My career started in advertising as an art director.
I was making ads 25/7 and trying to minimize the impact my disability had on my professional pursuits, but my condition was unexpectedly getting worse. Learning I had been misdiagnosed, I spiraled into something of a quarter life crisis. Piqued by my work on commercial and photo shoots, and a curiosity as to why I rarely saw people with disabilities in TV, film, and advertising, I began training as an actor. I figured that if we’re not seeing disability on screen, it’s not going to be because there aren’t qualified disabled performers to do the work.
As I developed as a storyteller, my confidence grew at just the right time for me to find adaptive sports. I learned how to play wheelchair basketball, tried out for a team and started going to tournaments. As I entered the para sport world, I soon found para swimming, which completely changed my life, and again I wondered why I hadn’t known about this sooner.
I started to do my best work when I started working with my disability, rather than trying to work around it.
It’s a huge part of what I bring to the table in any role—a lens that looks for who we haven’t noticed who can be a part of this and a voice that can reach them. With my years of marketing communications work done across various industries, complemented by a formative career transition that empowered me to show up and advocate for disability inclusion, I now tell impactful stories that inspire, educate, and create positive change, in all that I do.