Playing catch-up with UCF Hall of Famer Shaquem Griffin ’16 will require mental reflexes. At least a dozen subjects wrestle for his — and our — attention during a conversation: family, business, technology, football, business again, training, faith, being a good father. The list goes on. Everything on it, in some squiggly way, connects to Griffin’s childhood memories in the family garage. He’ll take us there, but first he needs to do the catching up part.

“It’s hard to explain everything in a sizzle reel,” he says before doing his best to provide a rapid-fire montage of life since retiring from the National Football League in 2022. He works as a community coordinator with NFL Legends, is actively involved in six companies, manages several real-estate holdings, travels to speak at corporate events and schools, serves on the Big 12 Alumni Council, writes books, is co-founder (with his twin brother, Shaquill Griffin ’22) of Consumer Launch Pad to help entrepreneurs streamline innovative ideas into manufacturing processes, cares for his three children at home in Anna Maria Island, Florida, and is working on a movie script about his life.

“I’m also training for three track and field events at the Paralympics — the long jump, 100 meters and 200 meters,” he says. “I plan to be in Los Angeles in 2028.”

If you know anything at all about Shaquem Griffin, then you know enough to take him at his word when he sets his mind to anything. And that seems like a perfect bridge into the expected subject of sports, specifically Griffin’s determination to play linebacker at the highest level despite having his left hand amputated when he was 4 years old.

But Griffin’s mind is set on something bigger, newer and just as personal as the sport that brought his story into the public eye. It’s his collaboration with smartARM, a tech company dedicated to developing prosthetics using a rare combination of artificial intelligence (AI), cameras, 3D printing, cosmetic appeal and, at the heart of it all, genuine compassion.

“Over the years, I’ve been approached by countless prosthetic companies,” Griffin says. “But they only wanted to use me for my name and likeness. The moment I met the people from smartARM, I knew there’s something different about them — not only what they’re doing with technology, but why they’re doing it.”

Griffin says this today from the perspective of a smartARM user. A few minutes ago, he was cleaning his son’s bottles with the help of a smartARM. Yesterday, he picked through produce at his favorite market with it. Every time he lifted an apple, the prosthetic collected real-time data and fed it into a constantly improving algorithm. When he picks up an apple tomorrow, the arm will be smarter than it was yesterday.

“I didn’t know how helpful it would be until I started using it,” Griffin says.

The technology, however, is just part of the reason he wanted to join the smartARM team.

“Their values match mine,” he says. During his initial conversation with smartARM’s founders in 2022, he heard a story about a friend of theirs who never had a commercial-grade prosthetic because of the high cost. Griffin heard words that had been missing from his brief discussions with other prosthetic makers: affordability and accessibility.

“I could relate to those issues,” he says. “I’m at a point now where I can say my challenges were part of God’s purpose for me — to overcome obstacles and be in a position to do more good for others. smartARM fits that purpose.”

Now, let’s go back to the Griffins’ garage in St. Petersburg, Florida. Before Shaquem and Shaquill helped put UCF on the national football map, before Shaquem was named defensive player of the year in the American Athletic Conference, before he set the record for the fastest 40-yard-dash time by a linebacker at the NFL combine, before he was drafted by the Seattle Seahawks and before he’d ever heard of smartARM, there was just a set of tools and a workbench in the garage. Griffin’s father also brought vision into the garage. In his mind, he saw a prosthetic his son could use for training. But instead of taking out a $40,000 loan to buy it, he’d build it.

“Who can afford that kind of money?” Griffin says. “I’ve always thought it’s wrong that people who really need prosthetics often don’t have access to them.”

Through middle school and high school, Griffin would use “dad’s contraption” as he calls it to lift weights. Shaquill was his dedicated spotter. Whenever the contraption broke, dad would buy a replacement part and fix it, or he’d build a new one. When Griffin arrived at UCF to prepare for his freshman season, the Knights training staff surprised him with a commercial-grade prosthetic.

He returned the favor by surprising them, too.

“They’d never seen someone doing pullups and pushups the way I did them. They didn’t expect me to increase my bench press to 385 pounds with the prosthetic either. Looking back, I was changing the way people think about disabilities.”

Griffin was growing off the field, too, earning a degree in human communication, which prepared him to share his powerful story with large audiences. He studied business books so he could be a discerning investor, and he immersed himself in technology to learn how it works and how it can be improved. Whenever a prosthetic company came along to pitch Griffin about a partnership, he knew exactly what to ask.

“What kind of advanced tech do you use? How do you plan to scale it?” And most important: “What will it cost the person who needs it?”

“Being a D-1 football player gave me access to resources that others don’t typically have,” he says. “Those resources shouldn’t be exclusive. With smartARM I have an opportunity to bring them to a space that’s been lacking forever.”

Griffin now has something more tangible to share with families who frequently contact him simply for an encouraging word.

“Parents of disabled children have approached me since I was a teenager, asking if their child would ever make friends, if they’d be able to play sports, if they’d find someone to marry,” he says. “Honestly, I didn’t know what to say because I was going through it myself. I’d hear comments like, ‘Oh, he’s pretty good for being handicapped.’ I thought all of that would change when I made it to the NFL, but it didn’t. Eventually, I realized I was trying to erase something that could actually make me a blessing to others.”

Proving others wrong once motivated Griffin. Today, perspective drives him. He knows how the workbench in the garage morphed into his platform. He’s spreading awareness, assembling like-minded investors, and participating in technology advancements. With his help, the cost of a smartARM is almost one-fourth the cost of most bionic prosthetics — and he’s hopeful that insurance plans will soon cover the costs.

“This is just the start,” Griffin says. “My goal is for more people to commit resources to help others the way smartARM is doing. Let’s provide access so we can see the capabilities of those who have been marginalized. You’ll be surprised what they can do. That’s my message and it’s now my purpose.”