Longevity has moved from the margins of bioscience to the center of global conversation. Boardrooms, healthcare systems, and event stages now grapple with the same question: how do we extend not just lifespan, but healthspan — the quality years we actually live? The speakers below are shaping that answer from every angle: genetics, data, nutrition, psychology, mindset, and culture.
This post has been updated to reflect the most current roster of longevity voices. It now covers ten perspectives — from the radical biomedical to the deeply human — to help event organizers find the right match for their audience.
Peter Diamandis: Longevity as an Exponential Opportunity
Futurist speaker Peter Diamandis
argues that humanity is approaching a moment where age-related diseases become manageable — and eventually optional. A physician, entrepreneur, and founder of over two dozen companies including XPRIZE, Diamandis believes that converging advances in AI, gene therapy, and cellular rejuvenation will reshape what it means to grow old.
A Practical Playbook for a Longer Life
In 2024, Diamandis co-authored Longevity: Your Practical Playbook for Living Your Longest and Healthiest Life with Dr. Bob Hariri — a comprehensive synthesis of cutting-edge science and actionable strategies for extending healthspan. His earlier books Abundance, Bold, and The Future Is Faster Than You Think explored themes that feed directly into this work. On stage, Diamandis inspires audiences to imagine a world where 100 is the new 60, and to understand the technologies making it possible.
David Sinclair: Rewriting the Biology of Aging
Speaker David Sinclair, a Harvard geneticist and one of the world’s leading longevity researchers, has transformed scientific understanding of the biological clock. His work on sirtuins, epigenetics, and cellular repair has positioned him at the center of the modern longevity movement.
Aging as a Disease — and a Target
Sinclair’s research shows that aging is driven largely by epigenetic changes — the gradual loss of information that keeps cells functioning properly. His landmark book Lifespan: Why We Age — and Why We Don’t Have To makes a compelling case that aging is not inevitable decline but a modifiable biological process. His presentations translate complex science into compelling, accessible ideas with real implications for healthcare, business, and public policy.
Dr. Kristen Holmes: The Data Behind Peak Healthspan
Speaker Kristen Holmes brings a uniquely applied lens to the longevity conversation. As Global Head of Human Performance and Principal Scientist at WHOOP, she leads research that decodes the physiological and psychological patterns behind peak performance — and how those patterns shape how long and how well we live.
From Elite Athletes to Everyday Performers
A three-time All-American athlete, two-time Big Ten Athlete of the Year, and former NCAA National Championship-winning coach at Princeton, Holmes built her career on translating high-performance data into real-world behavior change. At WHOOP, she oversees research connecting biometric signals — sleep consistency, heart rate variability, recovery — to long-term health outcomes, including pace of aging. Her recent congressional testimony highlighted WHOOP’s Healthspan feature, developed in partnership with longevity researchers at the Buck Institute, as a tool for helping individuals understand how daily habits shape their aging trajectory. On stage, Holmes gives audiences practical, science-backed frameworks for improving sleep, recovery, and resilience across any profession or life stage.
Dr. Aubrey de Grey: The Case for Radical Life Extension
Keynote speaker Aubrey de Grey is one of the most provocative voices in longevity science. As President and Chief Science Officer of the LEV Foundation (Longevity Escape Velocity Foundation), he is leading research designed to demonstrate that aging can be reversed — not just slowed.
Seven Categories of Damage, One Goal
De Grey’s SENS framework categorizes the molecular and cellular damage of aging into seven types, each with specific repair strategies. His current research at the LEV Foundation focuses on robust mouse rejuvenation studies, combining multiple interventions — including senolytics, stem cell therapies, and gene-based tools — to extend healthy lifespan in animals. He argues that once these results are reproduced convincingly, the scientific and public response will shift dramatically toward defeating aging as a disease. His talks are intellectually rigorous, deliberately provocative, and consistently energizing for audiences in healthcare, biotech, and future-of-work contexts.
Dan Buettner: Longevity Lessons from the World’s Longest-Lived Communities
Dan Buettner spent two decades searching the world for places where people consistently live past 100 in good health. What he found became the Blue Zones — and one of the most influential frameworks in global health.
The Power 9 and the Netflix Effect
A National Geographic Fellow and multiple New York Times bestselling author, Buettner identified five Blue Zones — Sardinia, Okinawa, Nicoya, Ikaria, and Loma Linda — and distilled their shared practices into the Power 9 lifestyle principles. His Emmy Award-winning Netflix documentary series Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones (2023) brought these ideas to a global audience, and his latest cookbook, The Blue Zones Kitchen One Pot Meals (2025), continues to translate the research into everyday action. Buettner has keynoted at TEDMED, Google Zeitgeist, and the World Economic Forum at Davos. His presentations offer event organizers something rare: longevity science that is immediately practical, deeply human, and visually compelling.
Carl Honoré: Slowing Down to Live Longer
Among healthcare speakers, Carl Honoré occupies a distinctive position. He is not a scientist — he is the journalist who helped turn the cultural case for slowness into a global movement, and whose most recent work directly addresses how we age.
Bolder and the Longevity Revolution
Honoré’s book Bolder: Making the Most of Our Longer Lives is a spirited manifesto against ageism and a practical guide to aging well. His TED Talks — including Why We Should Embrace Aging as an Adventure — have accumulated millions of views. Named an Advocate for Aging by the American Society for Aging, he speaks to audiences across industries about how slowing down improves not only longevity, but creativity, leadership, and decision-making. For organizations navigating multigenerational workforces, his message is both timely and actionable.
