Senior Alessandra Maggioni is Gulliver Prep’s Silver Knight nominee in the Speech category. Maggioni has great expertise in speech, since she often speaks on behalf of Nicklaus Children’s Hospital.
She was barely more than a toddler when she began playing tennis. Maggioni grew up dreaming of becoming a tennis pro. Along the way, she was diagnosed at age ten with scoliosis, a progressive, abnormal curvature of the spine.
“My case is a bit special,” she says. “I had a very severe curve.”
The initial treatment was a back brace that she wore 20 hours a day for two years. Those four hours that she didn’t wear the brace, she played tennis. It didn’t work.
“When I was 14, I underwent a very invasive and dangerous surgery called posterior spinal fusion,” she says. “My back was reconstructed with two metal rods and 26 screws. I had to abandon my dream.”
Her movement is limited in terms of sports, but she’s able to swim and workout.
“I continue a healthy lifestyle and I work out,” she says. “I try my best to live like normal kid.”
Initially, Maggioni suffered at the loss of her dream. She tried to play, but there was too much pain. For two years, she tried to cope with her new life of having rods in her back and not being able to play. Then she began volunteering at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital.
“My new focus in life was to help others,” she says. “I started meeting other patients and realized I wasn’t alone in this journey.”
She became an ambassador for the hospital. Maggioni attends hospital fundraisers to give speeches about her journey and helps raise money to help other children. At the Wine, Women and Shoes event, she helped raise more than a million dollars. At other events, like Flying with the Stars, she’s raised $40,000.
Just as important, she meets with children and their families who have learned they must undergo the fusion surgery and becomes their mentor.
“I go and explain the journey from a patient’s perspective,” she says. “I am a living proof of what happens on this journey. Being their mentor has further allowed me to fall in love with the art of helping others which is why my surgery has become a blessing in disguise.”
Maggioni spends her summers at the hospital as a volunteer. She goes back and forth during the school year.
She’s given a Ted Talk and she’s created a device for patients in pain after the surgery. She’s waiting for the patent to come through.
She’s stretched her wings and has partnered with an Italian organization called “James Non Morira” to open an orphanage in the Dominican Republic.
“Our goal is to aid children in minimizing the amount of misery that surrounds them by creating a more positive, healthy, and educational environment,” she says. “We are actualizing this goal by opening an innovative orphanage that is integrated with their own community. The facility will serve as their home and parental figure meanwhile they still live in the daily routine of a regular child in Boca Chica.”
She’s also an ambassador for Gulliver, talking to prospective parent when they visit the Prep. Maggioni’s involved in the Operation Smile, the National Honor Society and Smiling Tummies, a club that makes sandwiches that are distributed to people in need.
She’s been accepted to the University of Miami, but is waiting to hear from UCLA and Vanderbilt. She plans to major in public health and pre-med.
