Seun Adebiyi

Seun Adebiyi is a graduate of the Yale Law School, co-founder of the Bone Marrow Registry in Nigeria, and a cancer survivor/advocate.

Born in Nigeria, Adebiyi moved to the United States at age 6 and grew up beneath the poverty line, picking farm crops with his mother during the summers and working after school as a tutor. He started college at 14, graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pittsburgh, and after law school, worked on Wall Street as a private equity/hedge fund attorney. He later transitioned into management consulting, then helped expand a pain treatment program for cancer patients in Africa on behalf of the American Cancer Society, before launching his own virtual law firm in 2016.

A member of the Nigerian national swim team, Adebiyi barely missed qualifying for the Summer Olympics by 0.1 seconds. Switching tactics, he began training to become the first Nigerian athlete to compete in the Winter Olympics and created Nigeria’s Winter Olympic federation, which in turn allowed Nigeria to participate in Winter Games for the first time in history. In recognition of this achievement, Adebiyi carried the Olympic torch at the 2018 Winter Games in Korea.

Adebiyi's athletic and professional aspirations were interrupted with a diagnosis of two rare and aggressive blood cancers in 2009. His survival hinged upon finding a genetically compatible donor for a stem cell transplant, which fewer than 17% of African-American patients are able to locate (compared to over 70% of Caucasian patients). In addition to raising awareness about the need for global health equity through numerous media appearances, Adebiyi organized the first bone marrow donor drive in Nigeria, then launched the first bone marrow donor registry in Nigeria (and only the second in Africa). In 2010, Adebiyi received a cord blood transplant and has been cancer free for a decade. His life goal is to recruit 100,000 stem cell donors of African descent, so that racial background is less of a determining factor for a patient's odds to survive cancer.