Being grateful…and toasting life.

I love the holidays, as it is a great time to reflect on the year and think about everything.

I have tried, as I have gotten older, to make myself much more cognizant of all the blessings in my life. It is really easy to take things for granted, like being healthy, people in your life being happy, even the amazing flowers every spring in the garden.

Life is a miracle. Even in the saddest, darkest situations in this world, which are so easy to get depressed over, there are good people and good things happening in the midst of evil.

Life is a blessing. And hopefully, we will all continue to be blessed with what we need in 2014. I wish everybody a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and a blessed 2014. There are a lot of exciting things brewing in 2014, and I can’t wait to see how they unfold.

Namaste. And ho ho ho! And cheers!

The 411…

Joanne C. Gerstner is an award-winning multimedia journalist, author, college professor and Fulbright specialist. She extensively covers, and is an expert, on sports, concussions in sports, the global business of athletics, women in media, and journalism/social media for outlets such as The New York Times, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, the BBC, USA Today, ESPN and Detroit News.

She is the co-author of “Back in the Game: Why Concussion Doesn’t Have to End Your Athletic Career”, with Dr. Jeff Kutcher (Oxford University Publishing, 2016), an Amazon No. 1 hot seller on youth sports and concussions. She has also written five children’s books.

In 2019, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer appointed her to the state’s first Women in Sports Task Force. The group served three-years, making recommendations for legislation and other private sector changes in the state to assist girls and women in playing sports, and finding careers in athletics.

Gerstner is a sought-after expert, speaker and panelist, appearing at SXSW Sports, CoSIDA, the University of Michigan, Jacobs Foundation, the American Academy of Neurology’s Concussion conference, the Association for Women in Sports Media, and numerous media appearances (BBC, NPR, etc.)

She is the Brandt Fellow Sports Journalist in Residence at the School of Journalism at Michigan State University, and has won fellowships with Knight-Wallace at the University of Michigan (2012-2013), Jacobs Foundation (2015) and Steve Saler-Medill (1995).

Gerstner is the recipient of Oakland University’s Distinguished Alumni Award (2020); the Association for Women in Sports Media’s Ann Miller Award (2014); Faculty Impact Award from the College of Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University (2017); the inaugural MSU ComArtsSci Brandt Fellowship for Faculty Excellence (2021), and the Headliner Award from the Association for Women in Communications Detroit chapter (2017). She was inducted into the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame in 2021.