We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Oscar Ortiz. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Oscar below.

Oscar, appreciate you joining us today. If you had a defining moment that you feel really changed the trajectory of your career, we’d love to hear the story and details.

Hearing the words, “your child has cancer”, is as defining a moment a human can experience in life. In October of 2015, I was told my then 15 year old son, Sebastian, was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. We lost him just 14 months later on December 29, 2016.

What we learned about childhood cancer throughout our journey shaped my future in a way I could never have foreseen. We started the SebastianStrong Foundation (www.sebastianstrong.org) shortly after losing Sebastian in 2017. For the first three years, I worked 80 hour weeks balancing between my corporate job and the foundation. Then, in early 2020, just as the world was facing a global pandemic, I lost my job. It was the first time in my life that I’ve been let go and it was a difficult blow at the time. All of the uncertainty facing the world at the time only brought more angst. I’d also be lying if it didn’t bruise my ego a little.

At the same time, it put me in a situation where I had to do some deep reflection on my future. I’ve always tried to live by the mantra, “life happens, we choose how we respond”. So what was my response going to be? I was very fortunate to receive a couple of job offers shortly after I was let go. It was exactly what I needed. The job offers soothed the ego part of the job loss and, more importantly, made me give thought to what I wanted my professional future to look like.

The more I reflected, the more obvious it became to me that running the foundation was what I wanted/needed to do. So, after some conversations with my family, we decided that I would make the change and leave Corporate America after a 30 year career. I was incredibly excited and scared at the same time. Aside from stepping away from a career I had built for over 30 years, there was also the financial implications of working for a non-profit,

Now, just 3 years after making the decision to run the foundation full time, I could not be more fulfilled professionally. While I will always hate the WHY I do the work I do, I am so grateful that I have been able to channel my energy into making the world a better place for kids with cancer.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Including our boilerplate language here as I feel I addressed many of these items in the responses to the first question.

About SebastianStrong Foundation
SebastianStrong is a 501c3 nonprofit organization that is raising awareness of childhood cancers and funding research for less toxic, more targeted childhood cancer treatments and cures. Founded in 2017 to honor the life of Sebastian Ortiz (2000-2016) and his courageous 14-month battle with rhabdomyosarcoma, SebastianStrong focuses on Discovery Science – think innovation, funding research and trials that would otherwise not likely be funded. With the intent of furthering our mission, we pride ourselves on collaboration with other childhood cancer foundations and host multiple events throughout the year, such as Kayaking the Keys for Hope, the SebastianStrong 5K, and our annual Discovering Hope Gala. We’ve also partnered with renowned organizations such as the University of Miami’s Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center (an NCI designated cancer center), the Miami Dolphins, InterMiami CF, Major League Soccer, and more. Although headquartered in Miami, thanks to our esteemed medical advisory board, we’ve committed over $4M in research funding to leading childhood cancer research institutions across the nation.

At the heart of everything we do is the belief that KIDS DESERVE BETTER. We strive to provide kids hope that in the future, there will be less toxic, more targeted treatments for children of all ages. We fund HOPE.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I strongly believe what has helped build my reputation is my authenticity and my passion. What you see is what you get, always! It’s too difficult to have to act any other way than your true self. While being authentic and genuine can sometimes come off a little strong, I believe people appreciate it. From a passion standpoint, I’ve always been a passionate person but losing my son to cancer along with learning so much about the lack of funding and innovation for childhood cancer, has taken me to a level of passion I didn’t know existed.

I think the fact that I stepped away from a successful corporate career to run SebastianStrong fulltime has also served as validation of my passion for what we do.

Do you think you’d choose a different profession or specialty if you were starting now?

The reality in life is you can’t ever go back in time. We can only learn from our experiences and use those to help shape our future. My career prior to focusing my efforts on the foundation full time prepared me well to do what I do today.

As I shared earlier, while I hate the WHY I do what I do, I am so grateful to be able to channel the pain from losing Sebastian into the foundation. Helping others and providing hope to people who so desperately need it has been the most rewarding work I’ve ever done. In some respects, I consider myself selfish for the work I do.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.sebastianstrong.org
• Instagram: @sebsstrong
• Linkedin: SebastianStrong Foundation
• Twitter: @sebsstrong
• Youtube: @sebsstrong
• Yelp: SebastianStrong Foundation