World Cancer Day 2025: United by Unique
Publish Date
30 JAN 2025
Overview
Fostering an inclusive and resilient workplace to support colleagues affected by cancer and their caregivers.
Cancer is more than just a medical diagnosis—it’s a deeply personal matter. Behind every diagnosis lies a unique human story: stories of grief, pain, healing, resilience, love and more.1
Through our patient-directed approach, we are privileged to hear many of these stories directly from people affected by cancer and their loved ones. This is just one of the reasons why World Cancer Day’s new three-year campaign, United by Unique, resonates so deeply with us at EMD Serono. We are united with the broader community of patients and caregivers, medical professionals, and researchers in our drive and our passion. At the same time, we recognize that this is a community of individuals with unique needs. Their stories galvanize us to stand…
…united in our vision to help more patients become cancer survivors and be relentless in our work to address cancer with unique mechanisms and approaches.
…united with patients as we bring their unique perspectives to every stage of our drug discovery, development and delivery.
…united through our pledge to abolish stigma and insecurity in the workplace and provide a more supportive, recovery-forward culture that recognizes the unique needs of our colleagues affected by cancer.
…united with carers, in our long-standing support of their unique needs through our Embracing Carers program.
Uniting with Magali, Whose Unique Story Inspires Us
Magali’s journey has been an inspiration to us. We shared elements of her story over the years—from facing taboos, loss and side effects, to her resilience and fortitude in regaining command of her speech and ability to pronounce her daughter’s name and navigate the unknown after her treatment ended.
“I felt like there was a huge gap in between the treatment then ‘ok now we’ve finished everything.’ And that was in 2014. ‘You’ve finished treatment, now OK, off you go.’ But I know it is not ‘off you go.’ Even today, more than 10 years after that, I still sometimes feel some sadness or loss, why me?—grief and loss for the person I was before.” However, as she explains: “I am not my cancer, I am not defined by it.”
Now, many years after meeting Magali as a ‘patient,’ we are honored to work with her in a new capacity. Her unique cancer story led to a revelation, inspiring a new passion in her life and career: helping others through training and life coaching to ensure they do not feel as lost as she once did. As a certified coach, disability manager and onco-coach approved by the Cancer Foundation she finds the biggest endorsement is when people tell her they ‘feel seen and they feel heard.’ “I cannot change their stories. I cannot change the past, but being able to help them feel empowered is what I find so amazing and humbling.”
Magali is now helping to bring that empowerment to the workplace: she is coaching our management teams on how best to support colleagues affected by cancer, having recently delivered a workshop to our Global Government Affairs Leadership team. “Each person, depending on where they are in life, will be facing different challenges,” Magali emphasizes the importance for employees to feel they can talk and share that with HR, and it is hence crucial to give the latter the necessary tools to support people affected by cancer. Magali’s dream is for such trainings to become mandatory in all companies, irrespective of their size.
We know that 50% of those with cancer are afraid to tell their employers.2 But for those who do, 90% agree that support they got at work positively impacts their health.3 As signatories of the Working With Cancer Pledge, we are committed to creating a workplace where employees with cancer are well-supported as they navigate the unique effects of their diagnosis on their lives.
“When you have big companies showing that they want to tackle this issue, that it is not some empty words written in the cafeteria but that they are really putting effort, time and resources into this, I really love this,” said Magali.
Magali’s work also extends to caregivers, who are deeply affected when a loved one is diagnosed and whose new responsibilities often have direct effects on their working life. With cancer diagnoses expected to increase over the coming years, employers need to face this reality and create frameworks and policies to support people in a caregiver role. As leaders in the effort to support family caregivers, our company launched a new Caregiver Leave Benefit to aid employees caring for critically and terminally ill family members.
As Magali points out, caregiving can also enhance a person’s skills, benefitting both their companies and colleagues. After all, the ability to adapt, juggle tasks, and remain resilient that are so important in dealing with cancer are also critical skills in the workplace.
Magali’s story is a reminder that cancer can affect people in many ways, well beyond the clinical. We honor the unique person behind every cancer diagnosis and commit to a people-centered approach that unites us with this community, including those within our workplace. On World Cancer Day and every day, we are committed to improve the futures of those unique individuals living with cancer.
Cancer Doesn’t Care. But We Do.
US-NONO-00725 02/25
REFERENCES
1 UICC United by Unique. Available at: https://worldcancerday.org. Last accessed 01/25.
2 Cancer@Work Barometric Study 2021. Available at: https://workingwithcancerpledge.com. Last accessed 01/25
3 Publicis Health Custom Research Study 2022. Available at: https://workingwithcancerpledge.com. Last accessed 01/25