About Us
The FamiliesCAN program began helping cancer patients in 2000. The program is funded by the Ronald Whittier Family Foundation, a 501(c)(3) registered organization. We do not do any fundraising, nor do we receive grants – the program is supported fully by the funds donated by the Whittier family. The Ronald Whittier Family Foundation contributes to a variety of cancer-related causes in the community and supports cancer research.
Ronald Whittier was previously the Chairman of Convera Corporation. In 2000, he retired as Senior Vice President of Intel after thirty years with the company, where he ran the Memory Products Division, Corporate Marketing, the Intel Architecture Labs, and Intel's Content Group. He was born and raised in San Francisco and is a graduate of U.C. Berkeley and Stanford University (Ph.D., Chem E.). Ron runs a separate educational foundation, Tech Futures (www.techfutures.org. He lives with his wife Ellen and dog Sadie in Marin.
Jackie Whittier Kubicka is the Founder and Director of FamiliesCAN. The concept for the nonprofit is a result of Jackie’s experience with her husband Bruce’s cancer treatment more than 20 years ago. Against long odds, Bruce is a three-time survivor of Fibrolamellar Hepatocellular Carcinoma, a rare liver cancer. Their complicated and prolonged journey at the medical centers of UCSF and UCLA served as the inspiration for the program. They have two college-age children, Anna and Andrew. Jackie, a graduate of UC Berkeley and Cornell University, worked for many years in product management and marketing before launching FamiliesCAN. She started the nonprofit a few months before Andrew was born and continues to direct the program from her home office in Portola Valley. She was a longtime advisory board member for Camp Kesem at Stanford (www.campkesem.org), a camp for the children of cancer patients, and developed the “Parents With Cancer” class in 2005 with Parentsplace in Palo Alto (ParentsPlacePeninsula@JFCS.org). She's served on the Woodside High School Foundation Board and has done extensive volunteering for Ballet America and other local nonprofits. In 2015, Jackie completed the Professional Program in The Study of Loss and Grief at UC Berkeley Extension and is currently working on a second program in College Admissions Counseling. |
