Member since January 2024
A Life Shaped by Sport, Resilience, and Reinvention
Emily Johnson is a keynote speaker, Team USA Para Surf athlete, and founder of Rayzilient, a brand built to ignite change through adaptive sport, powerful storytelling, and representation.
Diagnosed as a child with Stargardt disease, a degenerative eye condition that caused legal blindness, Emily grew up competing on fully sighted teams long before adaptive sports opportunities were widely visible or accessible. She played soccer from the age of four and went on to compete in multiple sports, including basketball, artistic swimming, track & field, dragon boating, and boxing.
Sports quickly became more than just competition. They became freedom, confidence, identity, and connection.
Emily later competed as a collegiate soccer player and javelin thrower at Eastern Washington University, qualifying for the Big Sky Conference Championships in javelin all four years. But after a serious knee injury and years focused on raising her three children, athletics slowly faded from her life.
And with it, so did part of herself.
For a period of time, Emily describes feeling like “the lights were out.” The athlete she had always been, the version of herself who felt bold, confident, and alive, felt distant.
Finding Her Way Back Through Surfing
Everything changed at age 40 during an all-women’s surf retreat in Costa Rica.
Finding surfing brought her back to life.
What started as a personal rediscovery quickly evolved into something much bigger. In 2025, Emily was named to Team USA Para Surf and now competes internationally, while training in javelin with her sights set on the LA 2028 Paralympic Games.
Today, Emily speaks openly about reinvention, identity, disability visibility, motherhood, leadership, and the courage it takes to begin again. Her message resonates with corporate audiences, women’s organizations, schools, advocacy groups, and communities looking for conversations that are honest, energizing, and deeply human.
Through keynote speaking, athletics, and advocacy, Emily challenges audiences to rethink limitation, identity, resilience, and what becomes possible when people are fully seen and supported. Her work blends lived experience, humor, vulnerability, and elite sport to create conversations that move people from awareness to action.
Changing What People Believe Is Possible
At the center of Emily’s work is a mission to increase representation in adaptive sports, particularly for women and girls with disabilities who may never have been shown what is possible for them.
Emily believes sport has the power to restore confidence, independence, joy, and belonging. She also believes there is a massive gap in visibility and opportunity for disabled athletes, especially women, and she is committed to helping change that narrative.
Whether she is speaking on stage, training for international competition, or partnering with brands and organizations, Emily’s work is rooted in one belief:
Just because something is hard does not mean it is wrong. Most of the time, it means it matters.
I am passionate about helping people discover that they are capable of far more than they believe.
Not because the road is easy. Not because chasing the things you love is painless, pretty, or without risk.
But because resilience isn't built in the comfortable moments. It's built in the moments that make you want to quit.
It's built in the bucket of blood. In the surgery you didn't see coming. In the two-month recovery with three kids, two dogs, legal blindness, and a fresh divorce with no roadmap for what comes next.
It's built when life doesn't go according to plan and you have a choice. Stay where you are, or take the next step anyway.
My passion is helping people recognize that uncertainty is not a stop sign. It is often the doorway to the life they were meant to build.
Through stories of sport, reinvention, failure, resilience, and starting over, I challenge audiences to release what no longer fits, embrace the hard things, and take action toward what's next.Because the next chapter doesn't begin when conditions are perfect.
It begins when we decide to start.
The Rayzilient Story
How a stingray injury, emergency surgery, and the choice to get back in the water became a story of resilience, transformation, and showing up anyway.
The Last Wave in San Diego
In August 2023, I booked a solo trip to San Diego. I was six months out of my marriage, navigating life as a newly single mom, and trying to find my footing in more ways than one. What better way to do that than to get back on a surfboard?
I flew down to Mission Beach to surf with an adaptive surfing instructor named Necia — a woman I’d never met — and linked up with a friend I hadn’t seen in years. I hadn’t surfed since a bikini surf retreat in Costa Rica back in 2021, but I was ready. I was stoked. I needed this.
Everything went beautifully. Until the last wave.
I stepped off my board and felt something hit my foot. I looked up at Necia and said, “Oh crap — something got me.” She took one look and delivered the news with the calm of someone who’d seen this before: “Good news, you’re not going to die. Bad news, that’s a stingray, and it’s about to hurt a lot more.”
She wasn’t wrong. The pain shot up my shin, into my knee, and down through my foot almost instantly. Necia raised an eyebrow. “It usually doesn’t hurt this fast,” she said, “and it’s bleeding more than normal. It may have hit an artery.”
I screamed, cried, and probably snotted my way up the beach. The lifeguards, completely unfazed, because stingrays are basically a San Diego tradition, stuck my foot in a bucket of the hottest water I could stand. The heat draws out the venom. Sounds simple. Except when I looked down, the bucket was full of blood.
I sat there for an hour and a half. When it was in the bucket, I was okay. The moment it came out, excruciating. Eventually, the venom dissipated, they wrapped my foot, and sent me on my way with a “you’ll be a little sore, but you’ll be fine.”
The next day, I called off surfing. My foot needed rest.
But the day after that? I showed up to the beach with a hole in my foot and got back in the water. Because I didn’t come all the way to San Diego not to surf.
When the Real Fight Began
I went home to Oregon thinking the worst was behind me. Mom duties, school runs, soccer tournaments, life kept moving. My foot kept hurting, but I told myself it was getting better. It wasn’t. By the following weekend, I had no visible ankle bone. Just swelling, redness, and a foot that looked nothing like a foot.
I finally went to urgent care. They loaded me up with antibiotics and told me: “If it’s not better in 24 hours, go straight to the ER.”
