AMBITION Special Guest

Dave McGillivray is a U.S.-based road race director, philanthropist, author, and athlete. In 1978, he ran across the U.S. to benefit the Jimmy Fund and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He is currently the race director of the Boston Athletic Association (B.A.A.) Boston Marathon and his team at DMSE Sports, Inc. have organized more than 1,000 mass-participatory endurance events since he founded the organization in 1981.

McGillivray created DMSE Sports, Inc. in 1981, a firm that manages mass participatory road race events such as marathons, half marathons, 10Ks, 5-milers, 5Ks, and charity walks.

He has worked with the Boston Marathon since 1988, first as technical director, and then as race director beginning in 2001. In 1998, Olympic Gold Medalist Joan Benoit Samuelson tapped him to become the first race director of the TD Beach To Beacon 10K Road Race in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. Other races McGillivray and his team manage include the Bellin 10K Run in Green Bay, Wisconsin; the B.A.A. Half Marathon/10K/5K; Across the Bay 10K; the Boston Marathon Jimmy Fund Walk; the Runner's World Festival & Half; the Mount Washington Road Race; the Feaster Five Thanksgiving Day Road Race; and as of 2012, the New Balance Falmouth Road Race. DMSE has also created several races, including the Fenway Park Marathon (the first marathon to be run entirely within a ballpark since the 1923 race inside the newly constructed Yankees Stadium that had 38 participants running 115 laps), Run to Home Base (Fenway Park; Boston), Harvard Pilgrim Finish at the Fifty (Gillette Stadium; Foxboro, Massachusetts). In 2003, McGillivray created the DMSE Children’s Fitness Foundation to support non-profit organizations that use running to promote physical fitness in children.

In 2006, McGillivray wrote “The Last Pick”with writer Linda Glass Fechter, chronicling his childhood as the last pick for team sports because of his small stature, telling readers never to underestimate their own ability to set and achieve goals. The book also covers his life as an athlete and race director. In 2018, he and his co-author, Nancy Feehrer, published the first of their illustrated children's books. "Dream Big: A True Story of Courage and Determination " is the nonfiction story about reaching deep and showing extreme determination in the face of doubt, disappointment, and loss. Their second children's book was published in 2019. "Running Across America" chronicles McGillivray's 1978 run across the contiguous United States. In 2021, they published their third illustrated book, "Finish Strong: Seven Marathons, Seven Continents, Seven Days," which tells the adventure of McGillivray's 2018 World Marathon Challenge adventure.

In 2021, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, McGillivray, along with his team at DMSE Sports, were tapped by CIC Health to oversee logistics for mass vaccination sites at Gillette Stadium, Fenway Park, Reggie Lewis Center, Hynes Convention Center.