At 24 years old, Alex Foulkes was diagnosed with cancer. The doctors told him there was very little chance he would ever have children naturally. He banked sperm before chemotherapy. He fought. He recovered. And then his daughter was born — naturally — a surprise that still makes him shake his head in disbelief.
Then the cancer came back. And then again. Three separate diagnoses across 12 years. Each time, Alex came out the other side. Each time, something shifted in how he saw the world and his role in it.
Today Alex is cancer free for six years, the father of a 12-year-old daughter and a seven-year-old son, and one of the most thoughtful guests to appear on the Working Dads Podcast. Host Johnathan Grzybowski sat down with Alex to talk about what three rounds with cancer teach you about leadership, fatherhood, and the importance of not settling for a life you don’t actually want.
A Life Threatening Diagnosis Forces You to Define What Matters
When Alex was first diagnosed at 24, he was young enough to feel invincible even while going through chemotherapy. The prognosis was good — 98% survival rate for testicular cancer. But the second and third diagnoses, including one rare enough that doctors had little data on it, introduced a different relationship with uncertainty.
“When you have a trajectory like that in your life, you never fully trust,” Alex said. “But I’ve been cancer free for six years now.”
What cancer gave Alex — three times — was clarity. The awareness that time is finite and that how you spend it is a choice you make consciously or let happen to you by default.
For working dads, this is the most valuable lesson Alex offers: you do not need a cancer diagnosis to access the clarity it produces. You can choose it now. The question is whether you are living the life you actually want or the one that accumulated around you because you were too busy to design something different.
Show Your Kids There Are Different Ways to Operate in the World
Alex’s parents were both social workers — not wealthy, but deeply intentional. His father invested every raise he received and never touched a dollar of it. His mother took the family on international trips every year using home exchanges — swapping their house with a family in another country to travel without the cost of accommodation.
“Nobody else I know has ever traveled that way. I’m the only one. And she directly gave me that — a thinking that you can do things differently.”
Alex is now taking his own children to France using the same home exchange model his mother introduced him to at 12. The lesson is being passed down not through lectures but through experience.
For working dads, this is the template. You don’t have to be wealthy to give your children access to a wide world. You have to be creative, intentional, and willing to do things differently than the people around you.
What experiences are you giving your children that will still be shaping their decisions 30 years from now?
Don’t Let Your Kids Settle — And Don’t Let Yourself Either
Alex sold his restaurant after ten years. Not because it failed but because he was no longer passionate about it. He told his daughter why. He explained that he was moving on to something he cared about more. She was sad. She got it.
“I told her: I have more flexibility. I have this new thing that I’m passionate about. I’m just not passionate anymore. And that’s okay.”
He is intentional about teaching his children that they do not have to settle — not in their career, not in their relationships, not in how they spend their days. And he backs it up with his own behavior.
“I want my kids to understand that they don’t have to settle in life. That if you’re not excited — not every day, but most days — to be living your life, then figure out some other path.”
This is one of the most important things a working dad can model. Not success. Not wealth. But the willingness to keep asking whether this is actually the life you want — and the courage to change it when the answer is no.
What Working Dads Can Take From Alex Foulkes
Alex survived cancer three times. He built a restaurant from scratch. He raised two kids alongside a wife who went through IVF to have their son. He sold the business, started over, and is now heading to France with his family on a home exchange his mother would recognize.
His advice to new dads is to stop living in the future and start showing up in the present.
“You’re gonna snap your fingers and your daughter’s gonna be turning twelve and you’re not gonna know where that time went. The challenge I give myself is to just enjoy those little moments.”
Cancer did not break Alex Foulkes. It clarified him. And on the Working Dads Podcast, that clarity translates into one of the most practical and honest conversations about what it means to build a life worth living while raising kids who will build their own.
Working Dads is the podcast for fathers figuring out work, family, and everything in between. Hosted by Johnathan Grzybowski, co-founder of Penji. New episodes every week.
