We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Geoff San Miguel a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Geoff , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Do you think your parents have had a meaningful impact on you and your journey?

They instilled a strong work ethic in me that has driven me on my path to success. My father has been in his role for the past 50 years and will be celebrating retirement in the next few months. My mother worked in corporate jobs most of her work life. Both imparted invaluable insight into the structural, political, human resources, symbolic, and ethical communities in their respective arenas. My father has been a hospital O.R. nurse for 5 decades and my mother worked for big blue. The connections I have made through out the years have served me well in my career.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’ve been in the field since 1997. Helping patients has been a passion of mine for some time. This truly is a labor of love. My grandmother was a cancer survivor and battled for over a decade after being in remission and seeing mutiple recurring cancer diagnosis. She was on fixed income and had a small pension from her work as a civil service employee. It helped pay for treatment but unfortunately was not enough. I routinely applied for assistance on her behalf and took forms to be signed off on by her doctor. At the time I worked for a large San Antonio Oncology center and my grandmother was being treated by our largest competing facility, right across the street.

For me, it was about the realization that patients needed help (no matter what their financial status on a tax return disolayed) and as long as I was able to source and fidn grant money, that’s what I did. For years I helped thousands of patients cover their chemotherapy costs. I leveraged years of connections with local and national non profits, other cancer centers across the country, and my colleagues (pharmaceutical reps) in the industry. While working in one cancer center, a then fledgling non profit was birthed to help breast cancer patients. Throughout it’s life cycle, it has seen 3 executive directors who I was sble to work alongside and imart knowledge to help foster growth and revamp imcome guidelines as well as the patient population served.

This led me to be recruited to a competing cancer clinic to create an internal hardship program and similar non profit. During my time at this seeprst cancer clinic, I discovered a bigger gap in cancer related non profit assistance, radiation therapy. At the time (and to this date) there are no other non profits that are direct impact for radiation therapy patients.

Rays of Relief was born out of this gap we saw. Day in and day out, patients could seek out programs for assistance with chemotherapy, supplies, immunotherapy, antiemetics, transportation, and lodging.

We decided to step up and step in to fill that gap. Our goal was to help on a national scale. Pre Covid, Rays of Relief helped patients in 17 states. This was grown by word of mouth and through leveraged connections in the cancer arena.

As Covid hit, we were forced to stop fundraising in person, corproate sponsors dropped off, and donations came to a screeching halt. We have scaled back to help in Texas, Florida, and New York. These are states were funding is still coming in through the door.

Our goals are to get back on track to re-open in states we previously helped in, with our end goal again being to help in all 50 states. We need donors who are not transactional.

Unfortunately, too many businesses and donors have a tit for tat mentaility. We do not rely on donations from bird dogging. And we will not refer people, donors, clients to businesses who require an uptick in business from our referrals. It’s simply not what we are about and counterintuitive to helping people in need.

What we do need is donors who see the value we bring, the patients we sre helping, and who are empathetic to our cause. We are always willing to have a conversation with entities who share the vision and care abiut helping patients who cannot afford treatment.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Covid hit us hard. We had so much momentum going and felt as if that big fish/big partnership was on the horizon. Unfortunately, after Covid we had to scale back to avoid closing funding for good.

Our resilience remains in our dedication and passion to help these patients in need. Even if it’s one at a time. We see it as one more patient who started treatment on time, without delay, and one more life saved.

Other than training/knowledge, what do you think is most helpful for succeeding in your field?

Ownership, accountability, and follow through. Without these three, buy in, trust, and rapport is lost. We all want to feel as if we are apart of something bigger than oneself, and that we are making impactful change in our community.

Simply put, we are not about bullshit. No fluff, no jargon, no salary. We are all doing this voluntarily. We genuinely want to help patients. I used to say to my staff, think of every patient in front of you as if your grandmother was sitting there. How would you want someone to treat her? With empathy and compassion? Or simply another faceless patient who had a balance.

Cancer is divisive and destructive. I have seen it bring relationships to their breaking point and financially bankrupt families.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.raysofrelief.org
• Instagram: @raysofreliefsa
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/raysofreliefsa?mibextid=ZbWKwL
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/rays-of-relief/
• Twitter: @raysofreliefsa
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@raysofrelief6682?feature=share9