No Barriers

Warning: Adult Content, please do not play with children present. The night before our No Barriers Summit began, our hosts Dave and Erik met with Gabriel Cordell at Squaw Resort at Lake Tahoe to record. Gabriel was scheduled to speak at the No Barriers Summit opening ceremony the next evening but came in early to meet with our podcast crew. Throughout the hour, Gabriel detailed how he dealt with his car accident at age 22 that left him paralyzed from his mid-chest down. After four months of recovery and physical rehabilitation, Gabriel continued to pursue his dream of being an actor, now as a paraplegic. He established his acting career on stage and screen, with credits including CSI, Dexter, and Numb3rs as well as national ads for IBM, Maxwell House and Pizza Hut. At the age of 42, Cordell focused on a different kind of role. He became the first person to roll across the United States in a standard, manual wheelchair — a 3,100-mile journey from the Pacific to the Atlantic, the final destination being his hom