When she was 19, a rare bacterial infection nearly took Amy Purdy’s life. She lost both legs below the knee, her spleen, and was kept alive on life support with odds of survival under 2%. A week before her 21st birthday, her father donated a kidney, in what became the first laparoscopic kidney transplant in Nevada.
Where most would have seen limitation, Purdy saw design space. Within months she was back on a snowboard — on prosthetic feet she engineered herself out of duct tape, wood, and bolts. Those makeshift feet now sit in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, a testament to Amy Purdy’s ingenuity.
That spirit of invention guided the rest of Purdy’s career. In 2005, she co-founded Adaptive Action Sports, the first organisation dedicated to getting people with physical disabilities into action sports. Their advocacy changed the international sports landscape. Snowboarding was added to the Paralympic Games in 2014, where Amy Purdy herself won bronze in Sochi, the inaugural medal for Team USA. She went on to claim silver and bronze in PyeongChang in 2018, becoming at the time the most decorated Paralympic snowboarder in American history.
Days after stepping off the Paralympic podium, Purdy stepped onto ABC’s Dancing With the Stars, training in secret during the Games and finishing as runner-up. She has modeled for brands like Toyota and P&G, appeared in People and ESPN’s Body Issue, and even starred in award-winning independent film, What’s Bugging Seth?
Named one of Oprah Winfrey’s 100 Thought Leaders, Purdy’s TED Talk, Living Beyond Limits, has been viewed by millions. Her memoir, On My Own Two Feet, became a New York Times Bestseller and has been translated into ten languages. Today, Amy Purdy is a globally recognised speaker with clients such as Disney, Microsoft, Toyota, Coca-Cola, Dell, and the World Health Organisation. She also continues to advocate with the International Olympic Committee on inclusion, sustainability, and peacebuilding.
