“Being A Woman is Our Superpower”: Dr Navid Madani On The Importance of Mentorships and Championing Other Women in Science
When she left the Middle East for the US to study medicine, little did she know that she would return to the region at the top of her profession to advocate for healthcare awareness, galvanised by her own personal cancer story
All you have to do to get an instant understanding of the professional calibre of Dr Navid Madani is read her official title. She is a senior research scientist in the Department of Cancer Immunology and Virology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI), an affiliate hospital of Harvard Medical School where she holds appointments in the Departments of Microbiology and Global Health and Social Medicine. To be honest, with those sorts of credentials, I was expecting that our conversation would be a rather perfunctory factual exchange. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Instead, as we spoke together during her recent trip to the UAE, I was overwhelmed by her warm nature and gracious spirit. Unrushed, she talked to me as if reminiscing with an old friend. She told me story after story about the events that led her to where she is today. She talked about her happy upbringing in Iran and about her father’s influence in instilling in her a lifelong dedication to giving back and supporting the community. About her dream to become a doctor. About how the Iranian Revolution disrupted her life.
A revolution that would ultimately lead her to the United States where today, she spearheads exciting research on HIV, specifically on the development of a microbicide to inhibit transmission of the virus in women. She described how hard it was to leave her beloved country at 18 and how she endured six years without seeing her parents, overcame culture shock and homesickness, not to mention the daunting (and seemingly endless) red tape of immigration.
At this point – early in our conversation – I begin to realise what an extraordinary person she is. Rather than justifiably attributing her successes to her own hard work and perseverance, she consistently ascribed it all to serendipity and the inspiration that she derives from others. In fact, she credits most of her professional achievements to her undergraduate thesis advisor, saying how lucky she was to have found her. Professor Maria Linder, she says, “became my advisor, my friend, my confidant, my mother in the United States.”
“There is a place in heaven for women who help other women”
Dr Navid Madani
Image provided by DFCI
She had been warned about Professor Linder’s notoriously rigorous style of mentorship. But instead, Dr Madani flourished under her guidance and feels that she hit the jackpot when the professor decided to mentor her. Professor Linder was a “teacher of life, not just science… She gave me an appreciation of music, art and literature. I used to horseback ride when I was in Iran, and she had horses, so we would go horseback riding together. But most of all, she gave me my love of science and research.”
However, what Dr Madani is most eager to talk with me about are the women and youth she has met during invitational speaking tours across the MENA region over the past decade. “We have this wonderful vibrant, young population coming to the conferences… and there is this desire of getting the right information around healthcare, not from social media,” she explains. She is inspired by their enthusiasm: “there’s so much love and thirst for understanding.” But while there is great potential, she worries about the lack of educational and training opportunities leading to a persistent brain drain and an entrenchment of the stigma surrounding sexually transmitted diseases and reproductive care.
Dr Madani is particularly concerned about the low rates of early detection of preventable diseases, such as breast cancer and HIV. To make matters worse, according to several different studies, women in the region are presenting with breast cancer younger and at more advanced stages than women in the West. Moreover, according to the World Health Organisation, the MENA region is one of only three parts of the world where HIV is still on an upward trend. The 2022 Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/Aids reported that only 44 per cent of women in the region with HIV were seeking treatment.
“I take mentorship very seriously, it’s a privilege to be mentoring this generation of young global health citizens and young scientists”
Dr Navid Madani
It seemed obvious to Dr Madani that something needed to be done so in 2019, she worked with the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute to establish the Science Health Education Centre (SHE Centre) that today forms part of the DFCI in Boston. Through the SHE Centre, she hopes to set up a robust scholar exchange programme to encourage East-West scientific collaboration, and maintain the wealth of human capital in MENA while providing a legitimate space where women can be empowered to openly discuss reproductive health issues. “The goal is to increase best practices in the region by connectivity. Science is a universal process… we can build on that universal process and create partnerships from there.”
Moreover, as a woman, an immigrant, a mother, and a research scientist, Dr Madani has every intention of helping mentor the next generation. She sees it as a duty. In fact, when I met her, she was accompanied by one of her students from Boston, Samantha O’Reilly. “I take mentorship very seriously, it’s a privilege to be mentoring this generation of young global health citizens and young scientists.” The idea is to create a ripple effect, an everexpanding echoing of the impactful mentor relationship that helped shape her own worldview as a student.
But just as she was building her centre to help future generations of women have access to information and educate themselves about their unique healthcare issues, Dr Madani ended up having to take on another all-encompassing challenge. In 2019, she was diagnosed with Stage IV ovarian cancer.
When she gets to this part of her story I find myself bracing for a wave of sadness that I thought would wash over me as she starts to recount her gruelling journey with her cancer treatment. But once again Dr Madani surprises me. Quite remarkably, but actually quite in character, she ascribes a positive spin to this devastating reality – even somehow convincing me that there’s a silver lining.
“I try not to complain about my cancer too much because I really have the best of all worlds right now being [on the] faculty at Dana-Farber and being treated here,” she says. She talks about her wonderment with the latest experimental treatments and about how she has been “privileged to see the scientific machinery of cancer. And now, to also see the patient care machinery.” She dreams of translating the standard of care she’s received at Dana-Farber to the MENA region. She insists that her diagnosis has only strengthened her resolve to empower women to adopt better early detection methods of preventable diseases.
Dr Madani amazes me yet again by implying that her diagnosis of ovarian cancer, by some weird twist of fate, is helping her with her work. She feels it has allowed her to connect with women in the region on a whole other level. It’s enabled a sense of empathy to permeate the discourse, which she hopes is moving the needle on breaking the stigma surrounding women’s health issues.
But she will also admit that this time has been difficult as well, going through her battle with cancer while having a full-time job and being a full-time mother to two teenage boys. “Sometimes, I get on a plane and I’m tired. And then I land and meet these people and it’s like all my tiredness is out.” Going on to recount the time, a couple of years ago, that her husband told her, “Navid, I’ve never seen you this tired, but I’ve never seen you this happy.” It’s a telling observation of someone who has spent her lifetime in service of women.
Above all, Dr Madani stresses that, “being a woman is our superpower.” She smiles wittingly when explaining to me how she often likes to give a positive spin to a phrase first uttered by Madeleine Albright, the former Secretary of State of the United States and a UN Ambassador: “There is a place in heaven for women who help other women,” she proclaims. I couldn’t agree more.
Photography: Efraim Evidor. Styling: Imogene Legrand.
Lab Photos: Courtesy Of Dr Navid Madani
From Harper’s Bazaar Arabia’s February 2023 Issue