Through their foundation and their personal giving, Gillian and Mike Goodrich have committed several gifts that will enable UAB to recruit a world-class pediatric cancer researcher, strengthen efforts to eliminate health and cancer disparities, and accelerate breast cancer research at UAB. These latest are among several transformative gifts that Mike Goodrich, the retired chairman and former chief executive officer of BE&K, an international construction and engineering firm headquartered in Birmingham, and his wife, Gillian, have made to UAB since 2008. “We have a passionate desire to support and improve our community—a strong belief in the need to give back at the local level that originates from Mike’s early days at BE&K,” Gillian Goodrich says. Supporting community health care is a family affair for Gillian. Following her father’s example, she has served on the Children’s of Alabama Board of Trustees. In honor of her parents, she and Mike have generously given a gift to establish the Gay and Bew White Endowed Chair of Pediatric Oncology. “This generous, personal gift will enable UAB and Children’s of Alabama to recruit a physician-scientist who can integrate basic and clinical oncological research, advance pediatric cancer research and therapeutics, and allow us to raise our profile as one of the premier pediatric oncology programs in the nation,” says Edward E. Partridge, M.D., the Evalina B. Spencer Endowed Chair in Oncology and director of the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center. “We are deeply grateful to Mike and Gillian for choosing to honor her parents by establishing this chair for pediatric oncology.”
Through their foundation, Gillian and Mike Goodrich also have donated an annual gift of $75,000 for the next three years to the Deep South Network for Cancer Control. For almost two decades, the Deep South Network for Cancer Control has worked in Birmingham and other underserved communities in Alabama and the Mississippi Delta through an extensive network of community health advisors to eliminate health and cancer disparities on a grassroots level.
“The Deep South Network is reaching the unreachable, meeting desperate community needs, and changing the landscape of the local community by helping women affected by cancer and their spouses or their partners,” Gillian says.
Through a personal gift to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation of Alabama (BCRFA), the Goodriches also are helping to expedite the development and transition of basic science discoveries in cancer research to the clinical setting.