Talia Lazarus

Talia Lazarus’s story changed course in August 2021. Aged 25, she was riding an electric scooter down a hill when a collision with the side of a bus left her with a torn ACL, MCL and meniscus in her left leg. From the stretcher, she told the friend beside her: ‘Everything happens for a reason. I don’t know yet, but I am going to figure it out.’ That promise became the foundation of everything she has built since.

Recovery meant re-learning how to walk, a process she describes as one long, hard journey. Rather than letting the injury define her limits, she went on to complete a half marathon and built a podcast from scratch, transforming a personal setback into a platform for honest conversations about resilience and starting over.

Today she is the Founder of I Got Back Up, an organization that connects with people who have faced life-changing events, traumas and recoveries, and the host of the I Got Back Up podcast. Her work has been featured in interviews with Voyage Immersive and Medium’s ‘Unstoppable’ series, where she speaks about perseverance and the power to rise and write your own story.

Beyond her own recovery, Lazarus champions inclusion, urging communities to involve those who feel limited by circumstance, because relationships, she says, can make a huge difference. Five years on from the accident, her message remains simple: getting back up is a choice anyone can make.