Building Bridges Luncheon

Gunnar Esiason is a cystic fibrosis and rare disease patient leader, who is passionate about early-stage drug development, patient empowerment and health policy. He is the head of patient engagement and patient-centered innovation at RA Capital's venture group, RA Ventures.

Professionally, he developed a patient engagement platform for a medical nutrition company, built a venture philanthropy practice at the Boomer Esiason Foundation and was the head coach of his high school alma mater’s varsity hockey team. He has consulted on clinical trial development, a real-world evidence population health study, and a cystic fibrosis-specific mental health and wellness screening tool. Gunnar has been the face fundraising efforts for the Boomer Esiason Foundation, which has yielded more than $160 million raised for the fight against cystic fibrosis since he was diagnosed with the disease in 1993. His blog has amassed nearly 1 million page views since 2015. His podcast, the State of Health, is available on all streaming platforms.

Gunnar holds an M.B.A. from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, where he was a Wilson Scholar and received the Julia Stell Award, an M.P.H. from the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice, and a B.A. from Boston College.

His health policy opinions have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Hill, and STAT News.

One of ESPN’s most respected and longest-tenured personalities, Jeremy Schaap has been with the network since 1994. He hosts both E:60 and Outside the Lines, as well as the award-winning weekly radio show and podcast The Sporting Life. Schaap has covered most major sports and sporting events, including the summer Olympics, the winter Olympics, the FIFA World Cup, the Tour de France, the European soccer championship, the World Series, the Super Bowl, the U.S. Open (golf and tennis), Wimbledon, the French Open, the men’s Final Four, the women’s Final Four, the New York City marathon, the NBA playoffs, the World Cup of Hockey, the Daytona 500, the Kentucky Derby, the Belmont Stakes, the college football national championship game, the Breeders’ Cup, world championship boxing, the Special Olympics World Games, the Invictus Games, the X Games, and even, yes, chess boxing.

In 2018, Schaap co-directed 42 to 1, the acclaimed 30 for 30 documentary about Buster Douglas, who in 1990 upset Mike Tyson to win the undisputed heavyweight championship.

But it has been Schaap’s reporting on sports issues around the world, especially those at the intersection of sports and society at large, focusing on human rights, for which he is perhaps best known.

In 2015, Schaap won the prestigious Robert F. Kennedy Award for reporting on human rights and social justice issues, a first for ESPN. The RFK Center honored Schaap for his story exposing the plight of migrant laborers in Qatar, who live and work in inhumane conditions, even as they build the infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup. Schaap has also been lauded for the 2015 E:60 documentary he reported and hosted on FIFA under its longtime president, Sepp Blatter.

Schaap has also won two national Edward R. Murrow Awards as well as a Peabody Award, two National Headliner Awards and 12 national Sports Emmy Awards. He is the author of Cinderella Man: James J. Braddock, Max Baer and the Greatest Upset in Boxing History, a New York Times bestseller which The Economist called, “A classic of its kind,” and Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler’s Olympics, which Sports Illustrated called “a vivid portrait not just of Owens but of ’30s Germany and America.”

In 2006, Schaap won the national Sports Emmy Award for writing—an award named for his father, Dick Schaap—for a memorable profile of Bobby Fischer. In 2018, thirteen years after the story first aired, Tablet Magazine wrote, “Schaap’s showdown with Fischer is still powerful because it’s one of modern journalism’s most compelling moments of anti-closure, resonating because it draws attention to what we’ll never get to learn.”

Schaap’s three national Sports Emmy Awards in journalism recognized stories he reported on a Serbian basketball player accused of a brutal assault, an Israeli soccer team’s anti-Muslim fans and child fighters in Thailand risking their lives to support their families.

It was also Schaap who conducted the first interview with Hall of Fame coach Bob Knight after he was fired by Indiana University in 2000. In the New York Post, Phil Mushnick called the interview, which turned confrontational, “A slam dunk… one that should be stored in the annals of sports broadcast journalism.”

It was Schaap, too, who conducted the first interviews with Darryl Strawberry, then with the New York Yankees, after he was diagnosed with colon cancer; with Plaxico Burress of the New York Giants, after he shot himself in a New York City nightclub; and with Manti Te’o, the Notre Dame linebacker, after it was reported that his supposed girlfriend had never existed.

