Meet Craig Stubing | Podcaster & Nonprofit Founder

We had the good fortune of connecting with Craig Stubing and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Craig, what is the most important factor behind your success?
The success of the Beta Cell podcast and Beta Cell Foundation lies in always putting the type 1 diabetes community ahead of what would personally benefit me the most. It’s easy to believe that having a voice means you should do all the talking. But being part of a community, especially a community focused on living with a chronic disease like T1D, means understanding when you should be listening. When we use our voices for personal gain, we break the sacred contract that makes up a community.
I’ve always believed that the Beta Cell podcast should not be “about” me; I was just there to give a voice to these important stories. It’s a platform designed to lift up all people with type 1 diabetes, not be my own pedestal. When I founded the Beta Cell Foundation at the end of 2019, the goal was to do everything that current diabetes nonprofits were not doing: listen to diabetics, be completely financially transparent, and put the community ahead of financial gain. And that is exactly what we’ve done.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I had my first real conversations with another diabetic 13 years after diagnosis, when I was 26 years old, while creating a video advocating for Medicare coverage of continuous glucose monitors. It amazed me how similar their experiences with type 1 diabetes were to mine, despite having lived completely different lives (and being over twice my age). I felt a real connection to these people, and they were much more relatable for me compared to the athletes and celebrities on TV, in books, and magazines. It’s hard to articulate how it feels when you truly recognize yourself in someone else, and a stranger no less, but that experience was life changing. I realized that there were probably other people like me who had never had this feeling of shared experience and the emotional burden it lifts. I knew then that I needed to start the Beta Cell Podcast in order to share stories of living with type 1 diabetes to other people who felt alone with the disease—or didn’t even know that they felt alone—through carefully crafted stories, hosted by someone who can empathize with them.
Over the years, the show has evolved because of my experiences living with T1D, and I have evolved because of the experiences I’ve had listening to these stories. As I started spending more time interacting with the diabetes online community, the issues of insulin affordability and insulin access have touched more diabetics than most people realize. What troubled me was that these stories were being ignored by the biggest diabetes organizations and media outlets. Because of the platform the community had given me over the many years of producing Beta Cell, I saw it as my responsibility to share these stories to advocate for my community. The show evolved from just personal stories to tackling larger topics, like illustrating the insulin pricing crisis in the U.S., revealing how the nonprofit Beyond Type 1 opposed emergency insulin legislation in Maine, and exposing unethical diabetes health coaches.

At the end of 2019, I founded the Beta Cell Foundation as a way to help fund new diabetes projects for the community conceived and run by type 1 diabetics. I wanted there to be an organization that cared more about the diverse needs of type 1 diabetics, instead of “community” just meaning invitations to more and more expensive fundraisers and group events. As an unpaid CEO, I can work on what’s important to the T1D community, not what raises the most money; our commitment to being completely transparent with every financial transaction means the community knows I’m advocating for them, not sponsors. I’m excited to see the Beta Cell Foundation grow into a beacon of diabetes community, education, and advocacy.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I think LA’s most under-appreciated feature is our proximity to nature, like the Angeles National Forest. There are few cities where you can drive for less than an hour and be completely away from your 3.9 million neighbors. There is no better place in LA to recharge and reflect than on some spectacular trails with incredible views. With constant notifications pinging our phones all day, going off the grid is the best way to (literally) disconnect and spend time reflecting on our purpose. That said, I’d make sure we’d get coffee at Caffe Luxxe, sandwiches (and drinks) from Larchmont Village Wine, Spirts & Cheese, and grab dinner at Desano Pizza Bakery for the best pizza in LA.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I didn’t know anyone else with type 1 diabetes when growing up, I just existed with this disease without every really considering the emotional and physical toll a chronic self-managed disease with a drug that can easily kill you was having on me. It was only after being a patient of Dr. Anne Peters for many years that I came to understand and accept the realities of my disease. Seeing how much she cares for all of her patients motivated me to become an advocate myself. While Dr. Peters has many wonderful qualities, it’s her compassion that serves my north star to this day.

Website: craigstubing.com

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