Thirty-three doctors. Seven years bedridden. Self-diagnosed. Self-rehabilitated.
Then made Patient-in-Residence at two world-class institutions — and started a movement.
I know exactly how systems break people. And how to fix them.
Roi Shternin spent seven years bedridden, saw thirty-three doctors, and eventually self-diagnosed using the same medical literature those doctors had access to. That experience didn't make him bitter. It made him one of the world's most credible voices on what happens when systems fail the people inside them.
Today he's a keynote speaker in 27 countries, the author of 7 books, a former Patient-in-Residence at major healthcare institutions, and an advisor to Fortune 500 companies on empathy, inclusion, and the organizational cost of silence around illness.
His current work sits at the intersection of narrative medicine, psychoneuroimmunology, and organizational culture. He is building a body of work that examines what happens when the body believes the story it's been given — and what it costs when that story is wrong.
He is based in Vienna, available globally, and does not give inspiring talks about resilience.
TEDx Talk
How to Start a Revolution from Your Bed
TEDxMedUniGraz · Medical University of Graz
What happens when the system fails you completely — 33 doctors, 7 years, no answers? You build a new one. This talk on radical self-advocacy, patient power, and why the most dangerous thing you can do is tell the truth became the foundation of everything that followed.
Why Me
The combination that cannot be replicated.
01
~100 Doctors. Self-Diagnosed.
33 in the first 7 years. Around 100 in total. All failed. Self-diagnosis, self-rehabilitation — the lived architecture of a system that does not work.
02
Patient-in-Residence
First-ever PIR at two world-class institutions — bridging patient lived experience with executive strategy at the highest institutional level.
03
Fortune 500 Advisor
Direct advisory with the world's largest organizations — translating lived experience into board-level transformation strategy.
04
Global Speaker — 27 Countries
TEDx stages, international summits, and corporate conferences across 27 countries. Messages that challenge, not comfort.
05
7 Published Books
Seven books on chronic illness, patient rights, healthcare AI, public speaking, and the political economy of bodies that don't comply.
06
Movement Builder
Founded Chronically — the radical honest media movement for the chronically ill. The conversation extends far beyond consulting.
What They Say
Voices from the room.
"
Roi doesn't give you the comfortable version. He gives you the true one — and that's exactly what our leadership team needed to hear.
Chief Medical OfficerEuropean Healthcare Institution
"
I've seen hundreds of inclusion keynotes. This was the first time the room went silent in the right way — because everyone recognized the problem was theirs.
Head of People & CultureFortune 500 Technology Company
"
The Patient-in-Residence framework changed how we think about patient involvement at an institutional level. Not a consultant — a genuine strategic partner.
Innovation DirectorGlobal Health Institution
How I Work
Services for serious organizations.
Healthcare institutions, technology companies, and Fortune 500 organizations ready to stop performing transformation and start building it. Every engagement is bespoke — no off-the-shelf programs.
Most Requested Service
Keynote Speaking
A keynote that doesn't let your audience off the hook. Radical honesty about the cost of exclusion, the failure of inclusion theater, and a structural path forward your leadership team can actually use. Available in English, Hebrew, and German.
ConferencesSummitsHealthcareTech / F500DEI60–90 minEN · HE · DE
Boehringer IngelheimTakedaNovartisIBMTEDxLudwig Boltzmann InstituteAAE Speakers Bureau& more
The World
The Roi Shternin Ecosystem
Three interconnected platforms — professional practice, media movement, and education. Together they form a single argument: radical honesty about chronic illness and organizational failure is not a niche. It is the future.
Professional Practice
Roi Shternin
Speaking, consulting, and advisory work. You're here.
What happens when a person can't tell the truth about being sick — and what it costs medicine, organizations, and every system built around them.
27Countries
60Min runtime
AnyAudience
From €3,000Fee range
The Central Idea
Not a talk about resilience. A talk about what resilience costs.
Most keynotes about chronic illness end with inspiration. A triumph. A lesson. Something the audience can take home as proof that suffering has meaning and hard work pays off.
This one doesn't.
This keynote starts where the inspiring version ends — and asks the question most speakers are paid not to ask: what if the performance of recovery is making people sicker? What if the story we require people to tell about illness is itself part of the illness?
And what does it mean — for medicine, for organizations, for the people sitting in this room — if the body doesn't just keep the score, but creates it?
"The body believes the story it's given. Most chronically ill people are being given the wrong one — by medicine, by their employers, by the people who love them, and eventually by themselves. The cost is not metaphorical. It shows up in the labwork."
