Amy Purdy
Living Beyond Limits
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Amy Purdy has been through hardships that most of us will never face — or can even fathom. But what makes her story so incredible is not that fact that she lived a “normal” childhood and spent her high school years as a passionate artist and snowboarder, then traumatically lost both her legs at age 19, but how she has persevered, taking implausible challenges and rising above them.
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At 19, after experiencing flu-like symptoms, Amy was rushed to the hospital in a state of septic shock. En route, she experienced respiratory and multiple organ failure which caused her to lose circulation to her extremities. When she entered into the hospital she was given less than a 2% chance of survival, put on life support and placed into a coma. After multiple blood transfusions, and the removal of her ruptured spleen, doctors diagnosed Amy with Meningococcal Meningitis, a vaccine preventable bacterial infection. Due to the lack of circulation she had suffered doctors had to amputate her legs below the knee. She later received a donated kidney from her father a week before her 21st birthday.
After going through this life-altering experience, Amy challenged herself to move on with her life and attain goals that even those who have both legs struggle to achieve. Just three months after her kidney transplant, Amy entered the USASA National Snowboarding Championship where she won medals in three events. Today, she is one of the top ranked adaptive snowboarders in the world, and was the 2014 Paralympic Bronze Medalist. She is the only double leg amputee competing at the world class level.
Amy’s creativity, positive outlook and her never give up attitude have opened doors to many other opportunities including being featured in a Madonna music video, a lead actress role in an award winning independent film and multiple creative modeling projects including a photo shoot with musician and artist Nikki Sixx where her legs were custom made from steel to look like ice picks.
Amy has evolved into a powerful inspirational and motivational speaker who has literally been seen by millions of people and invited to share her story to audiences around the world.
Amy’s story and images have been featured in numerous national and international publications, and in 2012 she and her longtime boyfriend, Daniel Gale, raced around the world on The Amazing Race.
In May of 2013 Amy was named by the International Olympic Committee as one of the top 15 most marketable Para-athletes in the world.
Although Amy has numerous accomplishments, she is most proud of co-founding Adaptive Action Sports. Created in 2005, AAS is a non-profit organization which helps those with permanent disabilities to get involved in action sports. AAS has partnered with ESPN and runs “adaptive”action sport competitions at the summer and winter ESPN X Games. These events were instrumental in getting adaptive snowboarding added to the 2014 Paralympic Games. It was there that Amy reached the pinnacle of her athletic career, winning the Paralympic bronze medal as part of Team USA.
In the Spring of 2014, Amy inspired millions of fans with her stunning performances on ABC’s Dancing With The Stars, eventually becoming the show’s runner up. She followed that by sharing her remarkable story on a national tour alongside Oprah Winfrey, as part of Oprah’s The Life You Want Tour.
Next up was the release of Amy’s memoir, “On My Own Two Feet”, which quickly became a NY Times Best Seller and has since been published in numerous languages around the world.
In February, Amy was featured in a critically acclaimed Superbowl commercial along with Muhammad Ali on behalf of Toyota. Later that month she drove the pace car at the Dayton 500.
Amy is now in the process of launching her own clothing line, The Amy Purdy Collection, in partnership with Element Eden (due out for Spring 2016).
Attitude – Amy Talks about attitude and how it’s our perspective that creates the world that we live in.
Innovation – Amy talks about innovation and how challenges and obstacles can either stop you in your tracks or force you to get creative.
Motivational – Amy’s story of losing her legs and how she learned to push off of her obstacles and thrive as a professional snowboarder, entrepreneur and philanthropist.
Vision/purpose – Amy talks about how visualization and power of imagination leads to innovation and purpose.
Stress – After losing both legs, kidneys and the life she knew, Amy is able to give an insight on stress with humorous stories and real life techniques to manage it.
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