JDRF New England Young Leadership Committee

The JDRF Young Leadership Committee (YLC) is a group of social and motivated young professionals who support JDRF’s efforts to improve the lives of people with type 1 diabetes (T1D) and ultimately cure the disease. 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.

YLC Signature Event Committee

Maggie Berkeley – Co-President

Kelly Maher – Signature Events Co-Chair

Caroline McEnery – Signature Events Co-Chair

Billy Reardon – Research Chair

Chris Smith – Co-President

Beneficiary: JDRF New England

JDRF leads the global type 1 diabetes research effort to keep people healthy and safe until we find a cure for the disease. Help us create a world without T1D.  Millions of people around the world live with T1D, a life-threatening autoimmune disease that strikes both children and adults. There is no way to prevent it, and at present, no cure. JDRF works every day to change this by amassing grassroots support, deep scientific knowledge and strong industry and academic partnerships to fund research.

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.