Our team includes many wonderful people.
All members of our team in the UK are volunteers who give their time and energy freely to WE C Hope, despite the many challenges retinoblastoma brings to their own personal lives.
We are widely scattered across the country. Our meetings are held by teleconference and we use digital resources and social media to maintain communication and collaborative work between meetings.
Selwyn Lloyd
Family is everything to Selwyn. His daughter, Daisy (25), is a courageous young woman who has battled childhood eye cancer (retinoblastoma, Rb) and subsequent effects all her life. Witnessing Daisy‘s fight first hand has been an emotional journey, filled with anger, sadness, guilt, and even feelings of loss. Yet, it’s also been a journey of love, joy, and unwavering care.
Selwyn understands the often overwhelming challenges families face, having walked this path with wife Marie for 24 years so far. He believes Rb is a lifelong adventure, not a life sentence, and that there’s immense love, joy, and reward on the way.
Inspired by his family‘s journey, Selwyn agreed to chair the UK branch of WE C Hope. He’s still willing to share the family’s personal story to raise awareness for the cause, and connect with others who want to help.
Selwyn hopes his experience may be valuable in setting up the UK team. He has served on a number of boards, chaired the Portsmouth chambers of commerce and started companies in the UK. Previously, Selwyn founded Audazzle, a company that developed accessible video game technology to help Daisy shoot down space invaders just as well as her sighted siblings. This experience highlights his commitment to innovation, inclusion and accessibility.
While his focus remains on family, Selwyn wants to support the UK WE C Hope team’s growth, including a new chairperson. He sees himself as an interim resource, offering guidance and fostering connections with potential supporters.
Marie Lloyd
Marie is the mother of Daisy, Rose, Poppy and Woody. She and husband Selwyn walked the long rocky road of Daisy’s retinoblastoma to blindness.
Inspired by Dr Gallie and Dr Chan’s work, Marie wanted to help other children avoid losing both eyes, or their life, by providing appropriate healthcare opportunities where little exist. Daisy’s Eye Cancer Fund evolved from this desire.
Marie worked as an environmental chemist consultant, lecturer and homeopath when Daisy was diagnosed. After Daisy lost her sight, Marie retrained as a specialist teacher for children and young people with a visual impairment. She is now in management, supporting the strategic development of education for students with vision and hearing impairments in her local authority.
She is a keen advocate of early intervention – both in support for blind children, and diagnosis and treatment of retinoblastoma.
Marie loves spending time with her family and seven cats when she is not working or attending football matches. She enjoys theatre, reading, and walking.
Abby White
Abby’s father was diagnosed with bilateral retinoblastoma in Kenya in 1946, and treated in England. Abby was also born with caner in both eyes. She has an artificial eye and limited vision in her left eye that is now failing due to late effects of radiotherapy received as a baby. Radiotherapy has caused other late effects, including nightly cluster headaches, but emotional trauma has been most enduring impact of cancer in early life, including PTSD, complex grief, survivor guilt, and ravaged family dynamics.
Abby studied geography at university, with emphasis on development in sub-Saharan Africa. She co-founded Daisy’s Eye Cancer Fund (now WE C Hope) with Brenda Gallie, responding to the needs of one child in Africa and the desire to help many like her in developing countries.
When Abby received many requests for help from American families and survivors, she co-founded the US chapter to help advance care and support across the country.
As well as supporting individual families and survivors worldwide, maintaining our website, and a host of unseen office work, Abby uses her lived experience to advocate for targeted research and better care for our global Rb community.
Abby enjoys listening to audio books, creative writing, open water swimming, and long country walks with her guide dog, Ritzie.
Among various fundraising ventures for WE C Hope, Abby has hiked the full length of the Thames from barrier to source in 16 days; trekked across East Africa’s Great Rift Valley twice; completed the Great Scottish Swim; walked over burning coals (three times); and swam three miles along the Jurassic coast from Lulworth Cove to Durdle Door – then clambered heart-in-throat up the temporary cliff steps (which she feels is really where she earned the sponsorship).
