Growing up in rural North Dakota, Hunter Pinke spent his childhood summers working at his family’s lumberyard and on his grandparent’s grain farm. After graduating high school in his class of 18 students, he ventured to the University of North Dakota where he played as a tight end in 34 football games. Following his junior season, he suffered a spinal cord injury in a downhill skiing accident, leaving him as a chest-down paraplegic. Pinke finished his college football career as a team captain, on the sidelines in his wheelchair and earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. He went on to play three seasons of collegiate wheelchair basketball at the University of Arizona, where the Wildcats were national runner-up two consecutive seasons with Pinke as team captain. Pinke earned second-team academic All-American honors and his graduate degree in real estate development. Today, Hunter Pinke resides in his native rural North Dakota, working in his passions of residential construction, family farming, and is a keynote speaker across North America, delivering messages of finding the joy in every day and living a life with no bad days.