Chip Conley: Midlife as a Longevity Advantage
Speaker Chip Conley reframes the longevity conversation from a different angle: what happens when we embrace the second half of life as an opportunity rather than a decline?
The Modern Elder Academy
After building Joie de Vivre Hospitality into America’s second-largest boutique hotel chain and serving as the “modern elder” mentor to the young founders of Airbnb, Conley founded the Modern Elder Academy (MEA) — the world’s first midlife wisdom school. His New York Times bestselling books Wisdom@Work: The Making of a Modern Elder and Learning to Love Midlife: 12 Reasons Why Life Gets Better with Age — the latter debuting at number one in Self-Help on Amazon — argue that wisdom, purpose, and intergenerational collaboration are core drivers of a longer, more fulfilling life. A three-time TED speaker, Conley is particularly sought after for corporate events focused on leadership, culture, and the future of work.
Ellen Langer: The Mind-Body Science of Aging
Dr. Ellen Langer, Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, is widely known as the “mother of mindfulness” — and her research has some of the most striking implications for how we understand aging. Her landmark Counterclockwise Study demonstrated that elderly men who were placed in an environment that recreated their younger years showed measurable improvements in physical health markers. The implication: how we think about age shapes how we age.
The Mindful Body
In her 2023 book The Mindful Body: Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health, Langer synthesizes over four decades of research to argue that mindset and perception are not merely psychological phenomena — they directly influence physiological outcomes. Among psychology speakers, she stands apart for the rigorous scientific grounding behind what can sound like a counterintuitive claim. Her presentations challenge organizations to rethink assumptions about what is possible — in performance, health, and aging.
Tal Ben-Shahar: Happiness as a Longevity Strategy
The science of longevity increasingly converges on a striking finding: happy people live longer. Speaker Tal Ben-Shahar has spent his career building the scientific and practical case for that connection.
From Harvard’s Most Popular Course to the World’s First MA in Happiness
Ben-Shahar taught the most popular course in Harvard’s history — Positive Psychology — with over 1,400 students per semester, and later created the world’s first fully accredited Master of Arts in Happiness Studies at Centenary University. In 2025, he launched the world’s first PhD program in the same field. His SPIRE model of well-being — integrating Spiritual, Physical, Intellectual, Relational, and Emotional dimensions — provides a holistic framework that is directly applicable to longevity outcomes. Among happiness speakers, Ben-Shahar is the most academically grounded. His keynotes give audiences not just inspiration but evidence-based tools for living with greater meaning, purpose, and vitality.
John Mackey: Food, Health, and the Longevity Business Case
Speaker John Mackey spent 44 years as the co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods Market, transforming a single Austin health food store into a global brand with over 540 locations and more than $22 billion in annual sales. His conviction that food is medicine is not philosophical — it is the commercial thesis that built one of the most successful retail companies in history.
Love.Life and the Next Chapter
Since retiring from Whole Foods in 2022, Mackey has co-founded Love.Life, a health and wellness venture that integrates nourishing food, holistic medical care, and precision wellness therapies. His most recent book, The Whole Story: Adventures in Love, Life, and Capitalism (2024), reflects on the lessons of building a purpose-driven business while exploring his evolving understanding of health, consciousness, and leadership. His keynotes make the business case for nutrition-led longevity in a way that resonates with executives, HR leaders, and healthcare audiences alike.
The Longevity Conversation Is Just Beginning
Longevity is no longer a single discipline. It spans bioscience, psychology, culture, nutrition, and organizational design. The speakers above represent that full range — from the molecular biology of Sinclair and de Grey to the cultural intelligence of Buettner and Honoré, from the performance data of Holmes to the happiness science of Ben-Shahar.
Contact Aurum Speakers Bureau to discuss which longevity speaker is the right fit for your audience, event format, and goals.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why should organizations book a longevity speaker?
Longevity is now a strategic business issue — not just a wellness topic. Aging workforces, rising healthcare costs, and the growing demand for purposeful work all intersect with longevity science. The right speaker can help HR leaders, executives, and employees understand how biology, mindset, and lifestyle directly affect performance, engagement, and long-term organizational health. Contact Aurum Speakers Bureau to find the longevity expert best matched to your event’s specific objectives.
What topics do longevity keynote speakers cover?
Longevity keynotes span a wide range of angles: the biology of aging and anti-aging therapies (Sinclair, de Grey), behavioral and community-based strategies (Buettner, Holmes), mindset and psychology (Langer, Ben-Shahar), midlife transitions and aging well (Conley, Honoré), and the role of nutrition and conscious business (Mackey, Diamandis). The right speaker depends on whether your audience is a medical or scientific community, a corporate leadership team, an HR conference, or a general consumer event.
What is the difference between lifespan and healthspan?
Lifespan refers to how long a person lives. Healthspan refers to the number of those years spent in good health — free from chronic disease, cognitive decline, and physical limitation. The central goal of modern longevity science is not simply to add years, but to compress the period of decline so that people remain vital and capable well into old age. This distinction is a recurring theme in the keynotes of David Sinclair, Peter Diamandis, and Kristen Holmes.
Can a longevity speaker address both scientific and general audiences?
Yes. Many of the speakers above are specifically skilled at translating complex science for non-specialist audiences. Dan Buettner, Chip Conley, and Carl Honoré operate primarily in accessible, narrative-driven formats suited to large general audiences. David Sinclair and Kristen Holmes can adapt to both scientific and corporate contexts. Tal Ben-Shahar and Ellen Langer work primarily with psychological frameworks that resonate across sectors. Aurum Speakers Bureau can advise on the right fit.
