Valerie Goddard didn’t have to search for role models and direction in her life.
Her aunt had a career straight out of “Hidden Figures,” except that this math genius was exploring oceans as one of the Navy’s first nautical cartographers for submarines.
And her grandmother Altamese Brodie, “the love of my life,” says Goddard, was a transformational influence in the lives of children and families in the Tampa Bay area for over 55 years as the administrator at Helping Hand Day Nursery, Inc.
Great strength, compassion and desire to serve others shaped Goddard’s life as a wife, mother of two and now as CEO and Chief Strategist of The Goddard Group.
No wonder, then, when she hosted a Moffitt Cancer Center health disparities summit in 2010 as chair of the Children’s Board of Hillsborough County, she became intrigued by a new opportunity to serve. Moffitt’s vice president of Diversity, Public Relations and Strategic Communications B. Lee Green, Ph.D., invited Goddard to tour the hospital and learn more, in hopes that she might join the Moffitt Hospital Board.
Shortly after joining Moffitt’s Hospital Board in 2011, that passion became even more personal for Goddard when her mother was diagnosed with colon cancer. Though her parents initially planned to simply rely on a local physician for care, Goddard insisted they seek a second opinion at Moffitt – an option they’d never realized was open to them.
But far larger issues can interfere with access to care for underserved communities - and result in cancer health disparities with grave consequences. Those issues led Goddard to accept another role, chairing the George Edgecomb Society which raises funds for Moffitt research into cancer health disparities within the black/African-American community.
The Society was named in memory of Hillsborough County’s first African-American judge, a close friend of then-state representative H. Lee Moffitt. Judge Edgecomb’s death from leukemia spurred Moffitt’s vision to create Florida’s only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center. It’s a story that still inspires Goddard.