Influential Women Highlights Deb Carabet: Opening Doors To Endurance Sports For Para-Athletes, Women, And Beginners

LOS ANGELES, CA, UNITED STATES, October 14, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — The Founder and CEO of Elevate Multisport Combines Paratriathlon Coaching, Advocacy, and Decades of Service to Build Inclusive Pathways From First Races to the Paralympic Stage

Los Angeles, California – Deb Carabet, known to many of her athletes as Coach Deb, founded and leads Elevate Multisport & Paratriathlon Coaching and is a full-time Para-Multisport Coach in the Los Angeles area. She is the only dedicated full-time professional in this role in Southern California. Through Elevate, she coaches paratriathletes and para-athletes in paracycling, pararunning, and paraswimming, and introduces women and beginners of all abilities to multisport and endurance sports. Her specialties include coaching para-athletes with disabilities, guiding women into multisport and triathlon, open water swim instruction, and training age group athletes in cycling, running, and swimming.

Deb brings nearly a decade of coaching experience to her work, about eight years of which have focused on para-athletes. She builds training programs, talent identification camps, and development pathways for athletes who are working toward national and Paralympic competition. She is also a coach educator for other paratriathlon coaches, helping expand the number of professionals prepared to serve athletes with disabilities. She serves as a coach or consultant for USA Triathlon, the United States Olympic & Paralympic Training Centers, the Challenged Athletes Foundation, Dare2Tri, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, and other adaptive sport nonprofits. As Parathlete Coordinator for the Los Angeles Marathon and other regional races, she creates structured competition opportunities for athletes with disabilities.

Her path to coaching began in a very different field. Before coaching full time, Deb spent more than 20 years in corporate media and sports marketing, working in advertising, broadcast, and partnerships with organizations including Golf Digest. Her educational background is in Deaf Education and Speech Pathology, with studies at San Diego State University and California State University, Northridge, and she communicates in Spanish and American Sign Language. After September 11, 2001, she volunteered at Ground Zero and went on to spend two years there working with FEMA and the American Red Cross, serving as the Red Cross media liaison alongside her other duties. Those experiences shaped her understanding of service and community. They also gave her skills that continue to serve her athletes today. Her background in Deaf Education helps her communicate clearly with athletes of varied needs, while her years in media and marketing taught her how to build partnerships, tell compelling stories, and bring attention to causes that deserve it. Her time at Ground Zero showed her how communities come together in difficult moments, a lesson she now applies to building the support networks that adaptive athletes depend on.

Deb holds a range of coaching credentials. She is a USA Triathlon Level 1 and Level 2 Certified Coach, a USA Triathlon Level 2 Paratriathlon Certified Coach, and a USA Cycling Certified Coach for both adaptive and non-disabled disciplines. She also holds U.S. Center for SafeSport certification and American Red Cross certifications. Her contributions to the sport have earned her Coach of the Year honors.

Deb attributes her success to hard work, persistence, and continuous learning. She also credits her mentors and the supportive community of athletes, coaches, and volunteers around her. Her father played a central role, teaching her to persist, to value education, and to refuse to accept no for an answer. The support of her brother, her sister, and their families remains essential to her. The best career advice she has received reflects those lessons: believe in yourself, learn from failure and keep moving forward, never give up, keep asking questions, and never stop learning.

For young women entering her field, Deb encourages them to believe in themselves and to not let age, background, or a single career path limit them. She notes that the work rewards adaptability, resilience, and curiosity. She advises them to build networks, seek out mentors, and remain open to reinvention, as she did herself. She likes to point out that the word impossible can also be read as I am possible. Her own career, which moved from deaf education to corporate media to disaster response and finally to full-time coaching, shows that a professional path does not have to follow a straight line to be meaningful. Each chapter, she has found, adds skills and perspective that strengthen the next one.

Deb is candid about the challenges facing adaptive sports. Securing funding and consistent access to accessible pools and tracks remains difficult. Adaptive equipment such as prosthetic running blades, handcycles, and race chairs is costly, and travel places a heavy financial burden on athletes. Airlines also frequently damage both sport equipment and everyday wheelchairs. At the same time, she sees a major opportunity ahead in the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games, which she believes can raise visibility, attract investment, and build long-term support for para-athletes and inclusive programs.

Her values center on inclusion, service, advocacy, family, and a strong support network. She is committed to giving back, advancing education, and building communities where athletes of all abilities can thrive, with a particular focus on creating access. That commitment extends well beyond her coaching business. She is a member of the Challenged Athletes Foundation and has served as a longtime board member of a local cycling club, Velo La Grange. She is a board member and co-developer with a mobility device development company, and she supports organizations including Dare2Tri, the USOPC Foundation, the USA Triathlon Foundation, Skid Row Runners, the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, American Friends of the Hebrew University, and the Israel Para Sports Center.

Deb continues to serve in advisory and board roles that support adaptive sports, and she remains a strong advocate for people with disabilities, athlete welfare, and the Paralympic movement. As Los Angeles prepares to host the world in 2028, Deb Carabet is helping ensure that athletes of every ability have the coaching, opportunities, and community they need to reach the starting line and beyond.

Learn More about Deb Carabet:

Through her Influential Women profile: https://influentialwomen.com/connect/deb-carabet

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