Former CEO of Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation Surina Shukri is currently on a mission to show how one can still live a productive life, even with breast cancer
‘Cancer’ is a word that many, if not all, perceive as having an automatic death sentence; it’s earth-shattering, and can either make or break a person as they contend with life itself—before, during and after being diagnosed with an illness almost akin to a bogeyman. Globally, as reported by a World Health Organisation article written last March, at the end of 2020, 7.8 million women alive have been diagnosed with breast cancer over the past five years, making it the most prevalent of cancer types despite its improved survival rate.
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Regardless of the many medical breakthroughs as well as the improvement of readily available resources, however, the initial impact of getting that first diagnosis always hits the hardest, even when one braces oneself for it. For Surina Shukri, former chief executive officer at the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) and renowned for her 18-year stint at JPMorgan in Wall Street, her first diagnosis six years ago felt like “a punch to the face”.
“My first reaction, of course, was ‘Why?’” she says. “Because the thing is, [cancer] was always this faraway thing in our periphery, right? You always hear it from somebody else. So when I experienced it firsthand, questions like, ‘Why is this happening to me?’, and the unfairness of the situation just hit me all at once. My entire world had changed overnight, and I couldn’t help but spiral downwards.
“It didn’t help that I was a classic Type A personality—I had all these meticulous plans for my life, with notions like, ‘By this age, I’ll have done this and that’. But because of that diagnosis, it felt as though I was thrown off course. I was at a loss for what to do.”
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"My entire world had changed overnight, and I couldn’t help but spiral downwards. It didn’t help that I was a classic Type A personality."
The early adjustment period, according to Surina, was admittedly difficult for her, having to redefine the concept of ‘success’ taught to her at a young age by societal expectations, especially when you were a young woman climbing the corporate ladder.
But after a chance meeting with Claudia Chan, founder of S.H.E Summit, who simply told her to ask herself, “Why is this happening for her, instead of to her”—a lightbulb went off in her head.
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“It made me re-evaluate what was most important to me, and it challenged me to think outside of the box when it came to setting expectations for myself,” she says. “Like, who says you need to do A in order to get to B? You’re on your own timeline and you’re not in a rat race. Your health is what’s at stake here, which is why the things you used to take for granted are now more precious than ever, and why you become braver in trying new things, including, being easier on yourself.”
Embracing vulnerability was another lesson that Surina had to learn in every stage of being a cancer survivor, as it was, in her words, “Something that lives with you forever, so it never really goes away”.
In fact—and this bears mentioning—the last time I saw Surina was in late 2019, the very same year she took over the reins at MDEC, and her presence now, despite our present conversation held over a Zoom call, was no less magnetic than it was before.