Founded

1981

Headquarters

White Plains, New York

Key People

Gina Russo, Executive Director; John G. Rosanvallon, Chairman of the Board

Number of Employees

4

Phone Number

(914) 328-1313

Website

Corporate Angel Network

Corporate Angel Network

Since Corporate Angel Network co-founder Leonard M. Greene flew its first mission in 1981, the charity has coordinated tens of thousands of flights for cancer patients and bone marrow/stem cell donors and recipients. More than 500 American corporations, including about half of the Fortune 100, participate in the network by providing seats on their aircraft for patients and family members traveling to or from recognized treatment centers.

Flying out of Westchester County Airport in White Plains, New York, commercial pilot and cancer survivor Priscilla “Pat” Blum had a vision of easing transportation burdens for people undergoing cancer treatment. In 1981 she discussed setting up an organization with Jay Weinberg, owner of an Avis car rental franchise and also a cancer survivor. The pair then reached out to Greene, founder of White Plains–based Safe Flight Instrument Corporation, who had lost his wife to cancer. Greene agreed to use his company’s King Air to transport an 18-year-old home to Detroit after his cancer treatment in New York on CAN’s inaugural flight.

Borrowing office space in the Champion Corporation hangar and signing up 61 corporate partners, Blum and CAN volunteers arranged 23 patient flights in 1982 while Weinberg used his connections to provide ground transportation and lodging. By 1984, with the help of donated funds and 290 companies, the charity was arranging an average of 25 flights per month. 

In 1985 CAN moved into a larger, more permanent facility; and by 1987, it was arranging 650 patient flights per year. The organization had served 10,000 patients by 1998; 35,000 by 2010; and 63,000 by 2020.

Blum retired from CAN in 2000 at age 80 and was inducted into Women in Aviation International’s Pioneer Hall of Fame in 2015. Weinberg died in 2009 at age 91. Greene, inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1991, passed away from lung cancer in 2006 at age 88. His son, Randy Greene, became president and CEO of Safe Flight in 2001 and served as CAN chairman and then chairman emeritus until his death in 2021. 

The younger Greene furthered the relationship between CAN and the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) to the point where CAN became the exclusive beneficiary of NBAA charity events that have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars. Continuing to fly and solicit funds through the Covid-19 pandemic, CAN raised $275,000 in a virtual auction in 2021. 

As of 2022, the organization is operating with four staffers plus a 12-member board of directors that includes industry leaders like former Dassault Falcon Jet president and CEO John G. Rosanvallon and Gulfstream Aerospace president Mark Burns. Also on the board are BJT editorial director Jennifer Leach English and Wilson S. Leach, founder of AIN Media Group, which publishes BJT. In addition, CAN has a board of advisors that includes several people from the aviation field as well as three doctors from Memorial Sloan-Kettering.