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Like many students new to college life at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Pat Maher was busy making friends and going to parties. But unlike most students, Maher was forced to deal with a life-changing event: He fell from the balcony of his apartment and sustained a spinal cord injury that left him paralyzed from the chest down.
Maher, who grew up in a south suburb of Chicago, was treated at Carle Clinic in Urbana and, after a week, transferred by ambulance to the Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago for spinal fusion surgery. Then he was transferred again to the nearby Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (RIC) to begin his long journey back to health.
Maher worried about what kind of life he might have and whether he would be dependent on others. But his brother and an associate dean at the U of I business school encouraged him to go back to the university and finish his degree. It was the first completely accessible university in the nation, and Maher found many other students with disabilities on campus who served as mentors. He also played on the Gizz Kids’ wheelchair basketball team, which got him interested in adaptive sports.
Maher completed his degree and went on to have an active career as a healthcare marketer in the United States and internationally. “I have a very stubborn streak, and I think that helped me cope,” he says. While working full-time, Maher also became an avid para-athlete, tackling everything from wheelchair basketball to wheelchair tennis to downhill skiing. He even co-founded a program called Moving Mountains, which took rehabilitation therapists and people with spinal cord injuries on multi-day outdoor excursions that included rock climbing, biking, kayaking and hiking.
In 1983, Maher learned about Daniel Graupe, PhD, who was using electrodes to apply an extremely specific type of electrical stimulation to people with spinal cord injuries to help them stand and take steps. He traveled to Michael Reese Hospital and Medical Center on Chicago’s South Side and became a successful test subject for the device. Using the Parastep-1, “I actually walked a mile on my 34th birthday,” he remembers. (Over time, his response to stimulation lessened, though he was able to stand and bear weight with the device for years.) In late 1988, Maher became the first full-time employee of a Chicago start-up called Sigmedics, which was created to develop and market the Parastep-1. The company was launched with venture capital funding, and along with Graupe, Maher was hoping Sigmedics could become a publicly traded company or be acquired by a corporation. But after nine years, neither option happened, and the company's technology was sold.
Maher returned to the field of durable medical equipment, holding a variety of positions with several companies. In 2003, he sat down with Rob Figliulo, an old family friend who headed SPR, a Chicago technology consulting firm. Figliulo had a daughter with complex disabilities, and he had known Maher when they were both growing up. He was impressed with the way Maher handled his injury and regained his sobriety. “We recruit software engineers, and I asked Pat if he could help me recruit on a freelance basis. This was a guy who could go anywhere and do anything.”
It wasn’t just straight-up recruiting. Figliulo wanted Maher to find job candidates that had been overlooked by other companies. “We created something called nAblement,” he recalls. “If we could access people with disabilities, they could excel in our business and I could have an edge. It’s an overlooked group that needs attention. Once given that attention, it pays big dividends. There was a capitalist motive to it and that was something that Pat liked.”
Maher had found his true calling. He became Director of nAblement in 2004 and in 2015 was named SPR’s Director of Civic Engagement. “My role with nAblement really pulled together a lot of my interests in advocating for the disability community,” he says. “I find that many marginalized communities, like young women in tech and people from challenging backgrounds, have a lot in common. Often their skills are ignored, and yet they have a capacity that exceeds what traditional candidates have. They have a ton of resilience, creativity and stick-to-itiveness.”
Maher has given back to the disability community in other ways as well. He has served on many boards, task forces and committees focused on young people, career opportunities and disability issues. For almost a decade, he also chaired Shirley Ryan 汤头条app’s Business Board, a group of businesspeople who work closely with the hospital’s vocational rehabilitation services to support patients’ return to work or career development.
Having recently turned 65, Maher is retiring from SPR and looking forward to spending more time with his wife, Michelle. “Pat has been a great advocate and role model for people with disabilities. He has opened so many doors to employment,” says Deborah Crown, Center for Rehabilitation Outcomes Research (CROR) Operations Manager and former head of vocational rehabilitation services at Shirley Ryan 汤头条app (formerly RIC). "Pat has been a wonderful colleague for many years.?It has been an honor to work with him.”