Joel Nathan is the founder and CEO of Can-Survive—the first organization of its kind in the world to offer emotional and spiritual (not religious) support to patients and families facing all types of cancer and all other life-threatening illnesses.

Since his recovery from leukemia the first time, Joel has worked with people who have life-threatening diseases to help them improve the quality of their lives, maintain a positive outlook, and to see their diagnosis as a rare opportunity to rearrange their priorities and make the most out of life. Joel counsels and supports patients in their bid for better treatment options, improved quality of life and attainment of health, and better understanding of grief and dying issues.

He was born in South Africa, and after graduating from university followed a successful career as a Creative Director in advertising.

He migrated with his family to London in the early 70s and later to Australia where, after re-establishing his career, a cancer diagnosis changed his life.

Initially given three months to live, he set about becoming a survivor, and in the course of that odyssey discovered the truths and facts that he shares in both his books.

His own first encounter with cancer in 1983 is told with dramatic honesty in his first book, Time of my Life (Penguin Books, Australia, 1992).

Joel is a passionate patient advocate working to improving doctor-patient communication and relationships, to highlight the dangers of alternative medicine, and provide quality-of-life and survival strategies. He is at once remarkable and 'down-to-earth', and in this very paradox lies one of the reasons why people, who listen to him speak, feel their lives enriched, their courage charged and their hearts filled with hope and a desire to take control of their lives. His message is also relevant to people in large corporates who want to take control of their lives, to people who want to find meaning in the face of a life crisis, those in the caring and medical professions who need to understand their impact and learn better ways of dealing with the people they treat, and most of all to people and families facing a life-threatening disease.

You can read more about this remarkable survivor at www.can-survive.org.