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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."

5 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. 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.

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

    Hopefully it won't star Russell Crowe as Ramona.

  4. 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...