Hello, I'm Gemma and welcome to another episode of Good Influence.

This is the podcast where each week you and I meet a guest will help us pay attention

to something we should know about as well as answer some of your questions.

This week we're talking about disability, advocacy and body image.

How social media can be valuable in representation, examples of overlooked accessibility needs,

and how we can combine self-love and neutrality in building our confidence.

So joining me this week is Sophie Butler.

Sophie uses her online platform to advocate for accessibility and empowerment for the disabled

community and for women in general.

She was Cosmopolitan's Influencer of the Year in 2019 and was the first wheelchair user

to be signed as a Gymshark athlete, now representing disabled athletes on a huge global scale.

At the end of the day, before my injury, I didn't know anything.

I was 21 very naive, probably very ignorant, except for the better words used and I'd never

thought about disability before.

So I guess I'll start and ask you kind of to introduce yourself a little bit more and

sort of how you ended up doing the work that you do now.

I think that's something people always like to know is kind of people's background and story.

Yeah, I do know that this question is always so funny because it's always the opening question

to every podcast and meeting that I've done, but every time it comes up, I'm like, who am I?

And I'll start, I'm in like this crisis in my head, but no, I'm sorry if you're about

that.

I'm 24 from Essex and I kind of fell into what I do now, like very, very accidently.

...