Marissa Lima

I grew up in Richmond, Virginia, in a family where service was more than an idea. My father spent 42 years with the Virginia State Police, and another 13 years with the U.S. Marshals Service. I grew up with an understanding of what it means to dedicate your life to something bigger than yourself. I saw what it meant to serve a community, and I saw the sacrifices that come with that kind of work. I think I recognized very early that the people who protect and serve us are still people. They have families, worries, hopes, and lives outside of the uniform.

My father’s vocation taught me about service, and my mother’s constant words of support taught me from an early age to believe that I was capable of anything I set my mind to. She never let me doubt my own potential. Her unwavering belief in me gave me the courage to dream big, work hard, overcome obstacles, and always believe that there was nothing I could not accomplish. I didn’t know then how important those lessons would become later in my life.

My own path took me in a different direction as I learned that I was good at bringing people together, telling stories, building relationships, and helping people understand why something mattered. Eventually, I realized that those skills could be used to help people, and that became my career.

I did my undergraduate work at Virginia Tech, studying communications, and graduated Cum Laude as a Commonwealth Scholar. I pursued graduate studies in communications at Wake Forest University as a WFU fellowship recipient. After college, I began building a career in nonprofit development - starting in higher education, then in the arts, and ultimately in the healthcare arena.

In 2000, I left Virginia and moved to Memphis, expecting it to be simply another chapter. Instead, Memphis became home for nearly 25 years. It was where I built a family and a career, where I formed friendships and a community. It was where I learned to stand on my own. And it was where I became a leader.

My career eventually took me to the American Cancer Society, where I worked on some of the organization’s most important fundraising campaigns. Making Strides Against Breast Cancer became a particularly important part of my professional life. Those walks were about so much more than fundraising...they were about real people…survivors…families. People were there to remember someone they loved. People walked because they were still fighting. People walked because they wanted a different future for their children.

At ACS I learned how to manage complicated events, lead volunteers, work with corporate partners, communicate with the media, solve problems quickly, and make decisions under pressure. I also learned something I didn’t fully appreciate at the time: when you lead a community event, people trust you with something important, and that trust carries a great deal of weight.

That weight became the weight of the world on October 19, 2024, when I was in charge of the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk in Memphis. I had planned and led these events before, and I knew the work. I knew the details and the pressure. I knew what it meant to have thousands of people counting on me. But I could never have imagined what that day would become.

What started as a beautiful day of community and support, became a nightmare when a brilliant young woman - a first-year medical student - was tracked to our event by her ex-boyfriend. He murdered her in broad daylight. A day that had been planned around hope and healing was suddenly filled with unimaginable loss and pain.

For me, it created a line in my life between before and after. There are experiences that change the way you see the world, and for me, this was one of them.

When a crisis occurs at an event you’re leading, you don’t get to simply walk away because you’re shocked or afraid. People are looking to you…your team is looking to you…the organization is looking to you. And sometimes you must keep moving while you’re still trying to understand what just happened yourself. I was incredibly blessed to be surrounded by a strong, supportive team that day who helped me navigate the most difficult experience I’d ever known.

I carried a lot from that day. Trauma brings sadness, grief, anger, guilt…the range of emotions is confusing and dark, and I struggled with it for quite some time. I still struggle. But I gained a deeper awareness of how quickly life can change and a new understanding of the responsibility that comes with bringing people together.

In 2025, I received the Nexstar Broadcasting Remarkable Woman Award for the city of Memphis. The recognition meant a great deal to me, but it came with very mixed emotions. The award is a nationwide initiative to honor the influence that women have on public policy, social progress, and the quality of life. It celebrates women from across America who lead, inspire and forge the way for others to succeed. I received it for my work in the breast cancer arena and for how my team and I handled that tragic day. I struggled to accept that I should receive an award for something so traumatic.

But I came to realize that the award wasn’t just about me. It represented the people behind the work we were doing to end breast cancer. It represented the amazing colleagues who stood beside me in the aftermath of a tragedy. It was about the volunteers who showed up because they believed in the mission…the cancer survivors who shared their stories…the families who kept walking even when someone they loved couldn’t walk with them. When I accepted that recognition, I thought about how many people had been part of my journey. It was humbling and emotionally overwhelming.

If the tragedy of October 19^th taught me anything, it was certainly the importance of family. So, after spending half of my life in Memphis, I knew it was time to go home to Virginia.

Coming home was emotional because I wasn’t the same person who left. I was bringing nearly a quarter century of experiences with me…professional accomplishments, friendships, relationships, successes, disappointments, lessons, and memories…I was also bringing everything I had learned about leadership.

I joined the National Kidney Foundation as Director for the Commonwealth of Virginia and continued doing the work I knew well - building relationships, raising money, developing partnerships, engaging donors, creating events, and connecting communities to a mission. But a deeper purpose came to find me in an unexpected opportunity.

That opportunity came with Valor RVA. The organization had been serving First Responders and their families in the Richmond community for nearly four decades, originally founded in 1989. But it had never had a full-time executive director, and the Valor RVA board believed it was time for a new chapter.

I became the organization’s first full-time Executive Director in its 37-year history, and when I think about that now, it feels almost like the vastly different pieces of my life were coming together in this mission...the little girl who watched her father serve as a Virginia State Police officer…the nonprofit professional who learned how to build communities around a mission through passion and the power of a story…the fundraiser who learned that relationships are at the heart of philanthropy…the leader who experienced an unimaginable tragedy while responsible for a major event…and the woman who finally came home. I see now that all of those experiences prepared me for this moment. And I am so grateful.

Now as I begin this journey at the helm of Valor RVA, I realize that the tragedy of October 2024 has also changed the way I think about First Responders. Even though I had grown up in that world because of my father, after that day, I understood their work differently. I understood, if only in the smallest way, what it means to be the person who runs toward the crisis when everyone else is running away from it. Our First Responders make that decision every time they show up for work. The average person experiences between one and four traumatic events in their entire lifetime – our First Responders see an average of 800. It’s time to protect the wellness of the people who protect the rest of us. It is my absolute honor to lead that charge for Valor RVA.