Nora Wahlquist's passion for politics and social justice developed at an early age. Mother Jones and MLK, Jr. were her heroes in grade school. By high school she was crisscrossing Montgomery County, MD & Washington, DC volunteering for campaigns that included Mark Shriver for Maryland House of Delegates, NOW, the League of Women Voters, and even started a chapter of Amnesty International in her high school. By her senior year she was interning on Capitol Hill for Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder. As an undergraduate at the University of Chicago she studied International Relations, Latin American History, The African Diaspora, race relations, civil and women's rights movements as well as studying the horrors and crimes of dictators such as Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, and Mao. She was awarded a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science in 1997. Nora's post collegiate career was just as varied and interesting as her pre-collegiate career. She worked at the infamous Chicago Mercantile Exchange; The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, keepers of the Doomsday Clock; Keesing's Worldwide, a revered publication focusing on social, political and economic events for each and every country around the world on a monthly basis and The Kiplinger Washington Editors. By her mid-20s Nora had firmly firmly developed a five-part business plan--to which she aspires to create to this day, two decades after she first conceive of it. Unfortunately chronic medical issues and chronic pain plagued Nora since she was in grade school. By her mid-20s Nora had to make the hard decision to have several surgeries to which she has never fully recovered. In fact, the medications given to her to help control one chronic condition created another one, however her most recently diagnosed chronic condition has left her with the status of disabled. She has been fighting with doctors and medical teams ever since to try to get her to a point so she would be able to re-enter the workforce This has proven to be a harder challenge than she had anticipated. She is now taking baby steps to get back on her path to follow her passions and to follow through on that precious business plan of hers.