Colleen grew up in the Chicago-land area in a close-knit family with 5 siblings. In 1987 their grandmother passed away from a combination of acute leukemia and lymphoma, and in 1992 their mother lost her second round against breast cancer. It was in the days when science classes were “reassuringly” teaching that cancer had no genetic links, but even as a small child, Colleen discerned that she was at high risk. After getting her bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Spanish from Clarke College in Dubuque, Iowa, she set out to join two of her siblings in Portland, Oregon, where their mother grew up and where her youngest niece had recently been born. After four years in Oregon, Colleen decided to follow her dreams and spend a year at Hogar Infantil, a children’s home in Chiapas, Mexico where she became part of a 95 member family between the ages of 6 and 21. Upon her return to the states, she found a job in Washington, DC in a scholarship fundraising office for an international agricultural university called Zamorano, Escuela Agricola Panamericana. Colleen recently tested negative for the BRCA analysis, but has always understood that family history still put her at high risk and wanted to take an active role in understanding and coping with breast cancer as it would always be a part of her life. When one of her best friends in DC told her about Bright Pink, they were won over by the organization but were sad to find that there were no local meetings and decided to apply together to start a local chapter. Together, Colleen and Ali Hochreiter are ecstatic to be among the first class of Ambassadors working to bring Bright Pink to Washington, DC and are thrilled to be part of such a growing, caring organization.