About Grace

Grace Chen is a full time volunteer for the Tzu Chi Buddhist Compassionate Relief Organization. Many people know her for launching The Power of 5, an organization under Tzu Chi that encourages people to do one good deed a day, and her countless activities supporting music. She is a singer and saxophone player, and has produced all the English music albums for Tzu Chi in North America. She has dedicated her life to serving others.

After recovering several years ago from salivary gland cancer and the surgeries required to overcome it, Grace quit her job as consultant for Ernst & Young and joined Tzu Chi full-time. She saw the cancer and the treatment as a lesson of life, and an opportunity to make life-changing decisions.

What’s so mysterious is that the salivary gland cancer, or its treatment, has no plausible connection to her present condition, Acute lymphoblastic leukemia – and the chances of having two so unusual and atypical types of cancer within two years are mind-bogglingly small.

This is why the doctors want her to go through a bone marrow transplant – with her history, nobody can account for the chances of recurrence of the leukemia or some other type of cancer. A bone marrow/blood stem cell transplant will significantly reduce the risk of recurrence, and potentially save many years of her life.