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Dustin Prestridge

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General information

Hobbies & Interests

  • Theater
  • Writing
  • Reading
  • Advocacy And Activism
  • American Sign Language (ASL)
  • Animals
  • Anthropology
  • Archaeology
  • Art
  • Biology
  • Board Games And Puzzles
  • Business And Entrepreneurship
  • Chess
  • Cinematography
  • Clinical Psychology
  • Cognitive Science
  • Community Service And Volunteering
  • Communications
  • Counseling And Therapy
  • Directing
  • Exploring Nature And Being Outside
  • Education
  • Fitness
  • Gardening
  • Gender Studies
  • Health Sciences
  • History
  • Human Rights
  • Journaling
  • Learning
  • Meditation and Mindfulness
  • Mental Health
  • Mentoring
  • Movies And Film
  • Music
  • National Honor Society (NHS)
  • Neuroscience
  • Nutrition and Health
  • Pet Care
  • Philosophy
  • Photography and Photo Editing
  • Playwriting
  • Poetry
  • Psychiatry
  • Psychology
  • Public Health
  • Public Speaking
  • Public Policy
  • Research
  • Science
  • Social Justice
  • Swimming
  • Statistics
  • Self Care
  • Social Sciences
  • Sociology
  • Social Work
  • Spending Time With Friends and Family
  • Spirituality
  • Stargazing
  • Studying
  • Teaching
  • True Crime
  • Travel And Tourism
  • Tutoring
  • Volunteering

Reading

  • Academic
  • Biography
  • Business
  • Cultural
  • Education
  • Fantasy
  • Psychology
  • Adult Fiction
  • Adventure
  • Anthropology
  • Classics
  • Historical
  • History
  • Drama
  • Health
  • Humanities
  • How-To
  • Contemporary
  • Humor
  • Book Club
  • Leadership
  • Literary Fiction
  • Literature
  • Mystery
  • Novels
  • Philosophy
  • Plays
  • Reference
  • Science Fiction
  • Science‎
  • Self-Help
  • Social Issues
  • Social Science
  • Short Stories
  • Sociology
  • Suspense
  • Thriller
  • Tragedy
  • True Story

I read books daily.

Bio

Psychology student at Seattle Central College with a 4.0 GPA, transferring in Fall 2027 to study psychology, aging, and mental health. I am a Research Assistant in Dr. Patrick Raue's CREATIV Lab at the University of Washington, supporting a study on loneliness and depression in older adults, and first author on a manuscript under review at the Journal of Aging Studies. I have earned President's List and Dean's List recognition, Phi Theta Kappa membership, and the Costco Scholarship through the Seattle Colleges Foundation. In 2026 I won first place internationally in the League for Innovation Student Literary Competition. At Seattle Central I founded and lead three student organizations: Psi Beta, the National Honor Society in Psychology; the Psychology Club, now 52 members; and the Drama Club. I also serve as a teaching assistant and ESL tutor. Before returning to school, I spent twenty years at Apple as Director of Training, Compliance, and Vendor Relations, leading training for 1,500+ people and managing $500 million in vendor contracts. A diagnosis of early-onset Parkinson's disease redirected that path. I founded Wellbrella, a caregiving company serving 42 families navigating Parkinson's and related neurological conditions. My research focuses on caregiver burden, loneliness, and depression among aging adults with chronic illness, and on how isolation and human connection shape mental health outcomes. Long term, I intend to pursue graduate study and clinically oriented research that improves quality of life for older adults living with chronic illness.

Education

Seattle Central College

Associate's degree program

2026 – 2027

Majors:
  • Psychology, General

Miscellaneous

Desired degree level:
Bachelor's degree program
Graduate schools of interest:
University of Washington-Seattle Campus, Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus, Duke University, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
Majors of interest:
Gerontology, Mental and Social Health Services and Allied Professions, Research and Experimental Psychology, Psychology, General, Psychology, Other, Clinical, Counseling and Applied Psychology
Desired degree modality:
In-Person, Full-Time
Medical school interest:
No
English as first language:
Yes
Homeschooled:
No

Career

  • Founder

    Health, Wellness, and Fitness · Wellbrella

    Jan 2024 – Present

  • Director of Training, Compliance, and Vendor Relations

    Technology · Apple

    Jan 2003 – Jan 2023

Miscellaneous

Dream career field:
Mental Health Care, Psychology, Research
Dream career goals:
Pursue graduate study and clinically oriented psychology research on aging, loneliness, and late-life depression, and help build care models that reduce isolation and improve quality of life for older adults living with chronic illness.
Work experience:
10+ years
Has nursing license:
No
Leadership experience:
Yes

Military

ROTC:
No

Future Interests

  • Advocacy
  • Volunteering
  • Philanthropy
  • Entrepreneurship
Special Needs Advocacy Inc. Kathleen Lehman Memorial Scholarship
Before Parkinson’s disease, I rarely thought about how much of life depends on momentum. My career was advancing, I was building a family, planning for the future, buying a home, and thinking the way many people in their thirties and forties do: always forward. I spent more than two decades working in leadership roles at Apple focused on training, compliance, and operations. My life had structure, direction, and long-term plans attached to it. Parkinson’s did not arrive after those plans had already unfolded. It arrived in the middle of building them. At first, the changes were subtle enough to ignore. Movements I once made without thinking began requiring attention. Walking across a room, carrying a cup of coffee, buttoning a shirt, typing on a keyboard, or preparing for a meeting slowly stopped feeling automatic. I became aware of my body in ways I never had before. The strange part was how invisible most of it remained to other people. I learned very quickly how much energy goes into trying to appear normal while privately adapting to a body that no longer moves with the same certainty it once had. The hardest adjustment was not only physical. It was emotional. Parkinson’s forced me to recalculate a life that had already been moving at full speed. There is a particular kind of grief that comes from realizing your future has changed permanently while the rest of the world continues moving as if nothing has happened. Illness interrupted not only my health, but the version of my life I thought I was steadily building toward. Living with Parkinson’s also changed the way I saw other people. I started paying closer attention to the emotional realities people carry while navigating illness, disability, caregiving, aging, and uncertainty. Some of the people most in need of patience and understanding are also the people most likely to feel invisible. I became increasingly aware of how often vulnerable people are reduced to routines, diagnoses, or problems to solve instead of being treated as human beings with emotional complexity and dignity. That shift eventually led me back to school to study psychology. Returning to college later in life while managing Parkinson’s required humility, persistence, and adaptability. I entered higher education carrying experiences very different from many traditional students. Rather than discouraging me, those experiences clarified why education mattered to me. I became deeply interested in caregiving, chronic illness, behavioral health, and the emotional effects of isolation. Today, those experiences shape both my academic goals and my work developing Wellbrella, a caregiving-focused initiative centered around compassion, dignity, and emotional well-being. My long-term goal is to contribute to clinically oriented psychology and behavioral health work focused on caregiving, chronic illness, aging populations, and mental health support. I want to help create care environments where people with special needs feel understood rather than managed and emotionally supported rather than isolated. Being part of the disabled community changed the way I define resilience. Resilience is not pretending difficulty does not exist. It is learning how to continue adapting after life no longer looks the way you expected it to. More than anything, I hope to use both my education and lived experience to help build systems of care that make people experiencing illness or disability feel less invisible, more understood, and more human.
Dustin Prestridge Student Profile | Bold.org