Please also welcome our new board members

Jane McMahon Romanoff

Jane McMahon is an Executive Search Consultant with Opus Search Partners, a boutique executive search firm servicing clients in the healthcare, higher education and not-for-profit sectors. With over 10 years of executive search experience, Jane has completed senior-level assignments for a number of well-known and regarded institutions including Boston University, Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, Harvard University, Columbia University, New York University, and The University of Chicago, among others.

With a strong commitment to mission-driven organizations coupled with a desire to “give back,” Jane’s desire is to see the VHL Family Alliance gain greater visibility through research and educational grants and sees her involvement with the Board as a platform to increase public awareness, funding, and community involvement. A native of Philadelphia, Jane earned her bachelor’s degree from Temple University.

Sarah Nielsen

Sarah Nielsen is a Genetic Counselor in the Cancer Risk Program at the University of Chicago where she educates and counsels those with a personal and/or family history of cancer. Sarah received a Bachelor of Arts in Biology from Lehigh University and a Master of Science in Genetic Counseling from the University of Pittsburgh. During graduate school in Pittsburgh, she worked as a clinical researcher for the Department of Endocrine Surgery, where her focus was on VHL type 2A. She had the opportunity to study two very large historic Western Pennsylvania families with VHL type 2A, and her extensive conversations with these families further sparked her interest in VHL from a scientific perspective as well as patient advocate perspective. Her findings regarding genotype-phenotype correlations in these two VHL families were recently published in the American Journal of Medical Genetics and Familial Cancer. Sarah is currently working to establish an Endocrine Genetics Clinic at the University of Chicago where VHL families can come for comprehensive care and support.

Sarah will use her background as a genetic counselor and VHL researcher to further reach out to and educate medical professionals about the disease. She will serve as a liaison between the public sector and the medical field and use her involvement with the Board to spread the word about the great services and research opportunities that the VHL Family Alliance has to offer. Sarah plans to continue her own VHL research and to translate the latest scientific discoveries into language that patients can easily understand.

As a native “Mainah,” Sarah is adjusting to her new life in the Midwest and its exchange of oceans for lakes and mountains for cornfields.

As printed in the VHL Family Forum 19:3, September 2011. For permission to reprint, please contact VHL Family Alliance, editor@vhl.org. Further information is available from the VHL Family Alliance, info@vhl.org.