2021 Seminar: Boost Your Impact

Day 1: Personal Leadership & Group Leadership

Personal Leadership Keynote: Lacey Henderson 

From a promising young athlete to a girl battling the rarest form of cancer to an Olympic Games participant, Lacey Henderson's story is one of maddening hardship, inspiring perseverance and overcoming adversity. 

After being diagnosed with synovial sarcoma (so rare at the time of Lacey's diagnosis that there was literally no survival rate) at nine years old, Lacey had her right leg amputated above the knee and went through years of physical therapy and childhood ridicule. She received a cheerleading scholarship to the University of Denver before becoming a long jumper for Team USA. Lacey is a six-time USA National Champion in the long jump, the world record holder in the pole vault and the American record holder in the long jump. Lacey also participated in the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. More recently, Lacey earned a silver medal at the 2019 Pan American Games in Peru. She is currently training for the 2021 USA Trials in Minneapolis, MN and the 2021 Paralympic Games in Tokyo. 

In addition to being a world-class athlete, Lacey is a passionate advocate for health, fitness, nutrition, child advocacy and living one's best life! She started working with children with limb difference in 2010 and continues to use her athletic and social platform to normalize disability in society. In June 2019, Lacey and DCP Entertainment premiered the first season of her podcast, "Picked Last in Gym Class", which celebrates the adversity that people have overcome before finding success. In 2020, Lacey hosted Microsoft's "In Culture" series, featuring New Orleans Saints legend Steve Gleason, among others. Lacey is an expert in hosting, comedy, camps/clinics, DEI initiatives and has powerfully spoken in many team and corporate settings, such as SDSU Athletics, Ted Talk and Qualcomm Headquarters.

Group Leadership

Impact Panel: Reyn Aubrey, Heidi Andringa, Sara Whitestone

“If you have a Passion, don’t wait to get started”

Sara Whitestone

Sara Whitestone, MSc, first joined Southwest Ohio HOBY as an ambassador in 2010. In 2012, after a sudden viral-induced onset of disability, Sara and her fellow HOBY volunteers started a not-for-profit association, Sara Spins. Sara Spins is dedicated to raising both awareness and the necessary funds for assistive devices for students with disabilities pursuing their higher education. To this day, they have raised over $35,000. Currently, Sara is based in Bordeaux, France working for a MedTech start-up.

Reyn Aubrey

Reyn Aubrey is the CEO of PocketChange, Social Media That Makes Things Better. "Society is more divided, more hateful, and more fed up and frustrated than ever before. Social Media 1.0 accelerated this mess, and social media 2.0 can get us out of it." Reyn runs the product team, working with talented individuals to create products that will empower people. They have built everything from a mobile app that allows action from every app on your phone, an embeddable button for brands, influencers and charities to integrate with PocketChange, a chrome extension and an Alexa skill. PocketChange has built the first ever place for individuals to host their cause identity - to share who they truly are based on what they care about.

Reyn also loves to show the world the products they build, coordinating large scale launch campaigns, working with influencers & press, building and designing ad strategies, and conducting it all into cohesive and focused plans.

Before PocketChange, Reyn built a few small ventures including a consumer products company that sold the popular two wheel self balancing ‘hoverboards’. This venture ended up outselling Walmart & Target in his home state of Hawaii. Reyn was named one of the Top 25 innovators under 25 in Colorado, and you can read more about him and the amazing PocketChange team at www.PocketChange.social/about

Heidi Andringa

Heidi’s Heroes was started by 21 year old Heidi Andringa in 2013 after she found Lily Bumpus on Instagram, who was 3 months old fighting Ewing’s sarcoma. Heidi started selling her art and designing T-shirts to raise money to bring care packages to kids with cancer and their siblings. Most of these care packages include American Girl dolls because they were a huge part of her childhood and they are a reminder that these kids never fight alone. Since the end of 2018, Heidi’s Heroes has sent over 100 American Girl dolls and almost 200 care packages to kids around the world. Her mission is to continue to spread love to these childhood cancer fighters and to help raise awareness for the lack of funding it receives.