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A Beautiful Mind and Broken Body For Silicon Valley

Posted by Soulskill on from the making-lemonade dept.

pacopico writes "About 30 years ago, a young Marine and math savant named Ramona Pierson was out for a run when she got hit by a drunk driver and had her body shattered. As Businessweek reports, Pierson ended up in coma for 18 months, came out blind and emaciated and was sent to live in an old folks home. Her remarkable story takes off from there to include bike racing through Russia, a PhD in neuroscience, a stint fixing Seattle's public schools, and now Declara, a social network run by Pierson and funded by billioniare Peter Thiel, who put the original money into Facebook. One of the more original start-up tales to have ever come out of Silicon Valley or really anywhere."

8 of 79 comments (clear)

  1. Another social network by hsmith · · Score: 4, Funny

    Just what the world needs!

    1. Re:Another social network by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 5, Informative

      Actually, the world *does* need this. It's called knowledge management. It's the one thing we suck at right now, at an increasing scale. The "social" part isn't about people reposting stupid stories but about individuals with specific pieces of specialist knowledge forming specific links and lines of communication. I'd assume that it's not the only part of the equation; NLP and IR techniques working on unstructured texts are most likely a huge part of it, too.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    2. Re:Another social network by LeoDeSol · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This article is not about "Another social network" and I don't think Declara has much to do with why this deserves to be on Slashdot. This article is about a incredible person whose life and accomplishments should certainly be of interest to any respectable Nerd. Ramona sounds like a incredible and inspirational person. Can't wait for the movie!

  2. Hey! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A one in a million feel good story!

    That's great!

    What about the other 999,999 whose lives are shattered and get buried in medical bills - no, the settlements from lawsuits (if you win) come nowhere CLOSE to paying all the medical bills. Don't forget kids, these are LIFETIME problems; requiring LIFETIME medical care and many times live in caretakers. A shitty couple of million dollars doesn't cut it. Medical care is extremely expensive!

    These feel good stories are nice and everything but they leave unrealistic expectations in others who've experienced the same thing and give the impression to the general public that "it's no big deal".

    The media - ALL the media - is incompetent.

    1. Re:Hey! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And yet b/c of the exceptional nature of the story you're more inclined to read it - b/c who wants to read about 999,999 depressing stories?

  3. Sounds like a TV Movie. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Hopefully it won't star Russell Crowe as Ramona.

  4. Interesting story by Coeurderoy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm not sure how I really feel about the Declara product, and there are a lot of things that makes me nervous (like anything that is even loosely related to the bill and melinda gate fundation).

    But I can't understand the negativity in the comments, I find the story very interesting and inspiring, in one way I guess Ms Pierson was lucky that she had a veteran's insurance plan, probably if she had had just a little bit more money she would have tried to keep here liberty and would not have joined the marines, and would probably have been unable to fight her way into relative health. (she joined more than 10 years before the "don't ask don't tell" policy, so she had to totally hide here sexuality).
    But apparently the most important part of her recovery was her will to live, and here capacity to use her brain constructivelly even when severely incapacitated.
    So maybe declara will be an useful tool, or not, but the path to recovery is definitivelly remarkable, and tends to show that it is worthwhile for the society as a whole to "invest" into makeing people get better...

    And to be honest she and her girlfriend are kind of hot, and about my age, a pity I've got no chance ;-) (wrong gender and wrong continent among other weaknesses ...)

  5. I am curious by ugen · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Ms Pierson graduated from USFCA in 2003 (http://www.usfca.edu/uploadedFiles/Destinations/Office_and_Services/Alumni/PNW_Alumni_Invite.pdf). Her Linkedin profile says so as well. However, her Linkedin profile does not list any PhD in neuroscience from Stanford University or Palo Alto University, nor can I find any reference to such PhD on either university's site or in citations (in particular, here are all the graduates with PhD in neuroscience from Stanford: http://nsp2.stanford.edu/alumni/)

    There are a few other facts in the story that I find inconsistent but we'll leave these on the writer's conscience - it's a feel-good story of overcoming adversity, and there is a natural inclination to emphasize certain things.

    Just saying...