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CPAT Steering Committee
The Cancer Policy & Advocacy Team (CPAT) is guided by the energy and expertise of the steering committee members who know as cancer survivors the important role of policy and advocacy in improving cancer care. NCCS is grateful to the steering committee for their time and commitment.

Diane Heditsian
San Francisco, CA
Diane’s volunteer work as a patient, policy, and research breast cancer advocate, is informed and driven by her experiences as a four-time breast cancer patient and survivor. As an engaged advocate of twenty years, she strives to educate and empower women to advocate for their own health care and works to improve health outcomes equitably. Her work with clinicians, researchers, and legislators, advances quality of care, participation in clinical trials, and medical science discovery.
Diane is a sought-after speaker for diverse audiences and was the advocate speaker at ASCO’s inaugural Cancer Survivorship Symposium, presenting An Advocate’s Prescription for Survivorship Care. She is a member of the Bay Area Cancer Survivorship Coalition. For nineteen years she has served as a breast cancer peer counselor with various non-profit organizations and is currently helping newly diagnosed women through Living Beyond Breast Cancer and UCSF’s Breast Oncology Clinic.
To her advocacy work she brings her professional background and skills in communications and marketing along with knowledge of drug development, clinical trials, and health systems, as founder and CEO of deClarity, a global life science communications consultancy. Recently she designed, wrote, and produced both the national I-SPY 2 and WISDOM clinical trials’ patient websites on a pro bono basis.
In 2009 she joined the University of California, San Francisco, Breast Oncology Program’s S.P.O.R.E. (now Breast Science Advocacy Core) to help researchers translate their findings to the clinic. Diane supports a number of I-SPY 2 Trial activities including the Investigational Agents, Patient-Reported Outcomes, Biomarkers, Return of Results, and Primary Investigators Working Groups. She advocates on the PCORI-funded WISDOM Study, advancing precision breast cancer screening. As a member of Susan G. Komen’s Advocates in Science she supports academic and industry researchers around the country. She has reviewed Susan G. Komen grants both nationally and for the Komen San Francisco Bay affiliate. She serves on the Board of Directors for the Armenian Healthcare Association of the Bay Area (AHABA), planning, funding, and implementing projects in her ancestral home, to improve the health of its people.
As a National Breast Cancer Coalition Project LEAD and Research Advocacy Network-trained science advocate as well as an Alamo and DIA Scholar, she is a Consumer Reviewer for the Department of Defense Congressionally Directed Breast Cancer Research Program and has co-chaired an ERA of HOPE Conference symposium. Diane is pleased to have helped steer the National Coalition of Cancer Survivorship’s Cancer Policy and Advocacy Steering (CPAT) Committee since 2016. Diane is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Tufts University and has two grown children and two grandchildren.

Lee Jones, MBA
Arlington, VA
Lee Jones, MBA, is the advocate serving on the survivorship committee, and lives in Arlington, VA. Lee is semi-retired and has extensive executive and management experience in corporate, government, and non-profit settings, with special expertise in finance and financial systems.
A Stage 4 colon cancer survivor, Lee is a long-time cancer research advocate who serves on the Georgetown University Oncology and two other Institutional Review Boards, and has reviewed grant and contract proposals for groups such as the Department of Defense and the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). Lee is a member of the workgroup that is writing the next five-year Virginia Cancer Plan, and volunteers as a research advocate with Fight Colorectal Cancer.

Jamie Ledezma
San Diego, CA
Like so many other 27-year-olds, Jamie had plans for her life. Breast cancer changed those plans overnight. Fourteen weeks into her pregnancy, she discovered a lump in her breast and was diagnosed as a BRCA carrier with triple-negative breast cancer. She had six months of chemotherapy while pregnant before delivering a healthy baby boy.
Professionally, Jamie is an attorney with more than a dozen years of experience practicing both civil and criminal law and working on health policy matters at the national, state, and local levels. She is currently a Chief Deputy City Attorney for the City of San Diego where she is charged with leading the Neighborhood Prosecution and Collaborative Courts Units.
Previously, Jamie served as a cancer-rights attorney where she successfully forged relationships with, and provided cancer-related legal information to, cancer organizations, hospitals, law firms, other community partners, and members of underserved communities. Over the past ten years, Jamie has provided countless educational seminars discussing cancer-related legal issues to survivors, health care professionals, advocates, and the general public. She has been published in a variety of publications, such as California Lawyer and SHAPE magazine, and has been featured on dozens of community television and radio shows. Additionally, Ms. Ledezma has served as an Adjunct Professor at Fresno State and Fresno City College where she has taught political science courses.
Jamie currently serves on the California Breast and Cervical Cancer Advisory Council, the Advisory Council for Pink Power Moms™, and on the board of directors for the Get In Touch Foundation. As a working professional and young breast-cancer survivor with a growing family, Jamie is proud to serve on the Cancer Policy & Advocacy Team (CPAT) Steering Committee for the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship to advocate for the needs of all individuals touched by cancer.

