Meet our Staff & Founders
Haley Pollack
Co-Founder and Executive Director
During my first pregnancy, I began to suffer from stomach pains but they were always fleeting. After the birth of my second baby, it was worse but explainable: I had *just* had a baby. I was nursing. I was working full time. I was tired. My husband had been encouraging me to see my doctor but it all seemed so silly... after just having a baby who didn't feel unlike themselves? My doctor ordered a number of tests, and then some more, and some more after that. Finally, I learned I had Stage III Colon Cancer. At 37 years old, with a 6 month old and 3 year old at home, I went through major surgery and 8 rounds of chemotherapy.
Cancer runs in my family. My mom died from breast cancer when she was 58 and I had always assumed that I would eventually get breast cancer. Still, I thought of myself as healthy and that I was smart, getting early mammograms and staying on top of new research. It never occurred to me that I would get cancer before 40 and that of all places it would be on my colon. When my mom was first diagnosed I was 16 years old, so I have some sense of what cancer can do to a family. And yet, those many months after diagnosis were impossibly hard and I'm still grieving the precious time I lost with my young kids.
There are relatively few resources for young families wading through a cancer diagnosis. I'm lucky for the foresight of a handful of healthcare professionals who connected me with other young people like myself. Those connections bred conversations about talking to kids about illness, but also our careers, our partners, and our questions for what a post-cancer-diagnosis-life might look like.
I'm endlessly grateful for the conversations and connections. I know that Bright Spot Network will begin to fill the gap for other young people and their families.
Aimee Barnes
Co-Founder and Board President, Bright Spot Network
In September 2018, I was diagnosed with breast cancer while 38 weeks pregnant. I was 36 years old and had a four year old son; my daughter was born the day after I received my diagnosis. My husband and I were completely blindsided — I had no family history of cancer and had always been in good health.
During my pregnancy I had daydreamed about all the things I’d do with my daughter during my maternity leave. Instead that time was used for 16 rounds of chemotherapy, a mastectomy, and five weeks of radiation. The path of treatment was incredibly difficult – physically, psychologically, emotionally – both for me and my family. I often felt robbed of precious time during my children’s earliest days – time that would have felt fleeting even under normal circumstances.
Because a cancer diagnosis is relatively uncommon amongst young parents, there are few resources available to support us. I found that many of the resources that did exist were targeted at people 15-20 years my senior, and those targeted at the “younger crowd” generally didn’t account for the additional challenges presented by navigating a cancer diagnosis with small children. Through informal introductions by my doctors and friends, I was able to connect with other young parents who were facing similar cancer diagnoses, creating a critical support system. We often discussed this feeling of lost time, as well as a lack of cancer resources available for people like us – young and with small children. And we dreamed about the things we’d do, the trips we’d take, and the time we’d spend with our kids and partners when we finished our treatment.
Bright Spot Network was borne from these conversations.
Carissa Hodgson
Director of Programs and Community Outreach
Carissa Hodgson, LCSW, OSW-C is the Director of Programs and Community Outreach at Bright Spot Network, which provides a program of support to parents with cancer who have young children. She has 15 years of clinical and program experience working with families facing cancer. Prior to her position at Bright Spot Network she was the Youth and Families Program Manager at Gilda’s Club Madison for 13 years. Her professional passion is supporting kids and families who are navigating cancer, shaped largely by her father having lung cancer when she was a child and her step-father’s diagnosis of liver cancer when she was a young adult.
Carissa has been a member of the Association of Oncology Social Work since 2015 and presently sits as co-chair of the Youth, Families and Cancer Special Interest Group. She enjoys traveling around the country giving presentations and writing articles for cancer magazines and blogs. She recently finished co-authoring a chapter on cancer in middle adulthood for the upcoming Oncology and Palliative Social Work: Psychosocial Care for People Coping with Cancer textbook published by Oxford Press.
Carissa is also a Long Term Lecturer at the Sandra Rosenbaum School of Social Work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she teaches courses on grief and loss, as well as a generalist practice course with individuals, families and groups.
Carissa has a private psychotherapy practice where she specializes in working with cancer, chronic illness, caregiving, grief and loss, child and adolescent development, family systems, and issues relating to the LGBTQIA+ community.
Carissa lives outside of Madison, WI with her social worker wife, 8 year-old son and 2 silly pups. She looks forward to time spent with family meandering through the prairies near her home, taking up a new craft, playing board games, and taste-testing her wife’s hand crafted chocolates.