Meet BCAN’s New CEO: Meri-Margaret Deoudes

March 25, 2025

Transcript

Voice over:

This is Bladder Cancer Matters, the podcast for bladder cancer patients, caregivers, advocates, and medical and research professionals. It’s brought to you by the Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network, otherwise known as BCAN. BCAN works to increase public awareness about bladder cancer, advances bladder cancer research, and provides educational and support services for bladder cancer patients and their loved ones. To learn more, please visit bcan.org.

Rick Bangs:

Hi. I’m Rick Bangs, the host of Bladder Cancer Matters, a podcast for, by, and about the bladder cancer community. I’m also a survivor of muscle-invasive bladder cancer, the prouder owner of a 2006 model year neobladder, and a patient advocate supporting cancer research at the Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network or as many call it, BCAN, producers of this podcast. I am pleased to welcome BCAN’s new CEO, Meri-Margaret Deoudes, to our podcast.

Meri-Margaret brings over 25 years of transformative nonprofit leadership, specializing in strategic growth, corporate alliances, and innovative patient engagement programs. With experience at major health-focused organizations like the March of Dimes, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, and the Parkinson’s Foundation, she’s played a pivotal role in advancing patient-centered initiatives.

As a seasoned CEO, she has successfully led national nonprofits, driving impact through strategic planning, program development, and high performing teams. Meri-Margaret joined BCAN in January 2025. Meri-Margaret, welcome to BCAN and to Bladder Cancer Matters.

Meri-Margaret Deoudes:

Thank you, Rick. I’m so glad to be here. It’s a pleasure to have this time together.

Rick Bangs:

Oh, we’re excited to have you onboard here. So you just joined BCAN, and I think a question might be, why did you want to join BCAN?

Meri-Margaret Deoudes:

I really have found through my career that my passion is helping other people. It’s all about relationships to me, and having the opportunity to lead such a patient focused organization is critical. And in my past experience, I’ve found that that’s where I really feel the most comfortable.

I want to help people and BCAN really offered that opportunity in both the sense of the community, the warmth of the people that I’ve met through the process of interviewing, and then even through the time that I’ve been here since January, meeting so many members of the community. So I feel like I’ve met my people, as they say, and I’m actually glad to be here.

Rick Bangs:

Yes, it’s just a great community. So did you have any connection to bladder cancer?

Meri-Margaret Deoudes:

I didn’t think so in the beginning. As I was going through the process, I actually started talking to my family, particularly my father, about this opportunity, and I have to be honest, Rick, I didn’t know a lot about bladder cancer probably similar to other folks and had no idea how prevalent it was. And my dad is a retired physician. I was talking to him a little bit about the organization and what I was learning and sharing some of these facts with him. And he said, “You know, our cousin has bladder cancer.”

So it turns out my second cousin has bladder cancer. He was a Vietnam vet, then spent a lot of time working for the New York City Police Department, and is living with bladder cancer. So I found out through the process that I actually do have a connection to bladder cancer. And even in these short six weeks, as you know, Rick, I’ve met a lot of other folks on this journey and proud to say that I’m connected through all of you as well.

Rick Bangs:

Excellent. We’re so excited to have you. And so what were some of your prior roles?

Meri-Margaret Deoudes:

Yeah. I have been in this… As you mentioned, it’s hard to admit how long I’ve been working in the nonprofit sector, so don’t tell.

Rick Bangs:

Okay. It’ll be our secret then.

Meri-Margaret Deoudes:

Right. I started actually working at the March of Dimes on the local level, so on the chapter level here in the Washington, D.C. area where I’m based. And I really worked my way up through developing events, special events from galas to other roundtable events and walk events, of course, at the March of Dimes and built committees and relationships with volunteers, and really found that I, like I said, enjoyed the opportunity to connect with people that were impacted by the work that we did.

So that’s where I started, and I moved into other roles following my passion for engaging with people in corporations and fundraising. I’m a fundraiser at heart. I moved through a couple organizations working on the local level and then consulting with chapters on the national level. I did a stint, as you mentioned, I went to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. And then I did a little bit of work in the environmental space.

I wanted to see what that was like, really driving home the idea of the importance of in particular getting kids outside for their overall health and well-being. So even though I was working in the environmental space, I was still really interested in that holistic view of our overall health. And as you mentioned, then I led a couple of other nonprofits and I came back to the disease specific space most recently at the Parkinson’s Foundation.

And there, much like here, I really enjoyed the opportunity to connect with people living with Parkinson’s and their caregivers and learned a lot from that experience, which I feel really does translate to the opportunity to join this community.