This is not a self-help claim. It is a scientific one — grounded in psychoneuroimmunology, narrative medicine, and twenty years of one person's documented physiological journey. And it has consequences for every person in the room, whether they have ever been sick or not.
The Arc
What happens in the room
The keynote moves through four beats. The audience doesn't receive information — they undergo a shift.
0 – 15 min
The Story They Didn't Expect
Not the inspiring version. The true one. The years of performing health while privately deteriorating. The doctors who accused him of creating his own rash. The medication that nearly killed him. The labwork that matched a story he never chose. The audience doesn't know where this is going. That's the point.
Audience feels: Unsettled. Witnessed.
15 – 30 min
The Mechanism
The science underneath the story. How the body responds to the narrative it lives inside. Why suppression has a physiological cost. Why being disbelieved — by medicine, by employers, by partners — produces measurable damage. The audience begins to recognize this in their own bodies.
Audience feels: Thinking. Implicated.
30 – 50 min
The Wider Truth
The argument expands. This isn't only about chronic illness. It's about every person who has ever edited their honest experience into something more acceptable. Every employee who performs wellness for HR. Every patient who performs recovery for their doctor. The room gets very quiet here.
Audience feels: Moved. Seen. Changed.
50 – 60 min
The Invitation
Not a call to action in the conventional sense. An invitation to honesty — with one's body, with the people around them, with the systems they work inside. What changes when one person decides to stop performing and start telling the true story.
Audience feels: Ready to act.
In the Room
What people say after they leave
The talk reaches every person differently — but it reaches every person.
The person with chronic illness says
"He said the thing I've been trying to say for years and couldn't."
The chaos narrative finally has a name. The performance they've been maintaining has been seen. The relief of recognition is physical.
The leader says
"I have someone on my team doing exactly this. I didn't know what to do. Now I do."
The mechanism becomes visible. The cost becomes calculable. This is the moment the workshop booking happens.
The person who has never been sick says
"I thought this wasn't about me. It was entirely about me."
The talk reaches everyone who has ever suppressed an honest experience for someone else's comfort. Which is everyone.
The clinician says
"I have been the system he's describing. That's going to stay with me."
Not accusation. Recognition. Medical audiences don't leave defensive. They leave changed.
Right Rooms
This talk belongs in any room with humans in it
The specific details are medical. The argument is universal. It belongs anywhere people are performing a version of themselves that isn't true.
Healthcare & Medical Conferences
Narrative medicine, patient experience, clinical empathy. Reframes how clinicians understand patient disclosure, diagnostic delay, and the cost of not being believed.
Highest content alignment
Corporate & Leadership Events
DEI, wellness, and organizational culture. The performance tax argument translates directly into business language without losing its human core.
Highest booking frequency
Pharmaceutical & Patient Advocacy
Industry audiences who work with patients but rarely hear the honest version of the patient experience. Patient-in-Residence credentials make this uniquely credible.
Strong alignment
Education & Medical Schools
Reshapes how the next generation of clinicians thinks about the patient narrative before they see their first patient.
High impact
Ideas Festivals & TEDx
One of the rare health talks that works for a completely general audience. The universal argument — everyone performs, everyone pays a cost — makes it land anywhere.
TED positioning
Formats & Investment
Three ways to bring this into your event
Every engagement is different. These are starting points — book a call and we'll find the right fit.
Short Talk
The Distilled Argument
20 – 30 minutes
For multi-speaker events, panel openers, or conference sessions. The central argument stated with maximum precision. Plants an idea that grows in the conversation that follows.
From €3,000 + travel & accommodation
Signature Keynote
The Full Talk
45 – 60 minutes + Q&A
The complete four-beat arc. Story, mechanism, wider truth, invitation. Opens an event by disrupting assumptions or closes one by leaving the room changed. The version that gets shared and remembered.
From €5,500 + travel & accommodation
Day Program — Most Booked
Keynote + Workshop
Full day
The keynote opens the day — moves the room emotionally, establishes the argument. The workshop follows — translates the argument into organizational action. The combination that produces the most durable change.
From €9,500 + travel & accommodation
Virtual delivery available. Multi-event packages on request. A 30-minute conversation before any commitment is made.
Why This Talk Now
The inspiring story is almost always a performance.
We are in a cultural moment where the wellness industry has never been larger and chronic illness has never been more prevalent. Something is not working.
