Ryan Parker photographed Dr. Stella Koumna for the cover of Leap, the Alberta Cancer Foundation’s magazine, in its Fall / Winter 2026 issue, and for Best & Brightest inside, with Dr. Nadia Ghazali.
The story
Best & Brightest
For the issue’s More Time theme, Best & Brightest profiles three physicians helping Albertans live longer and better after a cancer diagnosis. Dr. Koumna, a nuclear medicine physician at the Cross Cancer Institute, moved from Cyprus to Fort McMurray in 2013 and came to Edmonton for a fellowship at the Cross in 2016. Her field is theranostics, where radioactive agents first image a cancer and then treat it, and in March 2025 the Cross made it standard care for eligible prostate cancer patients, with no waitlist. Dr. Ghazali, a medical oncologist at the Cross since fall 2025, treats genito-urinary and thoracic cancers and is helping lead the clinical trials that could bring liquid biopsies, which read a tumour’s traces in blood or other fluids instead of tissue, to more Albertans.
- Magazine
- Leap, the Alberta Cancer Foundation
- Issue
- Fall / Winter 2026
- Cover line
- Shine Bright
- Ran as
- The cover, and two of the three Best & Brightest profiles
- Words
- Nathan Kunz
- Art direction
- Veronica Cowan
- Photographs
- Ryan Parker
As printed
The cover, and the pages.
01Leap, Fall / Winter 2026
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