Benjamin James Anderson Gallacher ’16

Benjamin James Anderson Gallacher ’16 was awarded the UMass Outstanding Young Alumni Award, which honors graduates within the last 10 years who have demonstrated accelerated career progression and used their UMass education in a quest for excellence. Ben has done just that.

Since graduation, he’s been busy. He co-founded and is now a principal at Blue Deer, an exempt market dealer headquartered in Toronto, Canada, that provides advisory services to mission-driven entrepreneurs.

He also is co-founder and executive chairman at Voxel AI, a company helping patients assess brain trauma more effectively. Then there’s his work at Cannonball Capital, a Canadian family office, where he is the venture capital and private equity advisor. He also serves as a director at the medical device software and design firm Orthogonal and the bioelectronic therapies company Panaxium, and is a board observer at Butler Hospitality.

Outside of work, Ben is co-founder of the Lace ’Em Up Foundation for Kids, a charity that helps financially disadvantaged children play hockey. He is director of the Cannonball Sport and Education Foundation, and co-chair of the Breakthrough Fund, a venture philanthropy initiative through SickKids Hospital, both organizations he co-founded.

Ben has been active as a director on the UMass Amherst Foundation, generously giving to the Pond Club and the Men’s Hockey Excellence Fund. That may be because even before coming to play for the Minutemen, Ben strove for excellence. Selected by the Florida Panthers in the fourth round of the 2010 National Hockey League Draft, he went on to play in 42 games with the Green Bay Gamblers of the U.S. Hockey League. His coach John Micheletto said this about Ben’s winning attributes, which seems to hold true: “He’s a great teammate, first of all, a guy who comes in with a really great attitude every day and comes with a lot of energy.”