Jeff Butler

Jeff Butler (born June 12, 1990) is an American wheelchair rugby player, entrepreneur, and member of the United States national wheelchair rugby team. A three-time Paralympian, he won silver medals at the 2016 Summer Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro, the 2020 Summer Paralympics in Tokyo, and the 2024 Summer Paralympics in Paris. He is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and has built his career at the intersection of healthcare, and technology. He also serves in governance roles within the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee ecosystem.

Early life Butler was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The injury required extensive rehabilitation and marked a turning point in his life. He has described it as his "single most defining moment", the start of a path of independence and elite athletic competition that he could not have anticipated beforehand. The U.S. team again reached the final, where they were defeated by Japan 48–41, earning Team USA its third consecutive Paralympic silver medal and its eighth consecutive Paralympic medal in the sport.

World Championships Butler was part of the U.S. squad that won a bronze medal at the 2018 Wheelchair Rugby World Championship in Sydney, Australia. Butler again competed in the 2019 Parapan American Games in Lima, Peru, where Team USA won the gold medal in wheelchair rugby, and in the 2023 Parapan American Games in Santiago, Chile, where Team USA took gold and secured automatic qualification for the 2024 Summer Paralympics.

Personal life

Business career After graduating from the University of Texas, Butler launched VIPatient, a telehealth startup building a web and mobile platform to help healthcare providers deliver patient care. He has described it as an intentional first venture designed to accelerate learning about company-building, and later characterized it as a "traditional failure" in terms of product-market fit, but not a personal failure given the foundational lessons it provided.

Butler then pursued his MBA at Stanford before returning to full-time training and competition with USA Wheelchair Rugby through the 2024 Paralympics. Following the Paris Games, he joined a pre-Series A health technology startup in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Butler has drawn explicit parallels between elite Paralympic sport and entrepreneurship, describing both as requiring sustained persistence, tolerance for uncertainty, and an element of well-timed opportunity.

He also serves as an advisor to the USOPC Finance, Audit & Risk Committee, a committee of the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee Board of Directors responsible for financial oversight, budgeting, audit processes, and risk management.