The Latest Updates in Pediatric Cancer Predisposition

Jaclyn Schienda is the Lead Genetic Counselor of the Pediatric Cancer Genetic Risk Program (PCGRP) and the Bone Marrow Failure/MDS Program at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Boston Children’s Hospital. She graduated from the Johns Hopkins University joint genetic counseling training program with the National Human Genome Research Institute at the NIH in 2008. She joined Dana-Farber in 2012 after working in a busy general genetics clinic. 

At Dana-Farber, she co-led the establishment of the PCGRP and continues to build the program. She has a special interest in communication of genetic risk and health information to children and families.   She is also actively involved in many research projects which study the expanding phenotypes of and surveillance for pediatric cancer predisposition syndromes, as well as the psychological impact on children and families.

Kelly Burgess is a certified genetic counselor and a Genomic Science Liaison with Ambry Genetics.  She earned an MS in genetic counseling from Wayne State University in 2014. She has been working with Ambry since February 2020 and provides clinical and technical support for hereditary cancer testing to providers across multiple states, including Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Dakotas. Prior to joining Ambry, she worked as a clinical cancer genetic counselor for 6 years with the bulk of her clinical time spent at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, IL.