The comeback kid The comeback kid The comeback kid

Eason Yang, ’22, dreamt up Not Entirely Dead (NED) as a design hack to address the resume gap in the careers of young cancer survivors who had to step away from their careers to fight life-threatening illness. He wasn’t looking to make a personal comeback. He just wanted to start a dialogue about an issue that has touched his own life as well as the lives of 16.9 million cancer survivors living in the U.S.

In the midst of his professional ascent as a designer at the age of 33, Yang was diagnosed with cancer. When his cancer finally went into remission after a few years, he turned back to his career. But even with major companies like Uber, Ogilvy and Saatchi & Saatchi on his resume, the two-year employment gap made him unappealing to employers. At first, knowing that cancer was a stigma, he told recruiters that he had stayed home with his young daughter. But then they questioned his dedication and suggested he may no longer be relevant.

That’s when he decided to develop NED (which also stands for “No Evidence of Disease”) as a hack that could fill career gaps on LinkedIn. From the time of a person’s diagnosis to their remission, they can add NED as an employer on their professional profile. The placeholder protects them from being screened out by automated bots and opens up opportunities for employers to connect with cancer survivors.

NED catapulted Yang into the public spotlight, earning him design awards and public recognition from the likes of the American Institute of Graphic Arts and Fast Company magazine. As attention increased, Yang began to develop NED’s core initiative. Last year, he launched a coaching program to pair survivors of cancer with mentors and career coaches to navigate re-entry into the workforce and advise them on practical matters.

Yang, who moved to Seattle to pursue a Master of Design degree at the UW, had worked with coach Adam Grupp, who is also a consultant in residence at the Foster School of Business. “The experience itself of cancer doesn’t create a situation where you can’t work after your recovery,” says Yang. “But there’s a loss of confidence—confidence at work, but also confidence to get life going again. Working with a career coach wasn’t just about emotional support and help. It was about how to strategize to get to where I wanted to go.”

Inspired by Yang’s mission, Grupp signed on to help develop the coaching arm for NED. Together, they created free services to help survivors rebuild confidence and get back on their feet. Initially, Yang hoped corporate partners might sponsor the program at their companies and build with NED so that it could scale up. NED facilitates weekly pro bono coaching sessions for groups of four to six people, with participants joining remotely from places including the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Australia. Private funding would allow NED to hire more coaches or increase its active member base.

Yang is now strategizing NED’s next move. This fall, he is producing an educational exhibition for the New York Public Library to share NED’s journey and mission. “I want to help all cancer survivors make their comebacks,” Yang says. “I want to focus on the most motivated individuals to facilitate their moonshots and see what’s possible when the world sees what they can produce with their comebacks.”

Yang believes that many cancer survivors connect with their life purpose after their cancer experiences. They want to do meaningful projects that may not have anything to do with financial priorities, he says. “The intention is to focus on what people can do. We’ll matchmake people’s commitment and motivations and activate these projects for them. We’ll facilitate interactions for them and mobilize resources. If someone wants to make a podcast, we’ll try to get it on NPR,” he says. “If someone wants to write a book or start a coaching business, we’ll allocate resources to support that risk.”

NED will be an accelerator and a case study, he adds. Yang hopes that NED’s model might provide a structure for new mothers, veterans and other groups that confront resume gaps to find new pathways toward professional comebacks.

There was a time when Yang’s vision of his own comeback was landing at a major creative agency or joining a design team within a philanthropic organization. But since moving to New York last year, his perspective has shifted. “I had this personal drive for five years and wanted to make this comeback and get redemption,” says Yang. Instead, he realized he needed to focus on a bigger mission for NED—doing more for cancer survivors.

“This is the actual comeback that I wanted—no one’s telling me what to do,” says Yang. “Survivors and cancer patients have their professional dreams, like anybody. They deserve a comeback and success. Everybody wants to see them succeed.”