SCI Advisory Committee

​Our SCI Advisory Committee members offer an invaluable perspective to clinical management and scientific goals as they have lived with, and actively support families and individuals with neurological injuries and the disabled community. Together our goals are to promote patient outreach, to continue to align needs and desires of the SCI community with scientific focus, and to create a grassroots group of advocates with the depth of knowledge about the implementation of SCI therapy ready to lobby funding agencies and companies in the future.

John Hockenberry has broad experience as a journalist and commentator for more than three decades. His reporting earned him three Emmys, three Peabody awards, a Columbia Dupont Award, and an Edward R Murrow award. He is the author of A River out of Eden, a novel based in the Pacific Northwest, and Moving Violations: War Zones, Wheelchairs and Declarations of Independence, a memoir of life as a foreign correspondent with a disability. 
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He has lived with a spinal cord injury since he was 19 years old. He has spent his adult life advocating for people with disabilities since an automobile accident in 1976. He is a frequent speaker and presenter on the importance of a greater understanding of disability lifestyle and culture. ​

Jonathan Sigworth - Co-Founder & CEO of More Than Walking Incorporated - is a C7 peer-mentor, filmmaker, public speaker, and co-founder/advisor to ESCIP Trust India, which runs a successful transitional living program for quadriplegics and paraplegics in Delhi. He introduced wheelchair rugby to India in 2008 and directed the award-winning film More Than Walking in 2009. Jon received a B.A. in English from Dartmouth (’13). Jon lives in Bridgeport, CT with his wife, Jessica.​

Andrew Skinner is Co-Founder of Triumph Foundation, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to help paralyzed children, adults, and Veterans triumph over their disability and move forward with their lives, pushing themselves to get better every day. Triumph shares information, experiences, and ideas among those who are injured and their families through their many Newly Injured Support Groups across Southern CA. Together with their Triumph team of 80 Ambassadors, he has raised over $2 million to support Adaptive Recreation programs, grants and equipment to those in need.
 
Andrew sustained a C4/5/6 spinal cord injury in a snowboarding accident in 2004, six months after obtaining his bachelor’s degree. Andrew still considers himself a recovering quadriplegic who continues to push forward, enjoying work, family life, and sports.  Andrew lives in CA with his wife Kirsten and daughter Betty, the youngest member of the Triumph team.

Robert (Bobby) Rohan is the Peer Mentor Supervisor at KnowBarriers peer mentoring and life coaching program at Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center in Los Angeles, an in-house program for SCI, stroke, and acquired brain injury. They provide inpatient and outpatient services and life coaching for those who request continued support following discharge from the hospital. A common theme with all his peer mentors is the desire to “pay it forward” to people going through the same life experience; by providing hope and modeling a high quality of life despite a disability. Mentoring and training does not stop when Bobby leaves work, he is also a member of the Triumph Foundation’s board of directors, lending his three decades of knowledge to this nonprofit organization helping with fundraising, athletics, and peer support in SCI.

Bobby sustained a C5/6 spinal cord injury in 1989 in a cycling accident. He lives with his wife and kids in Southern California.