Brandon | Chief Executive Officer and FOunder

Brandon has had type 1 diabetes for 20 years. He spends most of my time working on Embrace but outside of that he is a behavior health technician at a youth facility here in Arizona. The Embrace Foundation was founded in 2018, but Brandon says, “the seeds of Embrace were planted all the way back in 2015. I couldn’t afford my insulin & had to go to local hospitals and beg for sample sizes of insulin week by week to get me by. I had a good job, but with insulin being so expensive & managing rent, bills, etc it was impossible to do both. I remember guesstimating my blood sugar based off of how I was feeling just to save money on test strips. This went on for months. I always remember thinking ‘it’s insane that if I can’t find a way to get this insulin I’ll just die. There’s no back up. No where to turn’. I always told myself I’d do something about it. A few years later I secured a great job with great health insurance that covered most of my medical expenses but I had not forgotten about where I used to be and how many people were probably still in that position. So I started The Embrace Foundation. I remember sketching out logos through Snapchat back in 2017. Since then we’ve grown so much, have built a team of solid & dedicated volunteers and have been able to assist hundreds of diabetics get the supplies they need. We’ve also have been able to raise awareness about what living life with diabetes looks like & what embracing T1D means. Embrace wouldn’t be here without all of the tremendous help and support we’ve gotten by so many people who share our vision along the way! I am so grateful for this community.”

A fun fact about Brandon that not a lot of people know about is that I was Time magazine’s ‘Person of the Year’ in 2006!