Dan Pallotta is the founder, owner, and Chief Executive Officer of Pallotta TeamWorks. He lives in Los Angeles and is 42 years old. He is the creator of the AIDSRides, Avon Breast Cancer 3-Days, AIDS Vaccine Rides, African AIDSTrek, AIDS Vaccine 3-Day, Out of the Darkness, and KidsMarch. Pallotta TeamWorks’ events have raised more money more quickly for AIDS and breast cancer charities than any known private event enterprise in U.S. history. The net figure to those charities as of the end of the 2001 event season is in excess of $222 million.

Dan Pallotta was born Malden, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, to working class parents on January 21st, 1961, the first day of John F. Kennedy’s Presidency. He grew up in Malden and Melrose, the next city over. He went to Melrose High School, where he was Class President for two terms, and played hockey and debated. He majored in development economics and graduated from Harvard University in 1983 where he served as undergraduate chair of the Harvard Hunger Action Committee. His work in creating altruistic journeys began as a senior at Harvard, where he conceived and organized the very first “Ride for Life” — a 4,235-mile bicycle ride across the U.S. in 1983. Dan and 39 other students completed the trip, raising $70,000 for Oxfam-America, an international hunger-relief agency. Also while at Harvard, he became one of the youngest members ever elected to the School Board in the City of Melrose, Massachusetts in 1981.

“Growing up in Boston in the 1960s, I was very influenced by the messages of John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. The boldness of speaking about going to the moon — the compassion in Kennedy’s Inaugural Address when he spoke about, ‘the poor people in the huts and villages of half the globe’ — these things felt visionary to me — they felt right — they felt moral — and they felt purposeful. Robert Kennedy’s vision of a ‘new world society,’ and his statement that, ‘each of us would ultimately judge ourselves on the extent to which we would help create that,’ — these things seemed full of vitality and hope and energy to me as a young person — their messages were wholly distinct from anything any other adults were saying, and they really captivated me. They still do. At Pallotta TeamWorks, in a very real way, we seek to go to the moon, and to do our part toward creating a new world society, where kindness is more prevalent than suffering.”

After graduating, he worked for a year as a legislative aide to the Majority Whip of the Massachusetts State Senate, and for Oxfam-America, an international hunger-relief and development agency, and played guitar in clubs around New England five nights a week.

“As a teenager, politics was what captured me. I wanted to run for the State Senate, and then for Governor, and I wanted to be the first Italian-American President of the United States. But in my early twenties, I began to realize that I was gay, and in 1984, that meant you could pretty much kiss your political aspirations good-bye, or at least that’s what I thought. At that point, I lost my spark. I lost my dream. I began to drift. I felt without a purpose, in stark contrast to all my years before, where my sense of purpose was strong — it was everything to me. I looked up to Robert and John Kennedy. I identified with the underdogs in society — the working class people like my parents. I wanted to help them. I wanted to fight injustice. I wanted to serve my country. When I began to realize I was gay, I felt I had been robbed of that mission.”

He moved to California in 1985 to try to get a record deal, writing songs and playing local L.A. clubs from time to time. He went to work organizing and fundraising for the Great Peace March Across America, and later for Hands Across America. He originated the very first California AIDSRide in 1994 — inspiring thousands of cyclists to join in raising unprecedented new funds for HIV and AIDS, as they biked along California’s coast between San Francisco and Los Angeles. The AIDSRides have been awarded the “Best Cause-Related Marketing Award” by Brandweek Magazine.

“After a lot of therapy and personal examination, and coming to terms with who I was, I began to reclaim the teenage dreamer in me. I began to get my dreaming legs back. My boldness began to return — the same boldness that allowed me to create “Ride for Life.” I was rising out of the ashes of a demoralizing period of self-deprecation and self-hatred. It felt beautiful to be coming back to life. But I was coming back with a new perspective and new ideas. I didn’t want to be the next John Kennedy anymore. I didn’t want to be the next Bruce Springsteen either. Or the next Walt Disney. These people had all influenced me. But I wanted to be an original. I wanted to create my own footsteps. I loved working on issues of social justice. I loved imagination and creativity. I loved bringing large crowds together to share a common experience. But I had to find a way to weave these things together — a way that was uniquely my own, and that would offer the world something new that was wanted and needed. In the AIDSRides, I began to see how they could all come together.”

Dan works in his spare time mentoring teenage gang members. He is the volunteer chair of the UCLA AIDS Institute AIDS Eradication Project. He is also a weekly volunteer at Childrens Hospital, Los Angeles where he works in the ChildLife program of the oncology ward. He is a private pilot. He enjoys motorcycle rides along the canyon roads of the Southern California coast. He has ridden in California AIDSRide, Texas AIDSRide, TwinCities>Chicago AIDSRide, the Alaska AIDS Vaccine Ride, and walked with his Mom and his two sisters in the Avon Breast Cancer 3-Day, Boston. He and his dad and brother-in-law rode together in the Montana AIDS Vaccine Ride in July of 2001. He was presented with the Upton Sinclair Creative Vision Award by The Liberty Hill Foundation in Los Angeles, and has been honored by Food and Friends, in Washington, D.C., and the Southern California Lambda Medical Association for his contributions to gay and lesbian health. He is also a member of the National Society of Fundraising Executives, and is frequently featured in the media, including a profile in 1997 in the New York Times Magazine, and as the cover story in the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine in May, 1998.

For public speaking engagements, contact the Jodi Solomon agency in Boston at 617-266-3450.