ABOUT US

Steve Coffman, our Project Sponsor, was born the fourth of 10 children, and grew up in the small Midwestern city of Urbana, Ohio. Following high school, Steve joined the United States Navy, where he served honorably for four years. He attended Sinclair Community College with a focus on Marketing Management, and entered the business world as a licensed realtor, before joining Allstate Insurance. In 1982, Steve joined Reid Psychological Systems, an established organization providing psychological assessment tools to the human resources market.

Over the next two decades, Steve would hold a variety of leadership positions with Reid Systems, including serving as its President for 11 years. In 2002, Steve helped facilitate and negotiate the sale of Reid Systems to Pearson plc, where Steve stayed on as Vice President and then Vice President/General Manager until June of 2004. Steve's leadership tenure was marked by a series of significant accomplishments, including double-digit growth for 10 consecutive years at Reid Systems, acquisition and development of key technologies to better serve the marketplace, and overall management of several extraordinary client projects, including a $100 million project with the Transportation Security Administration and a massive automated hiring program for the world's largest retailer. Steve had also been professionally recognized during his tenure, being named one of Recruiter Magazine's "Top 100 Most Influential Executives in Recruiting". Like many of his executive peers, Steve's substantial experience was helping him to lead his company to new heights.

REVERSAL OF FORTUNE

Everything began to change for Steve in April of 2003, when he was diagnosed with head and neck cancer. In an instant, Steve went from a successful executive to another individual in for the fight of his life. Like all of his previous challenges, Steve was prepared to tackle cancer as well. Lacking the full stamina he needed to run a business and wanting to focus on his health, Steve stepped aside from work, and was successfully managing his disease. But during a routine cancer scan in 2005, doctors discovered a GBM brain tumor, one of the most serious and deadly brain tumors. Suddenly, Steve's battle had become that much more difficult, and his prognosis that much more serious.

When Steve was diagnosed with cancer and forced to step aside, a great many people were affected. In addition to family, friends and loved ones who were now a part of Steve's fight, hundreds of employees, colleagues and customers who had the pleasure to work with Steve over the years suddenly had to adjust to his absence. Cancer and a brain tumor didn't care that Steve was a very successful, well-liked executive.

A CHANCE TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE

As Steve enters his third year of fighting the brain tumor, he decided that he wanted to make a difference and to do what he could to speed up the search for a cure. Inspired by the physicians and community from which he was drawn so much support and expertise, and disappointed to learn of the many obstacles to research funding that stand in the way of treating brain tumors, Steve decided to found unlockingbraintumors.org. With this project, Steve is looking to put his executive leadership skills and vision back to use, and to call on his peers and others to address crucial gaps in funding that is so desperately needed to fund critical research. Simply put, Steve realized that while the disease had forced him to step aside from his previous leadership role, he had another leadership role to play, and that he was uniquely positioned to lead this charge.

As you'll see in some of our supporting documents, the current funding and research model is inadequate to quickly propel the kinds of novel research that may one day help to find a cure for brain tumors. Steve's vision is to help generate substantial funding, and to quickly channel it to efficiently run, unencumbered organizations that are committed to operationalizing the research dollars as quickly as possible. If you're reading this, it's because you are exactly the kind of person we feel can help to make a difference, through a contribution or your involvement.

MORE ON STEVE

Steve has also maintained membership in several important professional and civic associations. Professionally, Steve has been affiliated with the Association of Test Publishers (ATP, as a founding member), the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the American Management Association (AMA), the National Retail Federation (NRF), the Food Marketing Institute (FMI) and the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL). In his community, Steve has been active in ROTARY/One, the world's first service club, having served as a former board member and chairman of the Gift of Life program, as well as involvement in the Operation Land Mine Survivors program, and serving on its International Service committees. Steve has also been affiliated with the Workplace Wellness Council of Illinois.

Perhaps Steve's greatest leadership accomplishment while in business was gaining the respect, admiration and commitment of his employees, being known for his relaxed but dedicated approach to business, and for the opportunities he gave his employees to succeed.