Nass­er Khan

Dr Safeeya Mo­hammed be­lieves in the max­im, "Suc­cess isn't just about what you ac­com­plish in your life, it's what you in­spire oth­ers to do."

This Na­tion­al Schol­ar­ship win­ner 1997; class vale­dic­to­ri­an 2004; alum­ni to an ex­clu­sive pre­miere US pro­gramme, the In­ter­na­tion­al Vis­i­tor Lead­er­ship Pro­gram, 2009; se­lect­ed at UWI's 50th Ju­bilee Cel­e­bra­tion as one of their 50 Dis­tin­guished Alum­ni, 2011, states un­equiv­o­cal­ly she'd rather be con­sid­ered 'sig­nif­i­cant' than 'suc­cess­ful'.

Mo­hammed is a con­fi­dent woman, her strengths based not on her suc­cess­es but the chal­lenges she has man­aged to over­come. She said, "Some­times I feel like every­thing I've want­ed, I was test­ed, how much did I re­al­ly want this? And I played the pa­tience game one too many times."

She re­called that mere weeks af­ter en­ter­ing med­ical col­lege she frac­tured her an­kle and was on crutch­es. This broke her spir­it in ways unimag­in­able. "Hav­ing missed class­es and per­ti­nent ex­ams so ear­ly in the cru­cial base year, it was rec­om­mend­ed that I with­drew and restart the fol­low­ing year to pre­serve the schol­ar­ship, an arrange­ment that wors­ened the iso­la­tion ini­tial­ly cre­at­ed by a frac­tured an­kle."

But Dr Mo­hammed is one tough in­di­vid­ual; she didn't waste that year off but chose in­stead to nur­ture the young minds of stu­dents that re­quired spe­cial tu­ition and those prepar­ing or re­peat­ing ex­ams at O-and A-Lev­els by help­ing to em­pow­er them. Cel­e­brat­ing the suc­cess­es of her stu­dents, Mo­hammed re­gained her sense of pur­pose. She be­lieves her dri­ve to im­pact lives pos­i­tive­ly stemmed from this. Mo­hammed re­turned to med­i­cine dri­ven and more com­mit­ted. She grad­u­at­ed a year lat­er than pre­vi­ous­ly planned, and as class vale­dic­to­ri­an.

At present, she's a con­sul­tant with the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty, vice chair of the T&T Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion, Cen­tral branch for 2016, and TV host for a live broad­cast­ed fea­ture 'Doc­tor in the House.'

She's an in­spi­ra­tional speak­er and de­liv­ered im­pact­ing pre­sen­ta­tions at CARAIFA Con­gress April 2015, the Pur­suit of Ex­cel­lence; Unit­ed Na­tions 1st In­ter­na­tion­al Yo­ga Day in T&T, June 2015; Arthur Lok Jack's 'Strength in YOUth' work­shop Au­gust 2015, In­ter­na­tion­al Youth Day; and most re­cent­ly, In­ter­na­tion­al Women's Day Cel­e­bra­tions.

In fact, over the past ten years, she has co-or­di­nat­ed sev­er­al men­tor­ing pro­grammes with the themes of vol­un­teer­ing, ca­reer guid­ance, healthy lifestyle, bal­anced liv­ing, fe­male em­pow­er­ment, emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence, lead­er­ship; guid­ing and en­cour­ag­ing par­tic­i­pants to find and ful­fil their po­ten­tial.

An­oth­er one of her beloved quotes, 'a jour­ney of a thou­sand miles be­gins with a sin­gle' step by Lao-Tzu, she as­sertive­ly states, helps in un­der­stand­ing both fig­u­ra­tive­ly and phys­i­cal­ly how dif­fi­cult it was at one point to take a sin­gle step while on crutch­es.

Thus in plan­ning the work­shops, she says, "I have used the con­cept of STEP sev­er­al times–al­beit ba­by steps, a step for­ward, a step up, a step through, but nev­er a step back­wards when faced with chal­lenges." The most re­cent be­ing, April 2016, an em­pow­er­ment work­shop host­ed by Arthur Lok Jack School of Busi­ness, 'I am Woman.'

The pre­sen­ta­tions were themed us­ing the mod­el Dr Mo­hammed con­cep­tu­alised with im­pec­ca­bly matched speak­ers for each top­ic.

I am Strong–strong in mind, body and spir­it–Dr Mo­hammed her­self

I am Trans­formed–trans­formed through fit­ness–Franz Gillezeau

I am Ex­quis­ite–ex­quis­ite and con­fi­dent with­in my skin–Fa­timah Has­san

I am Pow­er­ful–pow­er­ful and pre­pared in ac­tion–Ker­ry Grant

This in­cul­cates the watch­words "Strong, Trans­formed, Ex­quis­ite and Pow­er­ful."