Susan Leigh, BSN, RN
Tucson, AZ
After receiving her degree in nursing from the University of Arizona in Tucson, Susan Leigh served as a Lieutenant in the U.S. Army and completed a tour of duty in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam, in 1971. Soon after her return from Vietnam, she was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma and was treated with some of the earliest forms of chemotherapy and radiation. This experience influenced her decision to become an oncology nurse.
For the past three decades, Susan has focused her efforts on national advocacy work with special emphasis on long-term and late effects of cancer treatment. Her most cherished involvement has been with the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship (NCCS) as a founding member and past president and now as a member of the steering committee for the Cancer Policy & Advocacy Team (CPAT). She has also been actively involved with many professional organizations, including the Oncology Nursing Society and the National Cancer Institute.
Since 2010, Susan has been working as a survivorship consultant and educator with Arizona Oncology in Tucson. Besides surviving Hodgkin lymphoma, she has also been treated for breast and bladder cancers and is currently dealing with major treatment-related cardiac issues.

Bethany Ross
Nashua, NH
Bethany was diagnosed in August 2018 at 30, with Stage IV neuroendocrine cancer in her appendix and pancreas that spread to her lymph nodes and liver. She works full time as a Cyber Security Engineer.
Bethany serves on the CPAT Steering Committee for the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship (NCCS). Her passion lies in helping other young adult survivors (or as she calls them cancer badasses) and other metastatic survivors. Bethany has spoken at events through NCCS, the NCI, and the FDA about the unmet needs of metastatic survivors and cancer’s effect on mental health. She has spoken to her state’s senate offices and local representatives about cancer legislation. She can share her knowledge in those areas and hopes to learn how they use social media to get information out, as well as how to balance the emotional toll of advocacy.

Desirée Walker
New York, NY
At the age of 38, Desirée A. H. Walker was diagnosed with breast cancer, which recurred at age 47. For many who have had to fight breast cancer, Desirée serves as an advocate for patients by openly speaking about her diagnoses to audiences nationally and internationally. The core of her message is to encourage patients to truly know their body and feel empowered to steward self, mind, body and soul.
Extremely active in the cancer community, Desirée, through SHARE’s Side by Side Program, trains medical students and doctors on how to deliver disappointing news and passionately supports the importance of patient-doctor communication. She volunteers with the Young Survival Coalition as President, Board of Directors. She is a member of the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship’s Cancer Policy Advocacy Team inaugural Steering Committee, the NCI’s Cancer Prevention and Control Central Institutional Review Board; the NCI SWOG Recruitment and Retention and Patient Advocate Committees in addition to Diversity, Inclusion, Belonging Strategic Work Group. Desirée is also a member of the Society for Integrative Oncology Patient Advocate and Research Committees in addition to the Health Equity, Inclusion & Belonging Task Force. Desirée is a former member of the CDC’s Advisory Council on Breast Cancer in Young Women.
Desirée has given countless talks, including “Spirituality and Cancer” at CancerCare’s Living with Cancer conference and the Canadian Association for Psychosocial Oncology annual conference. She has served as a panelist and has provided a patient advocate perspective at AACR’s Addressing Advocacy at the Bench: COVID-19 Vaccines: Patient Advocates as Trusted Sources of Information, NCCS’ annual CPAT, SXSW’s International Women’s Day event, the FDA/OCE Educational Series – Conversations in Cancer, MSK’s National Minority Cancer Awareness events, AAADV Annual Meeting, The Cornell Center for Health Equity’s Tri-Institutional Symposium on Health Equity, the 12th and 13th AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities and the FDA’s session “Building and Inclusive Cancer Community” at AACR Annual Meeting. Desirée has been a guest blogger for WebMD, ASCO’s Cancer.Net and the Department of Defense’s Breast Cancer Research Program.
Desirée has appeared in the media on numerous occasions including “The Breakfast Club” with DJ Envy, Angela Yee and Charlamagne Tha God. She is featured in Conquer Cancer Foundation’s Your Stories mini-podcast, Susan G. Komen’s “Know Your Girls” campaign, the Ralph Lauren 20th and 21st Anniversary Pink Pony campaign and The Conduit’s podcast: “Don’t Forget About Love”. Desirée facilitates support groups for women of African descent who were diagnosed with either breast or ovarian cancer.
She is a graduate of the National Breast Cancer Coalition’s Project LEAD® and AACR S-SP program. As a patient advocate, she’s attended the AACR Annual Mtg. and the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved conferences and numerous other national and international conferences. Desirée has been a reviewer for the DoD’s CDMRP, PCORI, Cornell Center for Health Equity and the Conquer Cancer Foundation. As a patient advocate, she brings her experience to a team of cancer researchers at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
Desirée’s diagnoses motivated her to become a patient advocate to share her talents and aid diverse communities. She uses her platform to be a voice for the voiceless and pay forward by educating and empowering people around the world.
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