Simon Keith (CM) holds the distinction of being the first athlete in the world to play a professional sport after undergoing a heart transplant. Keith was just 21 when, in July of 1986, he received the heart of a 17 year-old boy from Wales, who ironically died while playing soccer. Keith, a world-class soccer player prior to the operation, was determined to return to “his normal” and made his return to competitive soccer playing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). After playing two seasons with the Rebels, Keith garnered many honors including being named the Student-Athlete of Year for the Conference as well as voted as USA’s Most Courageous Athlete. After his senior season Keith named the Most Valuable Player at the Senior Bowl and was drafted number 1 overall into the Major Indoor Soccer League just three years after his surgery.

In 2011, he founded The Simon Keith Foundation, an organization dedicated to increasing organ donor awareness and educating transplant recipients: Keith has recently published his biography detailing this most unique journey. Heart for the Game. Keith uses proceeds from both his book and speaking engagements to provide athletic training for other transplant recipients who choose to return to an active and healthy lifestyle.

Mai Duong is an accomplished advertising strategist and co-founder of Swab The World. With over 20 years of experience in communications and media strategy with top advertising agencies in Canada, Mai has led groups of talented strategists on clients such as Red Bull, General Motors, Coke, and many others.

In 2014, Mai was diagnosed with leukemia for a second time, and a stem cell transplant was her only cure. She’d never heard of the procedure, but she quickly learned that her odds of finding a compatible match in time were incredibly low. Why? Because she’s Vietnamese. Thanks to her connections in advertising, Mai’s story was shared widely on social media, billboard ads and radio spots. The “Save Mai Duong” campaign was so successful that 20,000 new stem cell donors signed up with her local registry that year, compared to 3,000 in a typical year. After receiving a stem cell transplant, Mai decided to combine her personal and professional experience to help other patients and get more people registered as donors. In 2018, Swab The World – a Canadian start-up charity working hard to fight racial inequality in the niche field of blood cancer and stem cell donation – was born.

Swab The World’s mission is to increase awareness of stem cell donation, diversify the international database of registered donors, and help patients find stem cell donors. In just a few years, Swab The World has established a network of over 150 student volunteers across 9 universities in Canada.

Dr. Lori West is a Professor of Pediatrics, Surgery, Medical Microbiology/Immunology and Laboratory Medicine/Pathology at the University of Alberta and Director of the Alberta Transplant Institute. A clinician-scientist, she has longstanding interest and expertise in pediatric heart transplantation and transplant immunology, particularly related to ABO glycoimmunology. Her pioneering work on crossing ABO-barriers led to global impact on infant heart transplantation. Dr. West is also the founding Director of the Canadian Donation and Transplantation Research Program, a national research coalition funded since 2013 by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Together with founding co-Director Dr. Marie-Josée Hébert, the CDTRP framework has grown to encompass collaborations in all streams of research with hundreds of investigators at 37 sites across Canada. Dr. West previously held the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Heart Transplantation, is past-president of the International Society of Heart and Lung Transplantation and the Canadian Society of Transplantation, and immediate past-chair of the Women in Transplantation international initiative of The Transplantation Society. A Fellow of both the Royal Society of Canada and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, Dr. West was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2020.