Though the American Cancer Society (ACS) sold its headquarters building in downtown Atlanta last year, the city continues to play a significant role in the organization's future.
Atlanta is home to the ACS’s discovery center — the “brain trust” that helps to analyze national cancer trends to set the organization’s priorities, including for research, screening and advocacy, said Karen Knudsen, CEO of the ACS. In an interview with Atlanta Business Chronicle for the New Cancer Quest project, Knudsen said being home to the group's brain trust, means Atlanta is also home to all the scientists that are employed by ACS.
Knudsen is entering her second year as the ACS’s first female CEO. She succeeded Gary Reedy who retired in 2021 after 15 years with the ACS. Knudsen is also the organization’s first leader to come from the science sector rather than the business community.
Knudsen is based in Philadelphia where she spent more than a decade at Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson Health. She worked with the ACS as an outsider for many years, she said during an episode of the On Leadership with Atlanta Business Chronicle podcast. But it was not until she became the organization's CEO that she realized “the reach the ACS has into thousands of communities nationwide.”
The ACS is the second largest nonprofit organization in metro Atlanta with 2020 revenue of $653 million, according to the Chronicle's Book of Lists.
The leaders who fund cancer research across the nation are also based in Atlanta, Knudsen said. She does not see that changing.
“Atlanta will continue to figure prominently in the path forward for the American Cancer Society," she said.
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