Busta Tournament Raises $33,500 for UW-Madison's Waisman Center & Stem Cell Research

In its' fifth year, the 2007 David Busta Basketball Tournament and Silent Auction raised a substantial sum of money, bringing our five year total to more than $145,000.

I had the honor of serving on the event's planning committee and to present a check for this year's total of $33,500 to UW-Madison's Waisman Center for stem cell research; that's me on the left in the photo with Dr. Su-Chun Zhang, lead scientist, and Dr. Marsha Seltzer, Waisman Center Director.

As I said in an interview with a local television station that covered the tournament, "It's impossible to be around David Busta and not find his spirit and enthusiasm contagious. We're creating quite a legacy in David's honor."

Busta was paralyzed in a 30-foot fall to concrete in August 2002, and has lived quadriplegic ever since. The group started with the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation as its benefactor, but changed beneficiaries in its second year to UW-Madison's Waisman Center, principally due to Busta's being an undergrad alum from UW-Madison and a desire to support the Waisman Center's leading position in the area of stem cell research. As you might have heard in the national media recently, November 20th also marked an important announcement for the Waisman Center as they released new results indicating a breakthrough in the ability to create embryonic stem cells from human skin cells. Whatever your own feelings on this issue, this is an extremely important discovery from an ethical standpoint in terms of lessening the reluctance of many who find the use of embryonic stem cells an insult to the sanctity of human life.

While the Waisman Center has always taken a stance on only adult stem cell or otherwise ethical applications of existing embryonic stem cell lines in its research, many others have doubted stem cell research as a whole because of this point of view. You can read more about this important announcement at:

http://www.madison.com/wsj/topstories/index.php?ntid=257876&ntpid=1

Working with the Busta event these past five years has been very important to me. My brother Arik and I recently had the chance to speak to a group of undergraduate business students at UW-Eau Claire on the subject of finding meaning in one's work. On Wednesday, November 28th, we addressed the business school's Beta Upsilon Sigma (BUS) business fraternity, with approximately 150 juniors and seniors in attendance from its core membership base. While Arik shared with this group of aspiring, young business professionals many of his reasons for founding Aurora back in 1995 and what drives the business today, I concentrated on some life lessons I've learned from my six years in investment management and the five years I've spent applying intelligence techniques for clients in the business world as Aurora's director of research.

I ended this way: "I've been fortunate to have been very successful in both my academic and professional career thus far, but my involvement with the David Busta fundraiser for the Waisman Center is the thing I'm most proud of. Get involved in something bigger than yourselves, either individually or alongside your organizations, and become part of a legacy of giving to those who need help the most."

With those thoughts, I wish you all the best this holiday season and a very happy and healthy 2008 ahead.