ETHAN ZOHN HAS ALWAYS seized opportunity. His career as a professional soccer goalkeeper from 1997 to 2001 led him to compete—and ultimately win $1 million—on the reality television series Survivor: Africa that aired in late 2001 and early 2002. With the help of that prize money, Zohn co-founded Grassroot Soccer, a nonprofit organization that was initially created to teach kids in Africa about HIV prevention using the game of soccer.
But in 2009, when he was 35, Zohn hit a substantial setback: a type of blood cancer called Hodgkin lymphoma. Cancer had already altered his life’s trajectory. He was 14 when his father, Aaron, died from colon cancer. After receiving chemotherapy, radiation and two stem cell transplants, Zohn’s cancer has been in remission since 2013.
Now 52, Zohn shows no signs of slowing down. On a Thursday evening in October 2025, he managed to squeeze in our hour-long interview in a hotel lobby, not far from the bustle of Times Square. Two nights before, he gave a keynote speech and was honored with the Gabe Grunewald Inspiration Award for his work with AKTIV Against Cancer, a nonprofit that seeks to educate and provide exercise programming for people with cancer. The same weekend, he cheered on New York City marathoners who were raising funds for Grassroot Soccer, which has expanded its focus from HIV prevention to sexual, reproductive and mental health education for adolescents in Africa, as well as to mental health programs for adolescents in the U.S.
For more on how physical activity can help patients alleviate side effects from cancer treatment, visit CTMag.org/exercise-programs.
From his earliest days, movement has been a mantra. But after his cancer diagnosis, Zohn learned that moving his body wasn’t just about winning a game; it was imperative for his mental and physical recovery.
The First Half
In August 2008, Zohn was dribbling a soccer ball on a 550-mile trek from Boston to Washington, D.C. He undertook the journey to raise awareness and money for Grassroot Soccer. Near the end of the trek, he tore his ACL and needed surgery to repair the ligament. That’s when he began to feel an intense itch all over his body.
His doctors chalked up the strange symptom to a side effect of his pain medications, but the insatiable itch persisted for months even after Zohn tried pills, topical creams and medications.
“I was a young 35-year-old on top of the world, training for the New York City Marathon, super healthy, former professional soccer player. I won Survivor. They didn’t think I was a candidate for cancer,” Zohn says.
Photo by Mileiddy Star
He developed night sweats. He lost several pounds and couldn’t sleep. Sometime in the spring of 2009, he felt a swollen lymph node protruding from his neck. An X-ray showed a mass in his chest, and in April 2009, he was diagnosed with stage II Hodgkin lymphoma, a blood cancer that develops when white blood cells grow out of control and collect in the lymph nodes.
Hodgkin lymphoma is often diagnosed in people in their 20s and 30s. But this type of cancer tends to respond to chemotherapy—with a five-year relative survival rate of 89%. Zohn’s cancer did not respond to two different regimens of chemotherapy, so his doctors recommended he undergo an autologous stem cell transplant, a procedure where a patient’s own blood-forming stem cells are collected, frozen and then infused back into the body. Typically, patients receive high-dose chemotherapy once the stem cells are collected, but Zohn underwent chest radiation prior to receiving his stem cell infusion. After the transplant, he stayed at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City for 22 days. He learned his cancer was in remission in April 2010.
The Second Half
Zohn was eager to get back to his routine—and into the game. In 2011, he joined the television series The Amazing Race 19, but he was eliminated from the competition. While staying at a house in Thailand until the show stopped filming, Zohn felt a persistent itch again on the bottom half of his legs. He kept thinking, “Please don’t be it.”
But it was. In September 2011, while Zohn was training for the 2011 New York City Marathon, blood test results revealed abnormalities that signaled his cancer was back. “Getting the news that the cancer returned was deflating,” Zohn says. “It was exponentially more difficult than the first time around because you’re running out of options.”
A cancer diagnosis stirs up many feelings.
Ethan Zohn is known for his resilience and enthusiasm, but he cautions against the perils of toxic positivity, which he defines as focusing excessively on the positive without acknowledging the negative.
“You’ve got to cry. You’ve got to be pissed off. You’ve got to laugh. You have to do it all,” he says. Bottling up emotions can court a disaster that he likens to holding a beach ball underwater. Those emotions will eventually pop to the surface in unpredictable ways. When he was diagnosed with cancer, Zohn felt “pressure to be the hero,” much like his television persona on Survivor. He felt a sense of freedom once he stopped faking happiness and embraced all his emotions. “Nothing is more empowering than the truth,” he says.
He encourages patients to allow themselves to be vulnerable. His decision to go public with his cancer experience stemmed from his own struggle to find resources. “I scoured the internet for someone like me,” he says. “Where’s the 35-year-old dude that’s going through cancer?” Finding almost nothing, he decided to share his story and use his platform to help others.
However, at times, Zohn admits it can be difficult to hear others’ cancer stories. “Just be prepared for the incoming as much as the outgoing, and have a plan for that,” he says. “If you’re not mentally there yet, then I would say hold off a little bit.”
He began treatment with Adcetris (brentuximab vedotin), an antibody-drug conjugate that had just been approved for people with relapsed or refractory Hodgkin lymphoma who had a stem cell transplant and prior treatment. The antibody-drug conjugate, which targets a protein on Hodgkin lymphoma cells and delivers a potent drug directly inside of them, was used as a bridge therapy to temporarily push the cancer into remission so he could receive another stem cell transplant in February 2012. This time, he needed someone to donate stem cells. His older brother, Lee E. Zohn, was a match.
