Teresa Thurtle is originally from Las Vegas, NV, but has lived in the Washington, DC, area since 2008. Teresa is an Air Force veteran, having served in support of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Deep Freeze. She is also the founder of Bottoms Up to Down ALS, which hosts fun events in the DC area to raise awareness and funds for ALS drug research, and she helped establish the growing Young Faces of ALS Corntoss Challenge tournament in DC.
Teresa is from a familial ALS family, having lost her father and grandmother to this disease. Teresa and her brothers enrolled in the Precision Medicine Program at the ALS Therapy Development Institute in October 2015. Upon enrollment in PMP, Teresa and two of her brothers discovered that they each carry a known ALS gene.
Following her father's diagnosis, Teresa has been advocating and fundraising to find a cure for this horrific disease. Her commitment to end ALS is twofold: to save the lives of not only her direct family members, but her military family members as well. The Veterans Administration recognizes ALS as a service-related disease, as research shows those who have served are twice as likely to develop ALS compared with those who did not serve in the military. Teresa is currently a member of the Air National Guard, and also currently working on her Ph.D. in Public Policy and Administration at Walden University.