WHow Chronic Illness Became This Doctor's Superpower (And Changed Everything)

Dr. Eugene Manley was hospitalized 20-30 times a year until he was 10.

Chronic asthma. Anaphylactic allergies. A father battling emphysema.

Most kids would be broken by this. Eugene was forged by it.

Today, those brutal experiences became his superpower driving him to revolutionize healthcare access for underserved communities through his award-winning SCHEQ Foundation.

This is how pain becomes purpose, and struggle becomes strength.
What You'll Discover:
• How 20-30 hospital visits a year shaped his mission to save lives
• Why he chose lung cancer despite the stigma and judgment
• The celebration milestones most entrepreneurs never track
• His funding strategies that raised $200K in under 2 years
• The Chicago summit that's changing healthcare forever
• How to turn your biggest struggle into your greatest strength

Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction and Welcome
01:04 Eugene's Journey and Achievements
03:24 Future Goals and Vision
04:57 Personal Story and Inspiration
09:05 Funding and Support
13:18 Final Thoughts and Advice

🎧 Full Episode: https://risefromtheashespodcast.com/home
📖 Baz's Book: https://bazporter.com/die-empty-live-full
🌐 Connect: https://bazporter.com/
🏥 SCHEQ Foundation: scheq.org

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Chapters

• 0:07 Welcome Back & Guest Setup
• 1:13 Celebrating Nonprofit Milestones
• 3:24 Vision: Trusted Resource for Underserved
• 4:56 Why Cancer, Why Lung Cancer
• 8:31 Precision Medicine & Equity Gaps
• 9:05 Funding, Summit, and Programs
• 11:13 Summit Details & Free Access
• 12:22 Where to Follow and Watch
• 13:26 Closing Advice: Try, Learn, Protect Your Energy

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:07

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to part two. I'm with Eugene Manuele Junior. He's a doctor, and as he was saying before in the previous episode, he was talking about his journey in the last five or six years of coming out from a career change into entrepreneurship, starting a non-profit, which can, as we all know, in the entrepreneurial world, slightly challenging. For those people who are entrepreneurs, we know about the roller coaster, and we also are very much aware of the trials, tribulations, and challenges, not just in the business, but on our personal lives. It takes as a toll on all of us because we are no longer adapting into a regime or a section of the world that makes sense for a lot of other people, i.e., the 925 or shift work. It can be scary. Eugene, you talked earlier about the challenges and overcoming them. What are the celebrations you've had?

SPEAKER_01: 1:13

This is great because often we don't celebrate our wins enough. We get so barred down in the work and a do and a do. It's like we don't get to celebrate, but I can happily say we just hit the two-year threshold last month. We have our trademark, our wordmark trademark, and we are waiting for our logo trademark, which should come up and be approved soon. We raised almost 200k in two years, less than two years. We have been named best stem and cancel equity nonprofit in the USA by Acquisition International. We were profiled on entrepreneur.com and we were profiling in the Village Voice about the work that I've been doing to really increase workforce diversity and how my lived experience has driven what I've created. And we have the website, which is now up and functional, and we now have infographics on there that are helping break down this terminology for patients. So that those are some big blends. And our other major thing is our lung cancer summit, which is approaching our third year, and we really focus on not just the problems that diverse and underserved communities face navigating lung cancer, but we focus on different solutions that stakeholders have created at all levels that are actually reducing disparities, reducing inequities, and improving outcomes. And that is like something I'm truly proud of.

SPEAKER_00: 2:40

I love that. And it's it's amazing that you've got the bullet point version of this is what I need to celebrate and remind myself of. Because a lot of people who were into the entrepreneurship non-profit zone are going, Oh my god, I haven't done anything. And then that they fail to look back or they don't remind themselves to look back and go, Where have I been? Where I've wherever you come from. And this is such an important topic, I think, for a lot of people out there who are bogged down in this cycle of oh my god, I'm not achieving anything. Did you wake up? Because there's a lot of things that you can celebrate incrementally in very small, very small packages. In five years' time, three years' time, where do you want this business to go? Where do you want the nonprofit to be?

