In October of 2023, I had a paragliding accident that resulted in a T12/L1 spinal cord injury (SCI). My life suddenly looked completely different than it had the day before. I first heard about Unite 2 Fight Paralysis (U2FP) through Quinn Brett. I had been following Quinn’s SCI journey on Instagram for a few years. When I learned about a movie event she was hosting in Colorado in May of 2024, I decided to check it out. She spoke about her work with U2FP and mentioned their Annual Science and Advocacy Symposium, which would be happening in Atlanta later that year. I was intrigued, so I signed up and went. I'll be honest, U2FP’s Symposium was a reality check. It helped me begin to understand the complexity of...

The Federal Government’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is proposing new rules for how they review, prioritize, and disburse federal grants. There is strong consensus across the scientific and advocacy communities that this proposed rule will have a significant negative impact on SCI research going forward. It is imperative that you and everyone you know in the spinal cord injury community push back against these proposals by writing a public comment on the...

On June 15th I had the honor of delivering a keynote address to several hundred researchers at the 43rd Annual National Neurotrauma Society Conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. To prepare my presentation, I asked myself: “If you had a giant billboard you could put up on the research interstate highway, what message would you want everyone to see?” After much deliberation to land on a singular, critical topic, I decided to be blunt, honest and just say everything...