BALTIMORE – It’s a remarkable story of bravely juggling a challenging professional career and raising five energetic children while battling through a rare and unforgiving cancer, and it’s a story that earned Sicklerville, N.J., resident Tahira Manns national recognition recently for exceptional resiliency.
Manns, 42, serves as a passenger operations program manager with U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) Baltimore Field Office, a Mid-Atlantic regional operations headquarters. On April 22, Troy A. Miller, Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Commissioner, presented Manns with the Commissioner’s Resiliency Award for 2023 during a ceremony at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C.
Manns was diagnosed in August 2021 with Stage 2B Triple Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC). At the time, she was the sole caregiver for her teen son and daughter, two young nieces, a young nephew, and her 86-year-old grandmother. She also served in a leadership position with CBP’s Mid-Atlantic Intelligence Division, a critical assignment on a team that constantly pored over evolving intelligence and investigated dangerous threats to our homeland.
According to the American Cancer Society, TNBC tends to grow quickly, is more likely to have spread at the time it is found, and is more likely to come back after treatment than other types of breast cancer. Because of this, the survival rates for TNBC are generally not quite as high as they are for other types of breast cancer.
As expected, this was a stressfully terrifying time, so Manns sought comfort by staying busy and focusing on task management – meeting her family’s needs, meeting her work expectations, supporting her peers’ needs, and attacking cancer treatment head on.
“It was hard. My emotions were unstable. Talking about my situation would bring tears to my eyes, but I tried to keep a smile on my face,” Manns said. “I just tried to stay busy. I still had goals I wanted to achieve, and if my time clock was ticking, I still wanted to be remembered for my awesome personality, my love for my family and friends, my work ethic and ambition, and my willingness to always help others.”
Manns is a single-parent and relied on family and friends, the goodwill of neighbors, and especially on her three other children – biological daughter, and adopted son and daughter, all in their early 20’s – to help her through surgery and radiation treatments and with family responsibilities.
“My family and friends were very supportive during this time. The exhaustion and the changes my body was going through were very dramatic,” Manns said. “My oldest daughters would take me to my treatment appointments, and my youngest daughter, who is an aspiring immunologist, helped prepare my meals to ensure that I was eating right; she wouldn’t let me eat junk food.”
Manns, who was raised in Willingboro, N.J., and still lives in Sicklerville, has been with CBP since 2014. She had previously served on CBP’s passenger analysis unit at Philadelphia International Airport, and has been detailed to CBP’s Baltimore Field Office since 2019. She appreciates her leadership, mentors, the very small number of peers who knew of her cancer, and especially her doctors for accommodating her telework option to address her healthcare needs.
“Telework was the best thing that happened in this entire experience,” Manns said. “My doctors were so understanding. They set me up in a private room so that I could still work during my chemotherapy treatments. I really didn’t want my illness to keep me from still achieving my goals, and so I focused on thriving through this traumatic experience.”
“The fact that I have so many people depending on me keeps me moving forward and trying to stay positive,” Manns said.
Manns has completed chemotherapy and continues appointments with her surgical oncologist.
“Tahira Manns is an amazing Hallmark story of inspirational bravery and perseverance through a life-altering health scare to care for her family and satisfy her work responsibilities, and she epitomizes the very resiliency that we hope to instill in all our workforce. She is very deserving of the Commissioner’s Resiliency Award,” said Matthew Davies, CBP’s Acting Director of Field Operations, Baltimore Field Office.
CBP annually hosts its annual Commissioner’s Awards Ceremony to recognize employees for remarkable deeds and accomplishments. CBP presented awards to 294 employees across 21 categories, including recognition for heroism, safety, integrity, best practices, volunteer service, and leadership. The Commissioner Awards recognized both individual and team performance. Read more about the CBP Commissioner’s Awards ceremony.
CBP's border security mission is led at our nation’s Ports of Entry by CBP officers and agriculture specialists from the Office of Field Operations. CBP screens international travelers and cargo and searches for illicit narcotics, unreported currency, weapons, counterfeit consumer goods, prohibited agriculture, invasive weeds and pests, and other illicit products that could potentially harm the American public, U.S. businesses, and our nation’s safety and economic vitality.
See what more CBP accomplished during "a Typical Day." Learn more about CBP at www.CBP.gov.
Follow the Director of CBP’s Baltimore Field Office on X (formerly Twitter) at @DFOBaltimore for breaking news, current events, human interest stories and photos, and CBP’s Office of Field Operations on Instagram at @cbpfieldops.