“Bald is beautiful,” they say – and Josh McGilliard, alongside 47 others, became just that at the St. Baldrick’s Foundation head-shaving event held at the Church Hill Irish Festival in Richmond, Virginia the last weekend in March.

Even though this was the first pursuit of this kind for McGilliard, Vice President of Marketing and Business Development at Kissito Healthcare, he turned out to be the highest individual fundraiser at $3,433 out of about 100 people and in the top five in the event’s history.

The St. Baldrick’s Foundation is a volunteer-driven charity committed to funding the most promising research and finding cures for childhood cancers in hope of giving cancer survivors long and healthy lives. What began as a challenge between friends has grown into the world’s fastest growing volunteer-driven fundraising opportunity benefiting childhood cancer research.

The daughter of a friend of McGilliard and his wife, Maddox, who isn’t even three years old, has a rare form of cancer. Moved by her situation, McGilliard’s family and friends helped to raise over $9,000 to help her family pay for bills, mortgage and loss of time at work while they traveled weeks at a time to Florida for treatments. This would be the same inspiration to carry McGilliard into baldness at St. Baldrick’s.

For St. Baldricks, McGilliard originally set a goal of $1,000 to raise in three weeks – but that happened in just four days. He ended up raising over $3,400 from friends, family and Kissito Healthcare colleagues. McGilliard was touched by the groves of Kissito Healthcare colleagues that came out of the woodwork to donate. Seventy-five percent of his donations came from Kissito Healthcare.

“This was an incredible illustration of Kissito’s mission, which is to exist for the betterment and care of human life,” Josh said. “You never really know if your organization truly lives its mission, but this outpouring of support and fans was a clear indicator to me that Kissito really does live its mission.”

A day before the event, McGilliard discovered that a boy named Roy, eight years old, was closing in on him within about $400. He decided that if Roy was $250 short of tying him on the day of, he would make sure Roy won. Roy didn’t show up with any more checks, so that did not happen – but McGilliard did give Roy the first chair on stage while he took the second. He was astonished at the young boy’s accomplishment and discovered it was his fifth year participating in the event. Roy had been participating with St. Baldrick’s since he was three.

“Imagine what he’ll be doing when he’s 35!” McGilliard said with raised eyebrows and a chuckle.

In addition to being moved by Maddox, his company and (later) Roy, McGilliard has always been inspired by his mother, Jan McGilliard. Though 51 years old and already a cancer survivor, she decided to start doing marathons and raising funds for TEAM in Training. She walked them at first and later began running them. Then came the triathlons – even multiple triathlons a year. She accomplished all this while maintaining a consistent, record-breaking fundraising effort for her causes.

“I can only hope to catch up to my mother,” said McGilliard, “but at least St. Baldrick’s afforded me the opportunity to raise awareness and funds – and the only training I had to have was for a close shave in a chair in front of a bunch of people.”

McGilliard encourages others to get involved in St. Baldrick’s events nationwide. The Richmond event is just one of many St. Baldrick’s events – people from anywhere, really, can get involved.

Next year, Josh plans to participate in the event again. Though he enjoys the Church Hill Irish Festival, he may explore getting an event together in Blacksburg where he lives. He envisions the event at Cassell Coliseum filled with cheering students as every Virginia Tech athlete, Greek organization member and other students are down on the floor getting their heads shaved with news cameras catching it all.

For more information, visit http://stbaldricks.org.