Dr. Kimmie Ng is Associate Chief of the Division of Gastrointestinal Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI), and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She also serves as the Founding Director of the Young-Onset Colorectal Cancer Center and Co-Director of the Colon and Rectal Cancer Center at DFCI. Her research focuses on identifying dietary, plasma, and molecular predictors of improved survival in patients with colorectal cancer, with a special interest in the vitamin D pathway, microbiome, and young-onset colorectal cancer. She is the recipient of numerous NIH, foundation, and industry grants to support this work. She chaired the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Scientific Program Committee for the 2023 Annual Meeting and currently serves as a member of ASCO’s Nominating Committee. She was appointed an Associate Editor of JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) in February 2024. She has been featured in multiple national media outlets, including the TODAY Show, ABC News, The New York Times, CNN, and The Washington Post, to raise awareness of young-onset colorectal cancer and the importance of cancer screening. Dr. Ng obtained her Bachelor of Science degree with Distinction from Yale University and her Doctor of Medicine degree from University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. She completed a residency in internal medicine at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and a medical oncology fellowship at Dana-Farber/Partners Cancer Care. She subsequently received a Master of Public Health degree from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Nelli Zafman is a nurse practitioner and holds a Master of Science in Nursing degree from Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing. She has been working at Sydney Kimmel Cancer Canter, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, for the last 18 years. Part of her career there she has been taking care of women and men with a history of early and metastatic breast cancer. Ms. Zafman is ANCC certified and holds an Advanced Oncology Certified Nurse Practitioner, ONS certification. She has also been participating in therapeutic studies looking at management of early-stage as well as late-stage breast cancer. 

The Williams Group is led by Michael “Mike” Williams. Mr. Williams has more than two decades of experience in business advocacy and strategic communication, as well as federal and state government service. Prior to founding The Williams Group, he was a managing director of Credit Suisse in the Public Policy Americas division. Mr. Williams served as special assistant to the president and staff Director for legislative affairs during the Clinton administration. He has worked in numerous election campaigns at all levels and has served as a congressional liaison for the National Democratic Convention for over 14 years.

Dina Lansey is an Assistant Professor of Oncology in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and serves as the Assistant Director for Clinical Research and Population Sciences at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Dina has led SKCCC efforts to improve the inclusion of women, minorities, and other underrepresented patient groups in clinical trials since 2012. Her efforts to understanding barriers to trial participation as they appear in practice and to develop interventions to address them through research, policy changes, education, patient supportive care services and community outreach and engagement have led to significant declines in long standing trial participation disparities at the Center. Today, her work also includes identifying and addressing the socioeconomic, environmental and structural barriers that influence disparities in cancer risk reduction, screening and access to treatment.

Dina received her B.S.N from the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing and M.S.N from Drexel University. She is currently a doctoral candidate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her dissertation is focused on environmental justice and its influence on cancer health disparities.

Kenan Onel, MD, PhD, is a Professor of Oncology at the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, where he leads the new Department of Clinical Genomics and is founding Director of the Center for Precision Oncology and Cancer Prevention. Dr Onel is a physician/scientist who studies the genetic contribution to cancer risk and response to therapy. As a physician, he is Board-certified in Pediatric Oncology and has spent his career as a clinical cancer geneticist caring for families at high risk for cancer due to their genetics or family history. As a scientist, he is known internationally for his work on the genetic contribution to cancer risk and response to therapy and is recognized as a leader in functional genomics, an emerging field integrating genetic and laboratory investigations that is yielding profound new insights into human health and disease. He has a long history of NIH and foundation funding, and has published almost 100 articles, reviews, and book chapters.

Dr. Luis Carvajal-Carmona is the Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Diversity and a Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine at the University of California at Davis (UCD). He holds the Auburn Community Cancer Endowed Chair in Basic Science. He serves as the Center for Advancing Cancer Health Director and co-director of the Community Engagement Program at the Clinical and Translational Science Center.  Dr. Carvajal-Carmona obtained his Ph.D. from University College London, completed postdoctoral training at the London Research Institute, and was a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. Dr. Carvajal-Carmona specializes in cancer genetics, epidemiology, health disparities, and global health. He has discovered multiple cancer genes and has published over 100 research manuscripts. His main contributions to science include the elucidation of the genetic origins of Latino populations, discovering the first common variants increasing the risk of colorectal cancer, and identifying a novel familial form of gastric cancer.