Four years ago, Shane Rooney was diagnosed with leukemia. In January, he was an honored guest at Global Traveler’s annual reader survey awards gala. A junior majoring in philosophy and education at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, Rooney was a high school track star when doctors gave him the life-altering news.

“Ten years ago, that would have been a death sentence,” said Rooney, who underwent a bone marrow transplant and is now cancer free.

Guest speaker Cynthia Nixon, a well-known stage and screen actor who is also a spokesperson for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, drove home that fact.

“Since the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society was founded in 1949, they have provided more than $483 million in funding for research,” said Nixon. “To show you how effective that funding has been, in 1960 a child with leukemia had a 4 percent chance of survival. Today, that same child has an 87 percent chance of survival due to the enormous strides that have been made in research over the last 40 years.”

Nixon, who played Miranda Hobbs on the HBO television series “Sex and the City,” has personal experience with blood cancer. She said fellow actor Evan Handler, who played Harry Goldenblatt on the acclaimed series, is a cancer survivor who benefited from research that led to the discovery of the stem cell transplant procedure that saved his life.

Nixon also has experienced the devastating effects of leukemia and lymphoma.

“Every 10 minutes, someone dies from blood cancer,” said Nixon. “Last year, that someone was a friend of mine. Almost a year ago today, my friend and colleague Wendy Wasserstein, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning play “The Heidi Chronicles” I had the privilege of performing on Broadway, lost her battle with lymphoma.”

Nixon urged the 300-plus travel industry elite who attended the event to donate to this year’s Global Traveler auction (see page 45) to benefit the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.