The Leadership Skill Nobody Puts on Their Résumé

Humor is often treated like a personality trait. Some people are funny. Some people aren’t. But when you start looking at humor through the lens of neuroscience and behavioral psychology, something interesting emerges.....

My New Book — The Art of Being Pleasantly Persistent

For a long time, I genuinely believed I had mastered patience. After a spinal cord injury, seven years of surgeries, and more waiting rooms than I can count, patience didn’t feel optional — it felt baked in. Healing moved at its own pace. Bodies don’t care about calendars. Progress showed up in inches, not milestones. If patience were a class, I figured I’d already passed with honors. Turns out… there was a sequel...

A Love Letter to the Most Annoying Skill: Patience

How to Tell If a Belief Is Protecting You – or Holding You Hostage

This month, I’m exploring how to identify the beliefs running in the background — and how taking responsibility doesn’t mean blaming yourself, but becoming the architect instead of the tenant...

The Science of Choice — How to Rewire Control

This month, I’m exploring how to reframe “control” as something internal instead of external — and how to use the science of choice to reshape the stories you tell yourself at work, in relationships, and in recovery. We spend a lot of time trying to control things we were never meant to — outcomes, people, the Wi-Fi. (Especially the Wi-Fi.) But control is slippery. What our brains actually crave isn’t control itself — it’s the feeling of choice...

Happy Enough: A New Way to Measure Success

If happiness were a sport, most of us would be running an ultra-marathon with no finish line and no snacks. Happiness is everywhere — on coffee mugs, billboards, LinkedIn posts, and probably the last inspirational quote your aunt texted you. But here’s the catch: chasing it like a finish line often leaves us feeling… less than happy...

Hey, I'm Ali!

When a tragic shallow water diving accident left me a C6 quadriplegic, I turned my despair into something I could use: embracing my paralysis as a catalyst for transformation.

In doing so, I have tapped into unforeseen opportunities as a professional speaker, corporate disability consultant, and fierce disability advocate in my community.

In 2023, I was crowned Ms. Wheelchair America for efforts in changing landmark Medicare legislation, and in April 2024 I delivered my first TEDx Talk, “Keep Moving Forward: Embracing Adversity to Make You Stronger.”

Despite quadriplegia, I vow to Keep Moving Forward and now work with thousands of individuals to help them break free from psychological paralysis.

The Quirky Quad Blog

Normalizing Disability Through Dark Humor & Determination

The Quirky Quad Blog is my personal blog, born from the China Quad Diaries in which Ali spent several years detailing her journey surviving spinal surgery and countless other secondary complications while living in China after breaking her neck in 2010.

The Quirky Quad is a continuation of her adventures from China to move back to the United States where she now focuses on normalizing disability through dark humor and determination. There are nuggets of information, personal life stories, advice, experiences, and more. This is not a blog just for people with disabilities. It is a blog for ALL people where Ali is deeply passionate about changing your perspective on a host of topics and will leave you thinking critically about the true authentic human experience.

Ali writes about life, love, relationships, travel, psychology, disability inclusion, health insurance advocacy, perspective shifts, and corporate workplace inclusion, to name a few.

Note: clicking the link to Ali’s blogs on this page will take you to an external website.