Executive Director

Jack Heath
President & CEO

Jack Heath is the Founder, President and CEO of the Inspire USA Foundation.  From 1997 to 2009 Jack was the Executive Director and Founder of the Sydney-based Inspire (Australia) Foundation which was established following on from the suicide of Jack’s 21 year old cousin on the family farm.  Jack continues to serve as a director of the Inspire (Australia) Foundation and is a Director of the Inspire Ireland Foundation and CEO of Inspire.org (which coordinates Inspire’s international activities) both of which were established in 2008.

Jack is a Law and Honors Arts graduate from the University of Melbourne and has undertaken Nonprofit Executive courses at both Harvard (2001) and Stanford (2006) Universities.

Prior to founding Inspire, Jack worked in Government service including as a diplomat in Thailand where he was the catalyst for the Australian Government’s decision to build the Friendship Bridge linking Thailand and Laos by land for the first time.  He was a member of the first Western delegation to meet with Cambodian President Hun Sen in 1989 while working closely with the Personal Advisers to Thai Prime Minister Chatichai.  Jack served as the speechwriter to the Australian Trade and Foreign Affairs Ministers in 1993 and was a Senior Advisor and Speechwriter to Prime Minister Paul Keating in 1994.  He was a Torchbearer for the Sydney 2000 Olympics and a national organizer for the Dalai Lama’s 2002 Australian tour.  In 2003, Jack was awarded a Centenary Medal for services to the community and he received the Equity Trustees National Non Profit CEO Award for Innovation in 2004.  In 2005 he was a NSW Finalist in the Australian of the Year Awards and in 2007 was the Ernst & Young Australian Social Entrepreneur of the Year.  In 2009 he was a TED Global Ambassador for the Charter for Compassion. 

Jack and his family moved to San Francisco in early 2010 and love living in the Bay Area.  Jack is husband to Catherine Milne and father to Lucy and Jamie.  A follower of Tibetan Buddhism for over 13 years, he has spent far too much of his life doing overly serious things.

Susan Keys, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Over the course of her career, Susan Keys has led, developed, monitored and evaluated school-based mental health and youth violence prevention programs and policies in collaboration with national centers, federal and state agencies, local school systems, and advocacy and consumer groups.

Most recently, Dr. Keys served as Chief of the Prevention Initiatives and Priority Programs Development Branch of the Center for Mental Health Services at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) - a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. There she oversaw SAMHSA's youth violence prevention and suicide prevention initiatives, including the Safe Schools/Healthy Students and the Garrett Lee Smith Suicide Prevention grant programs. Dr. Keys also provided leadership for Project Launch, an interagency national initiative focused on young child wellness.

Before joining SAMHSA in 2004, Dr. Keys was an Associate Professor and former Chair of the Counseling and Human Services Department at Johns Hopkins University, and also held a joint appointment in the Department of Mental Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She also served as the Associate Director of Education for the John Hopkins Center for the Prevention of Youth Violence.