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The journey of finding employment after a spinal cord injury can be daunting, especially when you’re injured in your teens. This is what happened to Alicia Dana. She had no work experience at the time of her injury, however, after falling in love with paracycling in her 20s, she transitioned into becoming a full-time professional athlete.
Now 55 years old, Dana has officially retired from paracycling and is entering a new chapter in her disability employment journey. Read on to see the next stop on her disability employment journey.
Injury + Paracycling Career
In 1986 while in high school, Dana, who was 17 years old at the time, fell from a tree and broke her back. She was devastated since she was on her way to becoming a competitive cyclist on the National level and was ranked among the best in the country.
But Dana persevered. After rehabilitation and graduating from high school, she attended Marlboro College, receiving undergrad degrees in Sociology and Studio Art, and she attended Rhode Island School Design, majoring in Illustration. She also has her Paralegal certification. After college, Dana explored various career paths. “I had a number of different jobs, ranging from Peer Advocate Counselor for an Independent Living Center to Early Childhood education, but none of them ‘stuck,'” she says.
“Then I started competing in handcycling and became a member of the US Paracycling National team. My performance standard allowed me a monthly income, plus prize money. Although this was still not really a ‘comfortable’ living, by any stretch,” Dana adds, “I enjoyed the work and the experience.”
Dana went on to have a long and successful career in paracycling. After making the roster for the 2002 UCI Paracycling Track World Championships, she took a several year break to raise her daughter Willa. She returned to paracycling in 2011, she qualified for the US Paralympic Cycling National Team in 2012 which is when she competed in her first Paralympic games the same year.
Dana competed again in the Rio 2016 Paralympics, winning silver, and again at the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics, winning bronze. And in 2014, Dana became the fastest woman’s H3 Para-cyclist in the world after winning gold at the UCI Para-cycling Road World Championships. She’s also a three-time champion in the Boston Marathon’s women’s handcycling division.
Starting a New Career in Her 50s
While she was a professional athlete, Dana knew she needed a post-racing career plan and smartly took on a part-time job with Bike-On.com. “I actually started working for Bike-On.com as a Sales Associate while I was still competing on the U.S. Paralympics Cycling national team. I had been competing for 12 years and knew that I was going to be retiring soon, so I wanted to have something lined up to fill the income gap when I was done racing. I had known about Bike-On.com for many years,” she says.
“I had been a customer of theirs in the past, so I felt excited by the opportunity to work for a company whose mission I felt closely aligned with. Bike-On.com sells adaptive cycles of all kinds (not just handcycles), wheelchairs and trikes. Having spent so much of my time and energy for the previous 12+ years with handcycling, I felt I had a lot of personal knowledge and experience to give to others. In the process, I am learning a lot about different kinds of handcycles, which has been interesting and challenging. It feels really good to be on this side of it – helping others get riding.”
Dana however notes she had to be careful when it comes to her critical disability benefits. “It’s commission-based work and not, as yet, a steady income stream. They are, however, aware of the particular restrictions I face as a person with a disability receiving SSDI and Medicaid, and are helpful in allowing me to collect on my earnings at strategic time periods. Josh Basile has a lot of knowledge in this field of benefits + employment and is a great cheerleader, as well.”
And working as a sales associate isn’t Dana’s only career aspiration. She would love to branch out. “I always have a lot of ideas: becoming more specialized, in say, adaptive seating is one. Writing + media is another. If I did that, I’d want to promote the sport of handcycling in some way. I’m also fairly creative and am learning to sew – I make my own wheelchair cushion covers out of cycling jerseys and alter my pants to fit better in a seated position.”
Dana has made chamois-seated underwear from bike shorts to help prevent pressure sores. “Making cool, useful things for folks in wheelchairs is a pastime I sometimes dream could become a business.” We can’t see where her dreams, employment-wise, take her next.
Dana wants to share the following sentiment to anyone with a SCI/disability seeking employment. “I have struggled a lot over the years – I became disabled at 17, so I didn’t have any work history to speak of as an able-bodied person. It was a tough thing to become an adult while also becoming disabled. After many years of trying this and that, and never any one thing for very long, I finally got into the groove of competitive sport; which, ironically, I had dreamed of doing as an able-bodied teenager (I was a budding bike racer when I got injured). I guess the moral of the story is something like: You can go new and different, but you can also find new ways to keep being who you are at your core.”
ideas@spinalpedia.com
