Susan G. Komen for the Cure founder and CEO Nancy Brinker and President Liz Thompson announced yesterday that they would be leaving their current positions, a management shakeup that comes just months after the organization made a controversial decision to cut funding for Planned Parenthood.
News broke on Jan. 31, that Komen would cut funding for PP, for which the group had long provided funding for breast health services for uninsured women. The announcement immediately sparked a political fire – a conflagration generated, at least in part, by Karen Handel, a 2010 Georgia GOP gubernatorial candidate and now-former national Komen vice president who was apparently the driving force behind the policy change. Enormous backlash from the proposal – which Brinker told reporters wasn’t about an anti-choice agenda, but rather about a desire to grant its funds more directly to diagnostic services, like mammograms – prompted the organization to reverse course, pull the policy, and resume its relationship with PP. In the intervening months, however, revenues for Komen, including those generated by registrations for its eponymous Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, have declined in cities across the country.
Indeed, in announcing that she would be stepping down as CEO – a position she said she was asked by her board to take in 2009 – Brinker said she would be moving into the role as chair of Komen Board Executive Committee where she would focus on revenue raising. “I want to focus on Susan G. Komen’s global mission and raising resources to bring our promise to women around the world,” she said.
This article appears in August 10 • 2012.