Peter Kapitein
Make an impact with Peter Kapitein
Choosing Peter will make your event truly unforgettable.
For everyone. In all aspects.
Looking for inspirational leadership?
Looking for a visionary speaker who highlights the power of sustainable leadership and looks together with your organization at the important transition needed in medical care? Peter is the speaker you need!
Vital ideas and solutions
With his focus on innovation and sustainable transformation, Peter offers practical solutions that are immediately applicable. He challenges his audience to step outside their comfort zone and explore new possibilities that can lead to positive changes in their organizations.
Make it dynamic
Whether you are organizing a conference or an internal meeting, Peter’s personal and dynamic approach ensures that participants feel inspired to take action. He creates an interactive atmosphere where everyone has the space to make their voices heard. Choose Peter Kapitein and make your event an unforgettable experience!
Looking for inspirational leadership? Looking for a visionary speaker who highlights the power of sustainable leadership and looks together with your organization at the important transition needed in medical care? Peter is the speaker you need! Vital ideas and solutions With his focus on innovation and sustainable transformation, Peter offers practical solutions that are immediately applicable. He challenges his audience to step outside their comfort zone View more…
Keynotes
Would you like to book Peter as a (keynote) speaker, panelist or sidekick for your conference, lecture or event? Below you will find a selection of his keynotes. Customized implementation? Ask for the possibilities.
From personal struggle to connection
“I am the master of my fate – I am the captain of my soul.”
Peter Kapitein knows better than anyone what it means to receive a diagnosis that turns your life upside down. But he turned his battle with lymphoma into strength and created a movement. In his keynotes, he tells how, during the process of his recovery, he laid the foundation for what we now know as Alpe d’HuZes and Inspire2Live. With his keen insights into medical and healthcare innovation and data ethics, Peter inspires his audience to strive for better access and greater equity in healthcare.
Access to Medical Care for All
Medications that don’t reach the patient, don’t cure
Peter highlights the gaping inequality in access to care worldwide. With inspiring examples and touching stories, he shows how bureaucracy and economic disparities affect lives. He challenges his audience to become aware of this and work together to create a fairer system where care does not depend on your zip code.
Revolutionizing health care in a digital day and age
Intersecting privacy regulations, ethics and patient data in scientific advances
In a time where data is driving scientific breakthroughs, Peter makes a case for patient-driven data sharing. He asks provoking questions about privacy, ethics and the responsibilities of researchers and policymakers. His vision? A culture where open data accelerates progress without sacrificing human dignity.
Personalized Medicine
The paradigmatic shifts within oncology
Peter takes his audience into the world of personalized oncology, where treatments are increasingly tailored to each patient’s unique characteristics and needs. He discusses the challenges and opportunities of this approach and inspires his audience to put the individual patient and their autonomy first.
From personal struggle to connection
“I am the master of my fate – I am the captain of my soul.”
Peter Kapitein knows better than anyone what it means to receive a diagnosis that turns your life upside down. But he turned his battle with lymphoma into strength and created a movement. In his keynotes, he tells how, during the process of his recovery, he laid the foundation for what we now know as Alpe d’HuZes and Inspire2Live. With his keen insights into medical and healthcare innovation and data ethics, Peter inspires his audience to strive for better access and greater equity in healthcare.
Access to Medical Care for All
Medications that don’t reach the patient, don’t cure
Peter highlights the gaping inequality in access to care worldwide. With inspiring examples and touching stories, he shows how bureaucracy and economic disparities affect lives. He challenges his audience to become aware of this and work together to create a fairer system where care does not depend on your zip code.
Revolutionizing health care in a digital day and age
Intersecting privacy regulations, ethics and patient data in scientific advances
In a time where data is driving scientific breakthroughs, Peter makes a case for patient-driven data sharing. He asks provoking questions about privacy, ethics and the responsibilities of researchers and policymakers. His vision? A culture where open data accelerates progress without sacrificing human dignity.
Personalized Medicine
The paradigmatic shifts within oncology
Peter takes his audience into the world of personalized oncology, where treatments are increasingly tailored to each patient’s unique characteristics and needs. He discusses the challenges and opportunities of this approach and inspires his audience to put the individual patient and their autonomy first.
“Connection creates progress – we need all stakeholders to push boundaries in medical care.”
Peter Kapitein is an inspiring connector and advocate for better, innovative collaboration and patient-centered health care. He writes and speaks on this topic, not shying away from sharing his own experiences as a patient.
