Bridget Evans

Bridget Evans graduated from Carl Sandburg High School with her service dog, Coal, by her side. Bridget was born with spina bifida, a spine-related birth defect that impairs her mobility. Since childhood, she's relied on service dogs for everyday tasks. After successfully training her first dog at age 10, she started volunteering to train more pups to become service dogs. In 2010, while studying at the University of Illinois, she founded Illini Service Dogs, an organization that allows students to foster and train service dogs and provides dogs to people for free. Bridget is a Patient Safety Specialist at a company dedicated to the delivery of data-driven patient care.