Our Friends and Partners
We are lucky to have many like-minded friends — people and organizations driven by a spirit of discovery and a desire to join forces to make the world healthier, cleaner, greener ...and a little more adventuresome. Their ideas and actions inspire us here at BikeCoastToCoast.org. In addition, we are grateful for their advice and helping hand in organizing our bike expedition. This page is our thank-you to them.
- Students of HBS'08 Section C
- Mountains for Miracles
- Racing the Planet
- Harvard Business School Outdoors Club
- Poxod Outdoors Club of New York
- Harvard professors Jan Hammond and Dutch Leonard
- Vlad Kuperman of Limus Studios
- Dr. Allie Schwartz
- Mike Vermeulen
The students of HBS'08 Section C have pulled together and donated over four thousand dollars to Lance Armstrong Foundation in support of our bike ride! We send them our heartfelt thank-you!
Mountains for Miracles, founded by a group of students from Harvard Business School and Harvard University's JFK School of Government, employs an innovative philanthropy model that combines challenging high-altitude mountaineering expeditions with personal-network-based fundraising. MFM's main goal is to raise awareness and funding to fight childhood cancers. Big thanks to the MFM executive director / chairman, John Serafini, for his advice, especially in the early stages of our expedition's set-up.
RacingThePlanet, based in Hong Kong, conducts multi-day, 250-km foot races across some of the most forbidding deserts around the world: the Sahara, the Gobi, the Atacama, Antarctica, and more. The founder / CEO, Mary Gadams, is a lovely lady who's tough as nails, runs marathons, and spends weeks on end in the desert together with the participants, volunteers, and staff, making sure everything runs smoothly. Some of us here at BikeCoastToCoast.org are so excited about RacingThePlanet that we are joining one of their expeditions as soon as our time permits.
Harvard Business School Outdoors Club and its tireless president, Nico Batrel, have set up countless local and international outdoors treks: Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Machu Pichu in Peru, Mt. Aconcagua in Argentina, and so on. We are grateful to Nico personally for his introductions to a few of our partners. Moreover, it is during his Kilimanjaro trek that Maksim and Devin met and decided to join forces in organizing their charitable cross-continent bike challenge. In addition, many members of the Club have contributed their valuable input into our planning and preparations.
Poxod Outdoors Club of New York, cofounded by BikeCoastToCoast.org's own Maksim Kalashnikov, is an online and offline community of outdoors enthusiasts in and around New York City. "Poxod" (Поход) is Russian for "backpacking adventure". The Club, founded in April 2000, started out as an online forum to help Maksim and his Goldman Sachs colleagues collaborate in setting up backpacking, kayaking, skiing, and rock climbing trips. Over time, the group has grown in size and evolved into a vibrant social and professional network with interests beyond wilderness adventures. We have tapped into this network for brainstorming, support, and validation of the BikeCoastToCoast.org concept.
Professors Janice Hammond and Herman "Dutch" Leonard of HBS are advising BikeCoastToCoast.org in our fundraising activities and guiding Maksim in his work on a First-Timer's Guide to Event-Based Nonprofit Fundraising. Click here for more information.
Vlad Kuperman of Limus Studios is our longtime friend from New York City. He has generously provided advice and consultation about the design of this website, its graphical elements, and content — all of that in addition to his warmth and hospitality on our frequent visits to NYC.
Dr. Allie Schwartz of Harvard University is another of Maksim's longtime friends back from their undergraduate years together. (Ah!) She has generously offered to provide complete financial support for our website. Thank you, Allie!
Mike Vermeulen is our esteemed Desert and Mountain Expert. Having crisscrossed the planet on a bicycle in every direction you can name, Mike has accumulated an awesome amount of bike touring experience. He has organized and completed over 30 long-distance, self-supported bike rides, ranging from 125 to over 12,000 miles in length! At the time of this page's writing, Mike is crossing Germany as part of his monumental bicycle expedition across Eurasia — from Amsterdam to Vladivostok (8,500 miles).