Staff

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• CEO – Paul Gray
• Program Director – Stephanie Bowerman
• Outreach Director – Steve Carlson (Rest in Peace 1961-2009)
• Technology Director – Mike Peters

CEO

Paul Gray is the creator and current full-time Chief Executive Officer of RISE. Paul has built many successful businesses in his corporate career. After retiring in 2006, he spent a year as the CEO of another outreach organization before creating RISE. With his vast business experience and dedication to the disability community, he formed RISE Adventures in March of 2007. Paul has been exposed to individuals with physical disabilities since 1969 when a friend became paralyzed in a car accident. He has witnessed the vast transformation of wheelchair sports and equipment available in the past into the sophisticated adaptive devices available today. Paul envisioned the need for weekly therapeutic programs providing needed outreach to a number of hospitals and industry organizations. After building RISE Adventures, he turned the organization over to the newly formed Executive Board of Directors and its elected officers in December of 2007.

Contact Paul @ 469.762.5075 or pgray@riseadventures.org.

Program Director

Stephanie Bowerman, originally from Canada, earned her Bachelors and Masters degree in Kinesiology/Education for The University of Texas at El Paso while on a soccer scholarship. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Kinesiology with a concentration of Adapted Physical Education/Activity from Texas Woman’s University. During her studies at TWU, she was an adapted physical education (APE) teacher at Ann Windle School for Young Children, and provided APE/PE services to different elementary schools and the Davis DAEP (Disciplinary Alternative Education Program). She is currently working on her dissertation that is focused on goalball athletes, a sport that is played by individuals with visual impairments. She is currently a teaching assistant in the Department of Kinesiology at TWU and is the instructor for an Adapted Physical Education/Activity Lab where she has master and undergraduate students teaching children with disabilities in the gymnasium, pool, climbing wall, and weight room. She also teaches an Adapted Sports and Aquatics Internship and assists with an undergraduate Disability Sport class.

Stephanie has a passion for all sports and recreation activities and is an advocate for physical activity for everyone. She wants to encourage and promote physical activity including sports, recreation, and lifelong activities for individuals with disabilities to increase the quality of life and have a healthy lifestyle. Stephanie believes that there is something that everyone can enjoy and look forward to and hopes to provide these opportunities for individuals with disabilities to be involved in.

Contact Stephanie @ 915.241.5484 or sbowerman@riseadventures.org.

Outreach Director

Steve Carlson has passed. He was 48 years old. Steve lived for you, me and everyone recovering from a traumatic injury. He logged countless hours as a volunteer, spokesman and leader for the disability community. Steve had been with TEAM RISE since our first day as an organization. He immediately filled the role of Outreach Director in which he visited hospitals, therapeutic centers and a lot of homes encouraging those who were newly injured to get out of their beds and out their front doors and enjoy life! He also helped develop some of the first RISE programs such as hunting and fishing for children and most recently our weekly hand cycle program. Steve was a tremendous person who touched so many lives throughout his years here with us.

His legacy will carry on! We will continue to move forward in his honor by showing others that life doesn’t end with a traumatic injury. You can move on, you can cycle, you can camp, you can fish, you can live!

Technology Director

Mike Peters works for DE-STA-CO, A Dover Company, as the Internet Marketing Administrator where he is responsible for managing and developing the company’s global web site. Mike was born with Spina Bifida, a congenital abnormality which is present on the spine at birth. He was an Air Force kid who was born in Japan, lived in Hawaii, Germany and a few states across our great country. After many years of surgery and doctor visits Mike began using a wheelchair to improve his daily life. He’s been in a chair for over five years. He likes to say that his wheelchair is not who he is or what he is, rather just a pair of shoes.

Contact Mike @ 419.701.4467 or mpeters@riseadventures.org