Rogliano family bolsters support with $250,000 for gait study Center
People with Parkinson’s disease in Greater Richmond — and those beyond the region — can be thankful to count Gary Rogliano among their ranks. Diagnosed with PD in May 2018, Rogliano is a highly successful entrepreneur who in the last nearly seven years has made fighting the disease — and helping fund research into preventing it — his primary venture.
“I was lucky in business, so I figured let me try to give it back to help the people with Parkinson’s,” Rogliano said recently from his estate in Goochland County, Va. During his career, Rogliano was involved in global ventures and industries, even founding an airline.
Today, he is founder and chairman of Power Over Parkinson’s, or POP. The Richmond-based nonprofit offers exercise, education and socialization for people with PD and other neurodegenerative disorders. His daughter, Margaret Preston (who lives across a wooded stream beside his home), serves as president.
POP’s goal: Reduce PD symptoms, slow the progression of disease and give people living with the condition a connection to others with PD through events and activities around town. Many of its events are in partnership with the VCU Parkinson’s and Movement Disorders Center (PMDC) and its specialists. Rogliano says POP helps fill the gap between doctors’ visits and multiple-times-daily medication doses for patients, giving them an outlet to build relationships with others living with the condition.
And in 2024, the Rogliano family deepened their commitment to the cause, with a $250,000 gift to the PMDC. Their funding will create the Gait Collective at VCU to study freezing of gait.
Typically, gait is an autonomic movement people don’t think about; PD patients, like Rogliano in recent years, often must think about how to move, walk or get in or out of bed. He notes that small changes in the floor — from carpet to wood, for example — cause him to freeze and consider how to maneuver from one material to the other.
“We have only limited time with patients, so creating a Gait Collective will help us more thoroughly analyze people’s walking problems, the root causes, look at data and trends and really come up with a comprehensive plan to help people dealing with gait,” says Leslie Cloud, M.D., who serves as the Rogliano Family Endowed Chair and directs the PMDC’s Parkinson’s disease program.
The gift will support research grants and collect additional contributions to build on the initial funding. Hopefully, the work out of the Gait Collective will someday lead to a helpful product or therapeutic to combat gait issues, Preston says. Cloud notes calling the initiative a Gait “Collective” means it’s open to other gait experts around the world for research collaboration.
Beyond the gift to the PMDC, Preston and her father continue to build POP. Its Parkinson’s Activity League (PAL) brings people with PD together at regular events. PAL is free to attend for people with PD, “and is one of my favorite programs because that’s really where the relationships happen,” Preston says. “Because you cannot feel alone in navigating this disease. At PAL, you’re among your people. It’s a support group on steroids.”
POP has expanded from four wellness and exercise classes a week to 10 between Henrico and Chesterfield counties. POP also holds educational seminars throughout the year tailored to community interests (a recent educational event discussed “Parkinson’s burnout” to address the constant demands of minding meds, exercise, nutrition and even talking about the disease).
“Gary and his family’s impact is so much greater than only VCU,” Cloud says. “What they do for people with Parkinson’s disease is unparalleled. They have provided people with PD a community that wasn’t here before and are providing opportunities for people to engage in beneficial activities while building that sense of community.”
Rogliano’s only requirement for those who participate in POP’s programs: Exercise. Cardio, in particular, is one of the only methods of slowing PD’s progression. “I don’t care what you do or where you do it, just do it,” says Rogliano, who works out at least two hours a day — treadmill, weights, swimming and boxing. He even exercises at his home gym or pool before attending POP classes.
“We charge nothing for anything we do. I don’t want anybody not to get what they need because of financial conditions.
That’s off the table,” he says. “We want people to get the care they need without any financial barriers.” And, he jokes: “If you don’t like it, I’ll give you your money back.”