The gap between what people are told to feel about their health and what they actually experience is wider than it has ever been — and the cost of performing across that gap is being paid in bodies, in labwork, in the slow erosion of people who simply could not sustain it.
"I spent ten years telling an inspiring story about thriving with chronic illness. I was lying. Not maliciously. The way you lie when the truth is too expensive."
This talk doesn't offer a solution to chronic illness. It offers something more rare and more useful: an honest account of what the illness actually looks like from the inside — and what changes when the people and systems around it finally stop requiring the performance.
What your organization loses when chronically ill employees can't tell the truth about being sick — and what changes when they can.
Half-dayHR & DEI teamsLeadershipIn-person or virtualFrom €4,500
The Problem
The problem organizations don't know they have
One in three of your employees is living with a chronic condition. Most of them are not telling you. Not because they don't need support — but because they've calculated, correctly, that honesty is more expensive than performance.
This calculation is costing your organization far more than any wellness program budget. And it's invisible precisely because it's working as designed.
$575B
Annual US employer cost from health-related lost productivity
Integrated Benefits Institute
60%
Of total illness cost comes from presenteeism — employees present but not functioning
Harvard Business Review / CDC
2–3×
More costly than absenteeism — yet nearly impossible to detect
CDC Foundation
36%
Of employees with chronic illness feel their manager understands their condition
Harvard Business Review, 2024
What the data shows
Employees with chronic conditions and co-occurring depression cost employers double
Depression and anxiety alone account for 12 billion lost working days globally each year
The majority of people with chronic illness actively conceal their condition at work
Employers are 7× more likely to hire someone with a visible disability than someone disclosing a mental health condition
What this means for your organization
Your highest performers may be your most at-risk — high achievers push through rather than ask for support
Your DEI data almost certainly undercounts invisible disability and chronic illness
Exit interviews rarely capture "I couldn't sustain the performance" as a reason for leaving
Your wellness program spend is reaching the people who need it least
The Workshop
Not empathy training. A diagnostic.
A precise examination of how your organizational culture is inadvertently requiring sick employees to perform wellness — and what the structural cost of that performance is.
Participants leave with a clear understanding of the mechanism, the cost, and three concrete behavioral changes they can implement immediately. The workshop is built around evidence from narrative medicine, psychoneuroimmunology, and organizational psychology — and grounded in twenty years of the facilitator's own lived experience and labwork.
Opening 45 min
The Performance
The workshop opens not with frameworks but with a story. Roi's account of spending years performing health for employers, doctors, and colleagues while privately deteriorating — and the measurable physiological cost of that performance. By the end of the opening, every participant has viscerally understood what the performance feels like from the inside. This is not a warm-up. This is the intervention.
Part 1 45 min
The Mechanism
Why employees perform wellness at work. The neuroscience of psychological safety and what happens in the body when disclosure feels unsafe. The specific cognitive and physiological cost of sustained concealment — drawing from Pennebaker's expressive writing research, polyvagal theory, and the ACE studies. This section establishes the scientific basis for why this is a structural problem, not an individual one.
Part 2 45 min
The Cost
The data made real. Presenteeism figures, retention costs, the specific ways chronic illness stays invisible inside organizations until it becomes a crisis. Participants calculate what the performance tax is costing their specific organization. This is where wellness theater becomes a business problem with a calculable price tag.
Part 3 45 min
Three Shifts
Three specific, observable behavioral changes that leaders and HR teams can implement starting Monday. Not values statements. Not policy documents. Concrete actions that signal to chronically ill employees that honest disclosure is safer than performance. Each shift is accompanied by language, examples, and a way to know if it's working.
01
A diagnosis they didn't know they needed
A precise understanding of where in their organization the performance tax is being paid — and by whom.
02
The science behind the problem
Evidence-based understanding of why psychological safety around illness is not soft but physiological and organizational.
03
Three actionable shifts
Specific behavioral changes with language, implementation guidance, and measurable indicators.
The return on investment
A single employee moving from concealment to supported disclosure — and from presenteeism to sustainable performance — represents a measurable return. The workshop pays for itself when it changes the trajectory of one person.
$1,685Average annual cost per employee from illness-related absence alone (CDC)
$2,100Annual productivity cost per person from mental illness presenteeism
2–3×Cost multiplier when chronic illness co-occurs with untreated depression
Investment
Two ways to work with this framework
Every engagement is different. These are starting points.