Rick Bangs:

And my grandfather had Parkinson’s. So talk a little bit about your proudest accomplishments. You’ve got such a nice spectrum of experience. What are some of your proudest accomplishments?

Meri-Margaret Deoudes:

So this is a tough one for me, Rick. As you might know, I have had this career that has opened so many doors to me, so many experiences that I normally wouldn’t have. I’ve had a lot of success in fundraising and relationship building, team building, joining different organizations, bringing differing viewpoints to find common ground when it maybe was difficult to do that. But I would say truly my proudest accomplishment is my son. I have a 17-year-old son.

He’s an only child, and he is near and dear to me and enjoy spending all the time that I can with him. And for those of you who are parents, parents of either children or pets, you know what that commitment looks like. And I’m just privileged to have the opportunity to have him and be able to spend time with him and watch him grow. It’s getting close to college time. I wasn’t ready to think about that.

Rick Bangs:

Wow! What excites you most about this new role at BCAN?

Meri-Margaret Deoudes:

Oh my gosh, what doesn’t? Everything. I think it’s such a pivotal time for the organization. We were having a call about a week ago, and it was described the transition for BCAN 20 years transitioning from Andrea Maddox-Smith leading the organization to me is really strength to strength, through Diane and Andrea, the board, the staff, and the volunteers, the whole community.

We’ve really had such great success, and it’s such a pleasure to be able to come in and build on the strength and the leadership that Andrea provided to the organization. That was definitely something that was really interesting to me. And the other thing that really became apparent to me, Rick, during the process was from meeting with the board members and the meeting with staff is the warmth of the community, which I just don’t have a better way of describing it yet, but the warmth, the welcoming.

Despite the fact that it’s a tough, tough place to be as a patient or a person living with bladder cancer, there’s such a sense of enthusiasm and positivity built on the fact that there are so many more therapies coming online. And BCAN’s really been a great part of that legacy, building that legacy, building that research, building the outreach over the last 20 years. And so all of those things I think put together, the people, the community, the research, and the leadership of Andrea and the team, just was a great opportunity for me to come back and lead an organization.

Rick Bangs:

I mean, it’s almost like it’s family. It feels that way to so many of us. You touched on this, but I want to open up the question. So what’s impressed you as you’ve come onboard?

Meri-Margaret Deoudes:

Again, I think it’s about the people and the progress. And I recognize that we have a lot more to do. But in the 20 years looking back, the people that are committed to this work have stayed with this work and we’re starting to see the benefits of that work. The people that work at BCAN, we have an amazing staff. I like to say even again, Rick, this is like six weeks in, we punch above our weight.

As you all know in the community, we have state-of-art literally materials that we provide to patients and caregivers to help navigate the journey. We do cutting-edge research and have been supporting that community since almost the beginning. I think that’s a really important part of our portfolio. And I think it’s also the commitment. The commitment to helping others is ingrained in everything that we do both from a staff standpoint, from a volunteer standpoint, and the leadership standpoint.

I had the opportunity to attend a survivor to survivor call last week, and I was just amazed by hearing the stories of people who are sharing their journey with others, helping them find their way, and the time commitment that they are giving to other people as they’re newly diagnosed or maybe somebody in their family pushed them to get some outside support.

Maybe that happens I’ve heard. That was a really impressive program to learn about. And then I’ll be going next week to our patient summit, and I’m excited to have that more one-on-one experience, if you will, with people in the community and learn a little bit more even so about the people that make up this great community.

Rick Bangs:

I like to hear more, because you’ve mentioned a couple times about the 20 year anniversary, and I think it would be interesting for folks to hear a little bit more about the plans that you have for the 20th anniversary.

Meri-Margaret Deoudes:

Yeah. It’s a pivotal year for us, right? 20 years is a significant amount of time in this space and really serving as the leader in bladder cancer patient care, patient education and research. It’s one of the things actually I heard at a conference not too long ago really reaffirming that we are the leader in this space. We are planning to celebrate all year long, so that should be fun.

You all have probably already noticed our new branding. So we’ve updated our branding and really talking about 20 years of impact. The website has been redesigned as well. So that kicked us off right from the very beginning of the year. We have a celebration event for all of our community members that we’ll be hosting in Washington, D.C. in November. So that will be a good time to talk about all the work that we’ve done.

We’re working on a narrative of what that looks like in terms of our research and how we’ve been able to influence from our young investigators to career development, to so many of the therapies that are coming online now what was BCAN’s contribution, so we’ll be telling that story. If you all haven’t seen it on the website, there’s a great timeline on the website of all the accomplishments we’ve had over the last 20 years.

