With his Toro & Tides clothing brand, this TCU alum is on a mission
If you saw Evan Folan on the street, you’d never guess the traumatic brain injury he lives with daily.
After graduating from TCU with a broadcast journalism degree in 2015, Folan went to work for an ABC station in El Paso. After three years of doing prime time news on the weekends, he accepted a new job in Los Angeles, Calif. at a Fortune 500 company.
“I was excelling,” Folan told the Star-Telegram in an interview. “And the day of the accident, I had closed my biggest deal. It was a six-figure contract.”
Folan was on his way to his next meeting when a 200-pound tire from a semi truck barreled into the driver’s side of his car’s windshield at an impact speed of over 100 mph. His heartbeat stopped twice on that freeway.
“The only reason I’m sharing this story with you today is because there was an off-duty EMT in an empty ambulance just a couple cars behind me,” said Folan. “The accident also happened at the exit for the best trauma center in Los Angeles County.”
Folan experienced seizures, with a broken neck in two places, a skull fracture, significant brain bleeding, lacerations down his face and neck and a broken hand. He was in a coma for two days after the accident.
Since the accident in 2019, Folan has undergone two hand surgeries and seven neck procedures, tried more than 120 medications and has been to 19 rehab facilities. And every day, he lives with chronic migraines and short-term memory loss.
“What was also difficult was kind of rediscovering myself after this injury. I mean, everything was stolen from me,” he said. “People work to live. I lived to work. I mean, I was a workaholic. I loved it. That was my identity.”
It’s a miracle Folan is alive, let alone functioning at the level that he does. Which is why he feels compelled to spread awareness for brain injuries through his clothing brand, Toro & Tides.
Toro & Tides – a brain injury awareness brand
“I’ve been blessed with the ability to articulate and express how I’m feeling,” said Folan. “In doing so, I started Toro & Tides as an educational brand, selling apparel, T-shirts and hats that start a conversation.”
The T-shirts, mugs and hats feature encouraging reminders. The brand name represents a bull (toro), which symbolizes strength and charging forward. The tides represent the highs and lows of life.
The black dot is another common symbol in the brand. A therapist once drew a black dot on a white paper and asked Folan what he saw. This tiny dot serves as a reminder that there is so much more to the paper than just the black dot. For Folan, it’s a reminder that there is so much more to him than his brain injury.
Ten percent of Toro & Tides’ proceeds go right back to patients with brain injuries.
Another way Folan spreads awareness is through his podcast, “Brain to Brain,” where he hosts fellow survivors, caregivers, and supporters to share their story with brain injuries.
“Forgetting to Remember” is a memoir that Folan spent six years putting together in efforts to remember as much as possible with his short term memory loss.
“I was encouraged to journal through this [recovery] process, to kind of capture those snippets of time,” Folan said. “I’d flush out those emotions, that frustration, that anger, that relief. And that book, my memoir, is the entirety of it.”
Why brain injury awareness is important
Folan says that brain injuries are often invisible because a brain injury can be anything from a concussion to a stroke. Every brain injury looks different. Many patients are like him, who look unscathed on the outside, but live with the struggles of a traumatic brain injury (TBI) every day.
Around 2.8 million Americans sustain a traumatic brain injury every year, according to the Brain Injury Association of America. Chronic pain affects about 60 percent of those with TBI for decades after the injury.
Despite his daily migraines and working through grief and trauma, Folan sees every day as a blessing and opportunity that he would have never had before.
“It’s brought me an incredible relationship with a beautiful woman which our path would have never crossed if this accident had never happened,” he said. “I’ve gotten closer relationship with my brother.”.
Now, Folan is working on developing a brain training app that will feature short interactive exercises to help users practice cognitive skills like memory, focus and processing speed.
Folan’s story is one of resilience and how he turned a life-altering event into something larger than him.
And this is just the start of the conversation.
This story was originally published April 28, 2026 at 3:02 PM.