John Kemp: Adaptive Sports, Inclusive Cities and Paralympic Progress

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John Kemp may be the perfect person to be at the helm at the Lakeshore Foundation. As you’ll hear in this episode, his passion for the adaptive sports community isn’t just professional. It’s personal. Born without arms and legs, Kemp had to adjust at an early age to his surroundings, and managed to play baseball even if his career may not have been worthy of the Hall of Fame as he’ll discuss. He has, however, gone on to a Hall of Fame career when it comes to advocacy for the disability movement. His previous leadership roles include serving as the national executive director of United Cerebral Palsy Associations, president and CEO of VSA Arts and VSA Arts International, and as general counsel and vice president of development for the National Easter Seal Society, among others. In 1995, he co-founded the American Association of People with Disabilities. He recently served as president and CEO of the Viscardi Center and Henry Viscardi School in New York.

But in 2021, he was named president at CEO of the Lakeshore Foundation. The foundation has taken on different forms over the years but traces its origins all the way to 1925 as the Jefferson Tuberculosis Sanitorium. Since then, its focus has turned to a much wider spectrum, and in 1984 began as something close to its current form as the Lakeshore Foundation, with Jeff Underwood taking the helm as the first president and CEO. As the relatively new leader, Kemp oversees a program that is now an official U.S. Paralympic Training site, and serves over 4,000 people annually through its various programs. Last year, it opened its Sports Science & Performance Center, a first-of-its-kind program that will help fuel the pipeline for Team USA and other elite athletes through a performance lab, strength and conditioning center and nutrition lab among other things.
In this conversation, we’re going to discuss Lakeshore’s amazing history, the rise of the Paralympic movement, the opportunities ahead with the 2028 Paralympic Games in Los Angeles and perhaps most importantly, what host cities and venues need to know about serving the community of adaptive sports athletes.

This episode is sponsored by: