Salt Lake City-based Jesse Grupper, who recently qualified for Paris 2024, is a professional climber – but what you might not know is that he’s also a banjo-picking mechanical engineer that helped design a robotic hand-rehabilitation exoskeleton for post-stroke patients. Jesse started climbing at the age of six after being dragged to the local gym for his sister’s climbing lessons. He had way too much energy to just sit on the couch, and started taking lessons. By the age of nine he was competing. He’s been on the youth National team ten times, on the open National team five times and won five medals on the IFSC World Cup circuit (2022+2023). He continues to compete at the international level to this day. Overall Jesse is passionate about expanding human potential, whether that be in the sport he’s dedicated much of his life to, working with people with disabilities to teach them how to climb, or utilizing engineering design to create the next gen of tech.