Diane Moore

Location: Durham, N.C.   When Diane Moore’s eight-year-old daughter, Colleen, was diagnosed with bone cancer in 2007, she was given only nine months to live. “We were not looking for research or cures, we were just looking for emotional support to get through this devastating diagnosis,” Moore, who helps oncology practices implement software applications through her job at McKesson (No. 11), says. But while first-class medical treatments were readily available, the psychosocial support that Moore and her daughter needed wasn’t there. Emotional support programs weren’t covered by insurance, and she wasn’t connected with any other parents of pediatric cancer patients. Even at one of the hospitals where Colleen was treated, which had a divinity school, no religious people came to visit, Moore says. She was forced to fill in as a therapist as well as a parent, helping her daughter to express her emotions in a journal; she consulted with a chaplain to learn how to explain death to a child.   When Colleen passed away less than a year later, Moore decided to make the journey for other parents better than her own. Now, she serve on the board of directors for the Me Fine Foundation, which provides funding for emotional support services for children in hospitals in North Carolina, and as a business analyst for the Coalition Against Childhood Cancer’s HOPE Portal project. She also started a cancer support group, which has grown to include more than 200 families. “I know it’s volunteer work, but it doesn’t feel like work,” Moore says. “It feels like my daughter died and I can’t let that be the end. This is my way of letting her life have continued purpose.”