Founder - Jayden Cummins

Creative Director | Storyteller | Filmmaker | Heart Transplant Survivor | Advocate

Jayden Cummins has spent more than three decades working across the creative spectrum - from sound studios and concert halls to film sets and edit suites. His career began in the music industry, where he composed, performed, and engineered for some of Australia’s most iconic artists, including Hunters and Collectors, Crowded House, and Margaret Urlich. He also earned a reputation as one of Sydney’s top cocktail pianists.

In the late '90s, Jayden transitioned into visual storytelling, producing campaigns and content across broadcast, corporate, and commercial sectors. His work has spanned television commercials, social media, branded content, animation (Buzz Bumble, Nine Network), live events, and graphic design - all grounded in the belief that powerful stories can move people to feel, think, and act.

In 2017, Jayden’s own story took an extraordinary turn.

After contracting Influenza A, he went into end-stage heart failure and was placed in a coma. He was fitted with a mechanical heart and spent 436 days living on life support. Then, against all odds, he received a heart transplant - a second chance, made possible by the generosity of a stranger and the brilliance of a world-class medical team.

Since his recovery, Jayden has founded two non-profits, become a passionate speaker and advocate for organ donation, and dedicated himself to telling stories that shine a light on survival, legacy, and hope.

Creativity paved the road beneath his feet.
Medicine caught him when he fell.
A stranger gave him time he thought he’d lost.
And gratitude lit the way home.

Jayden continues to use his voice, vision, and lived experience to create content that honours life’s second chances - and encourages others to talk, share, and register their decision to become organ donors.

A fun fact about Jayden: He was given the name 'Jayden' after his mother and father couldn't decide between 'Jason' and 'Hayden', so they got creative. In a fun twist of fate, the word is actually derived from the ancient Hebrew word 'Jadon' and literally means 'GRATEFUL'. As a name, it translates to 'THANKFUL ONE'.

Jayden and his son, Henry, moments before his heart transplant.

This is my "why". My reason for everything x

An Open Letter: On the gifts that come with a second-hand heart
By Jayden Cummins

People often ask if it’s changed me.
You know, receiving a new heart.

I think they expect something out of science fiction - a whisper of someone else’s soul living beneath my ribs. But what I’ve found is something far more extraordinary, and far more human.

The beautiful thing about receiving a second-hand heart is that, by the time it reaches you, it’s already full. Full of love, of kindness, of life lived and love given.
It doesn’t arrive empty - it arrives rich.

My job is simple: keep it full.

The heart holds more than blood.
We love with all our heart.
We trust with our heart.
We give someone the key to our heart - sometimes they break it.
We have a change of heart, if we’re not too faint-hearted.
We eat our heart out.
Sing our heart out.
Dance our heart out.

We can be wholehearted, or half-hearted.
Warm-hearted or cold-hearted.

The heart is stitched into our language because it is stitched into our lives.
And I think that’s why people are so fascinated by heart transplants more than any other organ.
Do people ask these questions about a lung? Or a pancreas?

But a heart... a heart makes people pause.

And so, when they ask me: “Has it changed you?”
My answer is always:
Yes.
Of course it has.

Not because I’ve taken on the personality of my donor - though I carry him with me every day.
But because you cannot go through something like this and remain unchanged.

You cannot stand on the edge of life, be pulled back by the generosity of a stranger, and not come back transformed.

This is not just a second chance.
It is a second way of seeing.

The heart I carry has given me more than life.
It has given me Perspective - a new lens through which I see every sunrise, every small kindness, every laugh with my son, and every embrace with my girl.
It has given me Gratitude - the deep, bone-deep kind that doesn’t need words, just a quiet thank you whispered to the sky.
And it has given me Purpose - to honour this gift not just by surviving, but by living fully, honestly, and in service to something bigger.

So yes, I am changed.
I am more than I was.
I am better in every way that truly counts.

Because this heart - this second-hand, love-filled, life-giving heart - has reminded me that the most extraordinary things in life often come not from what we are given,
but from what we carry forward.

Thank you.

From the bottom of another man’s heart,

Jayden