Two years after taking over Vision Advertising, Julia Becker Collins faces a new crisis: thyroid cancer

Julia Becker Collins describes herself as a walking ad for preventative health care.

Earlier this year, before the coronavirus pandemic upended every corner of society and the economy, the COO of marketing agency Vision Advertising in Westborough had a regular checkup scheduled for March – one she nearly skipped.

“I almost canceled the physical because I was so busy,” she said. “And then it just snuck up on me and I was like, ‘Forget it, I'll just go. It’ll be fine, she’ll run blood work, she’ll tell me I’m healthy.’”

All went as she expected as her doctor screened her for various health indicators, until her physician placed her hands on her neck.

“And then she looks me dead in the eyes,” Becker Collins said, recalling the visit. “She says, ‘You have a lump. You have a mass in your throat.’”

At the time, Becker Collins said, she didn’t even know what a thyroid was.

Heeding the warning it could be benign, as thyroid masses often are, according to her doctor, Becker Collins scheduled an ultrasound and then planned for a biopsy. She would be contacted the following Monday to schedule the latter, she was told. But over the course of the next several days, concern about the coronavirus pandemic reached a crescendo.

“Nobody ever called me on Monday, because the whole state got locked down over that weekend,” Becker Collins said. “I'm sitting here with what I now know is a three-centimeter mass on my thyroid, and I don't know if I have cancer or not.” 

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At the time, a March 15 order from Gov. Charlie Baker directed hospitals to delay elective procedures until further notice. Virtually any procedure not deemed a medical emergency was on hold, including Becker Collins’s biopsy.

At the advice of a cousin working as an oncologist in Colorado, Becker Collins transferred her case out of the UMass Memorial system and into a hospital network less overwhelmed with coronavirus cases. She switched to Emerson Hospital system in Concord, although she notes she was not upset with UMass for failing to call her about her biopsy.

“I’m not mad at anybody,” she said. “It was just a cluster.”

She scheduled a next-day telehealth appointment with a new provider, then a biopsy the following week. The test came back showing the growth was malignant: Becker Collins had thyroid cancer.

From New Jersey to Massachusetts

Becker Collins grew up in New Jersey, in what she describes as a wealthy white suburb of Manhattan, in a home originally built as low-income housing. Hers was the only Jewish family in a very Christian town, which she said she was very eager to get away from by the end of high school.

“I literally had swastikas drawn on my locker,” she said.

Both of Becker Collins’s grandparents on her mother’s side had escaped the Holocaust, and that grandmother played a key role in raising her, she said. Named Beatrice, or B, for short, Becker Collins has a tattoo of honey bees on her arm, commemorating her grandmother; her cousin has the same one.

When it came time to apply for college, Becker Collins made it a priority to get as far away as possible, initially matriculating at Sonoma State University in California. She lived there for two years, first studying studio art, largely because art class was the only one she could stand to sit through growing up. Traditional academia did not come easy to her.

“I must have thought I'd be an art major, because it's the only thing I could do in high school,” Becker Collins said.

Then, she said, she took her first women’s studies class and fell in love with it. But Sonoma State didn’t offer that major at the time, she said, so she began looking for schools to transfer to. She landed at UMass Amherst.

“I remember driving on campus and my little ‘91 Geo Prizm and being like, ‘What have I got myself into?’” she said.

UMass Amherst’s sprawling campus had stoplights; Sonoma State, in turn, only had 5,000 students.

Working her way through what would become a major in women’s studies and a minor in art history, Becker Collins threw herself into her new community, joining student organizations left and right. The only marketing experience she gained in college came by way of student clubs.

It wasn’t until she graduated and took a job at an apartment complex near Mount Holyoke – riding her experience as a residential assistant – that Becker Collins, tasked in part with attracting prospective renters, began to work in the field that would eventually become her career.

“I thought I was gonna work at a Planned Parenthood, for some kind of large nonprofit doing fundraising for a few years,” Becker Collins. “I was very focused on women’s issues.”

Although she would eventually leave the organization for a stint in law school, Becker Collins thrived in her new environment, which gave her the first inkling she might be a natural marketer. 

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Photo | VISION ADVERTISING

Originally focused on obstacle course racing, Julia Becker Collins does much of her training on trails around Central Massachusetts.

Finding MetroWest

As Becker Collins navigated the next few years of her life, ultimately landing in the nonprofit sector in Boston and earning her master’s degree in public administration from Framingham State University, she continued to build on those marketing skills she’d somewhat unwittingly begun cultivating while in school, and as a recent graduate.

It was at an event tech seminar in Boston that she first brushed up against Vision Advertising.

“I met a woman who was starting her own event planning firm, and we just became friendly and we started chatting,” Becker Collins said.

That woman had just left Vision – on good terms – and, as networking sometimes works, one thing led to another and she was introduced to Laura DiBenedetto, Vision Advertising’s founder. Although nothing happened at first, the two stayed in touch.

“At the time, I was trying to figure out my next professional move, and I didn't want to be working in Boston anymore, because the commute was really killing me,” Becker Collins said.

