As a kid, Louis DeSanto was a year-round athlete. Sports gave him belonging — a locker room, a team, a place he made sense. It also sat alongside something harder: bullying that followed him from one school to the next, even after his family made a change meant to leave it behind.

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By high school, his parents' divorce and untreated anxiety had turned into depression. Alcohol became the coping mechanism, the thing that quieted it down for a night. That pattern continued through college and into his early career — even as his life, from the outside, looked completely fine.

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His girlfriend was the one who told him the truth and encouraged him to get help. He entered a 90-day inpatient treatment program, where he was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Major Depressive Disorder, and Alcohol Use Disorder. There, and in the years since, he rebuilt his life through therapy and real coping skills — not willpower, not pretending.

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Sharing that story is now central to his work. What started as speaking to students became a broader message about resilience: it resonates in boardrooms, at sales kickoffs, and on conference stages just as much as it does in a school gymnasium. Because everybody gets knocked down. Not everybody has been shown a practiced way to get back up.

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Louis is the founder of DeSanto Advisory and a board member of Be a Part of the Conversation (BPOC).