Kristin Thorson is the nation's leading advocate for people with fibromyalgia, a chronic and painful condition affecting five percent of the population. She is president and founder of both Fibromyalgia Network and the American Fibromyalgia Syndrome Association (AFSA). For more than 20 years, she has written articles to keep patients educated about the latest in research, treatment, and coping advice in Fibromyalgia Network's quarterly journal.

Due to the absence of funding for fibromyalgia research in the early 1990s, Kristin orchestrated her first of many grassroots lobbying campaigns in 1993 to convince members of Congress to require that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) jumpstart research on this condition. In addition, she advocated that NIH set up a special committee dedicated to reviewing grant applications on fibromyalgia so that they would stand a fighting chance against better understood diseases. Today, the NIH spends ten million annually on fibromyalgia and a special NIH panel of scientific reviewers has been formed for the condition.

Kristin has raised over two million dollars for AFSA, a nonprofit that has awarded 31 research projects on fibromyalgia. While continuing to improve patient education and raise funds for research, she remains active on awareness campaigns designed to get people to understand that although the body-wide symptoms of fibromyalgia are not visible, they are serious and real.