Creating 2nd Act Directors for The World-Wide Movement

Chispa MagazineOpposites attract overwhelming support for women cancer survivors. Their careers, and sometimes personal lives may be on hold, but greater purpose and greater good is being spread.

On the surface Karen Shayne and Judy Pearson couldn’t be more different. Shayne is a southerner with big hair, a little dog, and a long standing career in healthcare administration. Pearson is a northerner with short hair, a big dog, and two decades worth of published writing. Shayne had uterine and ovarian cancer as a young woman. Pearson was diagnosed with Triple Negative breast cancer as a grandmother.

Yet they found common ground in what has only recently come into focus in healthcare: cancer survivorship.

Together they founded the Women Survivors Alliance (WSA), a women-only non-profit, organization unlike any other in existence. Their stakeholders are the 7 million women survivors of all cancers—all ages, all stages.

Both stepped away from their lives, put their careers on hold, and created (with their own life savings) a historical and ground breaking event in August 2013: the National Women’s Survivors Convention, in Nashville, Tennessee.

Attendees poured in from 49 states and five countries, representing 26 different types of cancer. Women found the same common ground in survivorship that Shayne and Pearson had.

But that wasn’t enough. The dyno duo expanded the organization’s work by launching the world’s first women survivors’ digital magazine, The Plum Magazine (ThePlum.org). Articles address the life changing (and sometimes life limiting) effects of cancer and the challenges women survivors face in all aspects of their lives.

Suddenly it became evident that a powerful community was being born; a community of women wishing to take their lives back after cancer; a community of women who wished to be heard.

Shayne and Pearson realized they had given survivorship a voice. And there was power, inspiration, and motivation in that voice. That’s when they truly began to change the world.

Their latest platform, My 2nd Act, encourages women to share their stories in both written and spoken form, with essays online and a live stage production, My 2nd Act: Survivor Stories from the Stage debuts at the National Women’s Survivors Convention in July 2014.

Karen Shayne and Judy Pearson are night and day, high heels and pearls meet blue jeans and boots. But they’re making survivorship their joint mission, improving the lives of women survivors, their families, and by extension, society as a whole.

Their magical push and pull make you believe these two really can move mountains, as they transform survivorship from a mood to a movement.

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Judy Pearson

Judy Pearson

Judy Pearson is an international speaker and award-winning writer with three published books. Her first two books, "Belly of the Beast: a POW’s Inspiring True Story of Faith, Courage and Survival" and "Wolves at the Door: the True Story of America’s Greatest Female Spy," are World War II biographies about ordinary people exhibiting extraordinary courage. Judy was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2011. It wasn’t the diagnosis or treatment that challenged her lifelong positive attitude. Rather, it was the laundry list of survivorship issues that rocked her. This experience inspired her to write her third book, "It's Just Hair: 20 Essential Life Lessons." In 2005, she also founded an organization called “Courage Concepts,” dedicated to cultivating courage in women and girls.
Judy Pearson

Latest posts by Judy Pearson (see all)

Judy Pearson

Judy Pearson is an international speaker and award-winning writer with three published books. Her first two books, "Belly of the Beast: a POW’s Inspiring True Story of Faith, Courage and Survival" and "Wolves at the Door: the True Story of America’s Greatest Female Spy," are World War II biographies about ordinary people exhibiting extraordinary courage. Judy was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2011. It wasn’t the diagnosis or treatment that challenged her lifelong positive attitude. Rather, it was the laundry list of survivorship issues that rocked her. This experience inspired her to write her third book, "It's Just Hair: 20 Essential Life Lessons." In 2005, she also founded an organization called “Courage Concepts,” dedicated to cultivating courage in women and girls.