Sarah De Lagarde

This woman got run over by two trains. Then made history as the first double-amputee woman to climb Kilimanjaro.

In 2022, Sarah de Lagarde was at the top of her game.

Global Head of Communications at Janus Henderson Investors.

Fresh off a summit of Mount Kilimanjaro with her husband.

One month later, her life changed in a second.

It was a rainy Friday night.

She left the office late and took the tube instead of a cab.

At High Barnet station, she slipped on the wet platform, and fell through the gap between the train and the edge.

Nobody saw. No one raised the alarm.

The first train departed.

It crushed her right arm.

And then a second train arrived.

It ran over her right leg.

She was conscious through it all.

Alone. Bleeding. Screaming. No response.

Eventually, someone noticed.

45 minutes later, emergency services got her to Royal London Hospital.

She was sedated, stabilized, and told to sign the amputation forms.

While recovering in the trauma unit, visited by C-suite execs and colleagues from across the globe, Sarah decided to become the company’s first Brighter Future Strategist.

A role she created.

Her pitch: use her own body as the testing ground for accessible innovation.

And let the data, AI, and tech tell a better story, grounded in real human experience.

Her request to the company? “I don’t want a Barbie arm. I want a kick-ass robot arm.”

Her husband launched a GoFundMe for the best prosthetic arm on the market.

£250,000 was raised in 19 days.

She got a generative AI-powered bionic limb.

16 electrodes read the tiny muscle signals in her residual limb.

The AI tracks and predicts her movement over time.

The more she uses it, the smarter it gets.

Sarah became the firm’s guinea pig for accessibility innovation.

She tested AI systems like Microsoft Copilot.

She customized her tools. Smaller keyboards, twin laptops, redesigned interfaces.

And she used her story to advocate publicly… for responsible AI, accessible healthcare, and inclusive design.

Doctors, friends, even the climbing crew in Tanzania, told her she’d never summit Kilimanjaro again.

18 months of training later, on August 14, 2024, she became the first woman with double prosthetics to summit the mountain.

She didn’t do it alone.

Her husband, her two daughters, two medical professionals, and her original climbing team all joined her.

It was also a fundraiser. For a charity that recycles used prosthetics from the UK and ships them to conflict zones and low-income countries.

Sarah is now suing Transport for London in a high-profile legal case.

The claim: there was no staff on the platform. No monitored CCTV.

No safety system in place to detect someone on the tracks.

She’s not just suing for herself.

She’s suing for the two million commuters who use the Tube every day.

And the 16 severe incidents per month that still happen on the network.