Mary williams author biography

SPEAKING & Consulting

Helping bridge the communication gaps between patients, doctors, and researchers is my mission.

I've talked about cancer, clinical trials, immunotherapy, grief, and the mental health challenges of living with illness for NNECOS (2024 Spring Meeting Keynote), Walgreens (Clinical Trials Day 2023), Fred Hutch (Moving Beyond Cancer to Wellness Day 2023 Keynote), Harrington Cancer Center (2023 Survivor Celebration), WCG MAGI West (2022 Keynote), Quality Cancer Care Alliance (Spring 2022 featured speaker), ASCO (2021 book club), DIA (2020 keynote), PRIM&R (2019 keynote), ACCC (2019 featured speaker), Cancer Research Institute, Memorial Sloan Kettering, Bristol Meyers Squibb, WCG, Flatiron Health, Pfizer, Jounce, Nektar, Weill Cornell Medicine, Indiana University, and multiple other organizations and institutions. 

I'd love to work with your organization too! Just ask.

I've also been a member of Stand Up to Cancer's immunotherapy dream team, am a Gilda's Club ambassador, member of NYU Langone’s Division of Medical Ethics Working Group on Compassionate Use & Preapproval Access, and have worked with the Parker Institute and the Cancer Research Institute.

My doctor, Jedd Wolchok, and I were in conversation for the 2021 ASCO Book Club.

Biography of Mary Williams

Mary Williams has lived throughout the United States and Africa. She has held positions with several humanitarian organizations, including the International Rescue Committee and UNESCO. In 2000, Williams created the Lost Boys Foundation, dedicated to raising awareness about The Lost Boys and organizing resources to help them. She is the adopted daughter of Jane Fonda and a trustee of The Fonda Family Foundation. Williams lives in Atlanta, Georgia. This is her first book.

Williams was a child of Black Panther-era Oakland, with its countercultural challenges to the racial status quo. Her father was a Panther who served time in prison, her mother eventually succumbed to drinking and withdrew from family life, and her sister died a violent death. Traumatized by poverty and neglect at 16, Williams took the opportunity to flee to Santa Monica to live with Jane Fonda, whom she’d known for several years through a summer arts camp. Read more in Mary’s memoir, The Lost Daughter.

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2 Books by Mary Williams

Mary Williams was born in Aberystwyth on 26 June 1887 and grew up in Tabernacle Chapel. She was the first child of John Williams (born 1827), a Welsh Presbyterian minister, and his wife, Jane Williams (born 1845). She had a younger sister, Jennie Williams (later Ruggles-Gates) (born 1884) and a brother, John Williams (born 1889), who died in childhood.

Williams received her early education at Aberystwyth Elementary School. In 1895, at the age of twelve, she left Aberystwyth to continue her education in London at Camden School for Girls. She then attended the prestigious North London Collegiate School for Girls, where she obtained a first-class certificate of the London Matriculation Examination in June 1901.

In 1901 Williams returned to Aberystwyth and won an entrance scholarship for three years at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, which was renewed for a fourth year in 1904. She obtained a Double First in German and French in 1905. Like most university-educated women at this time, Williams spent a short period as a secondary school teacher: she was employed as Junior Form Mistress in French and English at Portsmouth County Secondary School for Girls between 1905 and 1906, and as Senior Mistress in French at Llandeilo County School the following year. In 1907 Williams also obtained a Master's degree for her thesis on the Old German version of Perceval, the Story of the Grail.

Between 1907 and 1910 she held a University of Wales Research Fellowship. This enabled her to study at the Sorbonne and the Collège de France in Paris. In 1910 she received her doctorate from the University of Paris for her thesis in French which examined

American social activist and author (born 1967)

Mary Luana Williams (born October 13, 1967) is an American social activist and author who wrote The Lost Daughter: A Memoir about her life. The memoir details being adopted by Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden in her adolescence, as well as growing up as a daughter of Black Panthers before Fonda adopted her. She works with Sudanese refugees through the organization she founded, the Lost Boys Foundation.

Early life

Mary Luana "Lulu" Williams was born on October 13, 1967 in East Oakland, California as the fifth daughter to Randy and Mary Williams. Both of her parents were members of the Black Panther Party, an organization dedicated to stopping police brutality toward African-Americans, and helping African Americans who lacked employment, education, and healthcare. The family lived at the heart of the movement in East Oakland, California, during the height of the Vietnam War, Race riots and Civil Rights Movement, in an era Williams would later describe as "violent and frenzied". Mary's father Randy was a captain within the Panthers militaristic hierarchy and participated in the controversial Armed Citizens' Patrol, where Panthers would tail police and patrol neighborhoods, ready to defend any black people they saw being threatened by police. In April 1970, Williams' father and other Panthers witnessed several police officers arresting four black marijuana suspects and they intervened, ambushing and wounding three of the officers before fleeing. Thirty patrol cars pursued them on a high speed car chase while the Panthers tried to discourage pursuit by throwing molotov cocktails. Randy Williams was apprehended, charged with assault with intent to murder and given a seven-year sentence at a Correctional Training Facility near Soledad, California. At the time, Williams was four. Her mother was left to care for Williams and her five siblings, eventually b