Our Founder

Tanya Trippett, MD

Founding Member
Chief Executive Officer
Treasurer

Dr. Tanya Trippett is the President of the Wish4Life Foundation. She completed her medical and specialty training in Pediatrics at Duke University School Medical Center. She completed her Fellowship in Pediatric Hematology Oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. She served in the US Air Force as Head of the Division of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology. She is a Board Certified Pediatric Hematologist Oncologist practicing at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Her areas of subspecialty expertise include the care of children with lymphoma as well as children with cancers that have returned despite prior treatment. She is a clinical researcher who specializes in the design and assessment of investigational therapies — particularly antibodies and new targeted agents that take aim at the molecular signaling pathways that drive cancer growth — for children with all types of cancer.

She is the Co-Founder and Director Emeritus of POETIC (Pediatric Oncology Experimental Therapeutics Investigator Consortium), a collaboration between multiple academic centers in North America specializing in cancer care whose mission is the development of biologically targeted treatment approaches for children with cancer that has recurred after standard therapy. She started POETIC in February 2003 to increase access for children in North America to promising new agents in clinical trials.

In 2012, she expanded her focus globally on increasing quality access to cancer care for children in limited resource nations.