Panelists

Ricki Fairley, TNBC survivor

CEO of TOUCH, The Black Breast Cancer Alliance

#Whenwetrial Movement, Founder and Co-Host

Ricki is an award-winning seasoned marketing veteran that has transformed her strategic acumen into breast cancer advocacy. Ricki co-founded and serves as CEO of TOUCH, The Black Breast Cancer Alliance to address Black Breast Cancer as a unique and special disease state, with the overall goal of reducing the mortality rate for Black women. Ricki founded and serves as co-host for “The Doctor Is In,” a weekly live breast cancer advocacy web series on the BlackDoctor.org Facebook page that reaches over 3 million viewers. She is a founding member of #BlackDataMatters, in partnership with Ciitizen, The Center for Health Care Innovation and Morehouse School of Medicine to encourage and elevate the importance of Black Women participating in clinical trial research. In January 2022, she started the When We Tri(al) Movement to change the game on Black women participating in clinical trials to improve outcomes for Black women with breast cancer.

 Ricki serves on the Board of Trustees for the Triple Negative Breast Cancer Foundation where she chairs the marketing committee. She is a board member for the Center for Healthcare Innovation, and serves on the National Minority Quality Forum Scientific Advisory Board. Ricki has been featured in FiercePharma, Healthline, Oprah Daily, Shondaland, Platform Q Health and Salud and Ebony Magazine to name a few. She is one of 50 of the 800 applicants to receive the Goldman Sachs One Million Black Women Impact Grant funding Black women-led and Black women-serving nonprofits. Ricki has two daughters, Amanda Brown Lierman and Hayley Brown, and 3 granddaughters, Belle, Leia, and Hart, who remind her of her purpose every day. Ricki is a graduate of Dartmouth College and holds an MBA from Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.

Elizabeth Valencia, MD JD, FCLM

Consultant Breast Imaging & Intervention, Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic Rochester

American Medical Association-Minority Affairs Section, Chair of Engagement

Dr. Valencia is a medical expert in Breast Cancer Imaging and Intervention at Mayo Clinic Rochester. She is a passionate breast cancer and community advocate, and former Enterprise Associate Dean of Diversity Equity and Inclusion for Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine Arizona, Florida, Minnesota campuses. She obtained medical and law degrees from SIU School of Medicine & School of Law.  

Dr. Valencia serves on the Board of Governors for the American College of Legal Medicine and Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, serves as the American Medical Association’s Minority Affairs Section-Chair of Engagement, Women for Wellness Equity and Leadership Scholar, and National Hispanic Medical Association Leadership Scholar, and Student National Medical Association (SNMA) Hall of Fame faculty and community advocate. She served as a Health Policy Dunn Fellow for Governor of Illinois to the Departments of Health & Human Services, Public Health, Public Aid, and Child & Family Services. She was a recipient of the Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award, Illinois Women’s Bar Foundation Service Award, City of San Diego Delegate for U.S. Presidents’ Summit for America’s Future, and City of San Diego Volunteer of the Year Award.  

Vivian Jolley Bea, M.D., FACS

Section Chief of Breast Surgical Oncology, Department of Surgery

New York - Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital

Vivian Jolley Bea, MD, has been appointed Section Chief of Breast Surgical Oncology in the Department of Surgery for NewYork- Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital. Dr. Bea received her masters degree in biology from Drexel University and her medical degree from Morehouse School of Medicine. She completed her training in general surgery at the Medical University of South Carolina and a fellowship in breast surgical oncology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Board certified in general surgery, Dr. Bea is an active member in numerous professional organizations, including the American College of Surgeons, American Society of Breast Surgeons, Society of Surgical Oncologists, and the Society of Black Academic Surgeons. Dr. Bea’s areas of interest include breast cancer, benign breast disease, inflammatory breast disease, and high-risk management. She specializes in skin-sparing and nipple sparing mastectomies as well as oncoplastic breast conservation surgery. Dr. Bea is committed to community outreach, research, and eliminating breast cancer disparities.

Melissa Davis, PhD

Director of the Institute of Translational Genomic Medicine

Morehouse School of Medicine

Dr. Davis serves as Scientific Director of the International Center for the Study of Breast Cancer Subtypes (ICSBCS), (Interim) Director of Health Equity for the Englander Institute of Precision Medicine and Associate Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology in the Department of Surgery and at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, NY. She is also a Cancer Ethnicity Scholar, co leading the PolyEthnic-1000 project at New York Genome Center.

Dr. Davis received her Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics at the University of Georgia (Athens, GA, USA) where she completed groundbreaking work on developmental functions of steroid signaling in model organisms. She completed postdoctoral training in Functional Genomics and Systems Biology at Yale School of Medicine (Human Genetics) and the University of Chicago (Human Genetics and Institute for Genomics and Systems Biology). Here work involved key elements of the ModENCODE project, showing the genome-wide and tissue-specific dynamics of hormone receptor binding, establishing the dynamics of these functions on a cellular level. Her postdoctoral training in Cancer Health Disparities at University of Chicago at the Interdisciplinary Center for Health Disparities, led the current trajectory of her work to uncover the biological determinants of cancer health disparities and how they intersect with marginalization of minoritized population.

Dr. Davis’s has published groundbreaking findings that established a new lens to study associations of biological factors in cancer outcomes as related to genetic ancestry. Specifically, she has discovered links between African ancestry and tumor burdens that have a disproportionate burden in people across the African diaspora. Dr. Davis is a pioneer in the field of “disparities genomics,” with specific focus in breast cancer expanding into prostate and gynecological cancers in recent years. Her current findings involve utilizing quantified ancestry to unravel genetic vs environmental influences in tumor biology among race/ethnic groups, including epigenetic cell signaling and immunological responses in the tumor microenvironment and systemic immune regulation.

Catherine Lai, PharmD

Executive Director, Clinical Development

Gilead Sciences

Catherine Lai, PharmD is the Executive Director of Clinical Research in Oncology responsible for overseeing TNBC research at Gilead Sciences.  Her current work primarily focuses on the development of medicines in the treatment of Breast Cancer with the goal of bringing meaningful improvements for all those impacted by the disease.  With over 20 years in healthcare, including work as a Clinician, a Public Health Policy Leader and a Clinical Researcher in the Biotechnology/Pharmaceutical Industry, Catherine has leveraged her experience to help bring several breast cancer medicines, including Trodelvy®, to patients.