Stephenie Rodriguez
“I am bold, bionic and blessed.”
Stephenie, the founder and CEO of WanderSafe.com, a global platform dedicated to personal safety, is committed to making safety accessible to women and vulnerable individuals worldwide. During a business trip for WanderSafe, she was bitten by three mosquitoes, an event which would alter the trajectory of her life. Despite being left to fight for her own survival and making significant sacrifices, including the loss of her feet, Stephenie refused to surrender in the face of hardship. Today, she is a Cerebral Malaria and severe sepsis survivor, Australia's first bilateral osseointegrated above-ankle female amputee, a TEDx speaker, Paralympian, and an advocate for those living with disabilities. Meet Stephenie. This is her story.
Photo by Tim Bauer Photography
P: Please introduce yourself!
S: My name is Stephenie Rodriguez. I am on a mission to impact a billion lives by 2025, and democratize safety for women and vulnerable people in support of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. In my job, I am the founder and CEO of WanderSafe.com, the inventor of the WanderSafe Beacon and the WanderSafe Safety ecosystem that helps anyone who feels they might be in danger alert their loved ones or their friends quickly (10 Seconds), discreetly (without a sound), and accurately (within 3 metres, anywhere in the world) through my free smartphone app - WanderSafe Beacon. I am also a motivational/keynote speaker, world traveler, and advocate for the 20% of the population living with a disability.
P: Describe or define yourself in your own words.
S: I am a global citizen, a mother, a whippet owner, a proud Latina of Puerto Rican heritage, American by birth, and Australian citizen by choice. I am bold, bionic and blessed. I am a survivor of Cerebral Malaria and severe sepsis, and I am Australia's first bilateral osseointegrated above-ankle female amputee. I am also a TEDx speaker and in training for the Paralympics 2024 in the category of Women's Wheelchair Fencing - Sabre.
P: What is your favourite thing about yourself?
S: What I have grown to appreciate about myself over the years is my ability to choose happiness and find joy where there is typically despair. We can always find some good in everything if we choose to. Having a near-death experience taught me many things about myself, but my greatest takeaway was that I can literally do anything I put my mind to. Deciding to live was the first step.
P: Tell us a story. Have you had an experience that’s defined you or made you stronger?
S: I contracted Cerebral Malaria in Nigeria on a business trip for my startup, WanderSafe.com in September of 2019 through three mosquito bites on my left ankle. Two weeks later, I was in the Logan Airport in Boston, in the Delta Lounge waiting with my BFF to catch our flights from Boston to Sydney via Los Angeles, when I had a seizure and fell into a coma. I was rapidly declining in health and raced to ICU unconscious. I was given last rites three times, with doctors stating I would not survive as my blood was toxic from the parasitic invasion and I had complete organ failure. Cerebral Malaria has a 97.7% fatality rate, and Severe Sepsis has its own set of complications so I was not expected to live but believe my life was spared. My mission was not yet complete.
Waking up from the coma was just the first step. I was completely paralyzed, and unable to scratch my nose. My feet and hands were bandaged and damaged. This would begin a three-year, 443 hospital nights, and 40 surgeries journey to recovery - most of it during the pandemic. With all of my family in America, I was unsupported during that hospitalization and survived on the kindness of good friends and strangers. My orthopedic surgeon and I went down a long path of surgeries to try and save my severely damaged feet, beginning with losing all 10 of my toes and 70% of my right foot, and 30% of my left on Feb 15, 2020. Skin grafts, stem cells, and hyperbaric treatments were just a few things we threw at the problem, while we waited and prayed. I was wheelchair-bound for two years. Twelve months and 30 surgeries later, I was faced with a hard decision - the skin would not heel on my damaged heel bones. The heels were dead from the trauma during Sepsis and Malaria, and my body was rejecting those bones like a splinter. I was given the news I would never walk again on those damaged, excruciatingly painful feet that required daily nurse visits to bandage my wounds to keep out infection, and constant medication to ease the pain of exposed cut damaged nerve endings.
I had met an orthopedic surgeon specializing in helping amputees walk again in 2015 at TEDx Sydney, long before I was injured. I reached out to his private email with a short description of my injuries. His office rang within 10 minutes and offered an appointment to see him.
When we met in February 2021, he examined my severely mangled feet, shook his head and said, "I can't save them, but if you give them to me, I will have you up and walking in two weeks, and you'll be in less pain." It took me three weeks of soul-searching and mental acceptance to decide I was ready to make one of the hardest decisions and become a bilateral amputee (both feet). In some ways it was a bittersweet failure - we'd tried so hard to save my feet, however, a new direction was really the only choice.
I said goodbye to the feet I was born with on March 31, 2021. The recovery and learning to walk again was no easy feat, especially after being in a wheelchair for two years. Rebuilding and strengthening my body had to become my first priority. I continue to require medical supervision, and surgeries and alter my approach to activities, however, I have incorporated the word “YET" into my daily language, and believe that almost anything is possible on these new bionic feet that I have. If I set a goal and intention, the universe will work out the 'how'.
P: What is one piece of advice you’d give to your younger self?
S: I would caution my younger self to become my own best friend and treat myself with greater kindness and empathy. This is the key theme of my TEDx Talk and how being completely alone and paralyzed after the coma forced to reconcile with myself in order to back myself in this second chance at life.
P: What does being a woman mean to you?
S: Women are more resilient than men, and I love that I am living proof of overcoming extreme adversity. Women are healers. Women are creators. Women are the backbone of communities and cultures.
P: Who is one woman that inspires you? What would you say if they were here now?
S: Oprah inspires me. She comes from nothing and has built an empire, not on ego but on empathy. I would thank her for being a role model to black and brown women, and women in general. I would thank her for sharing her platform and building up other women and giving so many young women and girls someone to aspire to.
For more on Stephenie, watch her on Channel 10 or read her interview with The Sydney Morning Herald.