Champion for Cures Award

The AACI Champion for Cures Award was established in 2018 to recognize one or more people or an organization, who, through direct financial support of an AACI cancer center, demonstrate exceptional leadership in advancing cancer research and care and in inspiring others to do the same.

Selected by the AACI Board of Directors, the awardee has gained distinction through their visionary approach to promoting our shared goal of a future without cancer. Through their transformational philanthropy, which may take many forms—including supporting a new facility, cancer center infrastructure, or programming—the cancer center can focus beyond immediate needs to foster creativity and innovation and multiply its impact on patient health, research, and its surrounding community.

Previous Champion for Cures Award recipients are Friends of Dartmouth Cancer Center and the Prouty; Dana Dornsife, Lazarex Cancer Foundation; Pelotonia; Sidney and Caroline Kimmel; Phil and Penny Knight; the Jon M. and Karen Huntsman family; and Richard and Susan Rogel.

The 11 Day Power Play, Inc.

On June 22, 2017, 40 men took to the ice at Harbor Center in Buffalo, NY, to set a world record for the longest continuous hockey game. They lived onsite and played hockey nonstop through July 3, raising more than $1 million for Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. This incredibly successful event was the first of many fundraisers hosted by The 11 Day Power Play, Inc., a philanthropic organization founded by Mike and Amy Lesakowski in 2016.

Today the organization has contributed more than $7 million to cancer research and wellness programs at Roswell Park, supporting quality-of-life care for patients and caregivers through The 11 Day Power Play Cancer Resource Center, providing the naming gift for The 11 Day Power Play Immunotherapy Labs, and establishing The 11 Day Power Play Team Science Award to kickstart promising research with lifesaving potential. In addition to Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, the organization supports Make-A-Wish Western New York, Camp Good Days and Special Times, and the Roswell Park & Oishei Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Program.

The 11 Day Power Play participants encourage thousands of donors each year to make a difference through small gifts. By engaging an audience through a mutual passion for hockey, they have built lasting connections, not only in the Buffalo area, but with cancer centers and patients across the country.