At just 21 years old, first-generation college student Alyssa Wilbanks has learned that success knows no age. She has spent her adolescent years embracing education and using the knowledge she has learned to assist individuals obtain Social Security benefits through Unbound Disability Claims — a startup business she co-founded.
Friday, Wilbanks will graduate with a bachelor’s in health sciences and two minors: one in business and the other in health services administration. She says her time at UCF has helped her navigate the road map to creating this business.
“My degree helped me understand the medical jargon about what’s going on with the applicant, like their conditions and the basics of what their treatment may look like,” Wilbanks says. “The business minor has helped me learn the little things that I may not have known by learning the hard way; networking, creating connections and working on the business.”
Helping People with Disabilities Get Help
The epicenter of the company is technology: a unique Disability Claim Builder that was created by Wilbanks and Unbound Disability Claims Co-Founder and CEO Amanda McDonald, alongside a third-party software developer. The new software was pioneered in 2023 and allows people to navigate a disability application without needing to pay for expert assistance. While it is free to apply for Social Security, the cost of application assistance is not. Often, those who apply need help from experts such as lawyers, advocates or medical record retrievers.
“It is a Turbo Tax-like system that helps people get approved for Social Security Disability faster without paying a very expensive attorney or non-attorney representative, like us,” Wilbanks says. “They [clients] go through the platform, and it guides them through how to build their claim on their own.”
Unbound Disability Claims also helps relieve some of the financial burden for applicants by offering a handful of other cost-effective resources to make the process as stress-free and affordable as possible. These include materials like the free “Five Steps to Disability Determinations” guide and the “Independent Disability Analysis Packet,” which is a paid service that connects applicants with disability experts to create a claim.
Wilbanks’ company, which debuted in 2022, was inspired by her grandfather’s journey to acquire disability benefits for his rheumatoid arthritis. She says the process was a waiting game: waiting for application status, waiting for approval and waiting to see if her grandfather would obtain Social Security’s financial benefits for his disability. And that wait has become longer in recent years, as the average time to get an initial decision on a benefit claim has doubled since 2016, rising from 110 day to 230 days in 2024, according to According to the American Association of Retired Persons.
Becoming Business Savvy
At UCF, Wilbanks used every advantage that was available, skyrocketing her career before she even walked across the commencement stage. She’s already been recognized by the Orlando Business Journal as a 2024 Inno Under 25, which recognizes local innovators under 25 who are already making waves.
As COO, Wilbanks says she “wears many hats” when trying to pinpoint a definition of her role. At the age of 21, she does everything from overseeing internal operations to marketing the business, ensuring compliance with government regulations. A huge part of her role as COO is showcasing Unbound Disability Claims through various competitions and conferences.
“Earlier this year, I competed in the UCF Joust New Venture Competition, and I placed second, which opened up so many opportunities for me in the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership,” Wilbanks says. “Upstarts and Blackstone Launchpad are two resources on campus that have been a huge help in development and networking.”
She says that her second-place win specifically aligned her with Blackstone Launchpad at UCF — a campus program that teaches students entrepreneurial and business developmental skills. Wilbanks utilized this alignment to befriend other members of the program, allowing her to soak up any bit of business knowledge that was provided.
“They really taught me how to sell my product,” Wilbanks says. “It’s a very complicated industry so they taught me a lot about how to get the point across so I’m talking about things people care about.”
After graduation, Wilbanks says she will work full-time at the company and begin a transition to take it over as her co-founder steps into an advisory role in 2027.
Growing Impact
Despite being a fresh face in the market, Unbound Disability Claims has already seen solid results within the company. To test their product, Wilbanks and her team performed a trial of their system, using a pool of nine applicants who were all applying for disability.
“We beta tested it, and 89% of the applicants who went through it were approved for disability. At the initial level, we only see about 38% approval,” Wilbanks says. “Some of our applicants were approved within four weeks, which is unheard of in our industry.””
Along with witnessing her grandfather, Wilbanks watched other family members’ careers as hearing reporters, which consists of transcribing and recording discussions that occur during the legal process of filing a claim. She obtained firsthand industry experience as an executive administration assistant at Disability Expert Services in 2021 when she was a senior in high school. Within her first year at the company, which was a disability representative, she transitioned into the role of a certified disability expert where she worked one-on-one with clients to go through their case.
“The disabled community is often overlooked when it comes to innovation. People think of new things that can cure quick things, but these chronic use cases, there’s not as much innovation,” Wilbanks says. “I want to help them as much as I can.”
