Team Huron has been part of BellRinger since the first Ride in 2022. What began as a small group of colleagues has grown into a team that brings Riders to Washington, D.C., from across the country – New Jersey, Colorado, Illinois, New York, Texas, Massachusetts, the Pacific Northwest and throughout the D.C. region – just to name a few. They arrive with different connections to Huron, different levels of cycling experience, and deeply personal reasons for riding each year.
Team Captain Rick Rohrbach first learned about BellRinger through Huron’s longstanding work with Georgetown University and Georgetown Lombardi’s Comprehensive Cancer Center. His own connection to Georgetown and MedStar Health goes back decades, and his career has included extensive work with research institutions and cancer centers. When BellRinger was introduced, the opportunity brought several parts of his life together: a relationship with Georgetown, an investment in cancer research and a new interest in cycling that he had developed during the pandemic.
Rick traveled from New Jersey for the first Ride with a small group of Huron colleagues based around Washington, D.C. The experience convinced him that the team needed to return. As more colleagues heard about the weekend and the reasons behind it, participation began to build.
“After that second year, and with two really good years in a row, word spread quickly,” Rick said.
Huron has helped their employees from around the country participate by offsetting expenses such as travel, lodging and bike rentals. That support has made BellRinger an opportunity for colleagues who may not regularly work alongside one another to meet in person, spend the weekend as a team and contribute to a cause that resonates throughout the company.
“I don’t know anybody who hasn’t been touched in some way by cancer,” Rick said. “There are quite a few people on our team who are personally cancer survivors or who had recently lost loved ones.”
Rick is among them. He has lost his grandfather, aunt and sister to different forms of cancer, and he continues to see the disease affect friends and families around him. With each passing year, he said, the meaning behind BellRinger has become increasingly real. The weekend may be fun, but the reason Team Huron returns remains at the center of the experience.
Breanne Simkin’s path to Team Huron began years before her first BellRinger. With degrees in public health and clinical research, she began her career at the American Cancer Society, training volunteers to deliver patient support programs throughout North Florida. Cancer research and patient care remained part of her professional life, but the cause became deeply personal in 2020, when her mother was told she may have only weeks to live.
At the time, Breanne was living in St. Louis. She moved closer to her family in New York so she could help care for her mother. Years later, her mother is still with us—an outcome Breanne connects directly to the treatments made possible by cancer research.
Breanne later joined Huron with a career spanning public health, clinical research and higher education. When Rick invited colleagues to participate in BellRinger, she saw a chance to put her time, energy and resources behind work that had touched nearly every part of her life. She completed her first 25-mile Ride in 2024.
“If people who have cancer can do hard things, I can ride a bike for 25 miles,” Breanne said. “This really is not that big of a commitment on my behalf to show my dedication and support to the research and the hard work that this community is doing at Georgetown.”
BellRinger also introduced her to Huron colleagues she had never met. She arrived in Washington, D.C., with one coworker she knew and left with connections across the company. During the weekend, she also learned more about Georgetown Lombardi’s research and met students and leaders whose work is supported by the Ride. Seeing Genentech among BellRinger’s partners brought that impact even closer to home: one of its treatments has played a role in her mother’s care.
After participating virtually in 2025 because of work commitments, Breanne is returning in person for BellRinger’s fifth anniversary Ride this fall. She has registered for 25 miles and hopes to work toward 50, while continuing to recruit more Huron colleagues to join the team.
For Emily Clark-Walton and her sons, Quinn and Alex, BellRinger honors the memory of two people at the heart of their family.
Emily met her husband, Jeremy, while they were attending graduate school at the University of Washington. He became a neuroscience professor and received a Presidential Early Career Award, which gave him the opportunity to meet President Barack Obama. He was an enthusiastic teacher, a dedicated researcher and an avid cyclist who once built his own bike from individual parts.
Jeremy was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer in 2015. After multiple treatments and participation in a clinical trial, he ultimately passed in February of 2018. Through his illness, his sons, Quinn and Alex, remember a father who continued finding ways to get outside and remain active with them. He brought them onto local trails, led basketball drills in the family’s garage and filled their childhood with stories they still laugh about—including a trip to Discovery Park that ended with the boys helping carry him back to the car after he broke his leg playing football.
Emily joined Huron in 2021 and planned to attend her first BellRinger in 2024. Her plans changed when her mother entered hospice, also with colon cancer. Emily completed BellRinger virtually near home before her mother passed in November of that year.
In 2025, Emily asked Quinn and Alex whether they wanted to travel to Washington, D.C. and participate with her; they agreed without hesitation. The three flew across the country, completed the 25-mile route with Team Huron and spent the weekend reconnecting with friends in the area. They returned home already thinking about this year’s Ride, with Alex already considering the 50-mile route for 2026.
For the boys, BellRinger offers a way to carry forward what their father valued. Jeremy spent his career studying complex problems, understanding that scientific progress requires researchers, resources and people willing to support the work behind it.
“BellRinger is a symbolic way to provide support in other ways than just writing a check,” Quinn explained. “I think that even if it wasn’t cancer, even for anything that we believed in, I think that would make him proud. But the fact that this directly honors my dad… it’s everything”
Alex returned to the example Jeremy had set throughout his life and illness.
“He always loved to keep moving,” he said. “I think this is a way to just show him that that’s what we’re still doing. We’re still moving. We always will be for him.”
Emily also values the visibility BellRinger creates for people affected by cancer. Patients, survivors, caregivers, and those grieving loved ones may have different experiences, but seeing so many of them gathered in one place can make those experiences feel less isolating. As the wife of a researcher and a former researcher herself, she also understands how essential financial support is to scientific progress.
“You never know what piece of critical research is going to lead to the next breakthrough, and it’s why we honor him and all of those fighting in this way,” Emily said.
That shared belief in research is what connects the many individual stories within Team Huron. Rick looks forward to the Opening Ceremony, the team photos, the finish line, and even the post-Ride massages, but some of the most meaningful moments come from seeing why others participate. He makes time to read the messages Riders leave on the “Why I Ride” boards, each offering another reminder of what every mile and every dollar represents.
“It’s imperative we do something,” Rick said. “The more we can raise awareness, the more money that we can bring in. And hopefully, in our own small way, we can help make a difference.”
As BellRinger prepares for its fifth annual Ride, Team Huron continues to grow around that commitment. Its Riders come from across the country and carry many different names, memories and experiences with them. Through BellRinger, they have found a way to honor those stories while helping researchers pursue what comes next—and they continue to carry each other forward.
