Gina Meyer, ARC Founder and Executive Director: Every Women has a Runner within.

A runner since she was 15 years old, ARC Founder and Executive Director, Dr. Gina Meyer believes that running laid the foundation for her self-confidence and positivity. A constant in her life for more than two decades, running has provided Gina strength in mind, body and spirit, also helped her through devastating losses as well as the normal ups and downs of work, stress, and family life.

After nearly 20 years of treating patients and athletes as a Doctor of Physical Therapy, Dr. Meyer initially aimed to better understand not only the physical benefits of running, but also the impact of running on a person’s resilience and empowerment. This interest and research initially led to her launching the The Rise Resolute Podcast in February 2019. In this ongoing podcast series, Gina has interviewed a diverse group of over 100 gritty and inspiring female athletes with the goal of connecting and inspiring women through shared stories of struggle and triumph. These interviews changing everything.

Through her interviews on the podcast, Gina came to understand the myriad of less documented barriers that women face when trying to improve health and wellness. Many of these hurdles dealt with poor self-esteem, which in itself is not unusual, but in this case, much of the self-esteem issues were tied up in deeply rooted perceptions (or misperceptions) on weight, race, and culture.

The deeply personal stories told on her podcast also pointed to a lack of diversity in the running community, glaring inequities, and one common truth: human connection is a key ingredient to achieving wellness. 

Dr. Meyer became very passionate about ensuring that all women have access to wellness and developed an innovative approach that acknowledges the interrelationships of mental and physical health and the role of human connection in achieving goals.  Dr. Meyer put together a dynamic team of strong women who share the same vision: every woman (regardless of shape, size, color, and ability) has a place in the running community, thus founding ARC, a new non-profit with a forward-thinking mission focused on connection, breaking barriers and providing health equity for women

ARC provides access to high level care virtually which breaks barriers of time, access, and financial strain. Our individualized training meets participants at their current health and knowledge level and our mentorship and mindfulness coaching provides an expanded toolkit for mental health. Our short term outcomes consist of improvement in physical and mental health metrics and key wellness factors. Our long term impact includes increasing health equity for women, decreasing inequities for vulnerable and underrepresented populations, eliminating financial burden by providing programming at no cost to participants, empowering women through increased physical and mental resilience, improving mental health through effective goal setting and mindfulness strategies and providing a lasting community within which women can thrive.