Thriving Together 2026: From Silent Voices to Hear My Voice - 20 Years of the LBBC’s MBC Conference
“This is a disease no one wants, but you meet the best people."
Twenty years ago, about 125 people gathered at a hotel outside Philadelphia for the first-ever conference just for those living with metastatic breast cancer, at a time when the community was rarely seen or heard. Today, it's a three-day national event drawing hundreds of attendees and a virtual audience.
In this episode, the host Victoria Goldberg sits down with three longtime Living Beyond Breast Cancer leaders: CEO Jean Sachs; Elyse Spatz Caplan, who ended her 14-year tenure with LBBC as the Director of Programs and Partnerships; and Catherine Ormerod, a retired Executive Vice President for Strategy and Mission. In a separate conversation, she speaks with Janine Guglielmino, LBBC's former Vice President of Mission Delivery, who was there for that very first conference in 2006.
Thriving Together 2026: LBBC's MBC Conference Through Our Eyes
"You walk into a room full of people living with metastatic breast cancer and you just... break down. Not because it's sad — though it is — but because for the first time, you're not alone in it."
Twenty years in, LBBC's Thriving Together Conference is still doing what no other event in the MBC space does: bringing patients together not just to learn, but to find each other. In this episode, four MBC patients who attended the 2026 conference share what moved them, what the science is saying, and why they'll keep coming back.
Live Chat: From Devastating Diagnosis to Distinction with Lesley Stephen MBE
Imagine this: You're a mother of four. You think you have a chest infection, but it turns out to be stage four metastatic breast cancer—in your lungs, liver, and bones. The nurse sitting across from you has tears in her eyes. You're given one, maybe two years to live. Treatment after treatment fails. Finally, your doctor says the words no one wants to hear: "You need to get your affairs in order."
So you take your kids to New York for one last family vacation.
But when you come home, there's one spot left on a clinical trial in Glasgow. You take it. And against all odds, it saves your life—for seven years.
That's the beginning of Lesley Stephen's story. Twelve years later, she's not only alive and cancer-free—she's just been honored by the British Royal Family with an MBE. Princess Anne herself presented Leslie with her medal at Windsor Castle for her extraordinary work transforming how metastatic breast cancer patients access clinical trials and cutting-edge care.