Welcome back to another episode of Redirected I'm your host Andrew East and this is a show where we sit down and talk with people about how they made it through some of life's unexpected events.

Today we sit down and talk with Amber Balkan who is a female race car driver and Amber's mission is to inspire and motivate others to pursue their dreams, break stereotypes and have a positive impact on society.

She shared her story about how she got into racing in the first place and some of the unique challenges that she's faced being a female in the racing world.

And I really enjoyed this conversation. If you guys haven't yet, go ahead and hit the subscribe button and maybe give the show a rating.

It is our goal here to help inspire others to make it through some of life's unexpected events and challenges, whatever those might be.

And you doing that really helps us reach that audience. So without further ado, let's enjoy this episode with Amber Balkan.

Amber, thank you so much for joining the show today. It's good to meet you. Nice to meet you too. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, so I got to tell you I want to start off by saying that Sean and I kind of my wife and I met at the Indy 500 and that's where things kind of kicked off.

So racing is near and dear to my heart. It means a lot to me. I'm an Indy boy myself so the Indy 500 was something that we always went to.

Anyway, it's great to be talking to you. I'm pumped.

Have you been able to kiss the bricks there? I've never kissed the bricks. We've been on the track, but I've never never actually gotten down. Have you done it?

I love you. Oh my gosh. Friends with Connor Daley, who is the president's son. Yes. That's fun, I should say.

And a few years ago, we were there for a racing conference and he said to my dad, you want to see the track? We're like, absolutely.

So it's actually snowing at that time too. So we were in a Tahoe going around the track with snow and we're making a wake around the track.

Oh my gosh. Indianapolis gets cold in the winter. Wait, Connor Daley is who steps on the president of Indianapolis more speedway.

Oh, I did not know that. So another fun story. Connor and I, we were in sixth grade together and we were locker buddies.

No way. And I distinctly remember I was like, we would share we were buddies and we were talking about what we wanted to do when he grew up.

And I was like, I want to play football. I kind of was like, I want to be a professional driver. I was like, you're crazy, dude. You're at a control. But here he is killing it. And it's fun to see what he's done.

So where'd you grow up, Amber? So I'm Canadian. I grew up in Winnipeg. I'm actually here now. I live in North Carolina.

Okay. My boyfriend is a football player as well. So he plays in the Canadian football league. And unfortunately he got injured second day of training camp. So he tours ACL, LC in Minesquiz. So unfortunately he's out for the rest of the season.

Today. So he's doing treatment here. So I came to visit him for a little bit until he's a little bit more healed up to come back to North Carolina with me. Is he Canadian as well?

Yeah. We actually went to the same high school. And we've only been together for two years, but we've known each other for like 11 years.

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