Moving From One-Shot Collaboration to Long-Term Commitment

What makes a (really) good company? For a while, it seemed that it all broke down into three key factors: mission, vision, and values. Then, the talk moved onto organizational culture, customer centricity, positive impact and, more recently, purpose. Now, we are reaching a new milestone, asking ourselves: Is our own existence as a company bringing specific contributions to the people and the planet? If not, how can we start working in that direction? If so, how can we do even more?

At Mamotest, we have been fighting breast cancer for over a decade. I can humbly say that our experience providing high quality diagnostics and healthcare to underserved women in Latin America is unparalleled — to the point that even fellow European companies are looking at our business model and our social impact results in awe. And yet, there is always something that we can do better, faster, stronger. It’s all about being open to opportunities, whenever and wherever they might come. Pink October last month was one of those opportunities.

As the annual breast cancer awareness month approached, we started knocking on the doors of dozens of companies from Mexico and Argentina, to invite them to join us in our campaign to raise the number of free mammograms we offer in our diagnostic centers. We devoted hours to meetings across both countries, both virtual and physical, to talk about what we do at Mamotest and why, to us, “October is all year round.” We also shared our view that breast cancer is not just a challenge that the healthcare system must face, but it is a disease that it is up to society as a whole to defeat.

(Let me digress for a moment here to share with you one of my biggest insights as a change-maker and entrepreneur in the health industry: there is no point in developing cutting-edge technology and having hundreds of diagnostic centers open and even free of charge if women don’t show up. The possible reasons for them “not showing up” are complex. They range from “simple” emotions, such as fear or shame, to structural social and economic barriers with a profound impact in their everyday lives — for instance, a woman who is not capable of taking a day off work because she has an informal job and so she is afraid of being laid off, or even the cultural belief that it is the woman who must take care of her children, which leads her to dismiss her own self care.)

Thanks to our Pink October campaign, we reached 4,500 free mammograms. However, what to us seemed like a more than accomplished mission was just the beginning. 

As it turns out, many of these companies expressed their eagerness to do more. They wanted to go from a one-shot collaboration to long-term commitment. They even started asking themselves questions such as: What are we doing inside our organization to promote a breast cancer awareness culture? Are all our women employees over 40 years old getting tested? If not, why is that not happening? Are we, as their employer, doing our best to change that? Do we offer a day off work, or is there a benefits plan for a positive result? Even if we do have these policies, are we communicating them well enough? And what about our male employees who are husbands, sons, fathers of women: how can we get them involved, too, to reach the women in their lives?

In other words, companies felt inspired to actively help create the right and best possible culture of breast cancer awareness, starting inside their own four walls. To us, that meant providing a new service that we had to design and develop specifically for this purpose: a monthly mammogram subscription that will give these companies the infrastructure and guidance to sustain a rooted, continuous policy. For instance, in Mexico, JAC Motors has already established a monthly objective of 300 mammograms for 2023 — that is, 3.600 next year — and Grupo Azucarero del Trópico will provide annual mammograms for all of their women employees, while also extending the same opportunity to all women living in the communities close to their sugar factory in Veracruz. 

What’s more, the impact is not only expressed in a large number of mammograms, it is also about profound and genuine commitment. Let me explain what I mean by sharing with you the case of the food chain Wingstop. If one just looked at the numbers, it did not look like a key opportunity for our campaign: the company has just 16 women employees of any age to have their mammograms done. However, the social corporate responsibility director felt so moved after our meeting that she decided to reach out to those 16 women, personally making sure they all had their appointments set. She even promised to take each of them, in her own car, to the closest Mamotest center on the designated day.

Examples like Wingstop’s remind us that there is no small impact when it comes to breast cancer: each effort is necessary and potentially life-changing — or, may I say, life-giving. This is a disease we can only defeat if we all take part in the fight, no matter how small or grand that part may look like.