In February 2003, Schaap broke the story of a pattern of misconduct by the University of Georgia’s basketball coaching staff. The investigation led to Georgia’s withdrawal from the SEC and NCAA tournaments and the departure of head coach Jim Harrick. John Jackson of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote, “The report was the kind of first-rate reporting rarely seen on TV. Jeremy Schaap’s reporting was fair and balanced.”

In 2011, Schaap was honored by the United Nations with a special commendation for a report on so-called corrective rape, the sexual attacks committed against lesbians in South Africa. In 2006, Schaap received the annual journalism award of the National Association for Multi-Ethnicity in Communications, for a story on the Morgan State lacrosse team, the only lacrosse team ever fielded by a historically black college. In 2001, Schaap was honored by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism for his two-part story on a white Florida high school football coach whose use of a racial epithet sparked a local furor. And in 2015, Schaap won a PRISM Award for reporting on addiction issues, for a story about Cowboys’ tight end Jason Witten and his abusive father.

Also in 2015, Schaap was nominated for a national News and Documentary Emmy Award for an E:60 profile of a survivor of extreme domestic violence. ESPN had never before been nominated for a News Emmy Award. Schaap has been nominated for the national Sports Emmy Award in journalism multiple times.

Schaap has longstanding relationships with several charitable organizations, including the Greater New York chapter of the ALS Association, which has honored him with its Iron Horse Award; the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America, which has honored him with its Lifetime Achievement Award; and Prevent Child Abuse New Jersey, whose annual banquet he emcees. Additionally, the Muscular Dystrophy Association honored him with the Steve Ennis Hope Award in 2017.

Born in New York City, Schaap is a graduate of Cornell University and resides in Connecticut.

With multi-platinum recordings, Broadway shows, Disney Animated Films, Television scores, books and a teaching and lecturing career that spans the nation, David Friedman is truly someone who has made a major mark in all areas of show business and the Human Potential movement.

David has written songs for everyone from Disney to Diana Ross, conducted and vocal arranged 6 musicals on Broadway and numerous Disney Animated Films (including Beauty & The Beast, Aladdin, Pocahontas, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame), wrote songs for The Lizzie McGuire Movie, Aladdin and the King of Thieves, Bambi II, and Trick, and produced all of the late/great Nancy LaMott’s CD’s and wrote many of her best known songs. David won the 2018 Drama Desk, Outer Critics’ Circle and Off-Broadway League awards for his hit New York musical, Desperate Measures, which can now be seen in productions all over the nation. His Off-Broadway Revue, Listen To My Heart – The Songs of David Friedman, has played to audiences all over America, in Europe and Australia. David recently finished a 10-year stint writing and performing a song-a-month for the Today Show’s Everyone Has a Story Segment. In an effort to give back some of the lessons he’s learned in his fulfilling and varied career, David has written a groundbreaking book called, The Thought Exchange®-Overcoming Our Resistance to Living a SENSATIONAL Life, and other books including How They Met – True Stories of The Power of Serendipity in Finding Lasting Love, Help is on the Way - From Places You Don’t Know About Today, and We Can Be Kind – Healing Our World One Kindness at a Time.

Samantha Talora is a concert and cabaret artist living in the Berkshires of western, Massachusetts. Talora has been selected by film and theater composer & songwriter, David Friedman, as the principal singer and interpreter of his vast songbook. In December 2024, she made her NYC solo show debut at Don’t Tell Mama, with Trust the Wind: The Music of David Friedman; an encore performance is scheduled for May 10th. She's been a featured artist with the Savannah Voice Festival (Savannah, GA), founded by baritone Sherrill Milnes as well as the "Voices that Heal" series, bringing music to hospice patients and caregivers.

In the Berkshires, Talora curates concert performances with collaborator, Ron Ramsay, at various venues including Whitney Center for the Arts and Studio9. Since 2014, the pair has delivered countless concerts including A Night at the Oscars, A Sondheim Trilogy and Mistletoe & Music Cabaret Trains with Berkshire Scenic Railway.