Our Story

Overcoming his own personal adversity helped define A+C’s founder Rob Canton’s passion for helping others. A first-generation American, Rob’s mother and father fled the oppression of Castro’s Cuba in 1959 and 1961, and from the time he was born in Long Beach, California through his childhood growing up in Luna County, New Mexico—then and still now one of the poorest counties in the U.S.—he learned that, through hard work, dedication and perseverance, the struggles of poverty are not insurmountable and he worked his way to his first college degree. Life dealt Rob a second blow as he was finishing his undergraduate finance degree at the University of South Florida, when he was diagnosed with Type 1 (Juvenile) Diabetes and began the routine of four to six injections of insulin daily. Revealing that there is truth behind the cliché: “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” Rob learned resilience as he used these experiences to help guide him to become the national leader of the Sports and Tourism practice at the world’s largest professional services firm—PricewaterhouseCoopers—serving clients such as the New York Yankees, the Walt Disney Company, and the National Football League. Rob later left consulting and in 2012 became EVP Finance and Strategy for the NHL’s Tampa Bay Lightning.

It was soon after joining the Tampa Bay Lightning that Rob was asked to co-Chair the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation’s (JDRF) annual Gala. That year’s record-setting event was helped significantly by the development of a partner event to the Gala that Rob created that would be hosted by three local professional athletes, representing Major League Baseball, the National Football League, and the National Hockey League, whose lives were also affected by Type-One Diabetes (T1D) and that Rob convinced to join him. The first Athletes+Causes event was born out of the desire to engage high-profile athletes to support Juvenile Diabetes, but Rob didn’t stop there.

Realizing first-hand that the platform the Lightning provided to Rob and that the NHL, NBA, and MLB provided to his three host at the inaugural event, made it clear that George Clooney was on the right track when he said “If Celebrity is a credit card, then I’m using it.” Rob leveraged the success of the inaugural event to create Athletes and Causes, a 501(c)(3) public charity, that is focused on getting athletes, coaches and artists to understand their own philanthropic passions and help them leverage their platform and celebrity to positively impact the lives of others.