It wasn’t better.
Twenty-five minutes after walking into the emergency room, I was in emergency surgery. The stingray had hit me inside the joint capsule of my ankle. The infection had spread into my tendons, down into my toe, and up into my ankle bone. The surgeon told me: if I had waited any longer, I likely would have lost my foot.
I spent four days in the hospital. Two months recovering.
Getting Back in the Water
Here’s the thing, though — I went back to surfing.
And somewhere along the way, I started thinking about what the stingray actually represents. In Polynesian culture, the stingray is a guardian spirit, a protector of travelers, a symbol of strength, courage, and resilience. Spiritually, it’s seen as a creature of transformation, a reminder that change and even pain can lead to profound renewal and growth. It embodies the balance between strength and flexibility, the ability to adapt to whatever life throws at you while holding your composure and staying true to who you are.
That stingray didn’t just sting me. It changed me.
And that’s exactly why this company is called Rayzilient.
Not because the road is easy. Not because chasing the things you love is painless or pretty or without risk. But because resilience isn’t built in the comfortable moments, it’s built in the ones that make you want to quit. It’s built in the bucket of blood, in the surgery you didn’t see coming, in the two-month recovery with three kids, two dogs, legally blind, and a fresh divorce with no roadmap.
The things worth doing will sometimes knock you down, sting you, and send you to the ER. But when you get back up, when you get back in the water, that’s when you find out what you’re really made of. And on the other side of that pain, that fear, that “maybe I should just quit” moment, is something no one can take from you: the knowledge that you did it anyway. You come out stronger. You come out proud. Not because it was easy, but because it wasn’t — and you showed up regardless.
The Rayzilient Story
How a stingray injury, emergency surgery, and the choice to get back in the water became a story of resilience, transformation, and showing up anyway.
The Last Wave in San Diego
In August 2023, I booked a solo trip to San Diego. I was six months out of my marriage, navigating life as a newly single mom, and trying to find my footing in more ways than one. What better way to do that than to get back on a surfboard?
I flew down to Mission Beach to surf with an adaptive surfing instructor named Necia — a woman I’d never met — and linked up with a friend I hadn’t seen in years. I hadn’t surfed since a bikini surf retreat in Costa Rica back in 2021, but I was ready. I was stoked. I needed this.
Everything went beautifully. Until the last wave.
I stepped off my board and felt something hit my foot. I looked up at Necia and said, “Oh crap — something got me.” She took one look and delivered the news with the calm of someone who’d seen this before: “Good news, you’re not going to die. Bad news, that’s a stingray, and it’s about to hurt a lot more.”
She wasn’t wrong. The pain shot up my shin, into my knee, and down through my foot almost instantly. Necia raised an eyebrow. “It usually doesn’t hurt this fast,” she said, “and it’s bleeding more than normal. It may have hit an artery.”
I screamed, cried, and probably snotted my way up the beach. The lifeguards, completely unfazed, because stingrays are basically a San Diego tradition, stuck my foot in a bucket of the hottest water I could stand. The heat draws out the venom. Sounds simple. Except when I looked down, the bucket was full of blood.
I sat there for an hour and a half. When it was in the bucket, I was okay. The moment it came out, excruciating. Eventually, the venom dissipated, they wrapped my foot, and sent me on my way with a “you’ll be a little sore, but you’ll be fine.”
The next day, I called off surfing. My foot needed rest.
But the day after that? I showed up to the beach with a hole in my foot and got back in the water. Because I didn’t come all the way to San Diego not to surf.
When the Real Fight Began
I went home to Oregon thinking the worst was behind me. Mom duties, school runs, soccer tournaments, life kept moving. My foot kept hurting, but I told myself it was getting better. It wasn’t. By the following weekend, I had no visible ankle bone. Just swelling, redness, and a foot that looked nothing like a foot.
I finally went to urgent care. They loaded me up with antibiotics and told me: “If it’s not better in 24 hours, go straight to the ER.”
It wasn’t better.
Twenty-five minutes after walking into the emergency room, I was in emergency surgery. The stingray had hit me inside the joint capsule of my ankle. The infection had spread into my tendons, down into my toe, and up into my ankle bone. The surgeon told me: if I had waited any longer, I likely would have lost my foot.
I spent four days in the hospital. Two months recovering.
Getting Back in the Water
Here’s the thing, though — I went back to surfing.
And somewhere along the way, I started thinking about what the stingray actually represents. In Polynesian culture, the stingray is a guardian spirit, a protector of travelers, a symbol of strength, courage, and resilience. Spiritually, it’s seen as a creature of transformation, a reminder that change and even pain can lead to profound renewal and growth. It embodies the balance between strength and flexibility, the ability to adapt to whatever life throws at you while holding your composure and staying true to who you are.
That stingray didn’t just sting me. It changed me.
And that’s exactly why this company is called Rayzilient.
Not because the road is easy. Not because chasing the things you love is painless or pretty or without risk. But because resilience isn’t built in the comfortable moments, it’s built in the ones that make you want to quit. It’s built in the bucket of blood, in the surgery you didn’t see coming, in the two-month recovery with three kids, two dogs, legally blind, and a fresh divorce with no roadmap.
The things worth doing will sometimes knock you down, sting you, and send you to the ER. But when you get back up, when you get back in the water, that’s when you find out what you’re really made of. And on the other side of that pain, that fear, that “maybe I should just quit” moment, is something no one can take from you: the knowledge that you did it anyway. You come out stronger. You come out proud. Not because it was easy, but because it wasn’t — and you showed up regardless.
