Terry Healey Speaker Biography
A survivor of a life-threatening cancer that left him with a permanent facial difference, Terry Healey is an author, keynote speaker, and business strategist. Healey challenges audiences to face their adversities and to apply his framework of four key principles to gain confidence, build resilience, and find joy in their personal and professional lives.
Having endured more than thirty surgical procedures to reconstruct his face while in his early twenties, Healey discovered tools that could help him transform his changed life. He shares ways to take control, overcome challenges, build trust and teams, embrace change, and learn the value of acceptance and tolerance. He views the lessons he learned as gifts, and believes his greatest reward is being able to teach others how to overcome any kind of adversity and celebrate life.
His experience led him to a thirty-five-year successful career as a high-tech sales and marketing executive, including being on the founding team of a company that had a successful Initial Public Offering. His popular programs are presented to healthcare organizations, corporations, educational institutions, associations, and non-profits nationwide. They include Cisco Systems, Inc., Charles Schwab, The University of California Berkeley Football Team, Santa Clara University, Gilead Sciences, Ligand Pharmaceuticals, Genomic Health, Perkin Elmer, Stanford University, UC San Francisco, Kaiser Permanente, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Greater Baltimore Medical Center, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and many others.
A graduate of UC Berkeley, Healey is the author of The Resilience Mindset: How Adversity Can Strengthen Individuals, Teams, and Leaders (9/9/2025), At Face Value: My Triumph Over A Disfiguring Cancer, and is a contributing author to Open My Eyes, Open My Soul: Celebrating Our Common Humanity, Make Your Own Miracle: Surviving Cancer, an Anthology, and Reading Lips and Other Ways to Overcome a Disability.
His work has appeared in the following publications: CEO World Magazine, Psychology Today, Metro UK, The San Francisco Chronicle, Guideposts, NurseWeek, U.S. News and World Report, Sales and Marketing Magazine, Coping and CURE Today. He has appeared on dozens of national and local TV networks and has been interviewed on more than seventy-five radio stations across the U.S. and Canada.
Navigating Life’s Road Blocks: Attitude, Focus, and Teamwork
Based on his book with the same title, author Terry Healey takes you through his harrowing personal ordeal and what sustained him and enabled him to focus on the positive aspects of his life that weren’t only lessons he learned, but gifts that he could impart to others struggling with their own personal challenges.
Turning Points and Survivor Kits
Through some personal storytelling, Terry conveys the importance of taking note of ‘potential’ turning points in life and how to ensure that you create your own personal survival kit that will help you with career challenges, personal discovery, or physical challenges that may change the way you interact with others.
Dealing With Adversity and Taking Control of Your Life
Based on Terry’s extreme experience with adversity in his own life, Terry shares with us the lessons he learned about how to deal with adversity and how being focused and taking control of your life are the keys to making those difficulties not only tolerable but also valuable in our personal growth and development. Terry encourages the audience to confront things head on and to embrace, rather than fear our world that is constantly changing.
Embracing Our Differences
Terry focuses this interactive presentation on how truly different each and every one of us is, and demonstrates how we frequently make judgments of people that are oftentimes incorrect. Participants will walk away with a better appreciation for why we need to embrace diversity and strive to be more tolerant.
