I’m a planner,” Lillie Shockney, M.A.S., says with a mischievous smile as she discusses her “retirement” from Johns Hopkins Medicine after an exemplary career of nearly 36 years as patient educator, advocate and, since 1997, the administrative director of the Johns Hopkins Breast Center. “My mother always says, ‘When Lillie has a plan you either help her or get out of the way.’”

A fighter who twice beat back her own bouts with breast cancer, Shockney planned her Nov. 1 retirement in ways that allow her to spend more time with family—especially her two grandchildren—while staying involved with many of the philanthropically supported patient-centered programs she helped develop and launch. “We’ve been moving at such a fast pace for the past 35 years that I never paused to look at what we’ve accomplished,” says Shockney. “We’ve always been looking ahead for the next big thing that can make patient care better.”

Shockney and her colleagues in the Department of Surgery and the development office have accomplished a lot together, including:

• The oncology nurse navigator service that helps patients skip over obstacles and receive the care they need and deserve
• The breast surgical oncology fellowship that is training the next generation of superspecialists
• The Managing Cancer at Work program (originally designed by Shockney and Terry Langbaum, M.A.S., former chief administrative officer of the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, to support Johns Hopkins faculty, staff and family members’ management of their work life during cancer treatment), which has been packaged and sold to more than a dozen major businesses and corporations including Nissan, Pitney Bowes and Novartis
• The cancer survivorship support and metastatic cancer retreat programs that help patients, partners and caregivers plan and manage for what is the most important battle of their lives

“The patient is more than their pathology,” says Shockney, explaining that the goal of all these programs is to support patients along their paths to recovery or end of life. “All of our patients had a life before diagnosis. They need to continue to live their lives during treatment. And, if they are going to be successful, they need to plan for their life after treatment. We want that life to become even more rewarding than their life was before. And for those forced to succumb to this disease, we need to help them plan for it to ensure they and their families are prepared."

In September, Shockney hosted the 20th semiannual Johns Hopkins weekend retreat for metastatic breast cancer patients and their spouses/partners. In recent years, she has shared the benefits of the event by helping institutions in more than 10 states plan their own retreats.

“I didn’t have money when we started,” Shockney says with a grin. “Everything we’ve done these past 22 years has been with money that we’ve raised with our philanthropic partners. Where there’s a will there’s a way. And when passion and purpose have the opportunity to join together, extraordinary things will always happen.”

The first nurse at Johns Hopkins to become a full professor in the school of medicine, Shockney will continue to teach part time as well as actively participate in grant activities and philanthropic support to maintain these many programs. “I’ve always been very miserly with how we spend these funds,” she says. “I’m very respectful of the trust people put in us to carry out our work.”