It is Jan. 7, 2005, Peter Kapitein has no inkling of the medical circus he will find himself in a few days later. He initially has some bloodwork taken to check his cholesterol, but sure enough, it is not excessive cholesterol that alarms the doctor. It is something that would turn his whole world upside down, and that of his young family. Shortly thereafter, at the AMC, the final diagnosis is announced: lymphoma.
Treatments follow, but three more times the cancer returns inexorably. His doctors reach for a final option: stem cell transplantation. At first this fails, but a second attempt follows two and a half months later, this time using another person’s stem cells; a so-called unrelated donor transplant. The treatment caught on and since 2008 his cancer seems ‘under control’.
Peter had previously worked in the financial sector for a good amount of time, including at De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), but at the time of diagnosis he was an account manager at an IT company. While focusing on his recovery, Peter receives a call from a business associate – and now good friend – Coen van Veenendaal. He suggests what Peter calls the “berserk yet original idea of cycling up a mountain in France six times in one day to raise money for cancer treatments.” The result of which we all now know: ‘Alpe D’Huzes‘, the ascent of the Alpe d’Huez which many thousands of people now participate in every year and which raised 18 million euros in 2024.
“At first I saw it as a joke that got out of hand, and focused mainly on getting myself and my bicycle up the mountain, with the cancer still in my body. But as the day progressed, it became more serious, more emotional. I saw people cycling for someone they cherish; a mother, an uncle, a six-year-old daughter. That ‘giving it absolutely everything’ for a loved one is what makes Alpe D’Huzes so special, and why so much money is donated.”
Peter realizes how lucky he was to receive the treatment that ultimately saved his life, but is also aware that this is not the case for everyone in the world. So, in 2010 he founded Inspire2Live, an organization through which he manages to connect research institutes, doctors, governments, top scientists, insurers and patients on an international level.
Inspire2Live does not only aspire to create a greater equality of access to treatment – regardless of your zip code – it also encourages meetings between a wide diversity of scientists and researchers, as this accelerates medical developments. This is what he and his organizational talents are still passionately committed to today, as Patient Advocate within Inspire2Live. For his efforts he even received an honorary doctorate from VU University Amsterdam in 2012.
He also wrote the books ‘Ik heb kanker… en ik leef een goed, gelukkig en gezond leven’ (‘I have cancer … and I live a good, happy and healthy life’), about his personal experiences and ‘Hoe heeft het zo ver kunnen komen? Een frisse kijk op de gezondheidszorg’ (‘How did it come to this? A fresh look at health care’).
Peter lectures on both his personal experiences as well as his professional insights into the medical care industry.
Peter Kapitein is an inspiring connector and advocate for better, innovative collaboration and patient-centered health care. He writes and speaks on this topic, not shying away from sharing his own experiences as a patient. It is Jan. 7, 2005, Peter Kapitein has no inkling of the medical circus he will find himself in a few days later. He initially has some bloodwork taken to check his View more…
“Scientists often suffer from tunnel vision, yet sharing insights on an international level accelerates finding a breakthrough.”
“She told me: 'yesterday my father was declared cured'. It still emotes me to this day, this is why I do it.”
Design thinking in the medical world – patient-centered
Throughout his illness, it was milestones such as “seeing my sons go to high school” that kept Peter going. Moreover, it is not in his character to sit by for long.
“What happens to you in life is not within your control, but how you deal with it is. I decided to do something with the enormous gratitude I felt, by getting involved on a large scale for other patients, worldwide.”
Peter works a lot with doctors from Kenya, and he tells us he realizes that if he had lived there, he would not have survived the disease. But even in wealthier countries, even in the Netherlands, where access to care is above average, there are disparities. In Peter’s experience, this is partly because knowledge is still too isolated, research results are not shared enough and there is no focus on the patient’s quality of life. This being something he has not simply resigned himself to, but with his talent for organizing and connecting at a high level has been diving into, headfirst.
So far, about 100 people spread over 44 countries are working as professional volunteers for Inspire2Live to ensure that the voices of patients with cancer are heard worldwide, and to improve their quality of life. They do this by focusing on four pillars, namely: Prevention, such as HPV vaccination and lifestyle. Early detection of cancer (Inspire2Live has its own product for this). Access to treatment, such as medication, surgery and radiotherapy, and on good palliative care, when recovery is no longer possible. According to Peter, the strength of the patient organization lies in its representation of numerous parties.
“With Inspire2Live, we connect all stakeholders in the medical-industrial complex and challenge them to do even better together.”
