Amira Yunis

Amira Yunis, SFA Board Member and Stand Up to Sarcoma Champion and Event Co-Chair was an Executive Vice President in the Retail Services Group at CBRE, Inc. As one of the top performing brokers at the company, Amira specialized in executing national rollouts for new and international retailers. She was widely recognized for her dynamic vision, and received Crain’s New York Business 40 Under 40 Award in additional to being the 2006 recipient of the Real Estate Board of New York’s Ingenious Deal of the Year Award.  Working as a commercial retail broker in New York City’s ever evolving market was challenging work; however, Amira’s greatest fight was her battle to correctly diagnose and treat Undifferentiated Spindle-Cell Sarcoma.

Amira was diagnosed with sarcoma in the femoral neck in 2013, which she battled through surgery at MSKCC (Dr John Healey) and Chemotherapy at NYU. She was cancer free for 5 years, and then had to battle its return in the form of intimal sarcoma in her heart in 2018. She received life-saving chemotherapy from MSKCC (Dr. William Tap) and surgery at Houston Methodist (Dr. Michael Reardon) and was again cancer free until its return in 2020. Without a surgical option available she underwent treatment with all adjuvant therapies at MSKCC, but was then further diagnosed with a glioma in the brain in November 2020. She succumbed to these diseases in early September 2021. Her family is forever grateful to all these named physicians, nursing staff and therapists who were able to keep Amira in full battle mode as long as she was able.

Amira’s work with the Sarcoma Foundation of America and to better the lives of sarcoma patients was her passion.  She was dedicated to increasing research funds and finding new treatment options for patients.  Amira was incredibly proud to be the 2014 recipient of the Stand Up to Sarcoma Courage Award which she received for her strength and courage for not only fighting her own battle with sarcoma but for her commitment to finding a cure for sarcoma.