Nan Little

Nan Little, Ph.D.

Education: BA Albion College, 1967

Ph.D., Anthropology, University of Washington, 1998

After teaching middle school for a few years, Nan Little became a full time mom and volunteer, most notably as a Guardian Ad Litem representing abused and neglected children in court. She returned to the paid workforce at the YMCA, where she was a founder and first director of the YMCA Earth Service Corps, a global environmental leadership program for high school students. After being recruited to the Chemistry department at the University of Washington to administer a program designed to teach teachers how to teach Native American students, she was dismayed by her own lack of expertise, leading her to earn a doctorate in Anthropology focused on science and math education for Native students. Nan retired in 2003, intending to fly fish her way into the sunset.

Life had other plans. In 2008, at age 62, Nan was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. She joined Dr. Jay Alberts’ Pedaling For Parkinson’s (PFP) program and cycled with PFP across Iowa six times. That led to climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro in 2011 (probably the oldest woman with Parkinson's to do so), trekking to the Annapurna Base Camp in Nepal in 2012 and hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu in Peru in 2013. With her commitment to cycling, more than nine years after diagnosis, Nan is still at Level 1 on the UPDRS scale. Nan is a tireless advocate for participating in research trials.

Exercise, travel, writing and Parkinson’s advocacy fill most days. Working closely with YMCAs and other health facilities she helps set up Pedaling for Parkinson’s programs around the nation. Nan served on the Parkinson's Disease Foundation’s (PDF) People with Parkinson's Advisory Council (PPAC), on the board of the Parkinson’s Creative Collective, as an Ambassador for the Michael J. Fox Foundation’s Partners in Parkinson’s program, as a representative with the Northwest Parkinson’s Foundation to the Parkinson’s Action Network (PAN) and as an advisor for a company that makes assistive cycling apps for people with Parkinson's.

She and her husband live in Seattle where they dote on their four grandchildren and two miniature dachshunds.