Bonnie J. Addario, a retired businesswoman, lung cancer survivor, and AACR member who founded two organizations to support patients and foster research on the disease, died August 25, 2025. She was 77 years old.
In 1985, Addario joined Olympian Oil Company of South San Francisco, California, a petroleum products wholesaler, as a secretary and administrative assistant. She eventually became owner of the company and its subsidiary, the Commercial Fueling Network, and served as its president for nine years. She was the first woman to serve as president of the California Oil Industry Marketing Association.
She was diagnosed with Stage IIIB lung cancer in 2004. In 2006, she founded the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation (ALCF) to support patients and advocate for innovative medicines and treatments. She worked to lessen the stigma of lung cancer and spread the message that nonsmokers can develop the disease. One of ALCF’s first initiatives was a national awareness program utilizing buses and billboards. In 2019, ALCF merged with the Lung Cancer Alliance to form GO2 for Lung Cancer, with Addario as board chair.
With her husband, Tony Addario, she founded the Addario Lung Cancer Medical Institute (ALCMI) in 2008 to support research, including investigator-initiated clinical trials.
A member of AACR since 2012, Addario served on the program committee for the AACR-International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) Joint Conference on Lung Cancer in 2012. She was also a member of the AACR Women in Cancer Research (WICR) and Minorities in Cancer Research (MICR) constituency groups.
Addario was author of The Living Room: A Lung Cancer Community of Courage, published in 2019, based on the stories of 20 lung cancer survivors. The book took its name from a virtual support group livestreamed by the ALCF.
Addario was named a Woman of Influence by the Silicon Valley Business Journal in 2017 and a Purpose Prize Fellow by AARP in 2018.
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