Celebrate! with Above + Beyond Cancer

Name: Celebrate! with Above + Beyond Cancer
Start: 2025-11-13T17:30:00-06:00
End: 2025-11-13T20:00:00-06:00
Location: Hilton Des Moines Downtown

Schedule

Thu Nov 13 2025 at 05:30 pm to 08:00 pm

UTC-06:00

Location

Hilton Des Moines Downtown | Des Moines, IA

The Celebrate! gives everyone a chance to gather and celebrate the positive impact Above + Beyond Cancer is making in the community.
The annual event honors those who have done extraordinary things in the world of cancer and provides an update on the activities available with Above + Beyond Cancer.
Annabelle Gurwitch is this year's keynote speaker. Gurwitch is a cancer survivor and critically acclaimed actress and New York Times Bestselling Author of the memoirs,”Wherever You Go, There They Are, I See You Made an Effort, You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up, and Fired!”, which was also a Showtime Comedy Special. Gurwitch was the long time host of TBS’s Dinner & a Movie and television viewers remember her memorable appearances on programs including, Better Things, Boston Legal, Seinfeld, Dexter, Murphy Brown, and as the host of the sustainability series, WA$TED, on The Planet Green Network. She makes regular appearances on PBS Newhour, Real Time with Bill Maher and on NPR as well as penning op-eds for New York Times, WSJ, The Hollywood Reporter, and satire for The New Yorker and McSweeeneys. Her work as an actress on stage has earned her place in the annual critics “Top Ten Performances of the Year” in both The New York and Los Angeles Times.
In the spring of 2020, during a routine COVID test, Gurwitch received a diagnosis of Stage IV non-small cell lung cancer. This diagnosis, despite being a non-smoker, brought her into the growing population of women diagnosed with lung cancer who have never smoked.
Using her experience, Gurwitch has become a vocal patient advocate and speaker, sharing her journey. She has written about her cancer experience, including in a New York Times op-ed titled "The Coronavirus Saved My Life," and articles in The Washington Post addressing inequities in healthcare.