Melissa Miller, Co-Founder
President STAGES Foundation

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The STAGES Foundation was created in honor of my sister, Amy Daniels, whose journey through serious illness inspired a deeper commitment to advocacy, compassion, and support for families navigating life-changing diagnoses. 

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Amy’s experience revealed how overwhelming the healthcare system can feel for patients and the people who love them. In moments when clarity, emotional support, and guidance are needed most, many families find themselves searching for answers they never expected to face. Amy’s story awakened a passion to help ensure that no family has to navigate those moments alone. 

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Through the STAGES Foundation, her legacy lives on through our work to strengthen palliative care support, expand mental health resources, promote advance care planning, and advocate for compassionate and ethical decision-making for patients and families.

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What began as grief and questions has grown into structure, purpose, and possibility. During this journey, I met Stacey Warner, whose father lost his battle with multiple cancers, and we came together to fundraise, but also gained a life-long friendship as well. 

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Amy’s journey has inspired the mission of STAGES Foundation helping others find guidance, dignity, and support at every stage of serious illness.

Stacey Warner, Co-Founder

Vice-President STAGES Foundation

 

My “why” for the STAGES Foundation began with my father, Lyn Hyle. After he was diagnosed with multiple cancers, our family experienced firsthand how overwhelming the moment of diagnosis and the journey that follows can be. Around that same time, I was asked to run for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Visionary of the Year for Central Pennsylvania. The timing felt far from coincidental.

 

Through that experience, I met Melissa Miller, whose partnership and passion helped make our campaign incredibly impactful. Together, we raised more than $160,000, earning the 2024 Central PA Visionary of the Year title, the Research Mission Pillar Award, and two meaningful grants, one in memory of my father and one honoring Melissa’s sister, Amy.

 

Those experiences reinforced our shared belief that families facing life-changing diagnoses deserve stronger support, guidance, and advocacy—an idea that ultimately inspired the creation of the STAGES Foundation.

Kelly Bardon, Founding Member

Secretary STAGES Foundation

 

My journey to the STAGES Foundation began with my father, Gary Bardon.​When my father faced end-of-life care decisions, our family was fortunate in ways I didn't fully appreciate until later.

 

We had the conversations before they became urgent. My father told us how he wanted to be cared for, how he wanted to spend his final days, and what mattered most to him as his life drew toward its close. Those conversations were a gift.​We also made a deliberate and loving decision as a family to designate a power of attorney, not to remove anyone from the process, but to protect us all from it. To relieve his daughters of the weight of logistics and impossible decisions in impossible moments.

 

The person my father chose honored that role with grace, keeping communication open and every voice included, ensuring that Gary's wishes remained at the center of everything. ​My dad passed away in April of 2024 from congestive heart failure. He was surrounded by family: people who loved him and who were committed to honoring exactly what he had asked for. It was a hard goodbye, but it was his goodbye, on his terms, with dignity.Not every family gets that. And that is precisely why I am here.​

 

STAGES Foundation exists so that more families can experience what mine did; not the absence of grief, but the presence of clarity, communication, and compassion when it matters most. Advance care planning, thoughtful POA guidance, and coordinated family support are not just administrative steps.

They are acts of love.​

 

I am honored to serve this mission, and I am grateful every day that my father showed me what a good ending can look like, and inspired me to help others find their way there too.