Thirty years after brain cancer changed his life, Matthew Zachary joins The Resilience Playbook to discuss resilience, American healthcare, employer benefits, and why building a national patient constituency might accomplish what decades of traditional advocacy haven't.

For 20 years, I’ve built healthcare brands for markets nobody wants to need. From Stupid Cancer to We the Patients, I’ve learned that the hardest part isn’t creating demand. It’s giving people a way to recognize something that was already there.

Bryan Bishop and I bonded over brain cancer, bald heads, microphones, dark humor, and being two Jews who refused to let cancer become our personalities. Fourteen years after one unforgettable conversation, I went back to hear his voice again. This is for my bald brother.

American healthcare has insurers, hospitals, pharma, PBMs, employers, lobbyists and trade groups organized to protect their interests. The patient has a portal password. After 30 years inside the system, I think patients need something we’ve never had: a constituency.

In 2014, we built “Match.com for cancer.” It eventually died. The idea didn’t. Twelve years later, a CancerBuddy retreat sent me looking back at 30 years of survivorship, community, failure, progress, and the shoulders we stand on.

Thirty years ago, I walked into Gilda’s Club and the Wellness Community as a 22-year-old brain cancer survivor looking for people who understood. I recently returned to its successor, Cancer Support Community, and finally understood what those rooms, and the people who kept them open, had given me.

After 22 years away from solo performance, Matthew Zachary returns to the stage April 28 at Merkin Concert Hall in NYC. A live piano concert marking 30 years since brain cancer, featuring stories from the cancer community and the launch of We the Patients.

I was 21. Brain cancer came via a blinking answering machine. There was barely an internet. No young adult programs. We kind of all just died back then. But I didn't. I've watched three decades of impossible become ordinary—and it's been the greatest terrible privilege. 2026 is the Year of the Patient.