Before my injuries in Iraq, I was an engineer, spending my free time with my family, long distance running, and piloting an airplane. Following the loss of my right arm in Iraq on New Year's day in 2005, the most basic of things became a challenge: writing my name, putting on a pair of pants in the morning, tying my shoes, cutting a steak. After putting up a ceiling fan that Spring with my 5 year old son, I realized that as long as I was patient enough, I could do whatever I wanted. By the end of the year, I was back doing many of the things I had before my injuries. I had also found a new calling in life. Realizing the deficiencies in arm prostheses, I had begun work as an engineer on the DARPA Revolutionizing Prosthetics 2009 program, and started a non-profit called The Shared Design Alliance Open Prosthetics Project to address the lack of innovation in arm prosthetics.

     While my professional goal is to improve the technology amputees all over the world use to replace their arms, I have a new personal goal as well. People are incredibly resilient, and we are capable of doing nearly anything we set our minds to. People with disabilities have a greater set of challenges, and while the road may be longer and harder, have just as few limits to what we can achieve. Climbing Denali is a task that many able bodied folks would never undertake. By being part of a team tackling that task while sharing the additional challenges of disability, I hope to inspire others with similar challenges. I hope as well to remove the limits placed on their expectations of what they can achieve. This won't make getting dressed, eating, or anything else any easier, but it's my hope that it will make any challenge seem possible, and less of a chore to undertake.