A Story of Challenge and a Story of Strength

It has always been fascinating to me how the way we are viewed by the world can only vaguely resemble the way we view ourselves. I am many things and am seen in many, sometimes contradictory ways. I am a PhD and an Associate Professor at Stony Brook University, where I teach and study health policy and medical ethics. This is where I make a living, but it is also the very same place that saved my life. In September, 1990, I was hit by a car while walking home from school. I was crossing a major highway nestled in the Long Island suburbs and, in that accident, suffered innumerable injuries that have affected my life in immeasurable ways. But, I was a fighter. I am a fighter. My disability in no way compromises that. In fact, my disability amplifies that.

Details of my life and experiences that my family have undergone have been chronicled and relayed in narrative and cinematic form. I received my undergraduate degree in cognitive neuroscience from Harvard University, and then returned to Harvard to do my Master in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. A lover of mobilizing change, I ran for New York State Senate in 2006 and followed that with the creation of a nonprofit organization, the Brooke Ellison Project, designed to provide education about stem cell research. I'm now a scholar. I'm now a researcher. I am now a professor.

But, I am a fighter. My life has been shaped by challenges and adversity of all different kinds, but it has not been characterized by them. I am not defined by them. For every obstacle I have sought opportunity. In each instance of sorrow I have sought strength. When there has been challenge and adversity I have looked for resilience and hope. That is what I want people to know about me, as that is how I see myself. That is also what I want people to know about themselves, as that is how I view the world.