Carolina Martinez admits running track wasn’t originally at the top of her sporting interests growing up.
“I did a bunch of sports, like volleyball, basketball, soccer, and the funny thing about track is that when I started in middle school, the night before tryouts, I didn’t even want to go,” said Martinez. “I didn’t want to do track, I didn’t want to run. And my mom was like, ‘No, I think this will be good,’ and all my other friends were doing it. So I was like, ‘OK, fine, I’ll try it out.’”
That ended up being a wise decision for Martinez, who had spent three years in treatment and recovery after being diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia at age 5.
“When I was 6, 7, when I was going through treatment and just growing up, there was a lot of things that I wanted to do: I just wanted to get a medal, I just wanted to be on a team. I just wanted to go to a game, be playing a game,” said Martinez, who’s heading into her sophomore season as a sprinter on the Bradley University track team.
“Now I’m doing those things and achieving those things, and going beyond. I’m very grateful that I feel like I’m doing the things that my little self dreamed of.”
In her freshman season with the Braves, Martinez broke a 41-year-old school record in the 300-meter dash. Now, she’s building on her athletic success by sharing her story of recovery and resilience through a Name, Image, and Likeness [NIL] partnership with Veloxity Labs, a Peoria-based biotech research company.
“Learning more about Veloxity Labs, the vision, I think, aligned a lot with how my values and my views are, especially regarding my pediatric childhood cancer background. So just everything tied together,” said Martinez, who was diagnosed in 2011 and is now in remission.
“Being a part of track and being part of a sport that has a lot of running, you focus a lot on increasing your speed. So I think with the partnership, this is very unique where it’s kind of like two worlds colliding in a way that you didn’t think could collide.”
Veloxity Labs co-founder, president and CEO Shane Needham said the company has been interested in supporting college student-athletes for some time, and Martinez is an ideal partner for their NIL deal.
“She is perfect because she matches our vision,” said Needham. “Our mission at Veloxity is about speed, and she’s a track star. And our vision is treating disease one sample at a time, and accelerating bio analysis. That’s what we do.”
Needham said Martinez’s background as a childhood cancer survivor is a key part of that connection.
“As a track star and a student-athlete who has absolutely been affected in a positive manner by pharmaceuticals and biotech innovations and therapeutics, because she was diagnosed with leukemia as a child, we have directly had impact on people like her,” he said.
Founded in 2021, Veloxity is a contract research organization focused on improving turnaround time for lab results.
“We support the research via contracts with pharmaceutical and biotech firms to help them get therapeutics to treat disease to market,” said Needham. “The faster we can help companies get therapeutics to market, the quicker we can treat disease and help people like Carolina.”
Martinez recently filmed two promotional videos for Veloxity, titled “Why We Run” and “Purpose In Motion.” The campaign looks to show the human side of diagnostic science through Martinez and her journey.
“It’s all a very cool experience and very new to me, and I’m just excited to keep on going with it,” she said, noting the videos were shot on a Peoria-area track where she once competed in a state tournament as a middle schooler from Gurnee.
“I looked at the track and I’m like, ‘Wow, this looks really familiar,’” she said. “I was at the same track when I first started my track career, and I just felt like it was so full circle, because now I’m going to shoot a commercial on here and run around some more. So I just thought that was really cool.”
Needham said the campaign ties in with the company’s support for the annual St. Jude Run coming up on Aug. 2.
“This year, our goal is to raise $30,000 total. We’re almost to $25,000 already, and we’ve got a couple of weeks left,” he said. “St. Jude is an amazing organization. If anybody ever gets to visit one of those hospitals, you’ll see some very sick children and their parents and their families that never have to pay a dime because the donations and the philanthropy that goes on. It’s just amazing.
“It’s a great message for Veloxity Labs to send,” said Martinez. “You’re aligning yourself and you’re doing things with the pharmaceutical industry, and then you’re supporting the ones that you’re helping do labs and testing for. It’s personal to me because it’s all within the cancer world.”
