Heidi Letsche

I would say support from coworkers, my family, and stakeholders in the field. The success stories have been really important to me. I've witnessed a lot of donor-patient meetings where someone was cured and they got to meet their donor, who kind of gave them their second chance at life. Those stories keep me motivated and inspired in this work.

The best career advice I ever received was to follow your heart and do what makes you happy, which I have followed. I could switch my profession and go work somewhere that's not nonprofit and make a lot more money every year, but it's also really rewarding to be able to answer when someone says, you know, what do you do for work? Well, I work for a nonprofit that helps people with leukemia. So I would say that's probably the best piece of information: be proud of what you do every day and have a meaning behind it, not just a paycheck. Be proud of your job.

I would say that it's very rewarding, especially being a woman and having children. I have two children of my own, so of course a lot of women out there are moms, and it's really rewarding to be able to tell your kids why you're working and what you're doing. I can say, oh, I'm helping people who are sick. My kids will ask me all the time, like, do you really help cure cancer? And stuff like that. It's really rewarding as a mother to be able to tell your kids you're helping people who are sick. My 5-year-old is really starting to understand it, and he understands now that I help sick people. Maybe my story also helps someone out who feels like they may be in their career rut and wants to go do something meaningful. I don't know, maybe it's something inspiring for someone.

The challenges are definitely finding a match, so not everyone has that perfect match out there, and that creates a lot of barriers. We're trying to get as many people registered as possible onto the registry, but that also has barriers. Especially in the U.S. in general, just asking someone to go through this is challenging because it's a voluntary procedure. Getting our donors motivated to actually go through the donation process is difficult because they don't get anything for it. I mean, every expense, everything is organized, it's all covered, but at the end of the day, they're doing this out of their own good hearts. So it's just the constant motivation and getting someone to take the time and energy to go through something like that.

Communication is the most important value to me. Open, honest communication. I often feel like that's, for me, the number one, because without open, honest communication, I find it's very difficult in both personal and work life.