Board member Michelle Rella and Denise Rich
Grammy award winning songwriter Denise Rich celebrated with friends, board members and donors in victory at Tao Downtown on Monday, November 30th. Her Angel Ball 2015 raised $ 3.6 million for Gabrielle's Angel Foundation for Cancer Research. Radiant Denise shares her bittersweet journey to activism, "Next year will be 20 years since we started the Gabrielle's Angel Foundation in memory of my daughter Gabrielle who unfortunately passed from leukemia. Today she would have been alive because of all the advances that have been made. We have the glitz and glamour of the foundation. She loved the music so we always base it around the artists. This year we went to Miami and we had the medical symposium. We are one of the largest sources for non governmental funding for blood cancer research. We have over 163 researchers and we have given away $125 million since we began."
Our Story: Gabrielle's Angel Foundation for Cancer Research from Gabrielle's Angel Foundation on Vimeo.
Guests enjoyed Tao Downtown's signature dishes of crispy bao buns, beef satay, rock shrimp lettuce cups and an open bar to music in the decadent Pan Asian decor nightclub. 
Randi Schatz, Michael Trokel, Pamela Morgan
Tiffany Denee Jones with Coppy Holzman, Alicia Quarles and Cynthia Ott & James Coleman
Denise Rich has channeled any parent's nightmare into positive action. Gabrielle's Angel Foundation funds the nation's best science in the fields of leukemia, lymphoma, and related cancers of the blood. The foundation has expanded to include the funding of select pediatric oncology initiatives, music therapy programs, and international projects. Not one to rest on her laurels, the charity has an online auction at Charity Buzz for must haves like a six night stay at Ce Bleu for ten people in Anguilla, power lunch with Michael Lynton CEO of Sony Entertainment or a walk on role in the CBS show, "Scorpion" until December 17th, 2015.
(Photo Credit: Brian Ach/GettyImages.com)