In chasing that goal, Becker Collins eventually co-founded the MetroWest Women’s Network, which not only helped her meet more women professionals near her home in Marlborough, but kept her in touch with DiBenedetto.

“Julia is somebody who I've always admired for her tenacity and her hard work, and her ability to rise above the noise and actually execute on leading a group of people no matter what was put in her way,” said Michelle Mercier, a business strategy coach, consultant and host of The Resilient Entrepreneur podcast. Mercier, who worked with the MetroWest Women’s Network, considers Becker Collins a good friend.

“She does not balk in the face of adversity,” Mercier said.

Eventually, when DiBenedetto began looking to hire a second-in-command for Vision, with the goal to eventually hand the company over to that person, she tapped Becker Collins. The pair spent 18 months preparing Becker Collins to take over so that DiBenedetto could retire.

“Julia is the embodiment of everything I wanted Vision Advertising to have as a leader,” DiBenedetto said. “And she is a really fantastic complement to what I’ve built and who I am as a leader. We don’t step on each other’s toes. We work together perfectly. She is strong, she is logical, she is methodical, she's unflappable, she is tenacious. And nothing scares her.”

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Stepping back and finding balance 

Becker Collins had surgery in May, during which doctors removed her thyroid and, upon discovering the cancer had spread, some of her lymph nodes.

She then began a three-month medical leave from Vision. After pathology tests showed the cancer was more aggressive than doctors initially realized, she began radiation in July.

The latter, Becker Collins said, is awful.

“I don't know how to explain other than it's the most terrible thing I think I've ever been through,” she said. “And I've had some terrible medical stuff.”

It’ll take a year for Becker Collins’ body to recover once she’s done with radiation treatment, she said, and as of publication, she’s not sure when that will be. During her last round of scans in August, doctors located a new mass, but also saw it had been hit by the radiation treatment she’d already received. As it stands, her doctors are tracking it to see how her illness evolves.

As of now, Becker Collins is in what is supposed to be a healing stage so that she can withstand another round of radiation if she needs one.

“It's a careful balance of [needing to] destroy your body with treatment, but also [letting] your body be healthy enough to accept the treatment,” Becker Collins said 

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An avid runner and cross-trainer, Julia Becker Collins has focused on training for a marathon in December.

As this plays out, and when she’s not working, she’s drilling away at her other passion: long-distance running.

She currently plans to run a marathon on Dec. 6, the day she was set to run a race which has since been canceled.

“I'm going to do it on the Boston Marathon route,” she said. (Shortly before her interview with WBJ, she’d completed an 18-mile long run as part of her training.)

Becker Collins began long-distance running at the end of 2018 and has since become a devoted athlete, not just according to her, but to the people that know her. (The sport comprises the bulk of her Instagram account content.)

Making due without her

DiBenedetto, who is currently on Maui and remains majority owner of Vision, has since stepping back from the company published a self-help book on happiness – “The Six Habits: Practical Tools for Bringing Your Dreams to Life” – and reimagined herself as a happiness coach.

She never thought she’d have to step back into an active role at Vision after she retired and left Becker Collins in control, she said, but when she learned her protegee was sick, her return as an active CEO wasn’t even a question.

“The experience of jumping back into Vision Advertising after being away for awhile was both exhilarating and surprising,” DiBenedetto said. “Exhilarating in that it was wonderful to see everything that Julia had put in place and that everything was running very well without my involvement. It was amazing to see all the fruits of her labor right in front of me, in detail.”

Her return was surprising, DiBenedetto said, because when she left the company in 2018, she was feeling burnt out. But when she came back, she found Vision was teeming with energy as the staff took on COVID-19 and the way that it was impacting its clients. The agency serves clients in an array of industries, both in the business-to-business and business-to-consumer sectors, including restaurants, retail shops, business brokerages, insurance agencies, manufacturers, law firms and accounting firms.

“As marketers, we are really seeing the inner workings of all of these businesses that we support and their needs have changed this year to be … more focused on business strategy,” DiBendetto said. “That’s something we’ve always been capable of but not what we lead with.”

Returning to work

Becker Collins has since returned to work, although her return was incremental at first. Though it was hard to leave her beloved staff – of whom she can’t resist singing their praises – she’s taken heart the less than 10 people she left behind during her absence were more than capable of taking up the mantle.

“I've always been incredibly proud of my staff, but I'm just deeply proud of my staff and how well they've been dealing with everything,” Becker Collins said.

Handling her illness has prompted her to both lean on them more, but also let them take the reins.

“Because I don’t think they need me as much as they always think they do,” Becker Collins said.

Now, she said, she worries less, and although she still works on long-term projections, how she approaches her role as a leader has shifted.

“I don't know what my next round of scans are going to show,” Becker Collins said. “I just don't know what the next round of tests are gonna show. I don't know how I’m going to feel tomorrow.”

“I just can't freak out about small things,” she said. “Maybe that’s the best way of explaining it.”