- Person
- Evelyn Lauder
- Lived
- 1936–2011
- Field
- Breast cancer advocacy
- From
- Austrian-born American
The story
Evelyn Lauder, a refugee who fled Nazi-occupied Vienna with her Jewish family as a small child, became one of the most effective champions of breast cancer research in history. After her own diagnosis in 1989 she led a fundraising drive that raised about $18 million for a dedicated breast centre at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, which opened in 1992 and now bears her name, and she helped create the pink ribbon the same year.
Awareness, she believed, was not enough. What was missing was steady funding for scientists trying to understand and cure the disease. Talking with her friend Dr. Larry Norton, a leading breast cancer physician at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, she planned a foundation devoted only to research. The Breast Cancer Research Foundation was born in August 1993. A scientific advisory board selected the most promising projects, while a separate board raised the money, so that grants could go to the best researchers wherever they worked.
The start was small. In its first fiscal year, ending in June 1994, the foundation raised just over $600,000 and supported eight researchers. The next year it raised nearly $2 million, then nearly $4 million, then $6 million. Lauder brought in partners from department stores and fashion brands to an airline that painted a plane pink. By her death in 2011 it had raised more than $350 million. Asked in 2010 about her impact, she said she did not want to look back, only to reach the day when the foundation could close because cancer had been cured.
Since then the foundation has raised more than a billion dollars. For 2025–2026 it awarded $74.75 million in grants to more than 260 scientists in 17 countries, with about a third of its annual funding going to research on metastatic, or stage 4, breast cancer, the form of the disease that causes most deaths. It describes itself as the largest private funder of breast cancer research in the world.
Why it matters
The foundation Lauder created pays for hundreds of scientists every year whose work on detection, targeted treatments and metastatic disease helps patients around the world.
About Evelyn Lauder
Vienna-born refugee who co-created the pink ribbon for breast cancer awareness and founded the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, which has raised more than a billion dollars for research.
More about Evelyn Lauder
Sources
- An Interview with Evelyn H. Lauder LEADERS magazine
- 12 Facts About Our Founder, Evelyn H. Lauder Breast Cancer Research Foundation
- Top 10 Things to Know About BCRF Breast Cancer Research Foundation
- Evelyn H. Lauder, Champion of Breast Cancer Research, Dies at 75 (New York Times obituary, reprinted in the Congressional Record) U.S. Government Publishing Office
- Evelyn Lauder, breast cancer’s pink ribbon pioneer, dies at 75 Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.