We’re also collecting photos of people in the community, from care partners to people living with bladder cancer, to physicians and clinicians, researchers, everyone in the community. And we’ll be putting together a huge photo collage that we will print and frame and have in our office in Bethesda, our headquarters office, to keep it really close to our hearts who we’re serving and why the work here we do is so important. And then we’ll have a digital version we’ll produce from all those photos to share with the larger community.

Being a patient-centric organization, I think that’s a great way to celebrate 20 years. And then just as importantly, Rick, we want to think about what we’re going to do next. Our founder Diane says all the time, “What we’ve done is great, but it’s not enough. What are we going to do next? And what do we want to focus on for the future?” So we’ll celebrate what we’ve done, but we’re quickly turning to how we’re going to build the organization for the future.

Rick Bangs:

Okay, so that’s where I want to go now. Can you give us a little bit of a glimpse? Because clearly, I mean, I know I’m 19 years out, so I started shortly after BCAN was founded. And I know what was available to me at that time versus what’s available now. But I always think about survivors and people coming in now, I mean, it’s still not what they want or need until we get to the point where bladder cancer is no more.

So can you give us a glimpse of some of the things that are going to happen beyond the 20th anniversary celebration that would carry us forward? What are some of the things that you can see out beyond that are most exciting to you?

Meri-Margaret Deoudes:

There are a lot of opportunities. And although I’m only a few weeks in, I reserve the right to reprioritize. But for what I see right now, we are doing a survey, Faces of Bladder Cancer. Many of you maybe already took the survey and we thank you so much because it’s a pretty lengthy survey. But I think that’s an exciting opportunity for us, Rick, to really understand, as you said, the survivor point of view.

Those who are patients, what that journey is like for them right now. And the opportunity for us to take that information and that data and really chart what we want to do moving forward. We will be working on a new strategic plan at the end of this year looking into next year. So this will be pivotal both in how we set up our strategic plan, but also, as you mentioned, how we respond to what the community actually needs.

And I think we’re very well-versed at that and we want to continue that progress. So that survey will be running all this year. And then we plan to do behind that and one of our areas of focus will be accelerating the work that we’re doing with the caregiver community, knowing that’s an important part of survivorship and also the patient journey. What does that look like?

We also have, as you know, a very successful Women With Bladder Cancer. So we’ll be looking at other groups that maybe we don’t traditionally think of as having bladder cancer, women. Or even we’ve done some great work recently with… As I mentioned before, I have a family member who was in Vietnam. How do we work with the veterans’ community more tangibly to move that forward?

And the other audience, if you will, that we’ve been thinking about a lot and I think we’ll also have some information from the Faces Survey is the younger onset, people who are being diagnosed at a younger age than we would traditionally say you’re most likely to have bladder cancer and the, no offense, Rick, but older years. We have a lot of folks that are coming in younger with that diagnosis. So what does that look like and what can we learn from that?

The last thing I’ll say, again, there’s so many things, but as part of that patient experience, certainly in the survivor experience, we recognize that most folks are actually being seen by community neurologists in the community locally and we want to be able to expand our reach to those practices, those healthcare providers, as well as people who are being seen in those settings to make sure that they know BCAN is here to help support them during this time and the resources that we have, from the printed materials to the webcast, to this podcast, the survivor to survivor program, all the different ways we can help them as they navigate, as you said, the diagnosis that they maybe weren’t expecting, probably weren’t expecting, and how we can support them to get to that point where you are at that survivorship.

Rick Bangs:

Excellent. Excellent. Okay, so I want to set the record straight relative to my own personal experience here. We just did a podcast with Dr. Shilpa Gupta on young onset. And point of fact, 19 years ago, I qualified as young onset actually. The cut-off according to some current thinking, which of course it may evolve, is less than 50 and I was 48 at the time.

Meri-Margaret Deoudes:

48.

Rick Bangs:

I was a little surprised that I would have fallen into that category at the age of 48, but that’s I think the cut-off as she was describing it. Anyway, today I look more like a traditional bladder cancer survivor, closer to the average age still. It’s an interesting space that needs more work as you’ve pointed out. I want to give our audience an opportunity to get to know you a little better. So tell us what do you like to do in your free time? Do you have any favorite hobbies?

Meri-Margaret Deoudes:

I am an avid reader and runner. So I run everyday and I read while I run.

Rick Bangs:

What?

