A night about children, college, and the kind of community that outlasts a uniform
On Saturday, June 20, 2026, the Waldorf Astoria in Washington, D.C. hosted the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation’s 39th Annual National Capital Area Celebratory Gala. There is a moment at every gala of this kind when the room stops performing and starts remembering why it came. At this one, that moment did not belong to a sponsor or a speaker. It belonged to the children. Sons and daughters of Marines and Navy Corpsmen, many of them the first in their families to set foot on a college campus, were the entire point of the evening. Everything else in the room, the leadership, the legacy, the capital, existed in service of them.
VigilanteX was there. Not as a logo on a banner, but as people who understand exactly what that room represents.
The Foundation: a promise made in 1962, kept ever since
The Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation is the nation’s oldest and largest provider of need-based scholarships to military children. Its mission is stated plainly enough to fit on a challenge coin: Honoring Marines by Educating Their Children. The framing of the 2026 campaign sharpens the point even further. When you invest in the child of a Marine, you invest in America’s future.
The origin story matters, because it explains the character of the institution. The Foundation was founded in 1962 by a group of Marines who refused to let a fellow Marine’s child go without an education. More than six decades later, that single act of refusing to leave a family behind has grown into something staggering in scale and disciplined in execution.
The numbers are not decoration. They are the proof of work:
- Since 1962, nearly 61,000 scholarships awarded, valued at more than $235 million.
- A 91 percent graduation rate among recipients, against a national figure closer to 56 percent.
- In the National Capital Area alone this year, more than $700,000 awarded to 173 students across D.C., Maryland, and Virginia.
- A scholarship program that is intentionally need-based, structured to reach the students with the most need rather than the most access.
A scholarship from this Foundation is not charity handed down. It is a debt of honor paid forward, generation to generation, by people who decided long ago that no Marine family gets left behind.
The evening’s honors
This is a Foundation event, so the recognition was deliberate and narrow. The evening’s Semper Fidelis Award was presented to Gregory M. Shumaker, Managing Partner of Jones Day, in recognition of a career and a commitment that extend well beyond the firm. The Military Guest of Honor was General Eric M. Smith, the 39th Commandant of the United States Marine Corps. NBC News senior national security correspondent Courtney Kube served as Master of Ceremonies, and the distinguished guests included Medal of Honor recipient Colonel Harvey C. “Barney” Barnum Jr., USMC (Ret.).
But the voice that carried the most weight in the room belonged to none of them. It belonged to Kieron Kane, a University of Michigan physics student, son of a Marine Gunnery Sergeant, and a Marine Scholar who reminded everyone present what the math on every donation actually buys: a future.
The table VigilanteX brought
If you want to understand a company, look at who it sends, and look at who stands beside them.
VigilanteX was represented by its CEO, Lieutenant General Brian Cavanaugh, USMC (Ret.); co-founders Aaron Wallace and Cody Gross; Chief Strategy Officer Philip Quade; and advisory board member Lieutenant General Lori Reynolds, USMC (Ret.), along with their spouses. On paper it reads like a guest list. In a room built around Marine families, it reads like a homecoming.
Lieutenant General Brian Cavanaugh, USMC (Ret.) did not arrive at this cause as an outsider. A United States Naval Academy graduate and Marine aviator, he commanded at every operational level across more than 35 years of service, retiring at the three-star rank of Lieutenant General. He led HMH-362 during Operation Iraqi Freedom and commanded Marine Aircraft Group 36, overseeing disaster relief operations across Asia, before his final assignment as Commanding General of Fleet Marine Force, Atlantic. The decisions he made for most of his career were ultimately about the same thing the Foundation is about: getting people home to their families.
Lieutenant General Lori Reynolds, USMC (Ret.) knows that room from the inside, and not only as a guest. She also retired at the three-star rank of Lieutenant General, after a 35-year career, and was the third woman in Marine Corps history to attain it. As a Naval Academy graduate and a leader who commanded Marines at every level, she oversaw the Corps’ East Coast recruiting enterprise and the training of 20,000 new Marines a year at Parris Island, then went on to command Marine Corps Forces Cyberspace Command and to serve as the Corps’ first Deputy Commandant for Information, standing up an entirely new warfighting function. She also sits on the Board of Directors of the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation itself. When VigilanteX shows up for this mission, it does so with someone who helps steer it.
Philip Quade rounds out the national-security depth in the room from a different direction. Before the private sector, he spent more than 30 years at the National Security Agency, culminating as the NSA Director’s Special Assistant for Cyber and Chief of the NSA Cyber Task Force, the role that carried the agency’s relationship with the White House on national cyber strategy and operations. He later served as Chief Information Security Officer of Fortinet, an S&P 500 cybersecurity company, during a period of extraordinary growth, and is the author of The Digital Big Bang. He has spent a career thinking about how to protect the things a nation cannot afford to lose.
Co-founders Aaron Wallace and Cody Gross complete the picture. Wallace brings nearly 25 years in real estate and construction. Gross came up through the renewable-energy and technology world, scaling large operations before turning entrepreneur. Their presence is the reminder that this is a company where field-ready builders and battle-tested commanders sit at the same table.
This is what “executives beyond the desk” actually means. Strip away the titles and the cap tables, and you have a CEO, a strategist, two founders, and an advisor who chose to spend a Saturday night standing with families who have already given more than most of the country will ever be asked to give.
Why we showed up
VigilanteX is not the Marine Corps. It is a company led by executives who share a simple set of beliefs: you take care of your people, you take care of their families, and you invest in the ones who come next.
Our work is about looking ahead. The technology we build watches a site in real time, but the purpose behind it is always what comes next: preventing the next incident and getting people home safe. Supporting a child’s education comes from that same instinct, just on a longer timeline. You invest in a student you may never meet, trusting that the opportunity you help create today becomes a surgeon, an engineer, a teacher, or a Marine tomorrow. The reward shows up years later, and you had the privilege of making a fraction of a difference in someone’s life.
The Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation has understood this since 1962. It was built on a simple belief, that a community is measured by how well it takes care of its children, and it has kept that promise for generations. It is what Semper Fidelis looks like in practice: honoring Marines by educating their children. We believe in that mission completely.
Those same values guide how we try to operate every day. We work as a team. We value character as much as capability. And we measure success by what happens to people, not by a list of features: people kept safe, and people brought home. The technology is only the tool. The people are what matter.
So this was not philanthropy as an afterthought. It was a company putting its name on a future it believes in, beside families who already paid for ours. We are honored to stand with the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation, and we intend to keep standing with it.
The long game
Galas end. Lights come up, programs get folded into coat pockets, the valet line forms. What remains is the part that was never about the evening at all: a student somewhere who will register for classes, walk across a stage, and build a life because a community of strangers decided, long before that student was born, that this is simply what we do for one another.
VigilanteX is proud to be one small part of that community. We joined, and we will keep showing up, because we care, and because the measure of an organization is not only what it builds. It is who it stands beside.
From all of us at VigilanteX: to the United States Marine Corps, thank you. To the families, who so often bear an equal share of the sacrifice, thank you. And to the children who will go on to help shape the future of the world we wish you nothing but good luck.
To learn more about the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation, visit mcsf.org.
