In 2000, Alana Nichols suffered a spinal cord injury while attempting a backflip on her snowboard. Although paralyzed from the waist down, Alana’s athletic career wouldn’t be suppressed for long. While taking classes at the University of New Mexico, a short cut through the gym turned into a chance encounter with a pickup basketball game—a pickup game in wheelchairs. The fierce play and hard fouls convinced Alana that she was out of excuses and it was time to hit the court.
By 2004, Alana was a Paralympic alternate and in 2008, won her first Gold medal. And then Alana did the unheard of; while training for basketball, she was also training on her mono-ski. So much, in fact, that she made the 2010 Vancouver squad and won two golds, a silver, and a bronze. This would officially make her the first woman to take golds in both the Summer and Winter games.
Alana is currently training to compete in sprint kayaking in the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio. This 4-time Paralympian has also become a surfer and recently competed as a member of Team USA at the first International Surfing Association’s Adaptive Surfing Championship in La Jolla.

National speaker, Millennial expert and best-selling author, Lindsey Pollak has more than a decade of experience advising young people and organizations on the changing world of work. She is the author of New York Times best-seller “Becoming the Boss: New Rules for the Next Generation of Leaders” and “Getting from College to Career: Your Essential Guide to Succeeding in the Real World.” Her advice has appeared in The New York Times, Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, The TODAY Show, Forbes, and NPR. She serves as the chair of Cosmopolitan magazine's Millennial Advisory Board. Pollak appears on several ”Best People to Follow on Twitter” lists, including Mashable's list of “20 Twitter Resources for Job Hunters” and Marie Claire‘s “100 Twitters Every Woman Should Follow.” She has been named to the 2014 and 2013 “Top 10 List of Leaders in College and University Career Services” by the Career Services Insights Survey. Her website is on Forbes' “Top 100 Websites for Your Career.”