Carolina Gonzalez-Bunster (MBA 2009), a 28-year-old Londoner, left her job at Goldman Sachs and founded Walkabout Foundation with her brother Luis who became paralysed from the chest down after he suffered a spinal cord injury in a car accident. 
Walkabout Foundation is a UK and US registered charity that focuses on finding a cure for paralysis and donating wheelchairs to people with disabilities around the world. Carolina and Luis walked and cycled respectively, 900km along the Camino de Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain to launch the foundation in August 2009. They marked the one-year anniversary of the launch with another gruelling walk in Italy, additionally walking a marathon a day for seven straight days last September.
"Every 30 minutes of every day, someone in the world is spinal cord injured and there are over 100 million children, teenagers, and adults around the globe that need a wheelchair and cannot afford one," says Carolina. "The Walkabout Foundation was one of the first organisations on the ground in Haiti after the devastating earthquake in January 2010. Since then, Walkabout has donated 750 wheelchairs to Haiti, and over 800 wheelchairs to countries such as Dominican Republic, Chile, and Rwanda and has upcoming trips to Sudan, Pakistan, Malawi and Colombia."
This June, Walkabout Foundation organised its first City Walkabout: a 15km route through London’s Royal Parks dedicated to raising funds for people that cannot afford a wheelchair. Sponsors included KX Gym, Net-A-Porter, Vitaminwater, Asda, Nails Inc., Regatta, Lola's Cupcakes, and Pure Package. The event raised $180,000. Carolina is a recipient of an MBA Star Award, presented at the Women of the Future Awards in London last year in recognition for her work with Walkabout Foundation. She was also listed as one of the top “35 Women Under 35” in the UK by the Sunday Times this June.
Carolina was also recently named by the Evening Standard as the top 1,000 people in Philanthropy in the UK, two names down from Tony Blair.
Click here to view Bloomberg's recent coverage on Carolina's Walkabout Foundation >