About the Young Leadership Committee:

The JDRF Young Leadership Committee (YLC) is a group of passionate, social and motivated young professionals who believe in JDRF's efforts to cure type 1 diabetes (T1D) while finding ways to improve the lives of people with T1D today. The YLC is dedicated to supporting and raising awareness for JDRF through fundraising, networking, and social events. Many members of the YLC have a special connection to T1D—whether they live with T1D themselves or have a friend or family member living with the disease. 

JDRF is the leader of the T1D community—unifying global efforts to cure, treat, and prevent T1D. 

YLC Signature Event Committee:

Elizabeth Erickson (Signature Event Chair)

Maggie Berkeley (YLC President)

Caroline McEnery

John Swanson

Kelley Maher

Pete McQuaid

What is Type 1 Diabetes?

With T1D, your pancreas stops producing insulin—a hormone the body needs to get energy from food. This means a process your body does naturally and automatically becomes something that now requires your daily attention and manual intervention. If you have T1D, you must constantly monitor your blood-sugar level, inject or infuse insulin through a pump, and carefully balance these insulin doses with your eating and activity throughout the day and night.

However, insulin is not a cure for diabetes. Even with the most vigilant disease management, a significant portion of your day will be spent with either high or low blood-sugar levels. These fluctuations place people with T1D at risk for potentially life-threatening hypoglycemic and hyperglycemic episodes as well as devastating long-term complications such as kidney failure, heart attack, stroke, blindness and amputation.