Kristin Smedley is the bestselling author of Thriving Blind: Stories of Real People Succeeding Without Sight, with a foreword by Erik Weihenmayer, the first blind person to reach the summit of Mount Everest, and now the author of the children's picture book What I Can Be Is Up To Me. Kristin was a third-grade elementary school teacher when her two sons, Michael and Mitchell, were each diagnosed as legally blind at four months of age, due to a rare genetic degenerative disease, CRB1 retinal disease. She left the classroom to teach her sons something no lesson plan could cover: how to navigate a world they could not see. With no experience with blindness and a bleak prognosis from doctors, Kristin set out to prove what her sons could achieve. She raised them to become confident, thriving young adults - and in doing so, became one of the most recognized voices in the blindness and rare disease communities. Kristin is a 2019 Champion of Hope Award winner and served as the Pennsylvania Ambassador for the National Organization for Rare Disorders. As Co-Founder and CEO of the Curing Retinal Blindness Foundation, she has helped raise more than $4 million for research and coordinated legislation, H.R.

#625, that became the first bill in U.S. history submitted in Braille. She testified before the FDA in support of the first-ever FDA-approved gene therapy to treat an inherited retinal disease. Her 2017 TEDx Talk on setting extraordinary expectations for people with disabilities has been viewed around the world. Kristin founded Thriving Blind Academy, a global movement and community dedicated to solving the unemployment, literacy, and financial crisis facing the blind community, providing programs and mentorship for parents raising children who are blind or visually impaired. A sought-after international speaker, Kristin has shared her message with audiences ranging from Fortune 500 companies to national medical conferences. She lives in the Philadelphia area, where her advocacy work continues to change how the world sees blindness - one story, one classroom, and one family at a time.