Lorraine Tallman is founder and CEO of Amanda Hope Rainbow Angels, a nonprofit with a mission to bring dignity and comfort to the harsh world of childhood cancer and other life-threatening diseases. The nonprofit’s services include adaptive apparel, counseling, distraction events and financial assistance.
Tallman lost her 12-year-old daughter Amanda Hope on March 30, 2012, to two forms of cancer. Amanda battled leukemia for three years and a brain tumor for nine months. Tallman left her job as a CEO at a distribution company to care for her daughter. At the same time, her husband Marty lost his job in the banking business during the Great Recession.
Tallman worked to carry on Amanda’s legacy and honor her wishes of a chemotherapy clothing line and development of support resources for patients, parents, caregivers and siblings of those who lost a child to cancer. These were all the things that Tallman and her family did not experience when they were going through their cancer fight.
Tallman used her grief, anger and acceptance to do something. In Arizona there was no organized support for families whose children were fighting for their lives, no resources to help determine financial needs or treatment options and no support for siblings of pediatric cancer patients. Tallman took her years of management and sales experience at an entrepreneurial venture encompassing product design, manufacturing, distribution and sales, and in 2012 she started the Amanda Hope Rainbow Angels nonprofit foundation.
As Tallman and her family were working with patients, parents, donors and pediatric hospital systems in Arizona to positive reviews and excitement, Marty — Lorraine’s husband of nine years and stepfather to their three daughters — was fighting his own battle. On June 23, 2018, six years and three months after losing Amanda to cancer, Marty died of stomach cancer at the age of 53.
Tallman’s work has been heralded by numerous organizations and publications. She was named one of the Phoenix Business Journal’s Outstanding Women in Business and received the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce Impact Award in 2022; the Desert Cancer Foundation of Arizona’s Edgar H. Hernandez Humanitarian Award; and Phoenix Business Journal’s Health Care Hero Award.
“Complex problems are solved with our families’ input and staff meetings,” Tallman said. “Most of my team have all had experience with cancer care, and we look at all the ways we came in to prove our processes. Personally, I belong to two groups with CEOs. I’m able to share any challenges in a private and trusted environment. Life experiences are the best teachers.”
