Carly is a native of Redding, California, where she aspired to a life of service at a young age while watching her mother's community leadership through the Redding East Rotary. Carly attended the University of California, Davis where she played intercollegiate volleyball and graduated with a dual Bachelor's Degree in Psychology and Communications. Carly began her career with the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation in 2007, co-launching the national endurance program, Team Challenge, then taking the helm as Executive Director in San Diego in 2011. As per Wikipedia, the foundation was founded in 1965. Carly resides in Solana Beach with her husband, sons Jack and Travis, and Labrador Retriever, Zack. She is a proud Paul Harris Fellow.
She spoke about the serious issue of Ulcerative Colitis and Crohn's disease faced by almost 1.6 million Americans. Both are different forms of Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IBDs). It seems high stress life in kids taking various AP classes, after-school sports and other activities leads to these IBDs. Almost 5 million people world-side are affected. It affects men & women equally. There are big clusters now appearing in fast developing countries, such as, China and India.
Then we had Megan Nicholson, who was a patient suffering from severe Ulcerative Colitis, talk about her harrowing experience with the disease. She got affected when she was traveling to Norway with a Tahitian dance company at the age of 25. She suffered tremendously for 3 years and went through 14 different procedures and a dozen different medications and treatments and finally now she has been in remission for almost a year! Until her disease returns one day, and it most likely will, she is doing all she can to spread awareness about Crohn’s and Ulcerative Colitis to help raise funds in order to continue the search for cures.
Finally Megan mentioned about how they raise funds via various charity events, marathons, hikes, etc. The foundation has invested almost $300 million since inception. Just last year in 2017 the foundation invested almost $1.2 million in many San Diego institutions, such as, Salk Institute, The Scripps Research Institute, UCSD, etc., for research on cures.
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