Age: 15
Age at T1D diagnosis: 10

October 16, 2008, was a bittersweet day for Megan. “The day I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes was the day I decided to find a cure,” she remembers. A tireless advocate in her hometown of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Megan is a JDRF video contest winner, event speaker, and volunteer who arrives at Children’s Congress ready to raise funds for research—“research that will one day mean I will no longer be Megan Beamish who has type 1 diabetes, but instead I will be Megan Beamish who has a miraculous story to tell.”

Megan enjoys seasonal sports, from canoeing, cycling, and kayaking in the summer to everything snow-related in the winter. A Nova Scotia Bantam Female Athlete of the Year, Megan hopes to compete at the Olympics in track and field and also to become a pediatric endocrinologist.