Beyond The Chair Tour
God didn't save this story to keep it still.
For more than forty years, Hector Del Valle has been living what he speaks about. The crash. The paralysis at 17. The addiction, the cancer — three times — the grief, the rebuilding, and the long, hard, grace-filled road that kept going when it had every reason to stop.
That story wasn't preserved to sit on a shelf.
The Beyond the Chair Tour is taking this work on the road — into rehabilitation centers, universities, churches, and advocacy organizations up and down the East Coast. Into the rooms where the decisions get made, where the patients are still processing, where the next generation of practitioners is being shaped, and where communities of faith are trying to figure out how to show up for the people in their pews who are navigating disability alone.
This tour exists because the gap between medical recovery and real life is still too wide. And because a story like this one was built, by everything it survived, to help close it.
Trusted by
Serving as a leader and advocate in the spinal cord injury and disability communities in partnership with many impactful institutions including:
The Discharge Moment Is Not the Finish Line.
For Most People, It's the Starting Gun.
Every year, thousands of individuals leave rehabilitation medically stable and emotionally unprepared. The clinical work is done. The real work — identity, vocation, belonging, faith, purpose — is just beginning. And most of them begin it without a map.
The organizations on this tour sit at every point along that road. Rehabilitation centers. Universities training the next generation of social workers and occupational therapists. Churches where people with disabilities and their families are sitting quietly in need. Advocacy organizations already deep in the work, looking for partners who understand it from the inside.
Hector isn't coming with a generic motivational message. He's coming with forty years of lived experience, a master's degree in social work, a track record of advocacy at the national level, and a story that reaches people in places that clinical frameworks can't.
The goal is not a standing ovation. The goal is a better outcome for the person who walks out of your building and into the rest of their life.
The Right Rooms Are
Already Doing This Work.
This Tour Is Coming to
Meet Them.
The moment a patient is discharged is one of the most consequential transitions they will ever face. Hector speaks directly to that moment, structuring engagements for clinical staff, case managers, patients, and families.
Colleges & Universities
Shaping the practitioners of the next generation. Hector's combination of lived experience and professional credentials makes him a rare and credible voice in academic settings that students remember.
Churches & Faith Communities
Hector speaks the language of faith not as a backdrop but as a backbone. For churches ready to move from awareness into genuine, sustained support, this is the conversation that starts it.
Advocacy Organizations
For organizations already embedded in this work, an engagement can be a keynote, training, or leadership conversation. The format follows what the organization needs most.
This Is How Change Actually Happens
Not through a single program. Not through one organization doing it all. Through a growing grassroots initiative that multiplies through people, partnerships, and purpose-driven work.
The Keynote Presentation
A full keynote address anchored in Hector's story and the four pillars of the movement — Identity, Education, Housing, and Leadership. Built for large audiences and public-facing events.
Best for: Conferences, awareness events, hospital programming
Starting @ $1,000
The Workshop
A deeper, more interactive engagement that moves from inspiration into application. Participants leave with frameworks, tools, and next steps — not just motivation.
Best for: Clinical teams, student cohorts, nonprofit staff
The Leadership Conversation
A private, focused discussion with organizational leadership about how their institution can more effectively support individuals navigating the transition after disability.
Best for: Leadership teams, board conversations, strategic planning
More Than a Speaker.
A Resource Your Community Can Keep.
Every stop on the Beyond the Chair Tour brings more than the hours Hector spends in the room. Organizations can extend the reach of the engagement through resources their communities can take home.
Books
Beyond the Chair, Still We Rise, UNBREAKABLE, and additional titles are available for bulk purchase or giveaways. A book in someone's hands continues the conversation.
Course Access
Referrals to the six-week Thriving Through the Transition course — a structured, faith-informed journey through the pillars of identity, purpose, and rebuilding.
Ongoing Partnership
For organizations where one visit becomes something longer: co-hosted events, referral relationships, and advisory involvement. The right partnerships don't end at checkout.
Why I'm Getting on the Road.
"I've spent a lot of my life receiving things. Care. Support. Accommodation. Grace — more than I probably deserved. At some point, you reach a place where the most important thing you can do is give it back.
I want to sit in the rooms where the decisions get made. The rehabilitation units where someone is still trying to absorb what just happened to them. The classrooms where the next generation of social workers is learning what transition really looks like. The church offices where a pastor is trying to figure out how to reach the family in the third pew who hasn't said a word in six months.
Those rooms shaped me. And what came out of everything I've been through belongs back in them.
I'm not coming to perform. I'm coming to talk. To listen. To sit with the question of what's missing and figure out together how to fill it.
"God didn't save this story to keep it still."
— Hector Del Valle, MSW
Thank you for contacting us.
We’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
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No cost. No commitment. Just a real conversation.
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