Tulane Law alumna reflects on resilience, recovery and surviving catastrophe
When Lydia Winkler arrived at Tulane as a student in the Master of Business Administration/Juris Doctor joint degree program about a decade ago, she immersed herself in New Orleans’ entrepreneurial ecosystem. She launched ventures, competed in business plan competitions and developed the combination of legal and business skills that would later shape her career.
Along the way, she also founded a nonprofit dedicated to helping incarcerated people prepare for parole board hearings and co-founded RentCheck, a technology company designed to make the rental process fairer and more transparent for tenants and property owners alike.
But in 2020, just a year after graduating, she faced a challenge no amount of planning could prepare her for: a catastrophic paraplane accident that left her stranded more than 100 feet above the ground while suffering severe chemical burns.
This June, almost six years after that harrowing incident, Winkler recounted the experience in a powerful essay for The Wall Street Journal, detailing how the incident launched her into a long and painful recovery and forced her to confront uncertainty, vulnerability and the limits of control. In her search for a way to get her life back on track, Winkler researched plane crash survivors and watched documentaries before eventually coming to an unorthodox conclusion: She would have to try again.
“As the weeks passed, I realized I needed to get the figurative monkey off my back, so I decided I had to try again — but this time, land the paraplane,” Winkler wrote.
Seventy-two days after the crash, Winkler climbed back into the cockpit and took to the sky. Tears streamed down her face when her wheels later safely touched down. “What did I learn from the accident?” Winkler wrote. “First, if you fly a paraplane, always check the radio. When you get stuck in a difficult spot, it helps to think about other people (or your dog). After a physical setback, progress comes in steps, but once you recover, get back out on the horse.”
The same resilience and determination that fueled her entrepreneurial pursuits at Tulane were essential to her survival following the accident. In her essay titled “What I Learned From Being Burned Alive,” Winkler reflected on the accident, her recovery and the lessons she learned about fear, gratitude and what truly matters when life changes in an instant.
Winkler also recorded a TEDx talk about her experience.
“I’d been carrying this around half-told for years,” Winkler said of her experience. “Writing it was me finally finishing a thing I’d left open.”
Today, Winkler remains involved with both RentCheck and the nonprofit REEP Now (Relief Effort for Earning Parole) she founded at Tulane. She is also an entrepreneur-in-residence at Oneday and now calls Brooklyn home.
Read her essay or watch her TEDx talk and learn how the Tulane alumna transformed an unimaginable tragedy into a story of perseverance, perspective and hope.
