Mallori Thompson, administrative director of Cancer Support and Survivorship at Duke, keeps a coin-sized metal angel at her desk. When she feels frustrated, she rubs it.
“It reminds me of why I’m doing what I’m doing,” she says.
The angel was a gift from Liz Menges, whose son Bobby Menges was diagnosed with cancer for the third time in 2016 when he was 19 years old and a freshman at Duke University. Thompson met Bobby only once, in 2017, for an hour. But their conversation shapes what she does to this day.