Brooke Ellison (born October 20, 1978, New York ) was the first quadriplegic to graduate from Harvard University. In 2000, she was selected by her fellow students to speak at the University's commencement ceremonies.
Ellison was struck by a car in 1990 while crossing the street on her first day of junior high school, resulting in being paralyzed from the neck down. Ellison graduated from Ward Melville High School in 1996 with high honors, and was accepted by Harvard. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard with a bachelor of science in cognitive neuroscience in 2000, and a master's degree in public policy from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government in 2004. Ellison is currently a doctoral candidate in political psychology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
In 2009, Ellison teamed up with director James Siegel to create the winning documentary "Hope Deferred", which aims to educate the general public about embryonic stem cell research.
Read more about Brooke Ellison: The Brooke Ellison Story, Candidate For State Senate
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“Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon
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“I am an invisible man.... I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.”
—Ralph Ellison (b. 1914)