We are excited to introduce our Inaugural Community Member of the Month, Dr. Robin White. She is an integral member of our Board of Directors and a renowned pediatrician in northern Nevada! We are grateful for her guidance and honored to spotlight her commitment to northern Nevada’s youngest cancer warriors!
How did you first get connected with NNCCF?
I was serving on the Board of Angel Kiss Foundation prior to their merger with Keaton Raphael Memorial Foundation. Since the mission of NNCCF was the same as Angel Kiss, I wanted to help grow this new foundation in any way I could.
What is your NNCCF “why”? What makes you want to continue supporting NNCCF?
During the course of my career, I have diagnosed several patients with the emperor of all maladies—cancer. I then turn them over to a pediatric oncology colleague with much more training and experience than I for their treatment, watching helplessly as they and their families endure the battle and hopefully win the war. Being on the NNCCF Board enables me to engage in the battle, as well as to work towards a future cure by supporting childhood cancer research. Giving it back and paying it forward brings great joy simply because there is no joy without giving.
What is one thing you’ve done for NNCCF that you’re proud of?
This question is difficult for me to answer. I am very proud of the unprecented growth of NNCCF over the last 20 plus years and by association I am able to celebrate this success. I have great admiration for our NNCCF staff who work tirelessly supporting our child warriors and their families and by association I am deeply humbled by their dedication and fortitude. My participation is but a very small part of the ongoing work of the entire foundation, so my pride is not generated by any one thing I have done, but rather what our foundation has done to relieve a small part of the burden shouldered by the families we serve.
If you could meet anyone, past or present, who would you meet and why?
I would want to meet Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States of America. According to W.E.B. Du Bois, “I love him not because he was perfect but because he was not and yet triumphed.” Lincoln’s character has been described as his integrity in the longest sense of that term—his devotion to truth and justice and freedom in every department of human life and under every temptation. He was far from a perfect individual, as are we all. However, he learned from his mistakes and learned how to compensate for his own personal shortcomings. He believed to his core that people deserved equal treatment. Through constant practice and diligent effort, he treated others whom he encountered with honesty, humility, courage, justice and grace. I can only hope to barely approach these characteristics of this great human being.