Andrea Downing is a Community Data Organizer.

In 2005, Andrea learned she carried a BRCA1 mutation.  This mutation was passed from her great grandmother to her mother and now to Andrea. Frustrated with lack of options beyond removing body parts, Andrea started Brave Bosom in 2012 as a place to write about her own experiences relating to BRCA.  As Brave Bosom evolved, it became a place to educate others about how our collective data impacts the hereditary cancer community.

In 2018 she started adding ‘accidental white hat hacker’ to her repertoire of random titles through her work at Brave Bosom.  Back in 2013, Andrea first started speaking and writing as a media spokesperson for one of the plaintiffs in Association of Molecular Pathology vs. Myriad Genetics.  This case was a critical turning point for her community because the Supreme Court decided whether BRCA – and all other human genes- could be patented.  After joining the ePatient program at Stanford Medicine X in 2014, she began speaking publicly about issues affecting the BRCA Community.