Simon Keith
Senior leaders are asked to hold composure through events they did not prepare for. The cost of breaking under pressure is visible to the organisation within hours. Most leadership development assumes a steady operating environment; very little of it equips a leader for the moment everything is suddenly at stake.
Simon Keith is the first professional athlete to compete after a heart transplant and a leadership speaker who works with organisations on composure, recovery and self-leadership under extreme pressure.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Simon Keith
- A lived case study in decision-making when the cost of failure is absolute, drawn from two heart transplants, a kidney transplant and a return to professional sport.
- Member of the Order of Canada, awarded in 2022 for organ donation advocacy, signalling national-level credibility well beyond the speaker circuit.
- A second-act career as an operator who has built and sold companies and led turnarounds, which means the room hears the sporting story through a business lens.
- Author of Heart For The Game, with a foreword by Steve Nash, giving conference organisers a tangible artefact to put in delegates’ hands.
- A speaker who has addressed the White House Organ Summit, the Canadian Parliament and the British Parliament, which sets the calibre of the rooms he is comfortable holding.
Biography highlights
- First professional athlete in the world to play after a heart transplant, following his 1986 surgery at Papworth Hospital under Sir Terence English.
- No. 1 overall pick in the Major Indoor Soccer League draft, selected by the Cleveland Crunch in 1989.
- Member of the Order of Canada (2022), for advocacy of organ donation and support for transplant recipients.
- Founder and CEO of the Simon Keith Foundation, supporting young transplant recipients returning to active life.
- Author of Heart For The Game: The Incredible Saga of Simon Keith (2012), co-written with Jason Cole and Don Yaeger, foreword by Steve Nash.
- Speaker at the inaugural White House Organ Summit (2016), and at both the Canadian and British Parliaments.
Biography
Most leaders will never face the moment Simon Keith faced at twenty-one. In July 1986, at Papworth Hospital outside London, he received the heart of a seventeen-year-old donor named Jonathan Edward. Three years later he was the No. 1 overall pick in the Major Indoor Soccer League draft, the first athlete in the world to play professional sport after a heart transplant.
That single fact tends to dominate the room. What gives it commercial weight is what he did with the thirty-five years that followed. He played in the MISL with the Cleveland Crunch, retired into business, and built and sold companies across multiple industries. He has led turnarounds and run operating roles in healthcare and organ procurement, which is the world that gave him his life back.
In March 2019, his body rejected the 1986 heart. He received a second heart transplant and a kidney transplant in San Diego, and returned to work. In December 2022, Governor General Mary Simon appointed him a Member of the Order of Canada for his advocacy of organ donation and for his support of transplant recipients through the Simon Keith Foundation, which he founded to fund young organ recipients returning to active life.
On stage, the story carries the credentials. He is direct, unsentimental, and more interested in what an audience does on Monday morning than in how they felt on Friday afternoon. He works in two registers: the close, personal account of decision-making under existential pressure, and the operating perspective of someone who has run companies and knows what a leadership team is actually asking for when they ask for resilience.
Key speaking topics
- Self-leadership under existential pressure
- Resilience and recovery after personal or professional shock
- High-performance leadership
- Team trust and culture
- Organ donation, transplantation and patient advocacy
- Business turnaround leadership
Ideal for
- Executive leadership teams and senior leaders facing prolonged pressure or restructure
- High-performance sales, operations and field leadership conferences
- Healthcare, life sciences and medical device audiences
- Annual all-company kickoffs where the organisation is asking for composure, not just energy
Audience outcomes
- A frame of reference for the difference between coping with pressure and leading through it
- A clearer view of what self-belief looks like as an operational discipline, not a slogan
- Renewed willingness to make decisions when the conditions are not yet stable
- A specific account of how a leader rebuilds after a setback the team has watched in real time
Talks
A leadership keynote drawn from people Simon has worked with and learned from across professional sport and business.
Key takeaways:
- What credible leaders do that uncredible ones do not
- The difference between authority and influence inside a senior team
- How leaders are tested in the moments their team is watching most closely
A session on trust, team dynamics and the conditions under which high-performance cultures form.
Key takeaways:
- The behaviours that compound into trust, and the ones that quietly erode it
- How team identity holds or breaks under sustained pressure
- What a leader owes a team that is being asked to perform through change
The personal keynote: the events that defined Simon’s life and what they taught him about courage and self-belief.
Key takeaways:
- How to think clearly when the stakes are no longer abstract
- The role of preparation in the moments preparation appears to fail
- What recovery actually requires of a leader, beyond the language of resilience
A peak-performance talk on commitment, discipline and the version of yourself you have not yet met.
Key takeaways:
- The standards leaders hold themselves to when no one is watching
- How discipline is built and how it is lost
- Why ambition without composure is not a strategy