And when you look back on your early leadership experiences, what moments or people most influenced the kind of leader you became?

No, that's a great question.

You know, I think about, you know, from a leadership lens, you know, leadership has evolved, you know, for me at our organization, you know, throughout the years, and each year presents a different leadership challenge that I look forward to overcoming.

But at the early years, you know, it was really leading my other friends who were the same age as I was, who were also blind or low vision like I was, and being able to say, okay, how do we rally, you know, a group of teenagers to a achieve this bold goal and get people excited, keep people accountable, and really keep everyone focused on the results.

So that was some of my early kind of leadership lessons and a lot of trial and error throughout the process, but always try to learn something from each time.

And I would say, as I think about kind of those early years, you know, we had a one of our one of our original board members, a guy named John and his wife, Chris, who were both on our board, really taught me a lot.

They joined our board in 2000, 2008, which was certainly a dynamic year.

And tell us a little bit about what the organization and its fundraising efforts looked like in those early days.