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Photo courtesy of Amber Brittain
Amber Brittain, a loan officer with MortgageBanc, is a candidate for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Woman of the Year.
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Photos courtesy of Amber Brittain.
Amber Brittain, a loan officer with MortgageBanc, is a candidate for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Woman of the Year. Brittain’s team is raising money for Johanna Poole, 5. Johanna is diagnosed with Leukemia at a young age.
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Photos courtesy of Amber Brittain.
Amber Brittain, a loan officer with MortgageBanc, is a candidate for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Woman of the Year. Brittain’s team is raising money for Austin Bales, 8. Austin was diagnosed with Leukemia at a young age.
A Chelsea businesswoman is in the running for the The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s (LLS) Woman of the Year.
Amber Brittain, a loan officer for MortgageBanc (a branch of Fairway Independent Mortgage), will participate in this year’s event, and her focus will be on the LLS Children’s Initiative. She is one of nine candidates in the Birmingham region for Man/Woman of the Year who will be fundraising toward a mission to end blood cancers.
The LLS Children’s Initiative is a comprehensive $50 million multiyear endeavor to help children with cancer through every facet of their mission.
Brittain attended the 2019 grand finale for the event and said she was so moved, she knew she would one day take part in it herself.
“In 2019, I went for a friend that was nominated for Woman of the Year, and I was sitting there hearing about the boy and girl of the year and how many nights they’d been in the hospital and the number of surgeries they’d had, and I just sat there sobbing. The children’s initiative is my focus because that’s what I was so drawn to. I had no idea that children received the same amount of chemotherapy an adult receives in their little bodies.”
Brittain and the other candidates will compete in honor of two local children, Johanna Poole and Austin Bales, who are blood cancer survivors. The man and woman who raise the most funds during the campaign will be awarded the title of Man or Woman of the Year in their community. The ones who raise the most across the entire U.S. will be recognized as the national Man and Woman of the Year.
Candidates must be nominated by someone on the executive committee and explain their passion and connection before they are approved.
“I met with the director after [the 2019 finale], and they wanted me to run in 2020, and I asked them to let me serve on the executive board and get a feel for the campaign and then think about running in 2021,” Brittain said. “I had been feeling the nudge the whole time and said I’m going to do it.”
The purpose of the competition is to help fund ground breaking research to advance cancer cures. The Alabama campaign runs from April 6 through June 17, and every dollar raised counts as one vote.
She said the competition will come down to the wire, as donors can give until the last minute at the grand finale, about which details are yet to be finalized.
Brittain has a total of 10 team members, all of whom will have individual roles to help with donations and fundraising. They will have a letter writing campaign and also solicit corporate donations. Their largest fundraiser will take place June 7, and she will have help from those close to her who have some experience.
“We will have a golf tournament at Greystone Golf & Country Club at the Greystone Founders Course,” she said. “My dad works for Titleist, my husband puts on a golf tournament every year for ServPro and my friend who is a nurse at the cancer center at Brookwood Baptist Medical Center will head up the T-shirt campaign. There will also be a silent auction.”
Many LLS, supported therapies not only help blood cancer patients, but are also now used to treat patients with rare forms of stomach and skin cancers and are in clinical trials for patients with lung, brain, breast, pancreatic and prostate cancers. LLS-funded drugs like targeted therapies and immunotherapies are now saving thousands of lives every day.
All donations will be tax deductible and support not only LLS research, but also patient services, advocacy, public and professional education, and community services as well.
“The Woman of the Year in 2019 raised $53,000 in her campaign,” Brittain said. “My team goal is $50,000 this year. I hope to totally exceed it.”
The campaign kicks off April 6. For more information on how to donate, the golf tournament and more, visit Brittain’s LLS page at pages.lls.org/mwoy/al/bhm21/abrittain or on Instagram.
Blood Cancer Facts
► Blood cancers account for more than 40% of all childhood cancers, and most children are treated with the same toxic
combinations of chemotherapies developed decades ago.
► Every 3 minutes someone in the United States is diagnosed with blood cancer.
► More than one-third of blood cancer patients do not survive 5 years after their diagnosis.
► Every 9 minutes someone dies in the United States of a blood cancer.
