Who We Are

Built by people who
have sat in that room.

The RIM Project was not designed at a distance. It was built by people who have navigated cancer care as patients, family members, and advocates — and who refused to accept that the gaps they experienced were inevitable.

THE ROOM
Our Origin

We started with
a question.

Why does the quality of your cancer experience depend so heavily on whether you happen to know someone who can translate — who can explain what "progression" means at 11pm, who knows which questions to ask before signing a consent form, who understands the difference between a second opinion and a delay?

The answer is structural. Some people move through oncology with an invisible support system built from education, networks, and prior experience with institutional power. Others move through it alone, with a stack of pamphlets and a patient portal password.

The RIM Project exists to close that gap — not by training patients to advocate harder for themselves, but by placing trained advocates in the room beside them from the start.

"We were not looking for someone to feel sorry for us. We were looking for someone who knew the system well enough to help us move through it."
Presence over referral. Advocacy that happens at the appointment, not after it.
Infrastructure over awareness. We are building systems, not campaigns.
Accountability over goodwill. Outcome gaps close when there are consequences for allowing them to persist.
Community over extraction. The people most affected by these gaps must be at the center of the work — not just the subject of it.
What We Believe

The system is not
broken by accident.

01
Advocacy is a clinical resource
The presence of an informed advocate at a cancer appointment changes what gets said, what gets documented, and what gets done. This is not a soft benefit — it is a measurable clinical intervention.
02
Data without accountability is decoration
We have decades of outcome data showing which populations bear the highest burden of preventable cancer mortality. The problem is not information. The problem is the absence of institutional consequences for ignoring it.
03
Geography is a clinical variable
Where you live determines whether clinical trials are accessible, whether your oncologist has bandwidth to answer questions, whether your insurer will authorize what your physician recommends. We build for the full range of where people actually are.
04
Permanence over visibility
The most important infrastructure is the kind that doesn't need a news cycle to sustain it. We are building an organization designed to outlast the moment that created it — because the need will outlast the moment too.
Founding Story

What the system
owes.

The RIM Project was founded after a family member's experience with advanced cancer made viscerally clear what years of work in health philanthropy had already suggested: the gap between patients who know how to navigate the system and patients who don't is not a gap in motivation or intelligence. It is a gap in access to infrastructure.

Watching a loved one move through oncology appointments — the pace, the jargon, the assumptions about what a patient already understood — the question was not "why doesn't the system do better?" The question was "who is building the alternative?"

The founding policy document, What the System Owes, names six structural reforms required to close documented outcome gaps in cancer care. But policy is a destination. The RIM Project is the infrastructure that gets people there.

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We named the organization after the concept of the horizon — the rim of what is possible, moving outward. The direction toward the edge of things. Toward the future the system keeps insisting isn't available to certain people.

We disagree.

Leadership

The people
building this.

Founded by people with direct experience navigating cancer care — as family members, advocates, and health policy practitioners — who refused to accept that the gaps they witnessed were inevitable. Additional leadership will be announced as the organization grows.

If this is the organization you've been waiting for, it's time to say so.

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