American Cancer Society chief legal and risk officer Timothy Phillips has grown the Atlanta-based organization’s legal department from 16 members to nearly 60 over the past 15 years. To grow the legal backbone, he compartmentalized the team to fully serve the needs of the organization. He created the governance, risk and compliance team, complementing the enterprise risk management team he also created and the information technology security and internal audit teams.

As a community-based health organization, the American Cancer Society had to approach the novel coronavirus. Phillips assembled the ACS COVID-19 rapid response task force. With his specialty in risk assessment, he had initiated a similar venture upon arriving at the organization with what is now the enterprise risk management program. COVID-19 overemphasized the need to make sure the organization and its constituents understood the risk involved with the coronavirus when impacted by cancer. A decision that had to be made was converting the Hope Lodge free housing units for cancer patients into rest and recovery centers for hospital staff treating COVID-19 patients.