SPEAKER_01: 3:31

I really want it to be a go-to resource. That's sort of the idea. I want it to be a go-to resource for diverse and underserved groups and even patients in general to come and find information about diseases, particularly cancer, but even longer term asthma, ADHD, but we're really focusing on cancer. So they know they have trusted information that's vetted. We can direct you to other resources that may directly help you, or to people that will actually see you as the patient you are, as opposed to dictating what you must be and fit into a box. I think by that point, we'll also be more robustly established and be known for the stuff we're doing and helping groups engage with underserved communities and making sure we have representation and research and trials, even though that is a challenging environment right now, but these things still need to happen because we can't just keep putting out products developed on one race ethnicity and then get to post-market analysis and wonder why these other groups are having adverse events. Well, you have to think about this as you design the stuff so that you don't perpetuate the disparities and inequities.

SPEAKER_00: 4:42

I love that. The other thing you mentioned earlier about overcoming sort of your dynamics because you have to become a different person, slightly different person, or a different way of thinking, an identity with doing this. And you chose cancer. Can you dive a bit deeper, if you will, into the why you chose the cancer to focus on it? Is interesting.

SPEAKER_01: 5:04

I grew up, my father was a chronic smoker, but he never had lung cancer, but he had emphysema. And then, but I grew up as a chronic asthmatic, and I was in the hospital probably 20 to 30 times a year until I was 10, just with my asthma. And associated with that asthma was those anaphylactic allergies that I still have, which really made growing up a challenge. And I think one of my earlier science for projects was just on amount of tarin, nicotine, and cigarettes. Like I didn't know I was going to be a scientist. We had to use these ordering books. We didn't even, because we didn't have everything when I grew up. So we need to be resourceful to buy these testing kits and stuff. It just sort of, I got all this stuff from the American Lung Association that had pictures of throat cancer, tongue cancer, all the stuff from chewing tobacco. And so even though I knew smoking was a risk factor for lung cancer, and it still is, I never somehow was in the frame set that just because someone has history of smoking, they deserve to get lung cancer. And unfortunately, with all the anti-smoking campaigns in the 80s and 90s, a lot of people now assume that those that get lung cancer only have history of smoking and they deserve to get it, which is the worst thing you can say to a patient. Because there are now groups that have no smoking history or have radon exposure, indoor cooking modules, exhaust, forest fires. These are all risk factors, but they aren't typically associated with smoking. But these are other risk factors. So I really hate that we judge people that have lung cancer and assume that they deserve to get it, which they don't. That sort of started my path on the science train, but I never knew I was going to end up in a cancer bill. And then in high school, I got my very first research job at the Michigan Cancer Foundation. And this was thanks to my science department head who realized I had an aptitude for science. Now, like I said, because I'm a first gen, I didn't know any of these programs existed, but she told me about the summer research apprentice program I should apply for. And I think that was 11th grade. I got in, and then I realized, oh, there's a career doing science. And then I was hooked on science after that. And then it's sort of the cancer work I didn't get as much of. And then my undergrad was in mechanical engineering. And so, and I'm from Michigan, and everything in mechanical was carved, and that drove me crazy. I was like, When the dyes, I'm like, I'm so tired of looking at axles and chassis, like, shoot me. So I'm rebelling and doing my summaries, doing biomedical research. Let me get back to some real biomedical engineering. So that's how I got into biomechanics and my master's. And when my PhD came along and said, okay, let's get some real cancer work back in. And I just happened to do some rotations in one of the labs, did a lot of work with drug metabolism, cancer therapeutics. And so that's ended up being the lab I joined. So that was where I started really doing lung cancer. It was never the idea that I was going to do lung cancer, it just happened that way. And when I start in early 2000s, it was we had just maybe discovered the first biomarker. I think that was maybe 2003. But I wasn't even in that area, but I was studying other drug resistance enzymes. But I will say, since that time, they lung cancer has driven a lot of precision medicine and cancer across the board. I think now we're up to maybe 11 different biomarkers that can be used for patients. So you screen for cancer, then you can sort of look at the molecular signature of the tumors, and this helps determine what treatments they can receive. So we made a lot of advances, and unfortunately, not everybody's benefiting from them. Did I answer your question?

SPEAKER_00: 8:42

I just realized I want other no, no, it's all good. I I'm I'm just imagining now the Chicagoans going, oh my god, he said he said the thing they shouldn't ever say about the chassis. And I just love that. Downtown Chicago, no, they didn't say that. He did say that. Love it. When you're looking for uh sponsors, people who give the funding side of things, investors. What's the criteria that you're looking for? If someone's listening to this now going, that and I could help them, what's the sort of thing that you're looking for, and how can they really help you?

