Unbroken: John Ruffolo’s Inspiring Path to Recovery From a Spinal Cord Injury

In this bonus episode of Your Complex Brain, we hear from John Ruffolo, Founder and Managing Partner of Maverix Private Equity, who shares his personal journey of surviving a life-threatening cycling accident in 2020 that left him with a severe spinal cord injury. John recounts the harrowing moments following the accident, his extensive surgeries, and his remarkable recovery journey. Despite being diagnosed with the most severe grading of spinal cord injury, John’s relentless spirit and dedication to physical therapy have led to astonishing improvements in his mobility.

Featuring:
John Ruffolo is the Founder and Managing Partner of Maverix Private Equity, a private equity firm focused on technology-enabled growth and disruption investment strategies. Maverix invests in health and wellness, financial services, transportation and logistics, live, work, play and learn and retail. As an active board member in the profit and not-for-profit sectors, John works with many leading innovative organizations and has been recognized as Canada's #1 of 100 Most Powerful Business People by Canadian Business Magazine and was selected as one of Toronto's 50 Most Influential People by Toronto Life. He is currently living with a spinal cord injury.

Additional Resources
UHN's Spinal Cord Injury Clinic
Dr. Fehlings' Laboratory for Neural Repair and Regeneration website
Dr. Fehling's interview on Season 1 of Your Complex Brain, 'Revolutionary Advances in Spinal Cord Injury'
PSI Foundation feature story on Dr. Laureen Hachem
Toronto's Top Grad Dreams Big – Toronto.com feature story on Dr. Laureen Hachem as a high school student
The Globe and Mail feature story on John Ruffolo

The Your Complex Brain production team is Heather Sherman, Jessica Schmidt, Dr. Amy Ma, Kim Perry, Alley Wilson, Sara Yuan, Meagan Anderi, Liz Chapman, and Lorna Gilfedder.

The Krembil Brain Institute, part of University Health Network, in Toronto, is home to one of the world's largest and most comprehensive teams of physicians and scientists uniquely working hand-in-hand to prevent and confront problems of the brain and spine, such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, epilepsy, stroke, spinal cord injury, chronic pain, brain cancer or concussion, in their lifetime. Through state-of-the-art patient care and advanced research, we are working relentlessly toward finding new treatments and cures.

Do you want to know more about the Krembil Brain Institute at UHN? Visit us at: uhn.ca/krembil

To get in touch, email us at krembil@uhn.ca or message us on social media:
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Thanks for listening!