February 6, 2003 | Read Time: 6 minutes
Eileen Earhart Oldag doesn’t own a bicycle. She hasn’t ridden much since elementary school, in fact, and that was more than 40 years ago.
Yet, Ms. Oldag finds herself in the inner circle of one of the world’s most celebrated bicycle racers, Lance Armstrong. Last month, she became executive director of the charity started by the cyclist, the Lance Armstrong Foundation, in Austin, Tex. The group, which seeks to call attention to the needs of people who have cancer or have been treated for the disease, supports services and research to benefit patients, former patients, and the families of both. People who have lived through cancer treatment, for example, often need help obtaining insurance policies or advice about fertility issues. Common treatments for cancer, including radiation and chemotherapy, can lead to sterility.
Mr. Armstrong created the charity in 1997, after he was diagnosed with testicular cancer that had spread to his abdomen, lungs, and brain. Despite having had less than a 40-percent chance of surviving the disease, Mr. Armstrong regained his health, returned to professional cycling, and has won four consecutive Tour de France races.
Ms. Oldag, a native Texan like Mr. Armstrong, had followed the cyclist’s career. “I wouldn’t consider myself a sports fan,” she says. “But living in Austin, Lance’s hometown, means watching his accomplishments, and watching his accomplishments means being in awe of what he has done both athletically and personally.”
Fortunately for the noncyclist Ms. Oldag, her job description does not include participation in the charity’s annual Ride for the Roses, when cyclists ride up to 100 miles to raise money for the organization. But she does expect her new position to challenge her stamina in other ways.
During the charity’s short history, it has broadened its mission from supporting research and education about testicular cancer to working on a wide range of issues related to helping people after they are treated for cancer.
Gifts to the charity shot up from less than $250,000 in 1997 to more than $7-million in 2001. In that year, the charity made a big push to get donors into what the organization calls its Founder’s Circle, composed of people like Mr. Armstrong and his wife, Kristin, who make gifts of at least $500,000. Last year, contributions dipped to about $5-million.
Despite the drop in gifts, Ms. Oldag says she is heartened by the organization’s widening base of support, as it reaches beyond bicyclists and fans of Mr. Armstrong to attract donors interested in the organization’s cancer-related mission. Last year, about one-quarter of the group’s contributions came from the Ride for the Roses race and related events. That proportion is down considerably from 1998, Ms. Oldag notes, when the events accounted for nearly 70 percent of the year’s donations.
Ms. Oldag will be the organization’s sixth executive director in six years. She attributes much of the turnover to the growing pains of a young organization. Now, she says, the group is ready to settle in for the long haul. For nearly nine years, Ms. Oldag ran Caritas of Austin, a social-services organization, and for nearly five years before that, she was the head of a YWCA in Louisiana.
“My intent is to be here long enough to ground this organization,” Ms. Oldag says, “not just in its mission, not just in its fund raising, but also in its position in the community of national cancer organizations that are making a difference.”
In an interview, Ms. Oldag spoke about her new role:
What are your thoughts about heading a charity whose identity is closely tied to a celebrity?
We are lucky to have Lance provide a voice for a very important issue — cancer survivorship. But while he is the inspiration and energy behind the foundation, the organization and the cause go well beyond him. We have a high-profile survivor willing to put his name behind the cause, but even after Lance retires [as a cyclist], we’ll benefit because that will mean he’ll have more time to put into the foundation.
There are so many cancer charities. What distinguishes yours?
There are 1.2 million people diagnosed with cancer each year in this country, and 8.9 million people who have had cancer. As treatments get more sophisticated and more available, cancer becomes a chronic disease in many cases, instead of a death sentence. More people and their families will have to deal with the psychological, social, and financial aspects of living with and beyond cancer.
What’s an example of a survivorship issue?
The highest-profile issue right now is fertility. There are so many young cancer survivors, like Lance, who want to have children. The foundation has given grants to Fertile Hope [a New York charity] to support reproductive issues. Fertile Hope gets information out to young cancer patients about how their treatment can affect their fertility and their options in dealing with that.
Do you have plans to re-examine the mission?
If anything I can see us deepening the mission. Survivorship is definitely a niche we can fill and provide a voice and leadership. This is a timely convergence of an issue, an organization, and a spokesperson.
Who are your key supporters: cycling enthusiasts or people interested in cancer issues?
Both. That’s our good fortune. The foundation started with Lance and his cycling friends and fans, and cyclists are a dear and integral part of the foundation and its continuing success. But we have definitely broadened to reach out to people who want to support cancer issues, and we will be doing that more and more.
What are your plans for fund raising?
There was a big push in 2001 for the Founder’s Circle, and that is now closed out. Part of my mission is to develop a major-gifts program to attract both larger and smaller gifts on an ongoing basis, and to grow an endowment so we are not living from year to year or event to event.
How does it feel stepping into a position that five others have held?
Maybe I ought to be worried, but I’m not. It is such a young organization, and some of the earlier directors came with a particular set of skills and interests that were right to achieve what the foundation needed at a particular time, and then the organization changed and they moved on. The last director has put in team-building, planning, and communications processes that will serve this foundation well. I am a nonprofit leader who focuses on the fundamentals of management, and I am confident in the potential of this organization and my fit here.
ABOUT EILEEN EARHART OLDAG, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, LANCE ARMSTRONG FOUNDATION
Education: Bachelor’s degree from Lamar University, in Beaumont, Tex., and a master’s degree in human relations and supervision from Louisiana Tech University, in Ruston, La.
Previous employment: Served for more than eight years as executive director of Caritas of Austin, which provides food and a variety of social services to needy people in central Texas. She was previously executive director of the YWCA of Northwest Louisiana, and before that, director of the Coalition for Parent Education, both in Shreveport. She also held marketing positions at three businesses.
Hobbies: Yoga, birding, and enjoying the landscape and geography of her home state, Texas.
Books read recently: It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life, by Lance Armstrong, with Sally Jenkins; and No Such Thing as a Bad Day: A Memoir, by Hamilton Jordan, a Lance Armstrong Foundation board member, who writes about his experiences with three different forms of cancer.
