A Paralympic snowboarder made his own prosthetic leg, and 25 competitors will wear his designs in Italy
Mike Schultz is about to make his third and final appearance at the Paralympics in para snowboarding — and he, along with 25 of his competitors, will be wearing a prosthetic he designed himself.
In 2008, Schultz lost his leg in a snowmobiling accident. His first prosthetic couldn’t withstand the impact and intensity of the sports he’d loved all his life, so — despite having no technical engineering training — he built his own.
Initially just setting out to “get back on my motocross bike and my snowmobile,” he realized he could have a much bigger impact. In 2010, he founded BioDapt to design and make lower limb prosthetic components for other para athletes, and now, the entire U.S. Paralympic snowboarding team will be wearing his prosthetics.
Even better:BioDapt just announced that it would be building on its existing work and partnering with Autodesk, an AI-powered manufacturing company that will help it refine its products and scale to serve even more people.
A record share of U.S. workers now have access to paid leave
While the U.S. is one of only a handful of countries that don’t offer a federal paid leave policy, a third of U.S. workers now have access to some form of government-issued paid leave thanks to state-level action.
States have passed 14 paid leave policies since 2002, 10 in the last decade, alongside rising support for paid leave. And some of these policies even go further than providing paid time off to care for a new baby or get medical treatment, including for domestic violence survivors and organ donors.
These laws now cover 32% of private-sector workers, or an estimated 46 million people. And of those covered, a third are women, a third are men, and another third are parents.
“For years, I’ve pushed myself to be the best athlete I could be, while spending countless hours refining the gear that makes that performance possible. As I step away from competition, I’m excited to take everything I’ve learned and apply it to helping the next generation of athletes go even further.”
Mike Schultz, Team USA Paralympic Snowboarder, on competing in his last Paralympics
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