“As a family member, you want to be able to do something,” Lee says. “There’s a lot of helplessness. There’s not a lot family can do other than support you and be there. But I was so relieved I was the match. I felt this was a tangible way that I could help him.”
Thinking back to her son’s transplant day, Zohn’s mother, Rochelle, recalls seeing the bag of Lee’s stem cells, which would be infused into Ethan’s body. “The nurses and doctor walked in as if holding a plate of gold or a plate of something so precious,” she says. “And the procedure itself was so simple. But you would think there’d be lightning, an earthquake or something to mark how monumental that was.”
Ethan Zohn’s older brother, Lee E. Zohn, provided a blood sample to determine his compatibility as a stem cell donor. Photo courtesy of Ethan Zohn
Stoppage Time
During his 25-day hospital stay, Zohn turned to his weights and exercise bands whenever he could. Wearing a mask and gloves to protect himself from infection, he aimed to walk 18 laps, or two miles, a day around the eighth floor of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Sometimes, Zohn would dribble a soccer ball that friends had signed—which he called his remission ball—down the hall.
“If a nurse or a patient came out, I’d pass it to them, and they’d pass it back,” Zohn says. “Soccer is a door opener, no matter where I go in the world. It broke the barrier of this horrible scenario that everyone is in at the same time, in different stages.” Zohn also gave himself grace to take time to rest and recover, advice he shares with other people who are affected by cancer when he talks about the importance of physical activity.
After friends across the country signed his soccer ball, Ethan Zohn kept his remission ball by his side and dribbled it down the hall of the hospital while recovering from his stem cell transplant. Photo courtesy of Ethan Zohn
“When I say, ‘Have a fitness routine,’ I’m not talking marathons,” Zohn says. “Maybe you can get up and stretch, move your body, do one bodyweight squat, rubber bands on the door. You need to move your body, have a routine and stay consistent, whatever that is.”
Zohn remembers looking out the window from a common activity room on the 12th floor at Memorial Sloan Kettering the first time he was treated for Hodgkin lymphoma. “I was looking over First Avenue, and that’s where they run up during the New York City Marathon,” he says. “I kept thinking, ‘I’m going to run up First Avenue one day, and I’m not going to have to hook a right to go into MSK for an appointment.’” Against his doctors’ advice, Zohn ended up running the New York City Marathon prior to receiving his second transplant in 2011.
Medications that unleash the immune system to treat cancer have led to lasting responses.
Treatment for Hodgkin lymphoma that has recurred or relapsed has changed dramatically since Ethan Zohn’s recurrence. Immune checkpoint inhibitors, such as Keytruda (pembrolizumab) and Opdivo (nivolumab), can be used for relapsed or refractory Hodgkin lymphoma, says Miguel-Angel Perales, a bone marrow transplant specialist who treated Zohn at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.
Immune checkpoint inhibitors help lift the brakes on the immune system. Studies show that checkpoint inhibitors have led to durable responses in people with Hodgkin lymphoma whose disease progresses after autologous stem cell transplant—with one study showing about 71% of patients who received Opdivo after stem cell transplant failure lived at least five years. “Nowadays, because these drugs are so effective in many patients, what we try to do is put patients on a checkpoint inhibitor, keep them on that drug and reserve using a donor, or allogenic transplant, as a backup,” he says.
Some people with Hodgkin lymphoma will still need an allogenic transplant to achieve remission, Perales says. “But for many patients, allogenic transplant is not even on the table anymore because we have other options that are equally effective, or more effective and safer,” he says.
In addition, studies are looking at using the antibody-drug conjugate Adcetris (brentuximab vedotin) in combination with immune checkpoint inhibitors. However, the Food and Drug Administration has not approved this treatment combination for relapsed or refractory Hodgkin lymphoma.
Still, even with an arsenal of support in family and friends, Zohn admits he often felt anxious and depressed. He longed for other young people with similar cancer experiences who might tell him what the road would be like. He found a support group for young people with cancer and worked with a mental health professional to process his feelings.
While recovering from his transplant, he started dating his now-wife, Lisa Heywood, who also helped Zohn use coping strategies to fight his doubts.
“We created what we call what-if scenarios,” she says. “We would write down what would happen if what he was worried about occurred, and we’d make a plan. The worrying that he’s doing over things that aren’t in front of him was making him suffer twice, three times, four times. Worrying about that and living in that space now was robbing him of the present.”
Being open about his own feelings of isolation during his cancer treatment, Ethan Zohn stresses the importance of embracing all emotions, even negative ones. Photo by Mileiddy Star
Approaching 14 years in remission, Zohn exudes outward positivity, but he admits that he is only “publicly positive.” The what-ifs plague him if he lets them. He doesn’t receive screening to monitor for recurrence, but the overriding fear remains a shadow, perhaps illustrated clearest by the admission that he “would go get a PET scan every single day” if he could.
“I’m not living with cancer, but I’m living with the fear that it’s going to come back,” Zohn says. “And that is just as bad as everything else.”
Post-match Analysis
But Zohn’s advocacy allows him to move past that fear. He has expanded the work of his nonprofit Grassroot Soccer and serves as a global ambassador for Blood Cancer United, formerly the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. He also continues to join efforts with AKTIV Against Cancer to integrate physical exercise throughout cancer treatment and survivorship.
Also, using his popularity from his appearances on Survivor, Zohn shares his experience with cancer through speaking engagements and candid social media videos. “Playing some role in helping other people get diagnosed earlier has made it worthwhile to talk about my story,” Zohn says. “That is my best accomplishment in this cancer thing. The more you let people know what cancer’s like, the more change can happen, the more impact you can make.”
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