Published on Sep 30, 2022 at 7:30 am
Laetitia Mendes is on several fronts. On this National Genetic Cancer Day, and on the eve of the start of Pink October, dedicated to breast cancer awareness, this communications professional gives voice and energy. The one who is also the image and communication director of the Naf Naf brand founded the Geneticancer association.
For several weeks already, conferences, training and other testimonies on Instagram punctuate the daily life of the one who was, at 26, one of the youngest French women to undergo a preventive double mastectomy. “This long before actress Angelina Jolie made the subject globally visible”, slips the 40-year-old Parisian, a mixture of hypersensitivity and combativeness.
Crisis management at the CRA
Carrier of a hereditary gene, she saw her mother carried away by the disease. And she could not bring herself to observe, without blinking, this sword of Damocles weighing on her two daughters and on her sister. Hence Geneticancer, which she launched in 2016 and which relies on a scientific committee led by geneticist Dominique Stoppa-Lyonnet. “Our objectives are to support the families concerned, as well as to raise funds for research and screening tests”, she explains, soft voice and incandescent smile.
The specter of the disease, which marked her, is no stranger to her professional choices. Indeed, health and charity punctuate his career. As soon as she graduated in communication from CEFP Paris, this daughter of a body mechanic and an accounting secretary joined the Association for Cancer Research (Arc). Enough to gain experience in crisis management, since it is then a question of restoring the confidence of donors following the “scandal of the millions embezzled”.
Columnist in makeover on France 2
At the same time, this eldest of a blended family of four children is taking certification training from the International Success Institute in order to specialize in image and communication. Here she is ready to put on the clothes of an entrepreneur, hence the creation, in 2011, of Charism, a “personal branding” agency that she is about to sell.
In addition to accompanying managers and employees of companies such as BNP Paribas, Clud Med and Pathé Gaumont, she is a makeover columnist for the programs “A whole story” and “It begins today”, on France 2.
Refuting the superficial nature of fashion, Laetitia Mendes believes that “strength and confidence also go through the image”. “And everyone is entitled to it, whatever their age, origin, background…” remarks the one who joined Naf Naf in 2021.
Naf Naf and Pink October
It is under his leadership that the brand, founded in 1973 and taken over by SY Corporate in 2020, participates in Pink October. “What guides her is optimism but above all intuition: for this reason, if she does not believe in a project, she does not go there”, gauges her sister, the dancer Audrey Mendes, who converted to pole dancing.
Moreover, always with a view to raising funds, Geneticancer regularly organizes dance galas and other shows. Because, if fighting cancer is a bitter, unspeakable battle, nothing prevents you from adding “joyful moments”, according to Laetitia Mendes.
The fact remains that its priority is prevention, the first barrier against the disease, as recalled by the project of free medical visits, a flagship measure of the Social Security financing law. “We have designed information brochures that can be downloaded from our site and distributed through the oncogenetics consultations of the Institut Curie and the AP-HP,” she says. It is also on the ground, via the network of local branches of his association, that awareness is on the move.
