Petros Koumantaros’ father, Pano, came to the U.S. from Greece in 1970 to pursue the American dream. From all signs, he completed that goal, with a successful career in pension consulting and a family with two sons.

The company he founded, Spectrum Pension Consultants, still exists today and is run by his sons Petros and Yannis Koumantaros.

In 2005, however, Pano Koumantaros was diagnosed with cancer. Son Petros, who was working for Intel at the time, came home to support the family and join his brother, Yannis, and mother, Maria, at the family firm.

But just six months after the diagnosis of bladder cancer, Pano passed away.

“My father was one of these wonderful people—very much a larger-than-life personality,” Petros Koumantaros says. “He loved cooking, he loved good wine, he loved entertaining … that was the kind of person that he was.”

Beyond missing their father, the family was also faced with running what had become a successful pension consulting and investment business.

“We recognized at the time that he passed on that we had incredibly large shoes to fill from a leadership perspective,” he says.

Things eventually worked out, as Koumantaros is now managing director and CEO of the firm, along with being a financial consultant with Intellicents, and his brother Yannis is managing director and CFO of Spectrum Pension Consultants. But while their roles with the firm eventually blossomed—they have also spearheaded a project in their father’s memory that has grown alongside their careers.

“We wanted to do something in my father’s memory,” Petros says. “That’s when we decided to launch a cancer research fund in his name.”

A Memorable Event

Before Pano had passed, he had also expressed interest in the family doing something to help others fight the disease that would take his life. So, the Koumantaros brothers and their mother started a fund with a partner organization in Tacoma, Washington, and eventually spun it out into its own 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

In August of 2006, the family started a charitable golf and dinner event to raise funds to fight cancer. They have run that event every year since but for once, when they did a virtual event during the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to Petros, it has “become quite the event,” with friends, family, clients and colleagues gathering every year to enjoy themselves and raise money for cancer research, care and treatment initiatives. All told, that fundraiser, along with other efforts throughout the year, has raised $1.7 million for the Pano Koumantaros Cancer Research Fund.

The focus of those funds, Petros says, is mostly regional. Even though Spectrum Pension Consultants has become a national organization, the family has decided to focus the fund on the Pacific Northwest as that was their father’s home.

“We recognized the impact that cancer has tragically had, not just on our family, but others,” he says. “It’s unfortunate, but when people go through tragic experiences themselves, I think they become more in-tune, more empathetic, to tragedies that hit other families as well.”

Funding Hope

The charity’s focus areas over the years have reflected that desire to help people going through the experience the Koumantaros’ had. One example is the purchase of “sleeper chairs” for people spending a lot of time in the hospital while their family members are being cared for. Another is funding for clinical trials and care for bladder cancer, which Panos Koumantaros passed away from.

The fund has supported summer camps for kids who are fighting cancer, as well as a survivorship program to provide ongoing support for families who have lost members to cancer.

The family also hired an executive director, Liz Truong, who brought nonprofit expertise to the running of the fund and the charitable events.  

Koumantaros notes that, while the fund started mostly from Pano’s personal network, support from the retirement industry in its nearly 20-year history has grown to the point where some clients and partners are sponsors of the fund. The charity is also truly tied to Spectrum Pension Consultants, he says, with staff members from around the country attending and volunteering at the annual event.

“It has become part of how our company gives back as well,” he says. “If we wanted something sustainable, we needed it to go beyond the immediate social circle, even though that circle was so crucial to getting it off the ground in those early years.”

Koumantaros says that, while the fund has taken time and energy, it has paid back in many ways. For other advisers who are interested in doing charitable work, he recommends finding an area of focus that they are passionate about as it will be easy to commit. For Koumantaros, that focus has been honoring his father by helping others deal with the effects of cancer.

“My father came to this country to realize the American dream,” Koumantaros says. “For people who work incredibly hard and make the sacrifices that are necessary, that American dream can be realized. And to the extent that you’ve benefited from this wonderful society that we have, I think it’s incumbent upon all of us to do our part to pay it forward.”