Sommelier Yannick Benjamin

The restaurateur receives $1 million award for advocacy efforts for people with disabilities

- JULIA LARSON

After years of accolades, sommelier and restaurant owner Yannick Benjamin still needs a bit of time to process when amazing things happen to him. "I'm still trying to wrap my head around it," admitted Benjamin.

"I'm truly one of the luckiest human beings on the face of the Earth. ... I was given a second chance, maybe even a third chance. I just try to live every moment to the best of my ability." In October, Benjamin learned he had received the $1 million Craig H. Neilsen Visionary Prize, an award for those pushing boundaries while living with spinal cord injuries. Benjamin, who uses a wheelchair, is an influential advocate for disability accessibility in the restaurant industry.

Raised in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen neighborhood by French parents who worked in the hospitality industry, Benjamin started his first restaurant job at the age of 13. He became entranced by the sommelier position. He enrolled in wine courses even before he turned 21, moving up through the ranks to become a highprofile sommelier at some of America's most prestigious restaurants, such as Jean-Georges and Atelier at the Ritz-Carlton.

He was determined to stay in the field after his mobility-altering car accident in 2003, taking a position at New York's University Club and co-founding the charitable organization Wheeling Forward, which hosts Wine on Wheels programs across the country to raise funds for spinal cord injury research.