Billy Starr
Founder & Executive Director
The Pan-Massachusetts Challenge
Billy Starr founded and leads the Pan-Massachusetts Challenge, the most successful athletic fundraising event in the nation.
Since 1980, the PMC, a 190-mile bike-a-thon, has contributed nearly $240 million to cancer research. By 1984, the PMC had established itself as the largest grossing fundraising event for the Jimmy Fund, New England’s most popular charity. By 1990, the PMC had become the most successful cycling fundraiser in the world. Today, the PMC raises two to three times more money for charity than any other athletic event in the nation.
Starr has built a unique organization that performs at a level of proficiency rarely found in either the corporate or nonprofit worlds. In 2008, the organization raised and contributed $35 million, the largest gift ever received by the Jimmy Fund. The sum represented 100 percent of every rider-raised dollar.
In 1993, the Jimmy Fund honored Starr and the PMC, at Fenway Park by awarding him the Tom & Jean Yawkey Memorial Award for outstanding service. In 1997, the bridge connecting the Jimmy Fund Clinic to the new Smith Research Labs and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute was named the Pan-Massachusetts Bridge to Progress. In 1998, Starr was the speaker at Babson College’s graduate commencement and received an honorary degree for “entrepreneurial vision and leadership.” In 2004, Starr was featured in a documentary about entrepreneurs entitled Lemonade Stories, |
along with corporate moguls Richard Branson, Russell Simmons and Arthur Blank. This same year, Dana-Farber awarded Starr the Sidney Farber Medical Research Award, a very prestigious honor given to those who have made an exceptional contribution to reduce the burden of cancer on society. In October 2006, the national Lung Cancer Alliance presented Starr with its Lifetime Achievement Award.
The PMC infrastructure consists of six full-time and three part-time employees; a 10-person volunteer coordinating staff; an eight-person Board of Trustees; nearly 5,500 cyclists; 2,800 volunteers; 46 communities; 200 companies, which donate more than $1 million worth of merchandise and services; and over 200,000 individuals who sponsor PMC cyclists.
Starr consults on event programming throughout the country. Before starting the PMC, he was a reporter for newspapers in Massachusetts and Colorado, worked in public relations with Hill & Knowlton, and was the squash coach at Babson College. He received his BA from the University of Denver in 1973, a Masters in Education from Northeastern University in 1978, an honorary Doctorate of Laws from Babson College in 1998, and an honorary degree from Bay Path College in 2008. An avid cyclist, skier, and racquets player, Starr has ridden in his own event for all 29 years. Starr lives with his wife, Meredith, and daughters, Hannah and Sophia, in Wellesley, Mass.
MEDIA CONTACT: Jackie Herskovitz, 617-269-7171 |
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