Courtesy Rick Sontag

In 1994, Rick Sontag’s (MBA 1968) wife, Susan, was diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer. Thanks to an experimental treatment, Susan survived, though she continues to experience significant loss of cognitive function caused by the tumor and its cure. The experience set a new path for Rick Sontag, then the president of an aviation-components manufacturer. “If I ever get a chance to do something about this disease,” he pledged. “I’m going to do it.”

In 2002, he had that chance. Sontag sold Unison Industries to General Electric and used a portion of the proceeds to establish the Sontag Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting brain cancer research and brain cancer patients and caregivers.

In the last 18 years, the foundation has awarded more than $35 million to 51 early-career brain cancer researchers. “The grants they provided are high-octane fuel,” says Dr. Mark Johnson, one of the early recipients of the foundation’s signature Distinguished Scientist Award. Johnson is now chair of the Department of Neurological Surgery at UMass Memorial Health and a professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

The foundation has also birthed a second nonprofit, the Brain Tumor Network (BTN), which grew out of a Sontag Foundation support group for brain cancer patients and caregivers in Northern Florida that Rick and Susan relied on as they coped with her disease and its aftereffects. To date, the BTN’s nurse navigators and social workers have helped more than 1,200 people around the United States.

Sontag thinks big. “If this model works for brain cancer, this model can work for other serious diseases,” he says of the Sontag Foundation’s multipronged approach. But the drive behind his work remains very personal. “Every day, I go home and see my wife,” he says. “I’ve been her caregiver for 25 years, and I see how our work has helped her and so many other people.”

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