Alisa Wright Colopy is a bundle of raw energy. When she engages in a project, she’s a blur of organization and activity. She moves swiftly, assesses and analyzes with certainty and executes with skill.
When she established Fit & Able Productions 13 years ago, the objective was to promote healthy lifestyles, originally through training young people to triathlon. More than 4,000 people have gone through her coaching programs.
“I started out thinking that it was like training for life. That I could teach kids to think, ‘If I can do this, I can do anything.’ But I’ve discovered there’s so much more that’s important than winning a race. There’s compassion. There’s giving other people a hand up. It’s more about empowering than winning,” she said, when we met in one of her favorite parks, the Kids Together Park, in Cary, which is built to accommodate children with physical challenges and their able-bodied counterparts.
Right now, Alisa, 52, is weighing her options, wondering what her next steps might be, where she can channel her enormous energy into sustainable community work.
She has two bachelor’s degrees, sociology and psychology, a master’s in clinical psychology, she’s steps away from her doctorate in health administration.
