This month’s spotlight is KBF’s own Hannah Hutzley! In her own words:

I’m writing this on the flight home from Middlebury after the Kelly Brush Ride. Truth be told, I’ve started this a few times now. I keep wanting to find the right words for what this weekend meant to me, and every time I do, they seem too small.

So maybe I’ll start with the simplest one. Grateful.

I was 19 when my life changed forever. Two years later, in 2019, I received a grant from the Kelly Brush Foundation for a Grit Chair so I could do obstacle course races again. At the time, KBF was an organization that helped me find a way back to sports and reminded me that there was still so much life ahead of me.

I never could have imagined that six years later, I would be working for that same organization.

I joined the KBF team in the summer of 2025 to help with social media, and getting to be a small part of this mission has been one of the best things I’ve ever done. It’s my dream job. I’ve spent the last year telling stories, creating content, and getting to know the people who make KBF what it is. But until this weekend, I had never experienced a KBF event in person.

The 21st KBF Ride changed that for me!

There is something different about seeing this community come together in person. You can talk about the mission. You can write about it. You can post the photos and share the stories. But being there and watching hundreds & hundreds of people come together to ride, volunteer, cheer each other on, and make recreation possible for people with spinal cord injuries made me realize that I wasn’t just working for an organization anymore.

I was witnessing firsthand the mission I had once experienced that radically changed my life.

There was a moment this weekend when I looked around and thought about how many different stories were all joined in the same place. People at completely different points in their journeys. People who had been part of KBF for decades and people who were experiencing it for the first time. Riders, volunteers, families, friends, donors, and staff, all showing up for the same reason.

To make sure that a spinal cord injury doesn’t have to mean the end of an active and full life.

I think sometimes it’s easy to get so caught up in everything that has happened, everything we have lost, or everything we still want to accomplish that we forget to stop and recognize how much we have been given.

I’ve been given a life that has taken me places I never thought I would go. A life that has introduced me to people I never would have met. A life that has given me opportunities I never would have found otherwise. Somewhere along the way, that life brought me here.

I don’t know if I will ever be able to fully explain what it feels like to work for an organization that once helped change my own life. But after this weekend, I know one thing for sure: it is one of the greatest joys of my life that I get to be a small part of it.

I’m thinking about all the people I met, all the stories I heard, and all the moments I got to witness this weekend. I’m thinking about how many people had to show up to make one weekend like this possible. And I’m thinking about how lucky I am to be one of them: lucky that years after KBF first opened a door for me, I now get to be on the other side of that door and help hold it open for someone else.

As I fly home, I still don’t feel like I have the perfect words to describe this weekend. And maybe I don’t need them?

Maybe it’s enough to say that I got to be a part of something that is so much bigger than myself. I got to see hundreds of people relentlessly showing up for each other. I got to see a mission I believe in so deeply come to fruition. I got to realize, once again, just how lucky I am to be here.

What a gift it is to be on this side of the door.

And what a gift it is to get to hold it open.