The Bright Pink Legacy

Changing Lives – Educating, Equipping and Empowering High-Risk Young Women With Life-Saving Knowledge & Support

At just 23, Lindsay made the life-altering decision to undergo a risk-reducing double mastectomy after discovering she carried a BRCA1 mutation, just like my mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother before me. After going through this experience myself, she realized young women in similar situations needed the tools, knowledge, and support to make their own informed, life-saving decisions. And so in 2007, fueled by passion, insight, and a deep desire to help others, Lindsay Avner Kaplan founded the breast and ovarian health non-profit Bright Pink with one mission: to help save young women’s lives by empowering them to take control of their health.

Under Lindsay’s leadership, Bright Pink developed and scaled world-class programs that helped nearly 1.8 million women understand their cancer risk through the Webby-award winning AssessYourRisk.org, educated +100,000 young women on the breast and ovarian health basics through Brighten Up Workshops, trained over 20,000 healthcare providers on how to provide better preventive care to their young, female patients, and supported over 6,500 high-risk women through one-on-one peer support program PinkPal, local community-based outreach gatherings, and extensive online resources and tools. These programs served as the foundation of the Bright Pink movement that shifted the national conversation, changed clinical practice, and saved countless lives.

Changing the System – Advancing Breast and Ovarian Health Equity

As time went on, Lindsay and the Bright Pink team asked themselves: how could we scale our impact beyond our own programs, using the assets we’d built – our knowledge, resources, and partnerships – to strengthen the broader fight against breast and ovarian cancer?

There was an explosion of new data, new information, and new ways of thinking about preventive health. It became clear that to truly continue making a difference, we had to evolve. While we had empowered individual women, there were still systemic barriers that disproportionately affected historically marginalized communities. To address these gaps, we needed to scale our impact beyond our own programs and invest in others who were already moving the needle on health equity.

In 2021, Bright Pink transition from a direct-service organization to a Venture Philanthropy Fund, investing over $1,000,000 in financial and capacity-building resources into innovative interventions aimed at breaking down barriers to care for women of color and those at increased genetic risk. In collaboration with Mission Partners, Bright Pink advanced health equity, reduced disparities, and ensured that the system itself would better serve all women.

Changing the Future – Introducing PROACT and the Next Generation of Impact

In October 2024, Bright Pink proudly announced a $3.5 million legacy gift to establish the Bright Pink Preventive Risk Outreach And Cascade Testing (PROACT) Program at Stanford Medicine and sunset its organization. This program represents the culmination of nearly 20 years of work that has taught us one clear truth: awareness in action saves lives.

This gift honors and beautifully captures everything Bright Pink learned and achieved, and the intent is that it will continue to advance - and amplify - Bright Pink’s mission for years to come.

For the last 18 years, utilizing one’s family health history has been at the heart of Bright Pink’s work. Understanding a woman’s genetic risk unlocks the ability to manage it proactively —and, in many cases, prevent cancer altogether. This belief has driven everything Bright Pink has done: helping women access and act on the vital information that could save their lives.

However, we know all too well that starting these conversations is incredibly difficult. Despite advances in medical technology, cascade genetic testing—which identifies inherited mutations like BRCA1 and BRCA2 and extends testing to relatives—is still underutilized, with only one-third of those who could benefit taking action. The burden of initiating these family conversations has often fallen unfairly on patients and mutation carriers. This is where the Bright Pink PROACT Program steps in.

Led by Stanford physicians Dr. Allison Kurian and Dr. Jennifer Caswell-Jin, in collaboration with the University of Michigan, the Bright Pink PROACT Program intends to democratize access to cascade genetic testing. Building on this team's proven platform – which has already significantly increased cascade testing uptake – PROACT features a user-friendly, online tool that helps women easily understand their genetic risks and share this critical, life-saving information with their families. Offering low-cost, at-home genetic testing, PROACT empowers families to take preventive action. The program will first launch in underserved areas of Central California, Atlanta, and Washington, DC, before expanding nationwide.

Since its start, Bright Pink has turned genetic risk awareness into life-saving actions for women and their families. The PROACT Program intends to build on this work, streamlining the process so that understanding and sharing genetic risks becomes simpler and more accessible than ever before.

The PROACT program’s impact intends to go well beyond those directly using the platform. The data collected will offer critical insights, helping to identify gaps in care, drive policy changes, and advocate for broader systemic reforms to ensure every woman has access to the knowledge and resources she needs to live a long, healthy life.

Bright Pink’s Legacy

Almost 20 years ago, a crucial decision transformed Bright Pink Founder Lindsay Avner Kaplan’s life and ignited a movement that has since saved countless others. As we reflect on all we’ve accomplished, we are filled with pride and gratitude for the Bright Pink community—the young women at the heart of our mission and the countless individuals and organizations who have championed it along the way. We are eternally grateful to our Board of Directors including Board Chair Janet Foutty and all of the board members, team members, donors, corporate partners and volunteers who have helped advance our mission forward.

From our first 15 years serving millions of young women with life-saving education and resources to our recent work advancing health equity with our Mission Partners through the Bright Pink Venture Fund, our collective charge has remained the same: save young women's lives from breast and ovarian cancer through bold, innovative solutions. The PROACT Program intends to carry this legacy of life-saving impact forward and shape a better, brighter future for generations to come.

Stay Engaged

As we aim to maximize the impact of Bright Pink’s assets in support of the PROACT program at Stanford, we will be sunsetting our operations and will no longer be accepting donations. For those wishing to continue supporting Bright Pink’s life-saving mission, we encourage you to donate directly to the PROACT Program.