The Jonsson Cancer Center Foundation (JCCF), the fundraising arm of UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center (JCCC), has welcomed four community leaders to its board of directors. Each one brings professional expertise and a personal sense of mission to the fight to end cancer through research.
Carmen Copple is a long-standing cancer research advocate and support provider to individual cancer patients and caregivers. She has a nursing degree from Oral Roberts University and a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from the University of San Francisco. She has been an investor in many start-up firms and has served on a wide variety of business and non-profit boards and lives in Pacific Palisades.
John Lyddon is an Arizona State University alumnus and a retired oil industry executive (Nevada Refining Company). He supports various research efforts at UCLA, including the Broad Stem Cell Research Center, the Longevity Center and the Center on Aging. He also has served on the UCLA Urology advisory board and resides in Corona del Mar.
Stephen Spector is Senior Vice President and General Counsel at The Macerich Company. He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Maryland and his law degree from Duke University. A past chair of the Cancer Support Community (West Valley to Santa Barbara), Spector lives in Brentwood.
Manizheh Yomtoubian, in memory of her husband, founded the Neria Yomtoubian Foundation, which addresses pressing social concerns facing our community, especially its youth. She has a Master’s Degree in nursing from Boston University and lives in Newport Beach.
“We are pleased to welcome our new members to the Jonsson Cancer Center Foundation board of directors,” said Judith C. Gasson, JCCC director, professor of medicine and biological chemistry and president of the foundation’s board of directors. “Each of them has a personal commitment to raising funds for innovative research that will hasten discoveries that lead to more effective therapies for cancer patients everywhere.”
The Jonsson Cancer Center Foundation board is led by Chair Randall M. Katz, and Vice Chairs Jay Sures and Dana Walden. Katz is president of Milestone Entertainment and a director of the Ron and Maddie Katz Family Foundation. Sures is a partner and board member at United Talent Agency and the 2007 recipient of the foundation’s Gil Nickel Humanitarian Award. Walden is co-chairman and CEO of the Fox Television Group, and received the Gil Nickel Humanitarian Award in 2009 with fellow Fox co-chairman and CEO Gary Newman.
The Jonsson Cancer Center Foundation, founded in 1945, is the single most important vehicle for raising private funds for cancer research at UCLA. Through activities such as Taste for a Cure and Lifeline Connection, the foundation supports high-priority cancer research efforts aimed at translating laboratory discoveries into more effective and less toxic therapies for cancer patients.
