The Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation’s board of directors has unanimously elected Dianne Traynor president and chairman of the board, effective immediately. The appointment follows the death of former PBTF President Mike Traynor.
The Traynors co-founded the Ride for Kids® motorcycle charity in 1984, and created the PBTF in 1991. Dianne Traynor most recently served as the PBTF’s director of research funding and advocacy. Previous roles included treasurer and chief financial officer.
“I am honored to be elected to keep the mission of the PBTF robustly moving forward by growing our research funding programs and supporting multi-institutional collaborative research efforts,” Traynor said. “We are increasing our outreach programs to patient families as well. All of this will be accomplished with the support of the thousands of volunteers, our corporate sponsors and the outstanding staff of the foundation.”
In addition to her PBTF experience, Traynor’s early work in education and public and nonprofit accounting have uniquely prepared her to lead the nation’s largest non-governmental source of childhood brain tumor research funding.
The PBTF’s research funding program is international in its funding scope, having supported more than 50 institutions nationwide and abroad. Its Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation Institutes at Duke University, the University of California San Francisco and the Hospital for Sick Children in Canada bring together leading pediatric and adult brain tumor researchers to work collaboratively to search for novel, less-invasive treatments for this disease.
Under Traynor’s leadership, the PBTF established a national Scientific Advisory Board and has grown to support basic, translational and clinical research, a family support program, and advocacy efforts on behalf of children with brain tumors.
Traynor’s advocacy experience includes serving as a patient advocate for the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and as an advisor and reviewer of NCI-funded research programs, including the Patient Advocate Research Team for the NCI Brain Tumor SPORE program and the CARRA (Consumer Advocates in Research and Related Activities).
She has also served as a patient advocate representative to the National Institute for Neurological Disease and Stroke (NINDS) and the Department of Defense’s Congressionally Directed Research Program.
At the Alliance for Childhood Cancer, an advocacy organization made up of nonprofits as well as medical and psychosocial professional organizations who have a focus on childhood cancer, Traynor was the first co-chair of the organization, representing the nonprofit membership.
Traynor said that she plans to continue to build on the work that she and her late husband started over 26 years ago.
“Mike and I have shared a common mission in life, to fund research and provide support to the children and patient families dealing with pediatric brain tumors,” she noted. “The Ride for Kids® was started because of Mike’s passion to stop this terrible disease. Mike’s leadership and charisma will never be forgotten.”
About the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation
The Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation (PBTF), a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization based in Asheville, N.C., is the world’s largest non-governmental funder of childhood brain tumor research. Its programs include free educational information about brain tumors, Internet conferences, college scholarships for brain tumor survivors, and Ride for Kids® motorcycle charity events. For more information, call 800-253-6530 or go to http://www.pbtfus.org/.
—SOURCE Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation
