Nancy Achin Sullivan

Diagnoses

Vocation

Traits

Family

American politician and head of the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine, the first time the head of the Board has been a former cancer patient herself and one without medical or legal credentials. She took office in October 1999. As a politician, Sullivan had served in the United States Senate where she first worked with medical legislation. Raised by a brutal alcoholic dad, she worked her way through Harvard. A cancer survivor, she had Hodgkin's at age 14. At 32, she had breast cancer and a year later, a recurrence. In 1996 she had a malignant melanoma. Her younger sister died at age 32 from brain cancer and an aunt died three days later from ovarian cancer. Her mom is a breast cancer survivor and her older sister, a Down's Syndrome child, died when Sullivan was young. The 6' tall pretty blonde describes herself whimsically as a "psychotically over-controlled A-type freak," ambitious and driven.