Billy Starr

Billy Starr is the founder in 1980) and Executive Director of the Pan-Massachusetts Challenge (PMC), the world’s most successful athletic fundraising event.

As of October 2016, the PMC (a 2-day 192-mile bike-a-thon), had contributed $547 million to cancer research via the Dana Farber Cancer Institute rendering it their single largest contributor. The PMC has also raised more money for charity than any other single athletic fundraising event nationwide. It is hailed as being one of the nation’s top fundraisers.

Having lost a cousin, his mother and uncle to cancer, Starr turned his efforts to cycling with the creation of the PMC, finding it to be something he “needed to do to help [him] feel better and evoke [his] mother’s memory. He initially approached the Jimmy Fund (one of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s Research supporters) about accepting a donation. Mike Andrews (Jimmy Fund chairperson) says that Starr “does not have the word ‘no’ in his vocabulary.”

Starr brought together 36 athletes who had committed to doing their own fundraising. They then all cycled from Springfield to Provincetown. For the first year-and-a-half, Starr took no salary. He was the only employee for the first decade, using his father’s house as an office.

Within four years of its founding, the PMC had become the largest grossing fundraising event for the Jimmy Fund. A decade into its operation, it became known as the world’s most successful cycling fundraiser. In 1990 there were almost 1,000 cyclists, and $1.3 million was raised. Today, it raises between two and three times more money for charity than any other athletic event worldwide, with Starr still at the organization’s helm.

Because of his success with PMC, Starr has counseled various charities, assisting in the creation of events including: Pelotonia, the Dolphins Cycling Challenge, and the Enbridge Ride to Conquer Cancer.

Starr delivers talks on his fundraising efforts as well. Philanthropy group Rivers Givers hosted him in the past, telling the audience: “In our community, each one of us carries not a burden, but a responsibility, to get involved in something that is bigger than you.”

Starr is a keen cyclist, skier, and racquet player. He played tennis for Newton South High School teams that won state championships in 1967 and 1968. In the past he coached squash at Babson College in Wellesley, MA. To date, he has participated in and fundraised for, his own event every single year since its inception.

Starr grew up in Newton, Massachusetts. He and his wife Meredith have two daughters, Hannah and Sophia, and live in Wellesley.

In 2010, Starr was honored by Friends of Dana-Farber for his more than three decades of support and service to the organization. Starr received a lifetime achievement award from the Lung Cancer Alliance in 2006. In 2004, he was featured in a documentary about entrepreneurs entitled Lemonade Stories, on being a successful entrepreneur. Also in that year, he received the Sidney Farber Medical Research Award, for his exceptional contribution to reduce the burden of cancer on society. He was featured in Crain’s in their series talking with executives, entrepreneurs and business leaders.

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 Challenge Bridge to Progress. In 1993, The Jimmy Fund honored Starr and the PMC by awarding him the Thomas A. & Jean R. Yawkey Memorial Award.

In 1973, Starr graduated from the University of Denver with a bachelor's degree. Five years later, he earned his Masters degree in Education from Northeastern University. In 1998 Babson College awarded him with an honorary Doctorate of Laws 1998, and a decade later, an honorary doctorate from Baypath College.