Beyond Medical Treatment: How Shariann Tom and The Cancer Journey Institute Are Expanding the Role of Cancer Coaching
Cancer care is often measured through diagnoses, treatment plans, clinical decisions and physical recovery. Yet for patients, survivors and caregivers, the experience extends far beyond medical appointments. It can bring uncertainty, changes in identity, emotional strain, difficult decisions and questions about what life means after a diagnosis.
Addressing these less visible dimensions of the cancer experience is the focus of The Cancer Journey Institute, an organisation established in 2012 by Shariann Tom and developed in collaboration with co-founder Keri Lehmann. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Institute trains specialist cancer coaches and offers coaching, workshops and educational resources to people navigating cancer and its aftermath.
Its approach rests on a straightforward proposition: while medical professionals address the physical aspects of cancer, individuals may also benefit from dedicated support in processing their experiences, recognising their personal values and deciding how they want to move forward.
Recognising the Human Experience Behind Cancer
The Cancer Journey Institute emerged from a gap its founders identified in the support available to people affected by cancer. Medical treatment is essential, but the emotional and psychological experience of diagnosis, treatment and life beyond cancer can require a different kind of attention.
The Institute's origin story is closely connected to Shariann Tom's personal experience. Its website describes her as a survivor of non-Hodgkin lymphoma and gastrointestinal stromal tumour (GIST), and notes that she began coaching in 2007. Her experience informed a broader interest in how people make sense of difficult life events and how coaching can help them navigate change.
Keri Lehmann, described by the organisation as Tom's first life coach and trainer, helped develop the Institute's original curriculum. Drawing on their combined experience in personal growth, life coaching, coach training and corporate work, they established a programme designed specifically around the needs of people affected by cancer.
The organisation's philosophy also challenges the language frequently used to describe cancer. Rather than framing every experience as a battle to be won or lost, it promotes a journey-oriented perspective centred on awareness, choice and the possibility of personal growth. This does not minimise the seriousness of the disease; instead, it offers another way for individuals to understand their experience without imposing a single narrative on everyone.
What Cancer Journey Coaching Offers
Cancer Journey Coaching is positioned as a complementary form of support rather than a replacement for medical care, therapy, social work or cancer navigation services.
The distinction matters. A coach does not diagnose cancer, prescribe treatment or take responsibility for a client's medical decisions. Instead, the Institute's stated approach is to create a safe relationship in which individuals can explore what they are experiencing, identify what matters to them and reconnect with their own strengths.
This model places the individual, rather than the coach, at the centre of decision-making. Instead of telling someone what they should do, a coach helps them examine their concerns, clarify their priorities and consider how they want to respond to the circumstances they face.
For a patient, that process may involve adjusting to life after diagnosis, managing uncertainty or exploring changes in personal identity. For a survivor, it may mean understanding what comes after treatment and redefining future goals. For a caregiver, it can offer a dedicated space to reflect on an experience that often involves supporting someone else while managing personal emotions and responsibilities.
These needs are not identical, and the Institute's programmes recognise that cancer affects people in different ways. Its coaching philosophy seeks to support individual agency while working alongside the established professionals involved in cancer care.
The value of this approach ultimately depends on the individual's needs, the quality of the coaching relationship and appropriate boundaries between coaching and clinical services.
The Institute's emphasis on complementary support provides a useful framework for understanding its role within the wider cancer-care landscape.
Building a Specialised Coaching Profession
One of the Institute's defining activities is its focus on training people to become Cancer Journey Coaches. Rather than limiting its work to individual client sessions, the organisation aims to develop a wider network of practitioners equipped to support people affected by cancer.
Its offerings include a certification programme, foundational learning, coach development and an association-related pathway, alongside individual coaching, workshops and events.
The training is intended for people who want to specialise in cancer-related coaching as well as established coaches seeking to extend their practice.