'Step For­ward' was a dif­fer­ent men­tor­ing pro­gramme she host­ed along­side the US Em­bassy in April 2010, prepar­ing stu­dents with the vi­tal in­gre­di­ents to achieve suc­cess in life, en­cour­ag­ing and in­cor­po­rat­ing vol­un­teerism as an in­te­gral part of their de­vel­op­ment. She in­di­cat­ed that vol­un­teer­ing has been en­cour­aged in her life by her par­ents, Fazal and Shaf­fi­na, who have ded­i­cat­ed their lives to com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice.

Mo­hammed re­called that since the ten­der age of 16 she gave of her time at a month­ly free med­ical clin­ic or­gan­ised by the Is­lam­ic Com­mu­ni­ty Ser­vices, thus de­vel­op­ing her pas­sion for help­ing peo­ple.

Her en­er­gy for life is her on­ly qual­i­ty that match­es her pas­sion for com­pas­sion, guid­ing all her al­tru­is­tic en­deav­ours, as she has vol­un­teered with many char­i­ta­ble NGOs and or­phan­ages which she con­sid­ers close to her heart.

Dr Mo­hammed was as­signed per­son­al physi­cian to Malala Yousafzai, No­ble Peace Prize win­ner 2014 and her per­son­al en­tourage dur­ing their vis­it to T&T. She con­sid­ers that a defin­ing time in her life. "Malala has taught the world so many lessons, the abil­i­ty to be fear­less be­yond mea­sure, the courage to chal­lenge the sta­tus quo, the im­por­tance of ed­u­ca­tion and not tak­ing sim­ple gifts for grant­ed, but most im­por­tant­ly, she taught us for­give­ness...lessons I try to em­u­late and rec­i­p­ro­cate to oth­ers."

Of the many hats Dr Mo­hammed wears, the one she con­sid­ers the most im­por­tant is be­ing a mum­my. "I am hum­bled every day I look at my son, he is my mir­a­cle, as is every child."

Mo­hammed was ini­tial­ly be­ing di­ag­nosed with pri­ma­ry in­fer­til­i­ty, but through es­sen­tial med­ical pro­ce­dures, nec­es­sary lifestyle changes, time and count­less prayer, her pa­tience paid off yet again. Since be­com­ing a mum, she has em­barked on her own per­son­al health and fit­ness jour­ney, par­tic­i­pat­ing in marathons, test­ing her phys­i­cal en­durance with cross­fit and ex­treme sports like wake­board­ing, and in­cor­po­rat­ing yo­ga and med­i­ta­tion to round off her well­ness ex­pe­ri­ence.

She was fea­tured in the 2015 HY­BRID mag­a­zine, the fore­most fit­ness and well­ness mag­a­zine of the Caribbean as a 'Fit­Mom' along­side oth­er promi­nent in­spir­ing moth­ers of T&T. "The de­mands of moth­er­hood can be over­whelm­ing at times, but I've found my best cop­ing method is through yo­ga or any out­door phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty with my son, dis­count­ing not hav­ing time but MAK­ING TIME for it."

Q: Where did you grow up and what area do you now con­sid­er home?

A: Ch­agua­nas, one of the most rapid­ly de­vel­op­ing towns in Trinidad.

Where did you at­tain your pri­ma­ry, sec­ondary and ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion?

Pri­ma­ry–Char­lieville AS­JA Pri­ma­ry School; sec­ondary–St Au­gus­tine Girls' High School; ter­tiary–Uni­ver­si­ty of West In­dies, Fac­ul­ty of Med­i­cine.

What ad­vice would you give to some­one con­tem­plat­ing a vo­ca­tion/ca­reer such as yours?

To first read the Hip­po­crat­ic Oath and tru­ly in­ter­nalise it...To un­der­stand the im­por­tance of com­pas­sion and em­pa­thy in deal­ing with your pa­tients and per­sons of the wider com­mu­ni­ty. Med­i­cine is not for the light heart­ed,it in­volves im­mense sac­ri­fice of per­son­al time, com­mit­ment and sleep­less nights. How­ev­er, it is one of the few pro­fes­sions your im­pact can be so pos­i­tive, you are giv­en the gift of be­ing able to change a life or im­prove a life, and most im­por­tant­ly to save a life.

If you had to solve the ills that pre­vail in T&T what would you do?

