Who We Are
Cancer changes more than the body.
A cancer diagnosis can bring fear and uncertainty into nearly every part of life. Questions about treatment, family, work, finances, identity and the future can feel overwhelming. And those needs don’t simply disappear when treatment ends. For people living with cancer, survivors and caregivers, the physical, emotional, practical and psychosocial effects of cancer can continue long after a medical appointment is over.
Medical care is essential to treating cancer. Community helps people live through it and beyond it.
Cancer Kinship exists to help bridge that space. Through trusted community support, lived experience, education, whole-person wellness and access to practical resources, we help people affected by cancer move from fear toward knowledge, trust, confidence and hope.
We believe people are better equipped to navigate cancer when they have access to information they understand, people they trust and a community that recognizes the whole person—not only the diagnosis.
Together, we transform fear into hope.
Our Mission
Cancer Kinship empowers people affected by cancer to transform fear into hope through trusted community support, lived experience, education, whole-person wellness and access to free wigs.
Our Vision
Anyone affected by cancer can brave the storm with confidence and courage.
Our Story
Cancer Kinship began with a simple belief: medical knowledge is essential, but lived experience brings a different kind of understanding—one that can help people feel seen, informed and supported through cancer.
For Founder and CEO Yolanda “Yoli” Origel, that understanding began long before Cancer Kinship had a name.
Cancer entered her family when her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in her early thirties. Yoli was still a child when her mother died of metastatic breast cancer at age 42. Years later, at 31, Yoli received her own diagnosis: Stage III triple-negative breast cancer. She underwent chemotherapy, a bilateral mastectomy, radiation and multiple reconstructive surgeries, and later learned that she carries a BRCA1 genetic mutation.
One year after completing treatment, Yoli began mentoring other people affected by cancer. What started as one survivor supporting another deepened her belief in the power of lived experience—not as a replacement for medical care, but as an important part of helping people understand their options, find their voice and trust themselves through an uncertain season.
Then cancer touched her family again.
Yoli’s younger sister was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer and died at age 42. This time, Yoli experienced cancer not only as a survivor, but as a caregiver and advocate. The knowledge she had gained through her own diagnosis helped her participate in her sister’s care, ask questions, communicate with her medical team and support her through the final chapter of her life.
Those experiences became part of the foundation for Cancer Kinship.
Founded in 2018, Cancer Kinship grew from lived experience into a community where people affected by all types and stages of cancer—including those living with metastatic disease, survivors and caregivers—can find trusted support, practical resources, education and meaningful connection.
Today, Cancer Kinship provides community resource navigation, survivor empowerment and education, support groups, whole-person wellness opportunities and free wigs for people experiencing cancer-related hair loss.
Our programs have grown, but the belief behind them remains deeply human: medical care treats cancer; community helps people live through it and beyond it.
We know that knowledge can quiet fear. Trust can restore confidence. Human connection can remind people of their own strength.
And sometimes hope begins simply by having someone beside you who understands.
That is Cancer Kinship.