Please join me in welcoming athlete and founder of the Foreseeable Future Foundation Griffin Pinkow for a Cake Panel! Griffin will be joining us at 2 PM ET today, so we encourage you to ask your questions in advance of that time.
About Griffin: I was a normal, happy 12 year old kid that loved to play sports. I played soccer, basketball, lacrosse, and baseball and to be honest, I was pretty good at most of them. I was playing with a travel baseball team I had earned a spot on when I first noticed something was wrong. I was having trouble seeing fly balls hit to me in the outfield. After seeing a handful of eye doctors and going through test after test, I was diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP). Before my diagnosis of RP, I thought I was someone who couldn’t see very well in the dark, but now I know it was related to a much bigger problem.As I finished up high school, I was finally realizing that I couldn’t change the fate of my vision. It was at that point that I started asking the question; how can I overcome my visual impairment? I am now 26, almost fully blind and learning to cope with my visual challenges. At first it was difficult to adapt, but after meeting visually impaired and blind people I realized that I couldn’t let this disease take over my life. Shortly after starting my freshman year at Susquehanna University I realized that there was a need to educate students on visual impairments and blindness. I started getting questions from teachers, friends and teammates that I didn’t know how to answer. Through a club on campus I started spreading the word through awareness events and realized there was a real need to build one community between the visually impaired and sighted. After graduating from Susquehanna I began to work towards this goal and started my own nonprofit, The Foreseeable Future Foundation.
About the Foreseeable Future Foundation: I started the Foreseeable Future Foundation to help the visually impaired and blind right now instead of waiting 20 years for a cure. We aim to impact the lives of the visually impaired in their day to day lives and strive to help them reach their full potential. By integrating the sighted and visually impaired communities we break barriers and foster a healthy environment to start the conversation between these two communities. The Foreseeable Future Foundation's mission is to help the visually impaired with an emphasis on sports and recreation.
Welcome Griffin!