How Exact Sciences Approaches Community Support

Exact Sciences knows strong partnerships and active involvement in the communities where we do business makes us stronger — our organization and our workforce alike.

We share our support through monetary giving and subsidized volunteer time, and our people are eager to reach out a hand to help. We strive to be good corporate allies, but that doesn’t automatically mean we always know the best way to help. That’s why we look to our community partners, who know how best to approach a community’s unique issues.

Katie Boyce, senior director of corporate impact and community relations at Exact Sciences, reflected recently on our community partnerships during an employee roundtable discussion about allyship. Here’s what she had to say:

Moderator: “How has Exact Sciences partnered with historically overlooked communities to cultivate trust, build relationships, and extend allyship beyond company employees?”

Boyce: “First and foremost, it's important to note that Exact Sciences — and Kevin Conroy, as the CEO and president — have always believed that we need to give back to the communities where we work. Giving back in multiple ways has been a value that we’ve always had. As we have grown as a company, we’ve found ways to work with each individual new community.

“We think about it geographically, like Madison or Phoenix or San Diego or Marshfield. Each of those communities has different needs, and so we approach them differently. So, for example, we work closely with the Marshfield United Way in Wisconsin for people who are unhoused. We do the same in Phoenix, but they have very different needs: One place has a very cold winter, and one has a very hot summer. It requires that we understand the communities that we’re talking to and that we listen to them.

“That has been a really great way to build trust, so it’s not just that Exact Sciences is showing up with a check. We’re showing up to make sure that we understand what the needs are. We work to be community-centric in how we give our resources, versus being a donor-centric giver that instructs community partners on what we want to see. We want our community partners — people who are in the communities and working to serve them — to be able to do their work the way they know best.

“We take the approach that we don’t know what they need. We take the approach of, ‘We don’t know. You’re the expert. Please tell us what works for you, and then we will figure out how to work with you.’”