Ruth Ann Dailey serves as the Vice President of Regional Distinguished Partners Northeast Region of the American Cancer Society, Inc. In 2019, Ruth Ann Dailey will celebrate her ten-year-anniversary of working for American Cancer Society. As the Regional Vice President from 2008 through present, Ruth Ann also serves as the Vice President of Corporate and Distinguished Partners and began that role in 2013.
Ruth Ann’s day to day work for the American Cancer Society is always changing. As the Vice President of Corporate and Distinguished Partners for the Northeast Region, Ruth Ann spends a majority of her time traveling up and down the Northeast Region to Maryland, parts of Virginia, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia. Her primary focus, however, is on major markets such as Boston, New York, the District of Columbia, and Philadelphia. Her role is focused on creating more corporate sponsorships for the American Cancer Society and relationship building. Ruth Ann is not responsible for the small details of events or researching data instead she focuses on the planning, strategizing, and relationship building to gain additional corporate sponsorships. Currently, the American Cancer Society has more than 60 corporate partnerships. Ruth Ann’s continued goal is to bring in major gifts of $10,000 and more and working on special distinguished events that gross more than $500,000 from galas to golf outings. She currently leads a team of 34 staff members and collectively they raise about $24 million per year.
The American Cancer Society’s mission is to save lives, celebrate lives, and lead the fight for a world without cancer. In order to stay connected with American Cancer Society’s mission, Ruth Ann believes that “one must be very purposeful with their work and try not to get stuck into a silo.” She believes that the American Cancer Society does a great job of intentionally and purposely integrating their mission into their daily work. Ruth Ann believes in mission literacy in order to be able to speak to the work that the Society does through active communication and recognition of achievements. With a significant decline in fundraising support since 2012, Ruth Ann leads her team and asks them to have a renewed focus on the mission and to bring more insight into the work that they do to better the lives of those affected by cancer, and not to just look at the goal of how much money was fundraised in a particular year. Ruth Ann is confident in the future of the American Cancer Society and believes that the future is in the hands of leaders like students from the University of Pennsylvania. She shared insight on how to prepare yourself to get into a position of leadership with a nonprofit organization by recommending individuals to volunteer on boards, become advocates for an organization and its mission, and to just put yourself in a place of leadership that will enable you grow.