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City of Hope Announces Walk for Hope Kickoff Breakfast
July 8,
2024 by HFBusiness Staff in Business Strategy, Industry 
On June 27, City of Hope launched its Walk for Hope kickoff breakfast at the Langham Hotel in Pasadena, CA.
With over 150 people in attendance, the Master of Ceremonies was Joe Waterson, VP of the Office of Philanthropy, with speakers Joseph Alvernas M.D., clinical hematologist oncologist, and VP of government affairs for City of Hope, and Jerry Kohl, founder of Brighton Collectables, the Signature Sponsor of Walk for Hope, and there was also a patient film of 24 year old Melody Shahsavarani a Hodgkins Lymphoma survivor.
Martin Ploy was the keynote volunteer speaker who addressed the many reasons he and his wife Mary Ann, both former patients, have been participating in Walk for Hope since 2010 with the AICO All-Stars.
He discussed the importance of ‘believing’ in City of Hope and their extraordinary track record of successful and caring patient care. As one of the top ten cancer hospitals in the United States, it is much more than a hospital, it is also a premier research center where scientists, doctors, researchers, and technicians are continuously finding new protocols, procedures, treatments, drugs, and cures for cancer.
Unlike other research centers, City of Hope has the unique distinction of being able to manufacture their own medicines and drugs resulting in bringing clinical trials to patients in a much faster time frame. Currently, City of Hope has over 850 clinical trials available and those that prove successful will serve the Global Health Community. Right now, over 100 million people worldwide benefit from City of Hope discoveries every year.
Ploy, the team captain for the AICO All-Stars stated that their first walk in 2012 was on a chilly damp Sunday morning in November with only 12 team members. The last in-person walk was in 2019 with 72 AICO All-Star team members and 12,000 walk participants.
Several of the AICO All-Stars attended the Walk for Hope kickoff, including Michael Amini, David Koehler, and Rick Powell. The AICO All-Stars are a team of AICO employees, executives, their families and friends, as well as other industry supporters.
For the past 13 years, The AICO All-Stars have been a Walk For Hope leader, raising over $440,000 for City of Hope research. Ploy states, “One of the reasons for our on-going success in raising money is because we have a team of ‘believers,’ people who believe in the life changing work at City of Hope”
With the recent expansion of City Of Hope, this year’s Walk for Hope is hoping to raise $4M nationally with walks in Atlanta, Chicago, Phoenix, and in Orange County and Duarte, California on Sunday, September 8th.