Called “the most interesting man in the NFL”, Laurent Duvernay-Tardif is an eight-year NFL veteran, Super Bowl champion, and the only active NFL player with a medical degree. Just months after his Super Bowl win with the Kansas City Chiefs — and in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic — Duvernay-Tardif stepped away from football to join the medical front lines. From the incredible highs of winning the SuperBowl to the burnout of working as an orderly, Duvernay-Tardif shares his remarkable personal story, speaking to resiliency, leadership, and more.

As plans for the 2020 NFL season ramped up, Duvernay-Tardif stepped away from the game he loved, becoming the first player of the 2020 NFL season to publicly opt-out. For the first time in his remarkable career, Duvernay-Tardif couldn’t reconcile his twin passions of football and medicine, and with his team’s Super Bowl win only months behind him, he found himself on the front lines of the pandemic, working in a long-term care facility in Quebec. While working on the front lines, Duvernay-Tardif enrolled in Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health.