Ex­act­ly what I'm do­ing, mak­ing a dif­fer­ence through the lives of chil­dren and women. The ills that are of par­tic­u­lar im­por­tance to me are the in­fringe­ment of the rights of chil­dren, the evil of abuse–phys­i­cal, emo­tion­al and sex­u­al abuse our vul­ner­a­ble chil­dren face, the dis­turb­ing num­ber of street chil­dren in our coun­try, the alarm­ing child­hood obe­si­ty num­bers in our coun­try, the lack of re­sources and sup­port for our chil­dren with dis­abil­i­ties, cere­bral pal­sy, autism, the poor par­ent­ing prac­tices adopt­ed by many.

We need stronger po­lit­i­cal will and more ded­i­cat­ed re­sources to solv­ing these ills. We need more fi­nan­cial sup­port to the ex­ist­ing NGOs and in­sti­tu­tions in place that are al­ready fo­cused on bring­ing res­o­lu­tion to some of these ills.

What goals do you still have?

Too many to list...

First and fore­most, to be the best moth­er, daugh­ter, friend, men­tor, the best ver­sion of me pos­si­ble and most im­por­tant­ly a ser­vant to my God. I see my­self one day work­ing at Unit­ed Na­tions or Unicef, con­tribut­ing, de­vel­op­ing and im­ple­ment­ing poli­cies that sup­port the con­cept of the 2002 'The World Fit for Chil­dren' doc­u­ment.

To de­vel­op pos­i­tive par­ent­ing work­shops in­cor­po­rat­ing stress man­age­ment for par­ents, con­scious dis­ci­pline for ag­gres­sive chil­dren, al­so util­is­ing the prac­tice of yo­ga and med­i­ta­tion where ap­plic­a­ble.

Up­com­ing events?

Too many to list again...

The Na­tion­al Mus­lim Women of T&T, of which I am a mem­ber, is cur­rent­ly plan­ning a work­shop The Child at Risk in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Mad­i­nah House and TML Ladies As­so­ci­a­tion.June 18th-26th–Com­mem­o­ra­tive events for the UN de­clared In­ter­na­tion­al Day of Yo­ga host­ed by the High Com­mis­sion of In­dia and col­lab­o­rat­ing bod­ies.

I prac­tice yo­ga in­tent­ly and be­lieve it is a holis­tic fit­ness pack­age. Yo­ga first and fore­most brings a greater aware­ness of self and be­ing present in the mo­ment. The mind is con­stant­ly in ac­tiv­i­ty, swing­ing from one ac­tion, task to an­oth­er. By sim­ply be­ing aware of this ten­den­cy of the mind, we can ac­tu­al­ly save our­selves from get­ting stressed or frus­trat­ed eas­i­ly, there­by re­lax­ing the mind and re­duc­ing the vi­cious cy­cle of stress­ful fac­tors.

I'm al­so ex­cit­ed to pieces about my new­ly de­vel­oped work­shop–June 22, Boost­ing Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty through Suc­cess­ful Work-Life Bal­ance, at Arthur Lok Jack School of Busi­ness along­side the co-fa­cil­i­ta­tor Franz Gillizeau, ed­i­tor of HY­BRID and a phe­nom­e­nal fit­ness mo­ti­va­tion­al speak­er.

Many of us feel like we are con­stant­ly jug­gling and not of­ten ful­ly en­gaged in what we are do­ing. Work?life bal­ance is es­sen­tial to com­bat stress, en­sur­ing both in­di­vid­ual and com­pa­ny suc­cess. The stress as­so­ci­at­ed with un­bal­anced lifestyles is cost­ly; it dam­ages ef­fi­cien­cy and in­creas­es in­di­vid­ual health risks.

One of the most ef­fec­tive long-term ways to man­age the ris­ing costs of health­care is to en­cour­age em­ploy­ees to prac­tice good health habits. Em­ploy­ees who have the tools to bal­ance their pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al lives are hap­pi­er, health­i­er and more pro­duc­tive. The work­shop is aimed to em­pow­er par­tic­i­pants to cre­ate a cul­ture of health at the work­place and achieve a sus­tain­able work-life bal­ance. Those in­ter­est­ed can con­tact k.fras­er@lok­jack­gsb.edu.tt

What is your recipe for suc­cess?

Work for a cause, not ap­plause; Live life to ex­press, not to im­press; Don't strive to make your pres­ence not­ed, just make your ab­sence felt. I wish I knew who said it, but it's the quote I re­mind my­self of every day, be­gin­ning every morn­ing with pray and grat­i­tude.

De­scribe your­self in two words, one be­gin­ning with S, the oth­er with M, your ini­tials?

Sassy and Metic­u­lous

Dr Safeeya Mo­hammed can be con­tact­ed at dr­safeeya25@gmail.com