About
Author · Advocate · Founder of Heartbeat Forward
Adrian Adair is a Los Angeles-based author and advocate whose work lives at the intersection of storytelling and the belief that visibility saves lives. He is the founder of Heartbeat Forward, a federally recognized 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to congenital heart disease awareness, and the author of three books published under his Teneritas Press imprint.
"I didn't come to this cause through personal pain. I came to it through something harder to explain. A moral weight I could not set down."
Adrian Adair · Founder, Heartbeat Forward
The Story
I did not come to this cause through personal pain. I did not lose a child to congenital heart disease. I did not grow up with a diagnosis or a scar. I came to it through something harder to explain. A moral weight I could not set down.
Congenital heart disease is the most common birth defect in the world. One in every one hundred children is born with it. And yet most people have never heard of it. Most people do not know what it costs a family to navigate it. Most people have never sat in that waiting room.
I started meeting those families. And the more I met them, the more I understood that what they needed most was not another pamphlet or a fundraiser. They needed to be seen. Really seen. The child who has been called strong so many times that being tired started to feel like a secret. The parent who signed the consent form in the dark before the sun came up. The sibling who watched from the hallway.
I founded Heartbeat Forward in 2025 because I believed that visibility saves lives. Not just awareness in the abstract, but the particular, specific, costly work of making people feel that their lives matter and that they are not alone.
The books came from the same place. Each one was written because someone needed it and it did not yet exist. You Were Built Different was written for the child. Letters to the Waiting Room was written for the family. The Quiet Majority was written for the world that has not yet been paying attention.
My long-term vision is for Heartbeat Forward and CHD advocacy to be inseparable from my public identity. This is not a cause I support. It is who I am. I model this consciously on the belief that a life spent in advocacy is not a detour from a life in the arts. It is the same life, lived with intention.
Who He Is
01
Author
Three books published under the Teneritas Press imprint, each written for a different reader in the CHD world. Publisher of What the Colors Sing on Substack. Host of the podcast Small Hearts, Loud Voices.
02
Advocate
A dedicated public voice for children born with congenital heart disease and their families. Long-term vision includes congressional testimony, a CHD research institute, and a definitive narrative history of the disease.
03
Founder
Founder of Heartbeat Forward, a federally recognized 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Care packages for children in cardiac units. Scholarship programs. Working toward funding heart surgeries for children in need.
"A life spent in advocacy is not a detour from a life in the arts. It is the same life, lived with intention."
Adrian Adair
Published Works
The Mission
Heartbeat Forward is a federally recognized 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in 2025. Its mission is rooted in a single conviction: every small heart deserves a loud voice.
The organization delivers care packages to children in cardiac units, supports CHD awareness campaigns, and is actively working toward funding heart surgeries for children in need. The Heartbeat Forward Scholarship supports families navigating the financial weight of CHD.
Adrian's long-term vision for Heartbeat Forward extends beyond care packages. He envisions a research institute, a definitive history of CHD, and a sustained national advocacy presence that makes the invisible visible. He models this publicly on the Audrey Hepburn paradigm: cause as central identity, not footnote.
