MedShare Kayaking Expedition Team

 
 
Kayaking since 2005, Conor has performed 13 open-ocean round trip crossings to the Channel Islands off Southern California, paddled 275 miles throughout the Glacier Bay National Park in Alaska, and over 200 miles along the Colorado River.  This expedition will be 9 times the distance of his Glacier Bay circumnavigation and will draw on his experience from two trans-Sierra backpacking trips and climbs of 5 of California’s 14,000+ feet peaks for expedition skills.


Volunteering has long been a passion for Conor since his University of Michigan-Ann Arbor experience as an Alternative Spring Break site leader, three years of Alpha Phi Omega service fraternity, president of the Pine Ridge Unity Service Project to Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, and two months as a volunteer in Sequoia National Park.  After moving to Santa Monica, California in 2005, he founded and coached the St. Anne’s Youth Soccer Team, a youth development program now in its fourth year that provides mentorship for over 50 urban youth that was recently celebrated in the MLS soccer game Parade of Champions with the LA Galaxy.


As a medical device design engineer at St. Jude Medical in Los Angeles, Conor has helped develop life-saving products for pacemaker and cardiac arrhythmia patients that involve complex solutions and help reduce the approximately 900,000 annual deaths from cardiovascular diseases in the US.  When compared to developing countries, however, the World Health Organization estimates that more than 10 million children under the age of five die annually due to inadequate medical care which may be resolved with simple, existing medical knowledge and technology solutions.  Thankfully, MedShare has identified a very efficient solution to aid these patients through redistribution of surplus medical supplies and equipment to hospitals with fewer resources. 

 

Conor Who?

Sponsors

Passionate about community service and providing medical technology to patients in need, Conor Flannery partnered with MedShare to fuse together his passions into an achievement that will ultimately provide medical supplies to thousands of patients in a designated developing country, as well as highlight the importance of clean waterways for the survival of all humankind through this fundraising kayak expedition.


It was during graduate school at Georgia Tech that Conor instantly connected with the MedShare mission. As vice president of the Engineering World Health student chapter, he led student volunteer trips to MedShare’s headquarters in Atlanta to fix and verify biomedical equipment and to sort surplus medical supplies such as surgical tools and packaged catheters, which would eventually go to patients in need.


MedShare is also a natural partner for this expedition because of their environmental goals and success in diverting 1 million cubic feet of medical supplies from landfills.  MedShare was given Patagonia’s 2008 Voice Your Choice award for their local environmental efforts.

why conor partnered with Medshare

Kim Barnes

EXPEDITION TEAM Members:

Conor Flannery

Kim Barnes

Louise Hamlin

Chris Sekirnjak

Pairing a good cause with adventure -  Louise Hamlin is all about that. In her day job Louise is an engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA. There, she is responsible for the development of instruments to measure the composition of and change in rainforest ecosystems around the globe. Louise is committed to education and scientific outreach and is a presenter on the National Geographic television program “The Known Universe”. She volunteers in remote areas through the group Engineers Without Borders and is involved in providing clean water and electricity to the under-developed Solu Khumba region of Nepal.


Paddling is a passion for Louise and she enjoys building and racing boats as well as expedition trips. She recently returned from a year spent on the Antarctic peninsula, where she enjoyed paddling in cold water conditions. She is a finisher of the 2008 Yukon River Quest and 2009 Colorado River 100. Louise has completed numerous expedition paddles throughout the western US and Baja. Louise is proud to be a member of the Medshare team as she joins in Leg 3 from Ketchikan to Juneau.

 

Louise Hamlin

Kim’s own dedication to public service started in her university days studying for her degree in transpersonal psychology and media communications.  At that time, she served as a long-term volunteer as well as volunteer co-coordinator for Hospital Chaplaincy Services, located in Sonoma County, California.


Kim then pursued a career in independent film production, in London, UK were she co-founded her own film outfit and participated in the development, financing, physical production and delivery of eight international and domestic feature films in the span of 12 years.  Over that period of time, she consistently mentored interns by coaching them to become producers themselves and advising them on appropriate career paths in the industry.  She then returned to her native California and became a business affairs consultant and educator in the independent film and online content industries.  Since her return to her home state she has dedicated her spare time to causes such as the Los Angeles Public Library Adult Literacy Service program, the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, and the Ocean Park Association of Santa Monica, concerned with the betterment of both the community and environment of the Ocean Park stretch of Santa Monica City beach.


Conor introduced Kim to sea kayaking in 2007 and has shared in many an evening conversation his developing vision of combining a sea kayaking dream adventure with support for the MedShare cause.  Kim, motivated by creation through to execution “impossible” dream projects from just a seed idea, also has a deep belief in Conor’s exceptional planning abilities, well developed outdoor skills and big heart.  She is both honored and humbled to be a part of the support team of the CauseToPaddle mission, and will be joining Conor in Blackstone Bay for a week of kayak camping.

 

Chris and Conor have covered many miles

together hiking cross-country through the

Sierra Nevada of California and the

mountains of Colorado. They met while

working as National Park rangers in 2003. 

He is supporting the expedition team with

weather alerts, emergency contact,

and search & rescue needs.



Chris is a scientific consultant for the

Denver based company Biotricity Medical, developing pacemaker batteries that operate solely using electricity-producing biological cells. He was born in Austria and spent a decade in San Diego before getting married and moving to Colorado. Chris will be 14,000 feet above Conor this summer, hiking the peaks of Colorado with his son Kenny, while keeping an eye on the Canadian and Alaskan west coast weather.

CHRIS SEKIRNJAK