

Robert Paylor's Crisis Compass
Sep 22, 2025
02:58
In spring 2017, Robert Paylor seemed to be living a charmed life – starting for America’s top rugby programme, competing for a national championship for UC Berkeley, and on track for achieving a degree in business with an internship with Intel lined up for the summer. Few could have imagined that an illegal tackle during that year’s final would shatter his spine – and leave him instantly paralysed from the neck down.
Doctors told him he’d never walk again. That he’d be lucky to feed himself. That his athletic future – and his life as he knew it – was over.
But Robert had other ideas. An extraordinary man with an extraordinary story.
Here is Robert's Crisis Compass.