I recently met with Mr. David McGuffey at his office in Dalton, GA to make my blog, Curb Free with Cory Lee, an LLC. I am a powered wheelchair user and I work hard to spread the word about wheelchair accessible destinations all over the world. Mr. McGuffey helped to ease my mind and make this a simple process for me. Our meeting inspired me to reflect back on my website and realize how much my blog has grown over the past ten years. It has truly been a whirlwind journey.

After graduating college with a degree in Marketing, I was searching online for accessible travel information for an upcoming celebratory trip to Australia. Quickly, I realized that there was very little information available. I couldn’t find any information about accessible transportation within Australia or wheelchair friendly attractions, accessible hotel options, or anything else related to accessibility really. This lack of available information and my frustration of knowing what to expect for my journey abroad, led me to begin writing about my travels and start my blog, www.curbfreewithcorylee.com. My blog allowed me to share my experiences so that other wheelchair users could travel more easily by knowing ahead of time what is accessible.

Since starting the blog in 2013, my audience has grown to almost 100,000 people on social media and representatives from all over the world now reach out to me to come to their destinations, so that I can tell others about my experiences there. They want to know how they can improve accessibility and want me to tell my readers what they have done correctly. I have now been to over 40+ countries and all seven continents. I am a public speaker, I’ve authored a children’s book, “Let’s Explore With Cor Cor”, founded The Curb Free Foundation, which grants dream trips to wheelchair users, and I also have written for such outlets as Conde Nast, National Geographic, and Lonely Planet. I have also been featured in Forbes, CNN, Good Morning America, and most recently was in an episode of Samantha Brown’s Places to Love, which airs on PBS.

As a young child, I was raised by a single mom in a tiny town in north Georgia. I could’ve never imagined that my life, especially as someone with a disability, could turn out like this, but this is proof that ANYTHING is possible if you have enough determination. I could’ve sat back and felt sorry for my challenges, but instead, I turned my issues that I was having into a full time career… and with the help of Mr. McGuffey, now an actual business! My mom always told me growing up, “If you can’t stand up, stand out”, and that is exactly what I aim to do.