with the advocacy service who reaches out to your treatment hospital to negotiate a lower price on your final bill, they pay the remaining amount
• In 2025, this will be capped at age 25
• There is no financial requirement to apply for medical debt relief
• Feel free to reach out to stevi@cancerforcollege.org or shelby@cancerforcollege.orgCancer for College hosts virtual workshops regularly!