cindy eller & laurel dibrog

It’s the end of an era at Buffalo, New York’s Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center.

After a combined sixty-eight years, twenty-eight years working side-by-side as separate but equal forces in Roswell’s rise to prominence, best friends Laurel DiBrog, Chief Marketing and Communication Officer, and Cindy Eller, Executive Director of the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation, are preparing for retirement.

Laurel began her career at Roswell Park in 1997 and has worked tirelessly since then to solidify the institution’s brand and reputation as one of the country’s most forward-looking cancer centers.

Cindy, meanwhile, has spent the last forty years helping to build and then lead the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation, the not-for-profit organization behind the fundraising work that has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for cancer research, education, treatment, and patient care programming.

It cannot be overstated how significant the footprint the two women will leave behind as they retire is.

“I started at Roswell after Cindy saw me speak at a conference in Pasadena,” recalls Laurel. Cindy, already at Roswell Park, was impressed enough by Laurel’s presentation that she approached her and told her, “We need you in Buffalo.”

At that point, Dr. David Hohn had recently stepped into the role of Chief Executive Officer. He convinced Laurel to take a few tentative steps toward meeting Cindy’s request; she wrote up a marketing plan for Roswell Park, submitting it to Hohn thinking he and his team would use it to guide their work moving forward.

But he wasn’t willing to end the partnership so quickly: “‘No,’” Laurel recalls Hohn saying when she’d given him her plan. “‘I don’t want to implement your plan–I want you to come here and implement your plan.’”

Just months later, Laurel, her husband, a Los Angeles native, and their daughter had moved to Buffalo. She commenced what would become her life’s work, crafting a new marketing plan for Roswell Park from scratch.

At that point, nearly thirty years ago, Roswell Park was gaining recognition nationally  for innovative work in cancer research and treatment. Locally, though, the institution’s reputation was another story. Changing that narrative became Laurel’s focus.

“People didn’t realize what was in their backyard,” she says. “We were and are equal to many of the major cancer centers across the country, but because we were in this little city, people just didn’t understand that.”

Meanwhile, Cindy had been focused on the same goal for the better part of a decade by the time Laurel arrived in Buffalo.

“I’m a native Western New Yorker,” she says, “and when I started working at Roswell it was seen as a scary place.”

Roswell Park, like many cancer centers, was then emerging from a period during which communities associated these institutions not with life-saving treatments and cutting-edge research, but with cancer itself.

“We were asked to start fundraising and a marketing program at a place where that was the brand,” Cindy says, “so it was really about building around a different reality.”

Because Roswell Park was a blank slate in terms of fundraising and marketing, the two women acted as pioneers for the institution.

“We held focus groups and did marketing research right off the bat,” Laurel says. “And we learned so much about what people didn’t know about Roswell. There were so many misconceptions.”

The encouraging conclusion that came from that early exploration was that the problem wasn’t quality of care but simple misperception.

Cindy lobbied the New York State legislature to make fundraising, which had been a complex process because of Roswell’s status as a part of the Department of Health, easier. She worked to onboard well-known members of the community as volunteers and advocates.

“We reached out to Anne and Donna Gioia, for example,” Cindy says, “for help with building a volunteer group of well-known members of the community whose lives had been touched by cancer.

“It was obvious that we needed to change the way people thought about cancer. And about Roswell Park. We wanted people to think of it as the place you come first, not second or third.

“I’ve spent the last forty years building this program, nearly thirty of those years with Laurel, and I think we’ve been quite successful. And we’re proud of it.”

Laurel describes her working relationship with Cindy as a blend of community engagement, fundraising, volunteer advocacy, and patient advocacy.

“What’s unusual about Cindy and I is that we’re best friends, too,” Laurel says. “Often in our industry, marketing and development teams clash over differences. Cindy and I have our differences, but at the end of the day, we keep the mission top of mind.”

Laurel and Cindy’s friendship and shared priorities have served the pair, and Roswell Park, well, especially when hurdles have presented themselves.

Both Laurel and Cindy have strong opinions on the merits of Candace Johnson, who became Roswell Park’s President and CEO in 2015 and has overseen significant growth.

“She was an amazing Deputy Director, and she’s an amazing scientist and CEO,” Laurel says. “Candace is the president for the people. She’s approachable, relatable.”

Cindy concurs: “She’s our warrior. She will fight for this organization and its patients. She’s the right person. There are a lot of amazing women, strong women, involved in Roswell Park’s work, and she’s at the forefront.”

They’re confident in the future of the institution under its leadership.

As the duo prepares to depart from Roswell Park, both Laurel and Cindy are proud of what they’ve accomplished–and humbled by the whole experience.

“There is an intimacy in being with people who could die, and in helping those people,” Laurel says. “There’s a humility in that. And having come from another cancer center to Roswell, I have to say that this organization is built on passion.”

“When people are facing mortality, it gets very real,” Cindy adds. “It’s a privilege to work in this environment, to hear that something that got funded is now saving people’s lives. It’s pretty rewarding, and you feel like your life has made a difference. I can’t even begin to tell you what an honor it has been to be a part of this.”