SPEAKER_01: 9:22

Well, really, the biggest thing we need is funding, sponsorships for the our lung cancer summit, support for the different programs. Besides our big lung cancer health equity summit or intervention summit that will be October 24th and 25th. We run our, we do the we create the infographics for increasing health literacy. We started recording a podcast called Microscopes to Moonshots, Real Stories in STEM, which is actually pretty exciting. I get to talk to different people in STEM fields about what they've done, where they come from, how they got in the field, and sort of it's really designed to help keep more so even diverse and other circuits hear about these fields at early ages so they know that they're out there because often you don't know any of this until you get to college. So, how can we circumvent and get this exposure out early? So that that series really, really I'm happy that we finally started recording. And then in the last several months, started two lung cancer webinars about educating patients, researchers, etc., about different advances in lung cancer that impact patients or solutions to different problems. And this year we're focusing on risk factors other than lung cancer. So those are the big things we're doing. But the biggest thing is the summit and then infographics. So anyone interested in really supporting those initiatives, anyone wanting to speak, anyone wanting to volunteer, because we can use definitely volunteers because you know we're still technically a party of one, so I'm wearing many hats, which is what often founders, CEOs do, but there's only so many hours of the day, so you have to literally prioritize what I can do today and what just will have to wait, which is the hardest thing to learn.

SPEAKER_00: 11:04

I love that. So the the summit I want to focus on at the moment, where can people find it? What where can they sign up and the dates?

SPEAKER_01: 11:13

So the dates of the summit are October 24th through 25th. It is at the University of Illinois Cancer Center, which is a federally qualified health center in right adjacent to downtown of Chicago. I love the work that they do with that university. They have some of the greatest diversity in clinical trials and lung cancer. They do a great job with their black and Hispanic patients. They really meet them where they are. And if people can't make appointments, they check to see if why they missed an appointment, if they can come in on another time. And they do such a great, great job. And you can find more information about it on our website, check.org, SCHU.org. If you go under events, you will see third lung cancer solution summit when we have the agenda prospectus and registration pages. We make sure that the summit is free for patients, caregivers, and survivors. So it's free for those to attend, and then the price scales up for you know nonprofit industry, pharma, researchers. So all the information is there. Awesome.

SPEAKER_00: 12:15

And where people can find you, where do they get hold of you? Where's the we're on LinkedIn? But is there any anything that they you want people to know?

SPEAKER_01: 12:22

Yes, you can follow me on LinkedIn. I my posting goes in phases of when I'm actually sitting at the computer. So there are sometimes when I'm really something I disappear for two weeks, then I come back. But I can be followed on LinkedIn. The org is also on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook. If you just do slash S-T-E-M-M-C-H-E-Q, you'll find the org pages. Um, we also have a blue sky page, which I do not, I'm working on using more, but in the grand scheme of social media, that's the one that sort of lags behind the rest because it's not directly connected to the rest of my stuff, but it is there. So we do post some stuff there. We are slowly working on getting a YouTube page up, which will have us soon we'll have our series on medical racism and we'll have some of the webinars we've recorded, but we're working on that. That's work in progress.

SPEAKER_00: 13:16

Okay, awesome. Eugene, thank you very much for joining me today. Is there any final message you'd like to leave with the audience? Uh hope, inspiration, or even advice? Yeah, I will leave a couple.

SPEAKER_01: 13:27

There's a one, just don't be afraid to do something because people tell you it won't work. You know, you have to believe in what you're gonna do, and the worst thing you can do is there's no problem with failure if you have tried. The bigger failure is if you've never tried. Because you always grow if something doesn't work, but if you don't try something, there's no room for grate. That's the biggest message, and I just say, and it's always try to see people with respect and how you want to be treated. There's no I do not associate with people that are what's the word I want to use? Well, use a nice word, jerks. If someone is obnoxious, unruly, belligerent, like why would you want to associate with them? There's no reason to keep them in your sphere because they're energy dreams. So surround yourself with people that understand and will support you. They don't have to be your best buddy, but you know, people that are at least on a similar track or understand what you're trying to do. So because you don't need negative energy. Those are the two big things.

SPEAKER_00: 14:27

I love that advice. Thank you very much for joining me, Dr. Eugene. You're an awesome human being. Keep up what you're doing, and I hope you have an amazing event and summit in Chicago in October. To all my listeners, thank you very much for joining me. Thank you for being a part of my show and sharing this message. This is all about you and what people like yourself bring to the world. This is Rice on the Ashes. This is your story. Remember, you are the miracle. I'm Baz Porter. Thanks for listening. Talk to you soon. Thank you.