
“That was the best, most honest talk I have had the privilege to listen to. Advice taken!”
- Grethe Vermark, MD, Media 24
Considered one of South Africa’s top creative thinkers, Conn Bertish is a multiple internationally awarded creative director, trainer of resilience, cancer survival and big wave surfing — who resigned from his high-powered job after beating brain cancer in 2015 to launch Cancer Dojo (a mobile support app for cancer patients) with his medically supported Happy People are Harder to Kill training programs. Conn’s creatively infused approach to empowering staff, leaders and organisation with simple engaging tools of transformation, resilience and happiness have been developed together with a team of professors, doctors, psychologists and behaviour-change specialists to best develop the mental pathways needed to attain true creative resilience during tricky times.
His talks, video series and workshops on the intersection of creativity, health, technology and resilience have spanned the globe to assist clients like Google, Airbnb, Nestle, Merk, Pfizer, Cannes Lions and more — to empower their staff with the right mindset to tackle our scary, exciting and rapidly changing future.
- Media 24
After beating a rare form of brain cancer by infusing his treatments with purposeful creative gamification, Conn was urged to share his thinking with some of the world’s top oncologists at the largest Oncology conference ever held in Africa in 2015. His opening talk raised a standing ovation and confirmed his purpose to build simple tools to help others utilise this positive creative approach to overcoming challenges while becoming happier, healthier and harder to kill.
Conn’s brothers are incredible, Greg Bertish is a bigwave surfer and surf travel guru who uses sailing to help underprivileged children deal with trauma - see his work here: www.thelittleoptimist.org While Chris Bertish is a famous big wave surfer and ocean adventurer - and was the first person to have crossed the Atlantic on a stand-up paddle board, see his adventure here: www.chrisbertish.com And Conn as well, he merges creativity, the ocean, technology and survival techniques to help others best overcome challenges, fear and seemingly impossible setbacks.
"I've seen Conn on two occasions, in Barcelona and in Bucharest. Both times he had the most empowering and electrical speech of the evening. It is not just just his fantastic personal story that makes him so memorable, it is also the delivery: creative, emphatic, and with a spoon of self-irony that spices the very hard topic he is speaking and leaves the audience wanting for more."
- Valentin Suciu, Creative Partner, Jazz.com Romania
“Conn Bertish was absolutely inspiring today! Here's to people who follow their purpose. Salute!”
- Pepe Marais, Chief Creative Officer, Joe Public United
SERIES
Utilising Conn’s history of big wave surfing and creative problem solving, his Keynote talks, programs and series delivers multiple ways in which delegates can harness their creativity as a way to achieve a reduction in their own stress, anxiety and potential negative mental states. Each tool provides a way to positively repurpose a challenge using creative problem solving to ultimately develop unique medically supporter skills of resilience; a more positive mental state and an increase in personal happiness, productivity and wellbeing.
*This series is backed by Cansa.org, The Mindful Revolution and The One Club of Creativity in New York.
TALKS
Conn speaks and trains on the subjects (and intersection) of Creativity, Technology, Purpose and Resilience. His Harder To Kill modules range from 20 — 60 minute talks, 3hr Master Classes, 2 day sessions and multiple monthly series programs (including his ‘Never Fight the Ocean’ series of short talks and tools). Each iteration of training provides fresh purposeful ways for an interactive audience to learn how to better overcome challenging obstacles during stressful chaotic times. The talks, workshops and masterclasses are built to inspire, engage and empower the audience with simple user-friendly tools and techniques shown to build a more Resilient and Positive Mindset. Both the Harder to Kill qualities of Resiliency and Positivity are shown to enable humans and brands to become happier, healthier, more productive — and ultimately, Harder to Kill.
TOOLS TO GROW CREATIVE RESILIENCE:
Conn Bertish is the founder of Dojolabs and CancerDojo — a company he launched after beating a rare form of adult brain cancer. Conn’s creatively infused ‘Harder To Kill Journey’ to recovery captured the attention and support of many of South Africa’s top medical professionals, professors of mental health, oncology and psychology. His approach to using creativity and mindfulness as adjunctive medicine has been medically supported by the likes of:
Conn’s Harder To Kill Healing Journey utilises over 20 different creative mindful tools to help people overcome mental and medical health challenges.
In Conn’s ‘Happy People Are Harder To Kill Talks’ he inspires and educates anyone struggling with anxiety or overwhelming challenges to activate them in their own way. Each talk is user friendly, medically complimentary and supported by Cancer Dojo’s team of medical professionals.
Here’s to becoming happier, healthier and more mindfully resilient.
- Conn Bertish
- Tracy Chemaly (Director Business of Design Festival Cape Town)
Sil Curiati (Global Partner Lead Google)
- Professor Tim Noakes (Director of the South African Medical Research Council)
- Kirby Johnson (Project Manager at TNS Global"
- Jason Little (Head of Finance Sanlam Investments)
- Ilse Gravett-Hultzer (Transformation Director RCL foods)
- Ella Kieran (Director of WPP Stream Global)
- Media 24
Available on Android and iOS
After beating a rare form of brain cancer by infusing his treatments with purposeful creative gamification, Conn was urged to share his thinking with some of the world’s top oncologists at the largest Oncology conference ever held in Africa in 2015. His opening talk raised a standing ovation and confirmed his purpose to build simple tools to help others utilise this positive creative approach. Cancer Dojo is a multiple awarded social enterprise that makes people happier, healthier and harder to kill.
Harnessing Cancer Dojo’s proactive and mindful patient ideology, we created an interactive series of posters for patients that for the first time enable them to interact positively with parts of their body affected by cancer. Merging the ancient Buddhist practice of Sand Mandalas and the science of Psychoneuroimmunology – each poster is designed to enable patients to interact with something that was until now, invisible to them. Our mandalas are available to purchase at:
Book
Conn’s Happy People Are Harder To Kill book will be published and launched in December 2024 in conjunction with M&C Saatchi Merlin in London. The book will include 16 pathways to achieve Harder To Kill resilience and feature the stories behind the author’s hard-won collection of insights and tools that have positively enabled thousands of people facing life-threatening challenges to deal with more effectively with change, while becoming happier, healthier and harder to kill.
Rome/Cape Town, January, 2024
Singapore, March, 2024
Cape Town, June, 2024
Cape Town, July, 2024
Dresden, August, 2024
JHB/CPT, August, 2024
Italy, September, 2024
Cape Town (remote), November, 2024
New York, December, 2024