Mark McWhinney describes himself as “just the classic Silicon Valley nerd,” but this tech nerd’s life reads like an adventure story.

As part of an employee highlight for GetInsured, where he’s worked since 2014, McWhinney shared the following list:

• I ran (mostly dropped) from the top of Machu Picchu to the valley floor as I raced the locals for money. I lost.

• I was a foreign exchange student in Peru.

• I broke my leg as an infant when I put my leg through the spokes of my mother’s bike. I broke my leg playing basketball. I broke my leg on the first run on the first day of a seven-day ski trip. I broke my leg falling downstairs at HP. I fell down the stairs at the top of the Eiffel Tower but did not break a leg.

• I slid down a glacier in Canada on purpose.

• I swam with sharks in Hawaii but not on purpose.

As a child, McWhinney marched for human rights with Martin Luther King Jr. Throughout his career, he’s worked at a DMV, worked as a missionary at Wounded Knee, and has worked for some impressive Silicon Valley companies. His major hobby has been racing cars, which he describes as “fixing cars and occasionally taking them on a track.” He also once had a pet goose.

“I seem to have had a lot of just oddball adventures in life,” McWhinney said. “Some silly things as well as some serious things.”

One of the serious things—McWhinney has stage four colon cancer. “Of course, another little story,” he said when sharing about his diagnosis in 2019. “I’ve been a vegetarian for twelve or thirteen years now, and constipation is not something vegetarians generally deal with. One day, about three years ago, basically I was just kind of clogged up there and I went to urgent care and got a CT scan. I got my results immediately … I had a very large tumor in my large intestine—colon—blocking things. About a five-centimeter tumor there. They also found a tumor in my liver.”

As senior director of Operations and IT, McWhinney plays an integral role at GetInsured, a Mountain View-based health insurance technology and customer service company. GetInsured supports state-based marketplaces and exchanges stemming from the Affordable Care Act.

“Catastrophic diseases and health issues, besides just being tragically difficult for individuals with families, are extremely costly,” says McWhinney. “For families to be covered by insurance they otherwise couldn’t obtain—we are saving lives. People who are not getting care can have a very different health outcome than those who are covered.”

When Jennifer Milner, GetInsured’s director of communications, read McWhinney’s LinkedIn post, it hit her particularly hard because—not only was McWhinney a close colleague—but  she had recently lost her father to cancer.

“I’m always very impressed with the way Mark strings words together,” she said. “He’s just been so positive, and it’s just such a testament to his character. I knew we had to do something.”

She had the idea to start an employee fundraiser in McWhinney’s honor and donate the total to the charity of McWhinney’s choice. GetInsured mobilized its fundraising efforts and elicited donations from employees across the country — even outside the company. Per the company’s donation matching policy, donations up to $250 for each employee were matched.

“It was fairly effortless,” Krishnan said. “People just really came together and said, ‘Okay, this is something that Mark wants to support, and we’re there.’ It was heartwarming to see.”

After reflecting on his life and his oddball adventures, McWhinney chose Make-A-Wish Greater Bay Area as the beneficiary of the fundraiser, hoping to give children going through similar hardship some adventures and experiences of their own.

“When you’re older…you’ve been through a lot of life,” he said. “Whereas with a child… they haven’t had the adventures, they haven’t had the ins and outs and ups and downs of life. They need something to look forward to. They can be in the bed or the chair feeling awful, but to say, ‘Hey we’re going to Disneyland in a few weeks. I can see Mickey.’ You know, that's something to look forward to and then the experience itself, of course, is wonderful.”

On average, it costs $11,000 to fulfill a wish for a child. In McWhinney’s honor, the company raised enough money to adopt two wishes: Emma, age 4, and Julia, age 6, who both wished to go to the Walt Disney World Resort® for the first time and meet their favorite characters.

“Mark’s amazingly positive spirit in the face of incredible hardship is so inspiring for our staff, volunteers, wish kids, and for me personally,” said Make-A-Wish Greater Bay Area CEO Betsy Biern. “We’re so grateful to GetInsured and everyone who donated in Mark’s honor. It’s truly a testament to the power of hope and joy and the strength that community can bring us.”

McWhinney continues to recover from his last surgery, but as always, is in good spirits and is enjoying what each day brings him—be it a funny little story or an odd adventure.