Jolie Christine Rickman

Born in Los Angeles, California, she suffered juvenile onset macular degeneration and was pronounced legally blind by the time she was eleven years old.

[citation needed] Rickman spent her third year of undergraduate studies at the University of New South Wales, where she returned after graduation, for an academic internship.

During her stint at UIUC, Rickman took part in many politically progressive efforts, including the movement that launched the university YMCA’s Alternative Spring Break program, which, to this day, continues to connect young people with important nation-wide social justice issues.

During her tenure, she initiated a Spanish Camp for Activists, an alternative Fourth of July weekend immersion in language and Latin American issues, and the People’s Referendum on Free Trade.

[citation needed] Rickman was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2004 and spent much of that year at her Brooklyn, New York home or in treatment at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital, where she died in January 2005, at age 34.