Don’t Let Cancer Win
Duke alumna, Ross Harris ’78, M.B.A.’80, and the decision to be a survivor
In 1983, Duke University alumna Ross Harris had just lost her younger brother, Carlton Harris Jr., to leukemia. He was only 25.
She felt that she didn’t want to hear the word cancer ever again. “I was in so much pain, and I was so angry that cancer had taken him,” she says.
Five years passed as Harris, who had earned an undergraduate degree (1978) and MBA (1980) from Duke, worked in advertising for the Leo Burnett Company in Chicago, rising to the rank of vice president.
Then she decided to come back to North Carolina. She had spent her career crafting messages that sold products for the likes of Pillsbury, Green Giant, and McDonalds. As she returned to her home state, she sold herself on the idea of turning her terrible loss into a new way of looking at life.
She rebranded herself as a survivor.
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