When Annika Hutsler, ’17, earned her BIS in Speech-Language Sciences and Technology from Northern Arizona University, she was only 21 and already learning one of life’s hardest lessons: resilience means changing lanes when the road shifts beneath you.
“I learned so much about myself while I was at NAU,” she said. “It was really the first time I learned how to fail. And by fail, I don’t mean I failed my classes—but it was the opportunity for me to try something out, realize it wasn’t for me, and try something else. That’s what I really took away from my experience at NAU.”
A first-generation college student from Phoenix, Hutsler earned the Lumberjack Scholarship and finished her degree in just three years. On campus, she worked for NAU Outdoor Recreation and took her first snowboarding class—an experience that would later shape the course of her life.
“I love telling people that I grew up in Denver but learned to snowboard in Arizona,” she said with a laugh.
After graduation, Hutsler joined the U.S. Marine Corps. “You deal with a lot of physical challenges, but the camaraderie and serving my country—I’d never felt that feeling before. I loved it.” She excelled in training, earning multiple Meritorious Mast awards for academic and leadership excellence, and was promoted to lance corporal while still in boot camp.
But halfway through her service, unexplained pain in her leg led to a devastating diagnosis: a rare, aggressive tumor. “For 14 months, I was miserable and begging for answers,” she said. “It was the darkest point in my life.” After multiple failed surgeries, she made a bold decision. “At what point are we going to amputate my leg?” she asked her doctors. “I told them, ‘Cut it off now.’”
Her amputation in April 2019 marked the beginning of what she calls “the best day of my life.” “By losing my leg, I realized it was my first chance of doing things again,” she said. “I felt hope.”
That hope carried her into adaptive sports. Just eight weeks post-surgery, Hutsler competed in the Department of Defense Warrior Games, winning two silver medals. She went on to represent Team USA at the 2023 Invictus Games in Düsseldorf, Germany—earning ten medals across multiple sports—and is now training with the National Ability Center in Park City, Utah, as a Paralympic hopeful in alpine skiing.
“Skiing feels like flying,” she said. “It’s also the one place that I don’t really feel disabled. I have one leg, and I’m outperforming a lot of other people on the mountain.”
Hutsler is now ranked among the top para standing slalom skiers in the world and continues to break barriers off the slopes. As a disability advocate, mentor, and model, she uses her growing platform—150,000 social media followers strong—to champion representation. “One of the first ads I did was for Athleta,” she said. “A couple months after it aired, a little girl from Texas recognized me. That was the moment I realized why I’m doing this. Representation really does matter.”
Still, she traces much of her character back to her time in Flagstaff.
“All these characteristics that make me who I am today,” she said. “I can trace them back to the jobs I had, the people I met, and the classes I took at NAU.”
When asked what advice she’d offer today’s students, her answer comes quickly: “It’s okay to fail. Failure and trying new things can bring you to a life that’s way better than what you expected or planned.”
In November 2025, the NAU Alumni Association honored Hutsler with the Excellence in Achievement by a Recent Graduate Award, presented annually to an alumna who has achieved outstanding professional success within a decade of graduation.
And as for opening new doors, Hutsler smiles. “Every opportunity I’ve had in my life was because I took the initiative to go and open those doors,” she said. “As long as you keep trying, eventually something’s going to work out.”
