Out of Patients EP401: OCRA, Acronyms, and Audra: The Nonprofit Multiverse of Madness
🚨NEW EPISODE ALERT 🚨
Let’s talk about what it actually takes to run a national cancer nonprofit in 2025. Four mergers. A team of 22. A lifetime of therapy in the form of board meetings, grant deadlines, and telling scared patients, “You’re not alone.”
Audra Moran is the President and CEO of the Ovarian Cancer Research Alliance (OCRA), and she’s not your average acronym-hugging executive. She’s been quietly holding the line for 15 years, while the system keeps making the same mistakes. Late diagnoses. No screening. Shady access. A culture that still treats ovarian cancer like a footnote.
I wanted Audra on the show because she doesn’t fake it. She doesn’t use buzzwords. She doesn’t hide behind committee-approved statements. She tells the truth. About the brokenness. About what keeps her up at 2am. About what happens when a doctor says they’ve never met another patient with ovarian cancer.
You’ll hear about her Helen Keller origin story (yes, actual sign language). You’ll hear about her obsession with flipbook news apps and why Junior Mints might be the perfect nonprofit metaphor. You’ll hear us argue over whether Terminator 2 is better than the original and whether any movie has ever beat the book (Silence of the Lambs, fight me).
Audra reminded me what this show is about: bearing witness. To the frustration. The absurdity. The privilege. The grind. And the one person you did reach.
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Out of Patients EP402: Dancing Through the Wreckage: Sally Wolf
