How a cancer diagnosis altered the career of Bumble’s former COO

Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Jamie Spears is out as Britney’s conservator, women’s college hoops will now be part of March Madness, and former Bumble COO Sarah Jones Simmer on how a cancer diagnosis changed her career trajectory. Have a great Thursday.

– Betting on herself. How would a cancer diagnosis change the direction of your life? It’s a prospect we hope to never face, but it’s one Sarah Jones Simmer, the former COO of Bumble, encountered in May 2020 when doctors told her she had breast cancer. The then 37-year-old mother of two realized almost immediately that she wanted to keep working.

“My work was a big part of my identity,” she told Emma in a new Coins2Day story published today. With cancer, “you lose your hair, you lose your chest, you lose your fertility,” she says. “I wanted to feel like I was bringing something into the world.”

So she and Bumble founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd narrowed the scope of her COO job to focus almost exclusively on the dating app company’s impending IPO. She drafted Bumble’s S-1 from her chemo chair and when the Austin-based firm went public in February, nine months after Jones Simmer started treatment, she joined colleagues at its headquarters to celebrate; it was the first time most had seen her with her regrowing hair.

But Jones Simmer’s diagnosis also made clear a long-term goal: to become a CEO. Now cancer-free, Jones Simmer is today announcing her new job as chief executive of Found, a year-old weight loss company that has been led by COO Swathy Prithivi.

Cancer gave Jones Simmer a “real understanding of how precious our time is,” she says. After pouring herself into Bumble, it’s time, she says, “to take that bet on myself.”

You can read Emma’s full story on Jones Simmer here.

Claire Zillman
[email protected]
@clairezillman

The Broadsheet, Coins2Day’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women, is coauthored by Kristen Bellstrom, Emma Hinchliffe, and Claire Zillman. Today’s edition was curated by Emma Hinchliffe.

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