Our History & Leadership
Sailing Heals’ founders were united by a passion for boating and a belief in the ocean as a powerful source for health and healing. Being on the water could be exhilarating, rejuvenating, peaceful, and awe-inspiring. The ocean environment had also served them as a place of respite and refuge during some of life’s most challenging times.
Sailing Heals was created to give people a pause from the clinical environment and daily grind of “all things cancer.” It is our hope that the experience on the water gives participants a lasting memory that can be conjured in both mind and body…a positive place to pause along one’s personal cancer journey.
Board of Directors & Management
Sailing Heals is a small-and-nimble organization. Our volunteer board members actively participate in the operational activities required to successfully execute and support annual programming. We employ a hands-on executive director who manages all aspects of our sail events, in addition to outreach and fundraising.
Our sail programs would not be possible without the invaluable support of community & partner volunteers. Their help ensures that each sail event is “smooth sailing” for guests from check-in to disembarkment. Our host captains volunteer their time and vessels (motor and sail) for small and intimate excursions. Since 2011, more than 300 volunteers have generously donated time on land and sea.
President
Dr. Lori Wirth is the Elizabeth and Michael Ruane Endowed Chair of Medical Oncology, Medical Director of the Center for Head and Neck Cancers at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, and an Associate Professor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Wirth is a leading authority in advanced thyroid cancer and head and neck oncology, with special expertise in combined modality therapy for cancers of the head and neck, immunotherapy and molecularly-targeted therapies for thyroid cancer. Her research focuses on clinical trials and leveraging translational data to maximize the impact of clinical trial outcomes.
Treasurer
Ken Adam has been a board member and a champion of Sailing Heals since its early beginnings, and has been overseeing the organization’s finances since 2019. Prior to retirement, he had a career in the information technology sector (Honeywell and Bull S.A.), and later as a principle of MTS Partners, consulting to the wireless telecom sector. Ken is an active community leader, having served three terms on his town’s Select Board, and was appointed to the finance committee. A life-long sailor Ken Adam is a lifelong sailor and past Commodore of the Corinthian Yacht Club of Marblehead, he enjoys volunteering with CYC youth sail programs and as an officer of the Corinthian Classic annual regatta.
Secretary
Dudley Welch is a founding board member of Sailing Heals. He is the co-founding attorney and principle of Davis & Welch PC, serving clients in the area of estate planning, business organization, and real estate. A life-long sailor and boater, Dudley has shared the ocean experience with countless Sailing Heals guests as a volunteer host captain. In addition to serving as the organization’s secretary, Dudley oversees the network of Sailing Heals’ volunteer host captains.
Board Member
Pamela O’Connor has been a Sailing Heals advocate and supporter for more than twelve years. She joined the board of directors a few years into her volunteer work with the organization and was very involved in Sailing Heals’ programming leading up to the pandemic. She loved the positive energy and camaraderie of the sailing communities who helped to bring a beautiful day on the ocean to patients and caregivers in many ports of call, including Nantucket, Marblehead, Sag Harbor, West Palm Beach, Naples, NYC, and Newport.
Cancer has touched Pamela and her family directly. In her words, “The sea is a source of tremendous, organic healing power. Even gazing at water calms the soul and gives us a rebirth of confidence to carry on.”
Pamela is a real estate executive based in Palm Beach, Florida and Newport, Rhode Island.
Board Member
Jennifer (Jen) Brock is an Allogenic-Stem Cell Transplant Clinical Trials Registered Nurse at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Her prior experience includes oncology research and clinical trials at Boston Medical Center, where she managed forty treatment trials in nine different disease groups. Jen spent eleven years at Massachusetts General Hospital providing nursing care for patients diagnosed with Leukemia and hematologic malignancies receiving chemotherapy, stem cells, donor lymphocyte infusions, and radiation.
Jen shares a deep mind-body connection with the ocean. Curious about why she and so many others feel a strong pull to being near, on, and in the water, Jen began to research (no surprise) the science and theories of “blue space”: the human connection, and many physical and mental benefits that water offers. Over the last few years, she has devoted much of her vacation and free time learning how to navigate the waves of oceans atop her surfboard.
Board Member
Peter Gamage has been involved with communications and business development for over 40 years, as the fifth-generation Publisher of his family’s print and digital newspaper products and community endeavors in Lynn, MA. He has a long history of community involvement and has held many board positions, including as a trustee of Eastern Bank, Boston; a founder and executive committee member of the Lynn Business Partnership; a board member of the Boys & Girls Club, Girls, Inc., Lynn Arts and the Lynn Museum organizations, the North Shore Business Consortium and the Agganis Foundation.
Peter has served as President of the New England Newspaper Association as well as holding board seats on the New England Advertising Bureau and The Massachusetts Newspaper Publishers Association. Following several years as a consultant with Allsett Marketing, he continues as a member of the Board of Advisors of Eastern Bank and as a member of the Manchester Yacht Club.
He enjoys any, and all time on the water – sail or power. As a lifelong coastal dweller, Peter attributes his general sense of calm to the ocean. He believes that it provides an endless source of inspiration, relaxation, and especially, comfort. Peter’s family has been significantly impacted by cancer.