Meri-Margaret Deoudes:

Yeah. Right? I’m very talented, Rick.

Rick Bangs:

Yes. Tell me how this works.

Meri-Margaret Deoudes:

That’s so funny. It came out really fun. I listen to books as I read.

Rick Bangs:

I figured that’s what…

Meri-Margaret Deoudes:

Yes, as I run. I do that. I also read at night a different book, because I still like hard cover books. I listen to books when I run, and I read books at night. So I’ve enjoyed that. I love to be outside, so I tend to run outside every day, get some fresh air and helps me relax and process things that I don’t even know that I need to process. I love to garden. I have a big yard.

I love to cut flowers from my yard. So I’m looking forward to the spring and doing that. I’m a big sports fan, so I follow a lot of sports, from it’s almost March Madness, so college basketball. I love both men and women’s college basketball and football and baseball. It’s almost baseball season, spring training. All of those things. I have my favorite team. Some of them doing better than others.

Rick Bangs:

Isn’t that always true.

Meri-Margaret Deoudes:

Yes. I love spending time with my son, as I already mentioned, and I have a dog, a mini Goldendoodle named Cinnamon, who we started calling our chief happiness officer because she’s fluffy and fun. And I love to spend time with her as well, walk her and spend a little extra outside time, outdoor time.

Rick Bangs:

Oh, every should have a chief happiness officer. That’s great. I love that. I love that. Okay, so what would people be surprised to know about you?

Meri-Margaret Deoudes:

That’s a great question. I think there are two things I would say here. One is, which might actually contradict each other, but we’ll see. I love a good party. I love to entertain. I love to plan details. I love to have people over. I love to entertain. I love all of it, every detail of it, from cooking to preparing drinks, to setting decorations and tables and planning menus, all that stuff. I love to have people over and spend time with friends and family.

Rick Bangs:

Okay.

Meri-Margaret Deoudes:

The other thing I would say is that I’m not really an extrovert. I’m not an introvert either. So I guess I’m an ambivert. I like both. I like to be with people, but I also need time to recharge. That’s why it might… I’m not sure how that works out, but ambivert is a new word I learned recently took, so I thought I’d pass that along.

Rick Bangs:

Oh, okay, so that’s a real word. Okay, gotcha.

Meri-Margaret Deoudes:

Apparently.

Rick Bangs:

It’s like the ambidextrous.

Meri-Margaret Deoudes:

Right. Exactly. You’re both introverted and extroverted.

Rick Bangs:

Interesting. Interesting. All right, any final thoughts you want to provide?

Meri-Margaret Deoudes:

Just that it’s been so great getting to know you, Rick, for everyone else. I’ve talked to Rick a couple times and really enjoyed learning about your experience and appreciate your willingness, like so many others, to share your work and support our organization. So thank you. And thanks to the community for their support. Thanks to the staff. I look forward to meeting so many of you in person at summit or think tank or in other venues. I just want to say I’m really excited to be here and look forward to making sure that…

As I was asked during my interview, Andrea asked me during the interview process, “When you think about what’s important to you in leading an organization like BCAN, what would be it be? What would be your north star?” And without hesitation, Rick, I said, patients. Patients are the north star. I will always keep you all as my north star and welcome the opportunity to interact with you and hear from you at any time.

Rick Bangs:

Oh, that’s great to hear. And we’re so excited to have you and lucky to have you, so thank you. All right, Meri-Margaret, I want to thank you for sharing your experience prior to joining BCAN and presenting your vision for BCAN’s future. If you’d like more information on bladder cancer, please visit the BCAN website, www.bcan.org. In case people wanted to get in touch with you, could you share an email address or some other contact information?

Meri-Margaret Deoudes:

Absolutely, and would look forward to hearing from you all. The best way to get in touch is [email protected]. So I-N-F-O@BCAN, B-C-A-N, .org.

Rick Bangs:

Excellent. Thank you. Just a reminder, if you’d like more information about bladder cancer, you can contact the Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network at 1-888-901-2226. That’s all the time we have today. Be sure to like, comment, and subscribe to this podcast so we have your feedback. Thank you for listening and we’ll be back soon with another interesting episode of Bladder Cancer Matters. Thanks again, Meri-Margaret.

Meri-Margaret Deoudes:

Thank you.

Voice over:

Thank you for listening to Bladder Cancer Matters, a podcast by the Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network or BCAN. BCAN works to increase public awareness about bladder cancer, advance bladder cancer research, and provide educational and support services for bladder cancer patients. For more information about this podcast and additional information about bladder cancer, please visit bcan.org.