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 & Collectors, Crowded House and Margaret Urlich. He also built a reputation as one of Sydney’s leading cocktail pianists.

In the late 1990s, Jayden transitioned into visual storytelling, producing campaigns and content across broadcast, corporate and commercial sectors. His work has spanned television commercials, branded content, social media campaigns, live events, animation and design - partnering with major brands including AMP, ANZ, MYOB, Webjet, LifeHealthcare, Crescent Capital and EBOS. Across every medium, his focus has remained the same: stories that 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, was placed in a coma and fitted with a mechanical heart. He lived for 436 days on life support before receiving a heart transplant - a second chance made possible by the generosity of a stranger and the expertise of a world-class medical team.

Since his recovery, Jayden has founded Forever Grateful, a registered charity dedicated to organ donation awareness and lived-experience storytelling. He volunteers with St Vincent’s Hospital, speaks regularly in schools, hospitals, community forums and corporate settings, and has been recognised for his community contribution, including winning the 2025 Volunteer of the Year Award for South East Sydney Local Health District for his work with Donate Life. He has also appeared nationally across radio and television - including the 2025 Delta Goodrem Christmas Special - and has represented organisations such as the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute, St Vincent’s Hospital and the Organ and Tissue Authority.

Today, Jayden’s advocacy centres on a simple but powerful truth: organ donation is a family decision. Registration matters - but conversation decides.

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 lights the road ahead.

Jayden continues to use his voice, vision and lived experience to build stories, platforms and enterprises that honour life’s second chances - and encourage families to have the conversations that make them possible.

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