It is late in the night and a patient at the Massey Cancer Center needs a treatment still being researched. A team of specialists is putting together the paperwork to get help.
This type of vital but behind-the-scenes labor is the specialty of Juellisa Secosky.
Secosky, who grew up in Fredericksburg, has been at Massey since 2011, where she handles the essential features of research including budgeting, contracting, finding grant money and managing the awards. “I feel that what we do is very much behind the scenes,” she says. “We work on all types of studies.”
Prior to Massey, she worked in an administrative capacity at Virginia Commonwealth University, where she started in 2005 after graduating with an undergraduate degree in biology. She’s now working on a master’s degree there.
When not working, she’s active with the Junior League of Richmond where she’s leading a community program from October to March. This is a lot to handle since she and her lawyer husband John just recently had a baby girl. She says her “first child” is her cavalier King Charles spaniel who had to accept no longer being the center of attention when the baby came.
For fun, she skis and runs. She’s participated in several Richmond Marathons.
At work, “no day is the same.” Dealing with cancer is always a rough fight.
“I have known so many friends who have lost their lives to it,” she says.
