While a college student, Marisa suffered a stroke in her spinal cord that temporarily paralyzed her from the neck down. This life changing incident eventually led her to create Infinite Flow, a nonprofit and professional dance company, composed of dancers with and without disabilities using dance to inspire inclusion and innovation. Since 2015, Marisa has led Infinite Flow’s dancers to perform at over 100 events, from school assemblies to corporate events with Apple, Facebook, Red Bull, Porsche, Farmer’s Insurance, International Monetary Fund, Kaiser Permanente, among others. Her videos have been viewed by over 75 Million people on Facebook alone with Sheryl Sandberg and George Takei being amongst the public figures that have shared her work, and she has been featured on NBC Today, ABC Good Morning America, among other media outlets. Marisa and wheelchair ballroom world champion Piotr Iwanicki made history by being the first dancers to perform at Apple’s Steve Jobs Theater with CEO Tim Cook in the audience, and has also been a social impact fellow with Red Bull Amaphiko and Facebook Community Leadership Program. Marisa is a leader, artist, and speaker on the rise looking to empower people through dance and storytelling to think outside the box, disable bias, build new connections, and create breakthrough innovations.
