Multiple myeloma research crusader Kathy Giusti to speak at HBS Class Day

Kathy Giusti, M.B.A. ’85, founder and CEO of the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation (MMRF), will address this year's imminent graduates of Harvard Business School as Class Day speaker. She founded the MMRF in 1998 after being diagnosed with multiple myeloma. This spring, Time magazine named her one of the "100 most influential people" in the world. Multiple myeloma is a cancer of plasma cells—white blood cells that produce antibodies; it affects from one to four people per 100,000 and constitutes 1 percent of all cancers. Before starting MMRF, Giusti was an executive with pharmaceutical companies, and she has sought to encourage the development of drugs to treat the disease using a business model, rather than an academic model, of drug development. The MMRF is the world's top funder of myeloma research: it has raised more than $165 million to fund research.