Walking for a Purpose

Our team recently found out some very upsetting news; that one of our close colleagues on the East Coast was diagnosed with Leukemia. We had become close whilst working on a 4-month client engagement with him where we were helping to shape a future platform for an animal genetics company.

He is an extremely sharp, compassionate and articulate colleague who is a joy to work with and it hit us hard when we found out the news. Especially knowing how much of a family-man he is, we felt for him as well as his wife and young children.

It got us thinking…What can we do to support him from afar to show him how much we care and to give him some additional strength to fight this awful disease?

We started to get smart on Leukemia to try and grasp what he was about to tackle, and whilst doing so we found that there was an upcoming ‘Light the Night’ walk taking place in San Francisco hosted by the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. We signed up immediately.

Cancer is a horrible disease and it takes all the strength an individual can muster up, alongside a positive attitude in order to defeat it. Little moments along the way that they can draw strength from are important to keep the strength and positivity going. It was this that inspired us to try to be one of many small moments that our colleague could look towards.

We decided to honor him by making some personalized t-shirts and invited his sister, who lives in California, to join us for the evening. Here’s the team rocking their t-shirts in his honor:

The walk itself, was an amazing gathering of people who were all there for one reason. To show this disease that it cannot win.

It was enlightening to see people come out on a wet and cold (for California) evening to show their support, whether they were there, like us, in support of someone close to them or there in remembrance of lost friends and family. Or even more inspiring, there as a survivor.

The whole evening was special and proved that bringing people together in harmony, can do amazing things. The whole walk raised around $860k to support the fight against Leukemia and I was proud that our team was a part of that.

On a more personal level, I was also proud that our small gesture of supporting this great cause provided our colleague with a little more strength to continue his battle back to full health. As well as cementing the fact that he has support from people on a completely different coast from him.

We’re here for you mate and we’ll beat this.

Anyone who reads this and would like to donate towards a great cause, you can do so via this link: http://pages.lightthenight.org/gba/SanFran17/EPAMSanFrancisco