An internationally recognized artist, curator, and patient advocate, Ted Meyer helps patients, students, and medical professionals find meaning and resilience in the face of adversity.
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Drawing from his own lifelong experience with Gaucher Disease and his acclaimed project Scarred for Life, Ted Meyer uses striking visual art and deeply human storytelling to help organizations foster empathy, enhance physician-patient communication, and build resilient, emotionally intelligent cultures. His talks are a catalyst for connection, inspiring teams across healthcare, education, and corporate sectors to find meaning and strength in adversity while promoting compassionate leadership and inclusive thinking.
Keynote Speaker Ted Meyer is an internationally acclaimed artist, curator, and patient advocate whose work transforms the way organizations understand illness, trauma, and resilience. Best known for his powerful project Scarred for Life: Monoprints of Human Scars, Meyer gives voice to patients through striking visual art that documents their physical and emotional journeys. His keynotes reveal how scars—often seen as symbols of pain—can be reframed as powerful stories of survival, strength, and human connection.
Living with Gaucher Disease, a rare chronic illness, Ted brings a deeply personal perspective to every stage. His decades-long experience navigating the healthcare system has shaped a unique keynote style that fuses storytelling, empathy, and visual impact. As Artist-in-Residence at USC’s Keck School of Medicine, and a speaker on global stages including TEDMED, TEDx, and Stanford University, Meyer helps organizations build more compassionate cultures, enhance physician-patient communication, and inspire teams to lead with emotional intelligence.
Whether addressing healthcare professionals, corporate leaders, or educators, Ted Meyer’s keynotes ignite meaningful dialogue around inclusion, adversity, and the human condition. His sessions are both visually captivating and emotionally transformative, offering audiences lasting insights into resilience and empathy.
Book Ted Meyer for your event to engage your audience in a keynote that inspires reflection, challenges perceptions, and equips teams with tools for meaningful human connection.
Keynote by Ted Meyer:
Art about illness may not always be the most aesthetically pleasing, but it invites us to confront discomfort, expand our understanding of disease, and recognize the humanity in struggle.
In his new talk, Better by Illness, chronic illness as an artistic movement, curator and patient advocate Ted Meyer explores how chronic illness is emerging as a powerful artistic movement—on par with historic movements like cubism and abstraction. With over 53% of the U.S. population identifying as chronically ill, it is no surprise that this community is using visual art as a means to tell their stories.
This image-rich presentation features artworks created before and after the onset of illness, offering a striking comparison of style, content, and emotional resonance. Meyer argues that art made by those living with chronic conditions offers a unique and profound narrative—one rooted in survival, resilience, and lived experience.
According to Meyer, this deeply personal work often surpasses that of the general creative community, as it provides artists with a strong sense of purpose and a compelling visual language shaped by adversity.
Better by Illness is available in short or long format, ranging from 20 minutes to one hour. This talk is perfect for patient groups, medical school and medical conference.
Keynote by Ted Meyer:
For over a decade, Ted Meyer, an "Artistic Patient Advocate," has been using art to bridge the gap between the patient experience and the medical community. Starting at the UCLA Geffen School of Medicine and currently at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, Meyer has curated illness-specific art exhibits that align with the medical school curricula.
In this lecture, Meyer discusses how art has become a powerful tool in fostering empathy and understanding within the medical field. He explores his work curating over 50 exhibits featuring artists living with chronic illnesses such as cancer, MS, CF, heart disease, Parkinson’s, and visual perception differences. Through these exhibits, Meyer brings the patient experience to the forefront for first- and second-year medical students, giving them a deeper, human perspective on the challenges patients face.
Meyer also shares insights from a unique lecture series he has designed, which brings together patient-artists and medical specialists. This series provides a platform for open dialogue about medical care, encouraging students to see their patients as real people with stories, struggles, and resilience—not just test results.
This visually rich presentation showcases artwork by many of Meyer’s favorite patient- artists, highlighting the surprising and transformative outcomes that arise when artists and medical specialists collaborate.
This talk is perfect for patient groups, medical school and medical conference.
Keynote by Ted Meyer:
In addition to creating art that relates to his own physical condition, Meyer’s work also illustrates how other patient/artists live with rare diseases and permanent disabilities.
This presentation discusses how health problems affect every aspect of a person’s life—including work, family relationships, and planning for the future—and how those plans can change in unforeseen ways.
Meyer’s lecture begins with a definition of Gaucher’s disease and walks the audience through the phases of his life with this illness:
To illustrate these life changes, Meyer shares slides of his artwork and how it evolved as medical treatments improved his life. For contrast, he describes the lives and deaths of his two brothers—one who had a different form of Gaucher’s, and a second who was disease-free.
He continues with a history of his Scarred for Life art series, recounting several unique and compelling stories of patients who became his subjects. The presentation concludes with an overview of his current curatorial work, including exhibitions at the UCLA Geffen School of Medicine and galleries across Los Angeles.
Meyer’s Scarred for Life project has received extensive press coverage from outlets including The New York Times, USA Today, Chicago Tribune, Huffington Post, NPR’s StoryCorps, and PBS. His work has been exhibited in museums around the world.
This presentation is available in both long and short formats and can be paired with interactive storytelling workshops for both patients and medical providers, as well as “Print Your Scar” art workshops.
Watch Ted Meyer in action
