The GIST Cancer Research Fund (GCRF) is a non-profit 501(C)(3) charity (Tax ID: 13-4182988) and was founded to provide support to the growing community of GIST (gastrointestinal stromal tumor) patients and caregivers. The GCRF Board of Directors who manage the organization include GIST patients or caregivers with family members who currently live with or have succumbed to the cancer. GCRF’s foundress and Chairperson, Tania Stutman, proudly celebrates life as a GIST patient and relentlessly drives the fund to find better ways to raise funds and awareness for its ultimate goal, finding a cure.
The GCRF Board of Directors
The GIST Cancer Research Fund is an organization whose Board of Directors and Management Team are comprised of either actual GIST patients or caregivers with family members who currently live with or have succumbed to GIST cancer. The GCRF Board Members do not receive a salary or any other monetary compensation from GCRF.
Tania Stutman, Chairperson
Robert Stutman, Treasurer
Alan Stutman, Esq., Counsel, GCRF
Albert Heffes, Heffes & Heffes, CPAs, P.C.
Ephraim S. Casper, MD, Chief Medical Consultant
Directors
Pamela Fedowich
Wendy Kapiloff
Mark Landesman
Bruce Torrey
Karen Turano
Angelo Turano
William Price (Director Posthumous Emeritus)
Tania's Story
(Article taken from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center)
Tania Stutman is a survivor. Born in Israel, she is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. As a child, she lived for 11 years in Communist Romania. In 1965, when Tania was 15, she and her family immigrated to America with just the clothes on their backs. In 1985, her only sister, an airline attendant, was tragically killed in a military airplane crash. Her 47-year-old daughter is currently fighting stage IV breast cancer. “My parents were survivors,” she says, “so it’s natural that I am too.” But resilience is only part of her story.
A Grim Prognosis
In 1998, during an emergency hysterectomy operation for a suspicious growth, Tania’s surgeon discovered another growth on her small bowel. Her world suddenly turned dark.