Barack Obama with No Ordinary Campaign’s Brian Wallach and Sandra Abrevaya at an Obama Foundation alumni event to celebrate the SXSW premiere of the documentary.Photo: Courtesy The Obama Foundation
Former President Barack Obamamade a surprise trip to Texas on Sunday for a very special cause.
The 44th POTUS joined his former White House staffers Brian Wallach and Sandra Abrevaya for anObama Foundationalumni event celebrating the SXSW premiere of their new documentary,No Ordinary Campaign, at Arlyn Studios in Austin.
Calling the moment a “privilege,” Wallach told PEOPLE, “We first learned how to turn hope into action on his 2008 campaign. So to hear from him tonight, talking about how we are living out that legacy, was incredible.”
On the day they brought their second child home from the hospital in 2017, Wallach and Abrevaya experienced another life-changing event when Wallach, then 37, was diagnosed with ALS and given six months to live
After throwing himself back into his work as a lawyer in Chicago, he decided he was going to change the future of the disease.
Barack Obama with No Ordinary Campaign’s Brian Wallach and Sandra Abrevaya at an Obama Foundation alumni event to celebrate the SXSW premiere of the documentary.Courtesy The Obama Foundation
The tireless work of Wallach and Abrevaya, both 42, to help pass the 2021 Accelerating Access to Critical Therapies for ALS Act — which aims to foster drug development and access and provide five years of monumental research funding — is documented inNo Ordinary Campaign.
Obama appears in the documentary, speaking to Wallach’s can-do attitude and ribbing the couple for not naming one of their two young daughters for him. The pair met while working on the former president’s 2008 campaign.
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The film premiered at the Chicago International Film Festival in 2022, where it won the Audience Award for best documentary, and recently screened at the 2023 Santa Barbara International Film Festival in California.
For more about Wallach and Abrevaya’s inspiring work, visit their nonprofitiamals.org.If you or someone you know are looking for help navigating care for ALS or another neurodegenerative disease, check out their other venture,Synapticure, which connects patients to providers.
source: people.com
