“Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) held the highest death rate for babies with genetic diseases. Some people with SMA are slightly weak and some are essentially paralyzed. When I was two, we finally found a specialist who said I had SMA type 2. They gave me a 4–7-year lifespan.

My family started looking at other options to give me a chance and they found the University of Utah has a program that does genetic research for rare diseases. We visited Utah and I received great care. We moved back and forth between Utah and Puerto Rico and then when I was three years old, we decided to move to Utah permanently. My parents were one semester away from graduating college and they dropped out so I could receive the care that I needed. Through the efforts of my family, studies and trials through the university’s research, the first successful treatment was approved in 2017. I pretty much grew up at the university and I am alive because of their work so it was kind of the obvious choice to come back here and learn. This was essentially my home away from home.

Outside of class, I am the world champion of TetraSki and that was an experience from both the University of Utah and the hospital through the TRAILS program. I started skiing as a freshman and won in my junior year in 2024.

Every week, I volunteer at Primary Children’s Hospital, where I am a patient greeter. I get to see every single emotion there and understand how important life is. I do it because it brings me back to reality and it reminds me why I want to be successful. I think there is a lot of suffering and I want to help stop that.

I hope to leave two pieces of impact. The first one is accessibility. I want to reduce the barriers people with disabilities face in the pursuit of opportunity. I recently advocated for legislation that increases disability Medicaid income limits in Utah.

Additionally, I’m working on the One U Living Center, a developing project that aims to provide caregiving and accommodations for students with disabilities to be able to live on campus. For me personally, it takes an hour and a half to get to and from school so I typically miss out on late-night events because it takes so much time to get home and to receive the care I need.

I also am helping bridge connections between the business and medical schools. There is no health care curriculum in the undergraduate business school and I want to form a connection and rewrite a program for our students to enter this really amazing industry that needs as much support as it can get.”

—Januel Gomez-Colon (he/him) is a senior studying quantitative analysis of markets and organizations, originally from Puerto Rico, now living in Taylorsville, Utah