Exploring Life & Business with Patricia Ostiller of Cancer Support Community Greater San Gabriel Valley

Today we’d like to introduce you to Patricia Ostiller

Hi Patricia, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I’d be happy to share my story.

I will start with the fact that I definitely didn’t grow up thinking I was going to be the CEO of a nonprofit.

I was born in Gary, Indiana as one of four daughters. My dad was a lawyer, and he always told us we could do whatever we wanted to do. So, I pursued a career in law, attending Northwestern University and then Loyola Law School here in Los Angeles.

I began practicing law at a big firm, and initially, it was great. However, as I started my family, and with a four-year-old son and a two-year-old daughter, I found that I was missing out on dinners and family time due to the long hours.

Wanting a change, I transitioned to working as a career law clerk for a federal judge, which offered more manageable hours. Around this time, I also became a parent volunteer at a school in Altadena, joining their development committee, which is where I discovered my passion for development work, particularly in fundraising for causes I believed in.

When the school’s Development Director was leaving, I told them I was interested in the position. I soon became the school’s Development Director, and I’ve been in development ever since.

As for my time with Cancer Support Community Greater San Gabriel Valley, I joined the organization in 2015 as the Development Director and now serve as its CEO. This has truly been the culmination of all I hoped my career would be. It allows me to use my skills—education, business acumen, speaking, writing, and finance—in the nonprofit sector. I am honored to be doing meaningful work for our community and hope to continue here until I retire.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Are roads ever smooth? As nonprofits, we plan the best we can to serve as many people as we can. Along the way, we may hit curves in the road, but our team here at Cancer Support Community is strong, disciplined, and most of all, dedicated to our mission.
Leading Cancer Support Community through the last several years has come with some pretty significant challenges. Just as I began my leadership role, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Overnight, we had to shift from in-person programs to virtual attendance. In less than a week, my team and I managed to keep our programs accessible for over 1,000 immunocompromised participants while ensuring our staff stayed healthy and engaged.

In addition to the pandemic, we faced another major challenge. In March of 2020, our landlord informed us that we wouldn’t be able to renew our lease. So began the search for a new location. Our board quickly realized we could do our best work by creating our own solid future of establishing a permanent location – meaning, we decided to purchase a building instead of entering into another lease.

After doing some heavy lifting, we found what I knew would be our new forever home, but it had a pretty substantial price tag, so I did what any CEO in this position would do – we raised a lot of money. With the support of several Directors, we created our Be the Key capital campaign and raised an unprecedented $3,800,000 from over 250 generous donors. It was a tough task, but we did it and successfully negotiated the purchase of our new building in Sierra Madre.

Then, the building needed a complete renovation, which was another significant hurdle. From the second half of 2022 through June 2023, we worked tirelessly with architects, contractors, and designers to transform the space. In July 2023, we finally moved into our new home. Since then, we’ve been able to serve more people facing cancer than ever before, ending 2023 with a record number of 1,130 people served—all at no cost to the participants.

These experiences have been challenging, but they’ve also been quite rewarding. They’ve shown me the resilience and dedication of our team and community.

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Cancer Support Community San Gabriel Valley is a local affiliate of a global nonprofit that provides professional psychosocial support to anyone impacted by a cancer diagnosis, whether it be someone who is facing a diagnosis themself, a caregiver, family member, survivor, or even people who are bereaved, having lost a loved one to cancer. We offer individual and group support, educational workshops, healthy lifestyle classes, social activities, and resources/referrals. What sets us apart is that we measure our outcomes and we know that we are reducing the anxiety and stress that come with a cancer diagnosis and improving the quality of life for patients and their families during perhaps the most challenging time of their lives.

We offer professional services through our clinical team, volunteer instructors, and presenters at our educational workshops. Where else can you go and get advice from leading experts in their field at no cost? We walk alongside our participants and their medical team providing evidence-based knowledge and professionally-led psychosocial emotional support and activities as a proven method to enhance medical outcomes.

We are known for being a lifeline to those who need us most. We are also known for being one the top-rated nonprofits in Pasadena, and just recently, we were honored with Judy Chu’s Congressional Leadership Award as Nonprofit of the Year for the 28th District, celebrating our recent move to our new permanent home in Sierra Madre.

We want people to know that psychological support should be as compulsory as your medical treatments in your healing process. Unfortunately, cancer often creates financial hardship for individuals and their families. We feel premium mental health care for cancer patients and those that surround them should not come at a premium, so we offer it completely free of charge, with many thanks to the generosity of our community and donors.

We also want people to know that we offer our programs in English, Spanish, and Armenian, and we meet our participants wherever they are, so our programs are in-person, hybrid, and virtual. In fact, our service area reaches as far north as Santa Clarita, and as far east as Rancho Cucamonga, so we have embraced virtual programming to reach those folks farther away from us.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
In LA County alone, there are approximately 30,000 newly diagnosed cancer patients each year, and this number continues to rise, and unfortunately, it is impacting young adults at an alarming rate. We are all impacted by cancer – either personally or through a loved one – and if and when that time comes, it’s important that not only cancer patients take care of their mental health and well-being, but it is equally important for family members and friends to reach out for support as well. Once the family is engaged in receiving support, it makes it much easier to have those difficult conversations and stay present with one another. Additionally, even after treatment, life is simply different, so continuing support is essential, however, perhaps the greatest gift we offer our participants is just knowing that you are not alone, that others are sharing the same experience, and that you don’t have to do this by yourself. We’re here for you.

All of our services are offered free of charge to anyone impacted by cancer and our programs are funded entirely by the community – we do not receive any government grants.

Services include:
Professionally led support groups
Individual counseling
Educational workshops
Healthy lifestyle classes
Children and family programs
Social events
Resources and referrals

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.cancersupportsgv.org/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cancersupportsgv/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cancersupportsgv
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjkXYtN0ED2fbJW4rs1sKAg

Image Credits
For photo on checkered floor – photo credit Alexandra Houston