It is with a heavy heart that Cancer Card shares the news of the death of Jen, our Founder, who started Cancer Card in 2021. With the support and direction of Jen’s closest family and friends we want to acknowledge and celebrate the incredible legacy she has given us.

It is not easy to find words to describe Jen’s impact on the cancer community in Scotland. She wasn’t just a woman of words, she was a woman of action, a source of energy and inspiration. Jen motivated and encouraged many of us to do what we could, to do more than we imagined and make a difference to all those impacted by cancer.

Jen’s own experience of diagnosis was unexpected and impactful. It demonstrated that cancer can impact any of us, including those who are successful, busy, young, vibrant and apparently well.

A cancer diagnosis can create an unpredictable tidal wave of change for patients and families. In 2017 Jen was told she had metastatic breast cancer whilst on a business trip to the Middle East. It was a diagnosis that turned her world inside out. Whilst facing uncertainty and disruption she quickly focused on doing what she could, engaging with her amazing clinical team and finding a path through. It did not take long for Jen to find the silver lining and focus on what she could do for others.

Jen became an advocate, an active supporter for Breast Cancer Now campaigning to ensure access to innovative treatments were made available via the Scottish Medicines Consortium. She was part of the community that supported access to better treatments for HER-2 positive breast cancer achieving access to a new drug in January 2019 which had been turned down on three previous occasions.

As a highly skilled coordinator who had spent her career in the university sector, Jen struggled to navigate cancer support. In the months and years following her diagnosis she connected and built her community of support.

It takes strength to create something new when you are dealing with a personal health battle. Jen used her entrepreneurial skills, inspiring and engaging experts to create the innovative digital directory, recognizing the unmet need to provide comprehensive information and support to people affected by cancer, the foundation on which Cancer Card was built. In 2021 Cancer Card was launched. By 2022 we started making an impact on easing access to information for those diagnosed.

Following the foundation of the charity Jen and a team of intrepid volunteers supported by new CEO Ian Pirrie began to build awareness of the charity. They achieved a lot in a very short time with partnership working with Social Security Scotland, NHS Inform and tackling the digital divide collaborating with Lloyds banking group and gaining transformative corporate support.

Jen was positive despite on going treatment and health challenges. She was also honest and forthright, bunches of flowers, chocolates and cards did not make cancer and its treatment any easier. So she built on the baby box model to create a Cancer Card Comfort Box, practical and comforting items to be supplied to people facing treatment.

In 2023, Jen was awarded an MBE in the King’s Birthday Honours List in recognition of her work campaigning and establish the charity. She was proud, but very much saw herself as the catalyst for the efforts of a community who surrounded her and wanted to see her ideas in action. That community reached beyond the Edinburgh suburbs, and built Scotland wide connections with academic, corporate, NHS and community contacts. Very few of us would say no to a request for help or support from the power house that was Jen on a mission to help other people. In the last five years thousands of people have had access to information and support through Cancer Card.

In December 2025 Jen was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Heriot-Watt University. Accepting the honorary title, Doctor of Letters, at a ceremony in the University’s James Watt Building, Jen Hardy, said: “What an honour it is to receive this recognition from Heriot-Watt. This university has been part of my family for three generations and the skills I developed during my time here became the foundation for everything that followed.