Michelle Rakoff

Michele Rakoff, a 30-year breast cancer survivor and patient and research advocate spent 20 years working in the clinic directly with patients, clinicians and diverse communities developing mentoring programs to assist newly diagnosed patients and consulting on the development of support and education programs for women with metastatic disease. 

She is Executive Director of Breast Cancer Care and Research Fund (BCCRF), a National Breast Cancer Coalition (NBCC) board director, NBCC Artemis Project member and Project Lead and Advanced Project Lead graduate and mentor. In addition to having served as a member on the California Breast Cancer Research Program’s (CBCRP) Advisory Council, she was a CBCRP community research collaborative grant recipient. Michele participates in programmatic review for the Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program (DoDBCRP) and holds a seat on the UCLA Data Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) and Internal Scientific Peer Review Committee (ISPRC), and on the City of Hope External Advisory Board (EAB). 

As a research advocate, she collaborates on NIH, DoDBCRP and CBCRP grants as well as City of Hope grants to improve breast cancer care in Ethiopia. She is an advisory board member on the NIH California Precision Medicine Consortium (AllofUS) and the Wisdom Study. Michele also focuses on public policy issues as NBCC’s Field Coordinator for California.