As a result of the pandemic, her nonprofit organization, Rise Collective, lost a significant amount of funding, which forced her to make a difficult decision. At that moment, her options became 1) to give up what she had spent the last 5+ years building and go into another line of work or 2) to give it all that she had, give up her salary to keep the operations afloat and fight to keep her dream alive. Courtney chose to fight and move forward.