Gina Hollenbeck

Gina was a Director on the Board of ALK Positive, Inc., a non-profit 501c3. Gina Hollenbeck learned she had Stage IV Lung Cancer in 2015. She was a wife and mother of two boys. In 2018, Gina became the President of ALK Positive, a patient-driven group with the mission to improve the life expectancy and quality of life of ALK positive patients worldwide. She served as the Advocacy co-chair and on the Board of Directors. She was a driven advocate for lung cancer research, early detection, patient-centric clinical trials, and biomarker testing.

Since her diagnosis in 2015, Gina endured brain surgery, radiation, removal of 2/3 of her left lung, and daily targeted chemo-therapy. As a nurse and a person with no risk factors, Gina was shocked that anyone with lungs can get lung cancer. She was an athlete and practiced swaa healthy lifestyle. Through much persistence, she finally received a diagnosis at age 38. Her only symptom was a cough. At diagnosis, her cancer had already progressed to stage IV with metastasis to her brain.

Gina was an advocate for early detection of lung cancer, biomarker testing, and for easier access to clinical trials. She spoke at many media and pharmaceutical events. She served as a panelist for GO2Foundation for lung cancer, ASCO, NTREK Summit, ALK Positive Summit, and NLCRT 2018, 2019, 2020. She servesd on the NLCRT Women and Lung Cancer task force as well as the Biomarker Planning Committee. She co-lead a team to form the Biomarker Collaborative that advocates for biomarker testing and advocacy across tumor types. In 2019, she was granted the prestigious honor of being selected as one of the Patient Advocate Travel award recipients to the IASLC 2019 World Conference on Lung Cancer held in Barcelona, Spain. Gina has collaborated and served as an advisor to Pfizer, Takeda, and Genetech. She has had the honor of serving as a consumer reviewer for the Department of Defense Lung Cancer Research Program. Gina has been featured in Time, Health, and on local Memphis media. In addition to speaking, Gina and her husband, Greg, believed that fundraising events in their community serve to educate those around them about lung cancer, the inadequate funding for lung cancer research, that lung cancer is the number one cancer killer of men and women and that anyone with lungs can get lung cancer. They created two annual events that they host to raise awareness and money for lung cancer research. Gina was an advocate  driven by passion to change the outcomes for all who are diagnosed with cancer.