He also challenges said parties to think about the gray area of ‘quality of life’. For his book “Hoe heeft het zo ver kunnen komen?” he researched the health care system, which he is ever grateful for and simultaneously strongly advocates for even better care where the patient is the starting point. You could compare it to Design Thinking, because as he says:
“A drug is designed based on certain outcomes (think ‘longer life’). If we involved the patient in the preliminary process of formulating those desired outcomes, it could mean a lot for the quality of care as well as the quality of life (after all, the patient wants quality of life).”
Those direct lines of communication with the patient, as well as actively connecting other stakeholders, are what makes Inspire2Live so effective. The greatest scientists are specialists and the downside of that is that it can cause tunnel vision. That can only be broken by exchanging ideas and insights with other specialists and researchers, according to Peter. Especially when it involves international cooperation and a great diversity of backgrounds, this can accelerate a breakthrough process.
In his lectures, Peter speaks about the power of collaboration and connection in the medical world. He does this, as befits a connector, for every relevant group of stakeholders. From patient to hospital, from insurer to pharmacist.
Book Peter Kapitein as a speaker for your event?
Would you like to book Peter as a speaker for your event? Ask about the possibilities and his availability.
Why invite Peter as a speaker for your event?
1. Personal
Peter candidly shares how he turned processing his illness into a mission to help others. This personal connection makes his message palpable, credible and powerful.
2. Building Bridges
With Inspire2Live, Peter has proven to be a master at bringing together diverse stakeholders, from scientists and policy makers to patients and insurers. He knows how to achieve cooperation on all levels on complex issues while putting the patient’s quality of life first.
3. People-oriented
Although he operates in the medical world, Peter stays close to the human side of care. His empathy and attention to patients’ quality of life make his lectures both accessible and impactful.
4. Positive
With his infectious positivity and passion, Peter inspires action. He shows that change is possible, regardless of obstacles, and encourages his audience to contribute to better healthcare for all.
Custom
Peter has the ability to sense what the audience needs at that moment. For example, he may even open another “drawer full of experiences and anecdotes” just before a lecture when he intuitively senses that this resonates better with his listeners.
1. Personal
Peter candidly shares how he turned processing his illness into a mission to help others. This personal connection makes his message palpable, credible and powerful.
2. Building Bridges
With Inspire2Live, Peter has proven to be a master at bringing together diverse stakeholders, from scientists and policy makers to patients and insurers. He knows how to achieve cooperation on all levels on complex issues while putting the patient’s quality of life first.
3. People-oriented
Although he operates in the medical world, Peter stays close to the human side of care. His empathy and attention to patients’ quality of life make his lectures both accessible and impactful.
4. Positive
With his infectious positivity and passion, Peter inspires action. He shows that change is possible, regardless of obstacles, and encourages his audience to contribute to better healthcare for all.
Custom
Peter has the ability to sense what the audience needs at that moment. For example, he may even open another “drawer full of experiences and anecdotes” just before a lecture when he intuitively senses that this resonates better with his listeners.
Four questions for Peter Kapitein
For Good: What does "good" mean to you?
“That what I do actually matters. That I can make something better, literally in some cases. My talent may be organizing and connecting, but what I do with that is what matters.”
Walk the talk: how are you of value?
“I often talk about the great things that can come about through collaboration and sharing expertise, but the biggest impact I see is in the people. For example, at one point I got a call from a lady I didn’t know. She was at her wit’s end because her father had been ‘given up’. Lymphoma, and just like with me at the time, the stem cell transplant had failed. Desperately asking if I knew anything else. I put her in touch with my doctor, who is also lead investigator for the CAR-T treatment. I really didn’t think twice when I got another call a year later, I immediately knew who’s voice I was hearing. She said, “yesterday my father was declared cancer-free. As I’m telling you this it emotes me again, this is why we do this.”
Do you have a role model or inspiration of your own?
“I inherited my mother’s positivity DNA I dare say. She was a severe rheumatoid arthritis patient and had 27 surgeries in her life. That’s not nothing. Yet every time she woke up from the anesthesia she said, “From now on it can only get better”. I have that outlook on my life too, I noticed especially during my own illness process. The fact that cancer took up 1 hour of my day was more than enough, the other 23 hours were mine. I sometimes say: Lance Armstrong has won the Tour 7 times, in my head I have managed it 8 times. I didn’t deny my illness, but if life isn’t beautiful, you have to make it beautiful.
