James Wells.

Building an elite sporting identity

Earlier speaker-profile material records James earning his karate black belt at fifteen, representing England as a teenager and progressing to Great Britain competition while still a young adult.

What followed was a serious international sporting pathway rather than recreational participation.

James competed domestically and internationally, represented England and Great Britain, and developed the physical discipline, competitive focus and mental routines required for high-level martial arts.

Sport became a framework

Training taught him to break large objectives into repeatable actions: prepare, focus, compete, analyse and return.

Years later, when sport suddenly became far less important than survival, those habits became useful in an entirely different arena.

Diagnosed at twenty-one

Nottingham Trent University's alumni record states that James was twenty-one when he was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML) while studying Broadcast Journalism.

AML is an aggressive blood cancer, and treatment began quickly.

From training schedules to hospital treatment

The structure of James's life changed from karate training, university deadlines and competition to chemotherapy, medical monitoring and long periods in hospital.

Public profiles associated with his TEDx and cancer-awareness work later summarised the full treatment journey as including eleven rounds of chemotherapy, six sessions of total-body radiotherapy and roughly three hundred nights spent in hospital across the wider illness and relapse period.

Applying an athlete's mindset

James has repeatedly explained that sport gave him a useful mental framework: instead of trying to emotionally solve the entire illness at once, he concentrated on the challenge directly in front of him.

Treatment became another process requiring focus, discipline and the willingness to continue when the outcome was uncertain.

The leukaemia returned

In June 2011, James's Acute Myeloid Leukaemia relapsed.

This time the treatment pathway became even more intensive.

Intensive chemotherapy and irradiation

NTU's official biography records another period of intensive chemotherapy followed by total-body irradiation in preparation for a stem-cell transplant.

Treatment also left James dealing with serious physical consequences, including lung damage that created major questions about whether elite competitive sport would ever again be realistic.

The psychological difference of relapse

A first diagnosis asks whether you can endure something you have never experienced.

A relapse asks whether you can willingly walk back into a process whose difficulty you now understand.

That distinction has become an important part of James's perspective on courage.

Returning to university

James went back to Nottingham Trent University and completed his Broadcast Journalism degree after his treatment.

Turning experience into a documentary

His final project, Competing With Cancer, explored how athletes and high-performance sportspeople process traumatic information and how sporting mindset can influence the way somebody approaches serious illness.

Contemporary reporting records the documentary receiving a first-class mark.

The beginnings of a public message

The film helped connect three parts of James's identity that would later define his speaking career:

elite performance, lived experience of serious illness and the ability to communicate a difficult subject with clarity.

Focus

James's speaking work asks audiences to distinguish between the enormous challenge they can see and the smaller decisions they can actually control.

Perspective

A difficult circumstance does not become easy because somebody thinks positively. What can change is the perspective from which the circumstance is approached.

Courage

His TEDx message argues that courage is not an identity possessed by a small group of exceptional people.

It can be a behaviour — something developed through action even when certainty is unavailable.

Current professional life

As of September 2026, James's current public LinkedIn profile is associated with Romi ADHD and continues to describe a wider career built around executive leadership, strategy, communication and high-performance environments.

Speaking remains central

His work as a speaker connects personal adversity with practical organisational themes rather than presenting survival as a simple motivational slogan.

James speaks about resilience, courage, trauma management, pressure, mindset, prioritisation, performance and the difficult conversations that surround serious illness.

Cancer awareness

Current cancer-awareness programmes also use his story to encourage responsible health awareness and more confident workplace conversations around diagnosis and support.

A living rather than historical message

James's story did not finish when he returned to competition.

The more useful chapter is what followed: deciding how to use the experience across leadership, coaching, business, charity, mentoring and communication.