92 - A Sequence of Controlled Falling - Yakov Gradinar, CP

About this episode

Yakov Gradinar discusses his journey in founding the Protez Foundation to support Ukrainian war amputees and his vision for modern amputee care.

Yakov Gradinar, CP, is the Chief Medical Officer of the Protez Foundation, a nonprofit organization that flies Ukrainian war amputees to the United States to receive custom prosthetics, rehabilitation, and counseling services. He trained as an orthopedic trauma surgeon in Ukraine before immigrating to the United States, where he retrained as a prosthetist. When the war in Ukraine escalated in 2022, he left a stable career to launch the Protez Foundation out of his garage — and has since grown it into an organization with over 80 employees, 150 volunteers, and donors across 40 countries, having served nearly 260 patients across 30 groups. In this episode, Yakov walks us through a life shaped by an early cancer scare that taught him to treat every day as a gift, the humility of starting over in a new country, and what it actually takes to build a multidisciplinary nonprofit from nothing while raising seven kids and leading a church. We hear how Protez coordinates care across prosthetic fitting, physical therapy, mental health support, and community reintegration. We close with Yakov's vision for what modern amputee care should look like, his case for a multidisciplinary and…

People in this episode

Guest: Yakov Gradinar

Topics covered

• amputee care
• nonprofit organization
• rehabilitation
• prosthetics
• mental health
• community reintegration

Keywords

• Protez Foundation
• Yakov Gradinar
• amputee care
• rehabilitation
• prosthetics
• nonprofit
• Ukraine
• mental health

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Protez Foundation

Places: Ukraine, United States

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