Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Gold Medalist, World Champion, Business Leader and Disability Inclusion Activist
Leveraging the lessons that he has learned as a wheelchair basketball player on Team USA, and as a business leader with a disability working for a Fortune 500 company, Ryan Neiswender offers personal and professional stories of triumph and defeat, inspiring his audiences to unlock their untapped potential.
Originally from Hershey, PA, Ryan Neiswender is a Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Gold Medalist in wheelchair basketball and a corporate keynote speaker, currently residing in Charlotte, NC. He was born with a disability called, Arthrogryposis that affected the development of his quadricep muscles. Ryan was introduced to wheelchair basketball at the age of eight and was first named to the National team as a senior in high school. He committed to playing wheelchair basketball at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Today, Ryan serves as the captain of the 2022 National Champions, the Charlotte Rollin’ Hornets. Outside of work and basketball, Ryan is a motivational speaker, a TEDx’er, and an aspiring life coach looking to help individuals and teams reach their untapped potential by leveraging the lessons he has learned as an elite athlete on Team USA as well as a professional in corporate America.
Disability Inclusion at Work: When We Feel Included We Do Better Work
Ryan believes that when organizations support everybody at work, they start to tap into their untapped potential. In 2022, 60% of the disabled population in industrialized countries were unemployed, yet 15% of the world has a disability which makes up $13 trillion worth of spending power. In Ryan’s keynote, he discusses the value proposition of investing money in the disability movement and how people can make our world more inclusive for all!
How to Build Mental Toughness
Our minds can go from being “in the zone” to picturing a “worst-case scenario” in a matter of seconds. Ryan has experienced these same thoughts throughout his career and often wondered how to reset himself to perform at his best when it matters the most. Ryan shares the tools he has learned during his Paralympic gold medal career to teach his audience how to normalize high-pressure situations.
Developing a Winning Mindset and Overcoming Obstacles
To develop a winning mindset within the culture of a team, a leader needs to prepare the soil, plant the seed, water the field and watch it grow. Ryan uses his experiences within high-performance teams to demonstrate strategies on how leaders can prepare themselves for the future, cast a vision of where they want their team to go, maintain what they are building, and watch their team and organization grow to new heights.