He kept himself in shape, working out nearly every day, ate a reasonably healthy diet and was a model of moderation.

So when his doctor told him he had colorectal cancer, needless to say he was taken aback.

“It was beyond shock for a 40-year-old man who thought he had it pretty good,” Lennox said. “My doctor even told me he didn’t know which one of us was more surprised by the news because I just didn’t fit the profile.”

But there it was.

So he made an appointment at The James Cancer Hospital the next day to plan his course of action.

Six grueling weeks of radiation and chemotherapy followed, then six weeks of rest to get his strength back for the surgery to remove part of his colon.

“When you’re on chemotherapy, the hope is that it will kill the cancer, but it does a lot of damage to the healthy parts of the body as well,” Lennox said. “It takes some time just to get healthy enough to have surgery.”

The bowel resection worked, and doctors deemed Lennox cancer-free shortly after the surgery. Nevertheless, he underwent another nine weeks of chemo afterward to make sure he stayed that way. The last dose was administered this past New Year’s Eve.

“To say that kind of experience changes a person is more than accurate,” he said. “It changes you a lot and it changes you for good.” Tom Lennox was a high-ranking executive at a Fortune 500 company. With a loving wife and three kids, life was good; it was everything he wanted.

Lennox had never considered leaving his job as head of communications at Abercrombie & Fitch, and his job was waiting for him when he was ready to return.

But shortly after he returned to work, he got a call from Cindy Hilsheimer, a principal at executive recruiting firm SC Search Consultants and a member of the Pelotonia board, with a pitch to run a new non-profit organization.

“I had always assumed I’d be at Abercrombie for many years,” Lennox said. “The thought of jumping to a non-profit had never seemed like something I might do. But I said I’d listen.”

But this wasn’t just any non-profit. This one was brought to life with $12 million in seed money from NetJets, with the idea to turn that transformational gift into even more money to give to The James to fight cancer.

“I thought long and hard about it for about three months,” Lennox said. “I became convinced that this was the right thing to do. I could stay at Abercrombie and make a nice contribution there, or I could take this on and really make a difference in the community.

“I have absolutely no regrets and no second thoughts about doing what I’m doing,” he said. “It’s been one of the most wonderful experiences of my life so far and I can only imagine it getting better.”

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