A place at the table

2024 Laetare Medalist Claire Babineaux-Fontenot

Claire Babineaux-Fontenot often says that one of her greatest gifts came in “an ugly package.”

In 2015, she was diagnosed with cancer. And as she was sitting in the doctor’s office, letting those words wash over her, she came to a realization.

She’d been living as though she had all the time in the world and, in that moment, she was forced to acknowledge that none of us does.

“I asked myself, ‘What if the best thing I could do in my career was the best thing I could conceivably do in my current job. Would that be OK?’” she said. “And in my heart I knew the answer was no. In that moment I decided, right there in that office, that I was going to leave the job that I was in.

“For the first time in my career, I was going to take a leap of faith.”