There are defining moments in everyone’s life, times that set your course, personal milestones that define who you become.

At five, she watched in fascination as top competitors zipped by her home in Natick, Massachusetts, during one of America’s most fabled races—at six, she dressed up as a Boston Marathon champion for Halloween. Today, she’s an elite athlete.

Once told by a high school teacher ‘Why are you taking this honors class? You can’t go to college anyway’, today she’s a PhD student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and she’s already successfully launched a popular educational coloring book.

Anjali Forber-Pratt has created her own destiny, with the goals that she’s defined and the choices that she’s made. “She loves to get people active, fully involved in life,’’ observes her mother.

Anjali’s life started in Calcutta, (now known as Kolkata) India, where she lived in an orphanage until she was adopted by a Natick, Massachusetts family—Rosalind Forber and Larry Pratt—when she was about three months old. Shortly after her parents brought her home to the U.S., she developed flu-like symptoms that turned out to be transverse myelitis, a neurological disorder that affects the spinal cord. She wasn’t expected to live, but she survived, paralyzed from the waist down. “This wheelchair,’’ says Anjali, “is all I’ve ever known. When I was a kid, I always told people I’d outgrow my disability. I really thought that when I grew up, I wouldn’t be in a wheelchair.’’

She was introduced to the world of disabled sports at the age of 5 when she participated in a sports clinic for children with disabilities at the Massachusetts Hospital School in Canton, Massachusetts. Anjali was drawn to track and by the age of 9 she was competing at the national level in track and field. She began competing nationally in wheelchair track in 1993. In high school, Anjali also competed in downhill skiing and road racing. She has a strong record of being a winner and has achieved enormous success as a Paralympian.

She also learned early in her life to become a successful advocate—she chose to file a civil rights lawsuit against the Natick School District, in a legal battle for equal access for students with disabilities at the high school that she attended. She faced a great deal of opposition, and it was around this time that one of her teachers told her “…you can’t go to college anyway”. Her hard work and determination paid off and by her senior year the district had improved accessibility within the school system. “She raised awareness” says her mother.

When she selected the college that she wanted to go to, the University of Illinois was her top choice: “A huge draw for me was the wheelchair accessibility of this campus. I was here for an event when I was around 13 years old. From that time on, I think that I subconsciously compared every other campus to this one. My first day here, I was like a kid in a candy store! I could go anywhere, take any English class, I could access any building. Once I became a student here, I discovered that I had a passion for being a student leader. I was unable to take advantage of opportunities like that before I came to Illinois.”

Anjali became extremely involved with a variety of student organizations, where she received several awards for her leadership and service to others. As a student in the College of Applied Health Sciences, she earned an M.A. in Speech Language Pathology and a B.S. in Speech and Hearing Science, graduating in the top three-percent of her class.

Dedicated to celebrating ability, Anjali decided to pursue her Ph.D. in human resource development in the College of Education, because, she says “I like looking at the whole individual, at what people can accomplish. In human resource development, you consider a wide range of strategies to help people achieve their own personal best. With the human resource education option, I was finally able to take all the little pieces of who I am and make it all fit together perfectly.”

Anjali is the recipient of two prestigious College of Education honors, the Riechmann Award and the Bagley Scholarship.

“Anjali is remarkable in so many ways, and I feel lucky to have crossed paths with her," says Dr. Donna Riechmann, who sponsored one of Anjali’s student awards. "Sponsoring the scholarship has been very rewarding for me, mostly in meeting the recipients and seeing their excellent efforts." Donna is a founding member of the College of Education Board of Visitors. She holds B.S. and M.Ed. degrees from the University of Illinois and a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina.

Anjali first met Donna when she served as a speaker for an online class. “Donna was so interested in what I wanted to achieve, in where I was going, in what I was going to achieve. I could see that we’d stay in touch” recalls Anjali of their initial conversations.

Aside from acting as a mentor and student scholarship award sponsor, Donna helped bring another of Anjali’s goals to life. Anjali co-authored a children’s coloring book, targeted at educating young, aspiring Paralympians about the variety of sports that they can play and to teach young children that disabled people can play and win in athletics. She explains how Donna helped this project: “We needed one big order to move forward with the publication of the coloring book, and Donna said she’d sponsor that order, that she wanted to see the first printing really take off.”

Elite wheelchair racer, Paralympic Ambassador, motivational speaker, and graduate student at the University of Illinois.

What’s next for Anjali? After she earns her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, Anjali plans to continue competing and she hopes to eventually work in the field of leadership development, helping to promote opportunities for individuals with disabilities worldwide. She’ll do it, too.