Reading: #148: Kristen Carbone (Using Two Cancer Diagnoses To Redirect A Career)

Kristen Carbone had always wanted to work in an art museum, but after landing her dream museum job she soon faced a harrowing reality: her mother’s breast cancer had returned with a serious metastasis. Packing up her life, Carbone moved to Baltimore to be closer to her ailing mother. Heartbreakingly, her mother passed before turning 50. After her mother’s death, Carbone uprooted herself again and continued her museum work. But just three months after her 30th birthday, Carbone herself was diagnosed with breast cancer. She made the brave and terrifying decision to have a preventative mastectomy and reconstruction. “I felt really committed to the choice,” she says. As she learned to live in her new body, however, she experienced first-hand the challenges that many women face after treatment. Carbone reached out to hundreds of women experiencing the same issue before founding Brilliantly, a lifestyle brand whose programs and products are designed to support women living in post-mastectomy bodies. In this episode of Reinvent Yourself, Carbone talks with CoveyClub founder Lesley Jane Seymour about how cancer radically changed her life and inspired her to make an impact on the lives of other survivors.