Stories • mar 4, 2026
Zach French, Co-Founder of The Surrogacy Foundation and Father of Two, Including One via Surrogacy
After his wife’s cancer made pregnancy unsafe, Zach French built his family through surrogacy and co-founded The Surrogacy Foundation to widen access.
“One night my wife asked me to feel a lump, and for a moment, the world stopped. There was no family history, no warning. She just said, ‘We’re going to beat this.’ And we did,” Zach French has said.
For Zach and his wife Alexandra, surrogacy was never an abstract policy discussion. It was the path that allowed them to build their own family after Alexandra’s cancer diagnosis changed what pregnancy could safely look like.
Along the way, they experienced both the miracle and the math of surrogacy — the extraordinary generosity of professionals and community members who stepped up to support them, and the reality that many families never even get the chance to begin the journey because of cost and complexity.
That tension reshaped Zach’s priorities.
After spending years building systems and strategy in the professional world, he found himself focused on building something different: a path that made surrogacy more accessible, more transparent, and more human.
Together with Alexandra, he founded The Surrogacy Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to expanding access through grants, education, and storytelling.
“Access is a word that gets used often in this space,” Zach says. “We built The Surrogacy Foundation to expand who gets to say yes to building a family.”
Today, he leads the organization full-time, working to bring surrogacy into the mainstream and ensure that the possibility of family is not reserved for only a few.