The company describes itself as the first organisation in the United States dedicated to training coaches specifically to work with cancer patients, survivors, people thriving beyond cancer and caregivers. This is the organisation's stated positioning and reflects its ambition to help establish a distinct specialisation within the broader coaching field.
According to the supplied company profile, its core training programmes have accreditations associated with the National Board of Health and Wellness Coaches (NBHWC) and the International Coaching Federation (ICF). Such professional recognition can help prospective trainees understand the standards associated with a programme, although candidates should review the current status and scope of each accreditation when evaluating training options.
The Institute also treats each graduating class as an important milestone. Every new cohort represents an opportunity to bring additional trained practitioners into a field where the organisation believes emotional, mental and spiritual support deserves greater visibility.
Its longer-term mission is ambitious: a world with more than one million trained Cancer Journey Coaches serving people who want this form of support. That figure is a stated vision, not a claim that the network has already reached that scale.
Reaching Beyond Individual Coaching Sessions
The Institute's work extends into education, community engagement and public-facing resources. Its workshops and live events are available in person and virtually, giving participants different ways to connect with its methodology.
Its published book, The Call of Cancer, provides another route for people seeking reflection and guidance during the cancer experience. The organisation also produces The Cancer Journey Podcast, which explores cancer-related experiences and discusses how its curriculum relates to the broader journey.
These resources reflect a wider approach to accessibility. Not everyone is ready to enter a coaching relationship, and not every individual will choose professional coach training. Books, podcasts and workshops allow people to encounter ideas and experiences in formats that may better suit their circumstances.
The Institute reports that it has touched more than 10,000 lives and trained over 150 coaches. Its website also presents a history spanning more than 13 years and reports four or more awards. These are company-reported figures; their definitions, measurement periods and current totals would need confirmation before being used as independently verified impact statistics.
The organisation says its reach includes clients and trained, certified coaches across the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, South Africa and Saudi Arabia. This international footprint suggests that its training model is not confined to its California base, although the scale and distribution of its active coaching network would require further detail to assess.
Recognition and the Importance of Community
In 2024, The Cancer Journey Institute reported receiving four awards, including recognition from the International Coaching Federation, the American Lung Association, Success Magazine and Great Companies.
For a specialist organisation, recognition can help introduce its work to new audiences and draw attention to a category of support that may be less familiar than established clinical services. Awards, however, are best understood as markers of recognition rather than substitutes for evidence about client outcomes.
The Institute also highlights the experiences of programme participants and coaching clients. Testimonials on its website describe gaining a deeper understanding of coaching, finding space to process difficult experiences and developing renewed motivation. Such accounts offer insight into how some participants experience the programmes, while remaining personal testimonies rather than controlled evidence of effectiveness.
The organisation's community-oriented model also creates a potential multiplier effect. By educating practitioners, sharing knowledge and supporting continued professional development, it seeks to extend its work beyond the people it can serve directly.
A Broader View of Support Through and Beyond Cancer
The Cancer Journey Institute's work reflects a wider question facing healthcare and wellbeing services: how can support address not only the disease, but also the person living through it?
Its answer is to develop a specialist coaching approach that emphasises listening, personal values, awareness and individual choice. Through coach training, one-to-one sessions, workshops, a book and a podcast, the organisation is building several pathways into its model.
Its next challenge is to continue expanding access while clearly communicating what cancer coaching can—and cannot—do. Transparent professional standards, appropriate boundaries with clinical care and robust ways of evaluating client experience will remain important as the field develops.
For Shariann Tom and The Cancer Journey Institute, the underlying ambition is to make space for the human dimensions of cancer that can be difficult to capture in a treatment plan. The aim is not to replace medical expertise or prescribe a universal response to illness, but to help people explore their own experiences and choices with greater support.
In a journey that can reshape nearly every aspect of life, that distinction is central to the Institute's mission: ensuring that the person experiencing cancer remains part of the conversation, not just the condition being treated.
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