Why It Started
Our Founder’s Story
Love Ourselves, Love Others, or what we call LOLO, is the creation of Leslie Pitt, our founder and president. Educated in Law, Nursing, Biology, and Global Health and Human Rights, Leslie transitioned her twenty-five year healthcare career into the pursuit of her passion to help others and created Love Ourselves, Love Others, LLC, and global non-profit organization, Project Lolo.
Driven by her personal passion to help children on a global scale, Leslie felt a compelling need to act after learning about the harsh realities that children with disabilities sometimes face, especially in developing countries. Though she didn’t know what to do, or how to do it, she knew she had to do something about it and that’s how both Project Lolo and now, Love Ourselves, Love Others came to be.
Leslie’s passion to help children with disabilities, or what she calls “differing abilities” because of her own life’s experience with limb loss. When she was six years old, on the first day of summer vacation after first grade, Leslie was involved in a traumatic accident. Her summer was spent in the hospital and undergoing multiple surgeries with seemingly-endless hours of physical therapy.
Through her self-proclaimed tenacity and the tremendous strength of her parents, her brother, her extended family and friends, Leslie knew that nothing, let alone learning to walk with a new prosthetic leg, would stop her from missing the first day of second grade.
Three months after her accident, she was back in school with her friends and back into everything she loved to do, like tap-dancing and playing with her brother and friends.
Though never defined by her own “loss,” Leslie gratefully attributes it to how it has been her greatest “strength.” She knows that life has granted her endless experiences that would never have happened, otherwise. It is for this reason that Leslie humbly shares the gifts she has received by founding Project Lolo and LOLO.
“In so many ways, I feel so fortunate for my life’s experiences. Though living with limb loss is not easy, it’s made me who I am today.
Now, with my new book, ‘Lolo’s Superpower,’ I feel like I can be that voice for children who are still finding their voice in living with differing abilities.
In the end, I want children to know that being different than everyone else, whether because they use a wheelchair or a prosthesis, gives them a ‘superpower’ of their very own. ”
It is from Leslie’s perspective that the messages in Lolo’s Superpower speak to children (and others, too) about embracing our own amazing individualities.
Our Team
Leslie Pitt, J.D.
Founder & CEO
Love Ourselves, Love Others was created and founded by Leslie Pitt. Described as a “globe-trotting humanitarian”, Leslie started out as a little girl who dreamed of helping others by making a world a better place.
When Leslie was six, she lost her left leg above the knee-she knows what it is like to be a child longing to be seen for who she really is, beyond her differing abilities. From this perspective, she wrote Lolo’s Superpower to help children embrace the differing abilities that make them amazingly unique.
Educated in law, nursing, global health, and human rights, Leslie transitioned her twenty-five year healthcare career into the pursuit of her passion to help others and created Love Ourselves, Love Others, LLC, and global non-profit organization, Project Lolo.
An accomplished public speaker and media consultant, Leslie loves to share her personal story because she feels that if sharing it changes the perspective of one person; then she has helped. Leslie’s past speaking engagements range from live television, podcast and radio interviews to Fortune 500 companies, domestic and international symposia. To schedule Leslie for speaking engagements or author visits, please contact us.
Love Ourselves, Love Others, LLC is a Minnesota limited, liability company based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Love Ourselves, Love Others, LLC donates a portion of its profits to Project Lolo℠, a U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS)-deemed 501(c)(3) non-profit, public charity duly incorporated and registered in the State of Minnesota. Donations and gifts made to Project Lolo are considered tax-deductible charitable contributions under this designation.
