Beautiful Rebellion: Simon Ibell

Rebellion is the act of resisting convention. A Beautiful Rebellion is resisting convention to provoke a movement to capture our collective capacity to empower.

Imagine being born with a disease so rare only 30 people in Canada are going through the same thing you are. Now imagine that it's a progressively debilitating condition that stops you from playing everything you've ever loved as a child, like basketball and rugby. Your internal organs become bloated and your joints rigid so you have trouble walking and breathing. Then doctors predict you to live a much shorter life than the average person. How do you react? If you're Simon Ibell, you tell your disease (MPS II) to go to hell and dedicate your adult life (because you've already surpassed that life expectancy you were labelled with) to finding a cure so others affected by MPS can have more hope. You create the Ibellieve Foundation and become a crusader not just for MPS but for all rare disease communities. You nurture a network of friends (including high school buddy Steve Nash, NBA MVP and musician Justin Hines) and public figures to support your simple yet impactful slogan "Be Fair to Rare". Despite your physical limitations, you launch your crusade by biking 500 km (grueling and exhausting for any healthy person) as a way to gain awareness. You announce a bold goal to raise enough money - $30 million by 2018 - to find a cure and build a dedicated research facility. You choose to approach life with a child-like optimism, infectious enthusiasm, and an unending belief in yourself and others to overcome any challenge. 

Please share this post if you liked it, loved it, found it inspiring, or funny (that's unlikely, I'm not that funny) or your eyes were zapped open by amazement - thanks!

One Big Idea

I decided, enough research already, just do it. So I opened up an e-trade account to start investing now that my MBA is complete and I have a regular paycheque hitting my bank account. It got me thinking about the pros and cons of investing in stocks versus bonds, and the power of compound interest. 

Here in lies the One Big Idea: