There’s a moment in most survivor stories where everything pivots, where the person standing on the other side of a catastrophe decides what that catastrophe is going to mean. For Vincent A. Lanci, that moment came slowly, quietly, in the form of a support group at Tampa General Hospital, where a young man who had once been left for dead on a Tampa street started to realize that his story could do something for someone else.
That realization would take thirteen years to fully unfold. But the trajectory it set in motion, from trauma to testimony to a life built entirely around helping others, is the subject of the latest episode of Advocacy at Work.
The Night That Changed Everything
Vincent’s story begins with a decision that shouldn’t have been consequential. Walking home after a night out, he chose to pass on a ride from someone who’d been drinking. It was the safe call. And then a car leaving a bar hit him.
He woke up from a coma at Tampa General Hospital.
“I had to relearn to walk and talk. Spell my name. You name it, I had to restart life.”
Vincent had been a finance major pursuing his MBA, mapping out a career in the conventional sense: salary, corner office, title. The accident didn’t just injure him; it erased the version of himself he’d been building toward. Doctors told him he might need 24/7 care for the rest of his life. He might not return to school. The list of things that might never come back was long.
What followed was years of quiet, grinding work — physical, cognitive, emotional. He leaned on what his traumatic brain injury (TBI) had made harder: reading, writing, repeating. Where he once could glance at a study sheet before an exam, he now had to read, write, type, and listen again and again just to retain a fragment of information. He kept at it anyway, because he understood, viscerally, the power of keeping the brain active.
“I wouldn’t let someone I’ve never met ruin my life and my family and friends’ lives forever. I can work my way back. It just may not look the same.”
Left for Dead. Coming Alive. Living Proof.
The arc of Vincent’s recovery isn’t just personal, it became the literal framework for his professional life.
His company is called Left for Dead Incorporated. Under that umbrella sits Coming Alive, a podcast production company, and Living Proof, his TBI coaching practice. The naming wasn’t accidental. It’s a map of the journey: you don’t begin as living proof. You begin with what happened. You find your way back. And then, eventually, you become evidence that the comeback was possible.
“Left for Dead to coming back alive. Now we’re living proof — trying to walk. If I can do it, you can definitely do it. I am 100% no more special or gifted than anybody else out there.”
Along the way, Vincent wrote. A lot. He published Left for Dead, a TBI recovery memoir, in January 2026, thirteen years to the anniversary of his accident. He wrote children’s mental health books, including one where a fifth-grade teacher takes kids on a “mental health week” school trip in the style of the Magic School Bus. He launched multiple podcasts, including A Mental Health Break, which is where he and Tim McDonald first connected. He built a ghostwriting and book coaching practice. He formalized a podcast production service for others who want to share their stories.
None of it was linear. COVID ended his school speaking career before it really started. Finance roles he’d returned to never quite fit the post-TBI version of himself. Each dead end pushed him further toward what actually felt like his work.
Advocacy Is Just Sharing Your Story
When asked to define patient advocacy, Vincent doesn’t reach for a clinical definition.
“Advocacy to me is sharing your story.”
He’s quick to acknowledge that this sounds simpler than it feels. For a long time, he didn’t think anyone would care what he had to say. He didn’t want to be defined by the accident, to become, in his mind, “the kid who got hit by the car.” What changed it was attending those early TBI support groups at Tampa General and watching what happened after he spoke. People would come up to him afterward and say it helped. That feedback loop, small as it was, made him want to do it again.
“Once you lean into it a little bit, hearing someone say those things makes you kind of want to do it again to help a few more people.”
That’s the nature of advocacy he describes: it starts inward, with your own need to process and connect, and it slowly reveals itself as something that belongs to other people too. Sharing your story isn’t an act of ego. It’s an act of service.
The Broken Wrist Question
Perhaps the sharpest moment in the conversation comes when Vincent poses a question that reframes the entire mental health conversation.
“If you break your wrist, what do you do?”
You rehab it. You take time. You get surgery if you need to. You don’t go back to work until it’s healed. Nobody questions whether you deserve that recovery time.
“Now what if you’re going through a bunch of anxiety at work? You have no sick days, you have no PTO. Why is treating your mental health, while it’s still treatable, not the same thing?”
His argument is for prevention: that the same logic we apply to physical injury should apply to mental health. Taking a week to rest, eat well, get sunlight, exercise — these are interventions that can stop anxiety or depression from becoming something chronic and debilitating. The failure to treat mental health with the same institutional seriousness as physical health isn’t just a cultural gap. It’s a public health failure.
“I’d love to see that we take preventative actions for mental health like we would if you broke your wrist.”
One Is Enough
Vincent closes with a message that feels like the distillation of everything he’s lived.
“It only takes one piece of something to bring your momentum to the other side. One conversation, one networking event, one anything. One can change everything.”
He’s speaking from experience. He knows what it feels like to be in the dark. He also knows that somewhere in every seemingly ordinary moment — a support group, an email from a stranger, a podcast recording — there’s the possibility of a pivot. The work of advocacy, as he practices it, is about staying in motion long enough for that one thing to arrive.
To connect with Vincent, visit his website at vincentalanci.com, where you can learn about his books, coaching, podcast production services, and his podcast A Mental Health Break. He’s also offering a free ebook for anyone whose story this episode touches, no strings attached.
If you’re not yet subscribed to Advocacy at Work, now’s a great time. And if you know someone whose story belongs on this show, reach out — Tim wants to hear from you.