Something else I have gained a tremendous appreciation for are hospital nurses. My doctor has done an awful lot for me, of course, but I’ve also seen nurses spending 8 to 10 hours a day with patients, taking care of and cleaning up any kinds of misery and having valuable conversations, even if it’s 3 a.m. It is largely from that gratitude that I now dedicate myself to Inspire2Live.”
What makes you happy?
“I get very happy about my grandson, perhaps in particular because I know it is not something I have been able to take for granted; becoming a grandfather. I also get very happy about the passion my wife and I share for music and theater. We visit many performances together. Overall I am very happy with my wife; she understands that my work is more than just work to me. It is something I have to do, and because of that I am away a lot. Not everyone can live with that, she understands me.”
For Good: What does "good" mean to you?
“That what I do actually matters. That I can make something better, literally in some cases. My talent may be organizing and connecting, but what I do with that is what matters.”
Walk the talk: how are you of value?
“I often talk about the great things that can come about through collaboration and sharing expertise, but the biggest impact I see is in the people. For example, at one point I got a call from a lady I didn’t know. She was at her wit’s end because her father had been ‘given up’. Lymphoma, and just like with me at the time, the stem cell transplant had failed. Desperately asking if I knew anything else. I put her in touch with my doctor, who is also lead investigator for the CAR-T treatment. I really didn’t think twice when I got another call a year later, I immediately knew who’s voice I was hearing. She said, “yesterday my father was declared cancer-free. As I’m telling you this it emotes me again, this is why we do this.”
Do you have a role model or inspiration of your own?
“I inherited my mother’s positivity DNA I dare say. She was a severe rheumatoid arthritis patient and had 27 surgeries in her life. That’s not nothing. Yet every time she woke up from the anesthesia she said, “From now on it can only get better”. I have that outlook on my life too, I noticed especially during my own illness process. The fact that cancer took up 1 hour of my day was more than enough, the other 23 hours were mine. I sometimes say: Lance Armstrong has won the Tour 7 times, in my head I have managed it 8 times. I didn’t deny my illness, but if life isn’t beautiful, you have to make it beautiful.
Something else I have gained a tremendous appreciation for are hospital nurses. My doctor has done an awful lot for me, of course, but I’ve also seen nurses spending 8 to 10 hours a day with patients, taking care of and cleaning up any kinds of misery and having valuable conversations, even if it’s 3 a.m. It is largely from that gratitude that I now dedicate myself to Inspire2Live.”
What makes you happy?
“I get very happy about my grandson, perhaps in particular because I know it is not something I have been able to take for granted; becoming a grandfather. I also get very happy about the passion my wife and I share for music and theater. We visit many performances together. Overall I am very happy with my wife; she understands that my work is more than just work to me. It is something I have to do, and because of that I am away a lot. Not everyone can live with that, she understands me.”
Foto Seth Carnill Photography
2024
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Oncode Accelerator Summit
2024
Foto Seth Carnill Photography
2024
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Inspire2live Annual Conference
2022
A selection of companies that Peter Kapitein already had impactful collaborations with….
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“Peter is a national and international figurehead of patient empowerment. Driven and inspired, he shares his experiences and vision in the field of oncology care and knows how to inspire everyone with his stories.” – Maurice van Den Bosch, Board Chairman
Antoni van Leeuwenhoek – Dutch Cancer Institute -
“Peter Kapitein is the prototype of a committed and inspiring speaker. His enthusiasm, energy and drive for results are contagious and cause a strong positive vibe in the audience.” – Marcel Levi, President Executive Board
Dutch Research Council (NWO) -
“A beautiful and inspiring story. I am sure you gave the audience much food for thought, for which thank you!” – Oncode Accelerator Summit 2024
Oncode Accelerator -
‘Peter’s mission is simple yet profound: to bridge the gaps between patients and the systems meant to care for them, turning complex challenges into meaningful change. By hiring Peter as a speaker, your event will spark ideas, build connections, and empower action to improve lives.’ – Prof. Carin Uyl-de Groot, PhD;
Erasmus School of Health Policy & Management -
“With Peter on stage as a speaker, you bring in quality, individuality and originality” – Wanda de Kanter, pulmonologist and chair of Youth Smoking Prevention
Youth Smoking Prevention -
“The strong commitment Peter has to this subject is palpable in everything he does. As a driven expert by experience and patient advocate, he strives for results and exudes an infectious passion and energy.” – Joanne Kellermann, President of Pensioenfonds Zorg en Welzijn
Dutch Healthcare and Welfare Pension Fund