Half-Day Workshop
From €4,500
Virtual or in-person, up to 30 participants
3.5-hour facilitated workshop
Pre-workshop diagnostic questionnaire
Participant workbook with the three-shift framework
30-day follow-up Q&A session (60 min)
Workshop + Advisory
From €9,500
For organizations ready to go beyond the workshop
Everything in the half-day workshop
Full organizational audit — where the performance tax lives in your specific culture
3-month implementation support (bi-weekly calls)
Custom framework adapted to your industry and size
Optional keynote for all-staff launch event
Non-profit and academic pricing available on request. Virtual delivery available. A 30-minute conversation before any commitment is made.
Book This Workshop
The right organizations know this is must-have.
This workshop is not for organizations doing performative wellness. It's for the CHRO who has lost their third high-performer this year and cannot identify why. The DEI lead who knows their disability numbers are wrong but doesn't know what question to ask.
If that's you, let's talk. The first conversation is 30 minutes. No commitment required.
"The room went completely still. That doesn't happen at healthcare conferences. He said the thing nobody had been willing to say, and it changed the conversation for the rest of the day."
— Conference Director, European Patient Forum
Bio
Speaker. Author. Patient.
Roi Shternin spent seven years bedridden, saw thirty-three doctors, and eventually self-diagnosed using the same medical literature those doctors had access to. Today he turns that experience into one of the most unusual bodies of expertise in organizational consulting.
He is a keynote speaker in 27 countries, the author of 7 books including Revolution From My Bed and The Algorithm Will See You Now, a former Patient-in-Residence at major healthcare institutions, and an advisor to Fortune 500 companies on empathy, inclusion, and the organizational cost of silence around illness.
His current work sits at the intersection of narrative medicine, psychoneuroimmunology, and organizational culture — examining what happens when the body believes the story it's been given, and what it costs when that story is wrong. He is building a body of work that positions him alongside Gabor Maté and Bessel van der Kolk in the field of how narrative becomes biology.
He is based in Vienna, available globally, and does not give inspiring talks about resilience.
Talks
Three talks. Every audience.
Different rooms need different things. These are the three current offerings.
Signature Keynote45–60 min · Any audience
The Body Believes
What happens when a person can't tell the truth about being sick — and what it costs medicine, organizations, and every system built around them. Story, mechanism, wider truth, invitation. The talk that reaches every person in the room differently, but reaches every person.
From€5,500
WorkshopHalf-day · HR & Leadership
The Performance Tax
What organizations lose when chronically ill employees can't tell the truth about being sick — and three concrete behavioral shifts that change it. Evidence-based, operationally focused, built for decision-makers.
From€4,500
Medical & Clinical30–60 min · Healthcare audiences
The Narrative Body
How the stories told to and around patients become physiological reality — and what changes when clinicians understand themselves as participants in the patient's narrative. Grounded in narrative medicine, psychoneuroimmunology, and lived experience with 20 years of documented labwork.
From€3,000
Keynote + Workshop day programs from €9,500. Virtual delivery available. Multi-event packages on request.
Topic Areas
Where the work lives
Narrative MedicineHow stories told about illness become physiological reality
Chronic Illness & WorkThe organizational cost of performative wellness
Organizational EmpathyBuilding empathy into structure, not training rooms
Patient ExperienceWhat the honest patient story looks like from the inside
Psychological SafetyWhat it costs in bodies when disclosure doesn't feel safe
Inclusion InfrastructureEngineering inclusion rather than performing it
Mind-Body ConnectionPsychoneuroimmunology for non-clinical audiences
Honest StorytellingWhy the inspiring version is almost always a performance
What people say
In their words
"He didn't feel like a stranger giving a talk. He felt like a brother who finally said the thing I'd been trying to say for ten years."
Conference attendee
European Rare Disease Conference
"I left thinking about three people on my team differently. That's not what I expected from a keynote. That's what I needed."
Director of People Operations
Global technology company
"The room went completely still. That doesn't happen at healthcare conferences. He said the thing nobody had been willing to say."
Conference Director
European Patient Forum
"I've been naming the performance of recovery for years in my clinical work. He named it in 45 minutes for an audience of 400 people. That's a different skill."
Clinical Psychologist
Post-session conversation
Credentials
The work behind the work
Speaking
27 countries · 14+ years on stage · Healthcare, pharma, tech, finance, education
Books
7 published books · Revolution From My Bed · The Algorithm Will See You Now
Institutional Roles
Patient-in-Residence at major healthcare institutions · Fortune 500 advisor
Clinical Training
LSB Counseling Licensure (2025) · Narrative medicine · Psychoneuroimmunology
