Interview by Rachel Stewart, Content Director and Co-Founder
Some people are forged by fire. Dr. Rana Mustafa has walked through several. A former university professor who sacrificed her dream of medical school, survived civil war, and faced breast cancer during COVID, all while rebuilding her career, Rana now dedicates her life to helping women and displaced scientists rediscover their purpose. In this conversation, Rana shares how some of the hardest chapters of her life became the foundation for her work, leadership practice, and understanding of what truly matters.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
You’ve built a career helping women and displaced scientists discover their originality. How did this work begin for you?
It really started because I am all of those things myself: a woman, a scientist, and a displaced scientist. I wasn’t designing a program for “a target group”, – I was trying to find my own way.
I grew up in Syria with five brothers, very close in age. My dream was to become a physician. I loved people, and I was fascinated by the idea of understanding what they need and how to help them. I worked incredibly hard in Grade 12 because getting into medical school in Syria is extremely competitive. What I didn’t know was that my father was quietly worrying about money. One day he sat me down, staring at the floor because he couldn’t even look me in the eyes, and said: “If you go to university now, I won’t be able to afford to send your brother in two years. He told me that if I insisted on going to medical school, he could sell our land so that my brother and I could both go to university, but then we would lose the small piece of land where we grow our food.
I went to my room and cried. I couldn’t imagine choosing my dream and closing the door for my brother. In the end, I decided to sacrifice medical school so that he could study too. At the time, it didn’t feel like “strength” – it felt like love and a practical decision about how to share very limited resources. Deep down I told myself, “If I give this up now, life will somehow bring me back to the work I’m meant to do.” And in a way, it did.
I went into engineering instead, and at first I didn’t like it. The early years were very general and didn’t feel connected to people’s lives. But when I specialized in food engineering—and studied food security and food safety, how people eat when resources are scarce, something clicked.
Later, when I finished my PhD and became a faculty member, the part of my work I loved most was helping people—students, colleagues, especially women—solve problems and move forward. During the Syrian civil war, when electricity, water, and food became unreliable, I saw how essential this knowledge was. You learn to be extremely creative: how to keep food safe without a fridge, how to eat in a way that still supports your health in very basic, harsh conditions.
When I eventually became a displaced scientist myself, starting over in a new country, I realized how hard and lonely that path can be. I began sharing my story and the tools I was using to rebuild my life and career. Women and displaced scientists started reaching out and saying, “I need this. I feel the same.”
That’s really where my work began: from a personal need, a difficult path, and the decision to turn what I learned into something I could offer others.
You wear many hats… scientist, research facilitator, and leadership coach. How do these roles connect in your day-to-day life?
They’re different hats, but they all feed into each other.
My scientist hat shaped how I think. I’m naturally curious, analytical, and always looking for solutions. When a problem comes up, I still feel like I’m in the lab: I break it down, test ideas, and try to understand what’s really going on. That way of thinking is with me every single day.
As a research facilitator, that mindset becomes my daily work. I help faculty find and build collaborations, connect with industry, and secure funding. I support them in turning their scientific ideas into real projects that can create impact in the world. It’s still problem-solving, just on a larger, more strategic scale.
My leadership coach role brings in the human side. Instead of jumping in to solve everything myself, I slow down, ask questions, and create space for people to find their own answers. Coaching is about empowering others, not just being the one with the solution. Often my days are a mix: maybe I’m solving a complex issue in the morning, then in the evening I’m in full coaching mode, listening deeply and guiding someone through a decision.
I feel very lucky to have had training in leadership coaching, because my scientist side is very driven, competitive, and always “on.” Coaching grounds me. It reminds me that it’s not only about what I can do, but about how I can help others grow, lead, and move things forward. Together, these roles create a nice balance, and on any given day, I’m usually using all three.
You’ve lived through war and breast cancer, two experiences most people can’t imagine facing even once. How did you turn that kind of adversity into strength?
During the Syrian war, I was living in the city where it all began. I was terrified for my children. After only one year of the war, the college where I worked was destroyed. A few months later, heavy fighting reached our neighbourhood. We left in a hurry to save our lives and never went back. Our home was later destroyed. I had to move to another city and became displaced inside my own country. I lost colleagues, friends, and students to the fighting between different groups. At that time, the government insisted that universities stay open, so we were forced to keep working. I kept teaching, travelling about two hours each way to reach the university, never knowing if I would make it back. Every day, when I return home, I would think, “Today I made it. Tomorrow, I don’t know.” Living with that constant risk was one of the reasons I eventually came to Canada.
Just when I had survived the war, moved countries, and was slowly rebuilding my career, I was diagnosed with stage 2, aggressive breast cancer. Within 15 days I was starting chemotherapy. For months I went through scans, biopsies, and tests, waiting to know how advanced it was and whether it had spread.
Lying in a hospital bed during COVID, alone—because no one was allowed to be with me—everything I had worked for suddenly felt fragile. My degrees, my job, my plans: none of that could protect me. My identity was shaken. I wasn’t “strong” in that moment; I was asking myself very basic questions: Who am I now? What really matters? What do I want to do with whatever time I have?
Over many long hours, with a lot of reading and reflection, something shifted. I made an internal decision: from now on, I will focus on what truly matters. Every day I wake up is a gift, not something guaranteed. So how can I make this day meaningful?
That decision is where the strength started to grow. I chose to turn these crises into opportunities, even small ones. During treatment and medical leave, I took leadership and coaching training online—COVID made that possible. No one could see what I was going through physically; I could wear my wig, turn on the camera, and still show up as a learner. I started asking: How can I use my experience to help others, instead of letting it drag me into a dark place?
War taught me that once you let yourself sink into despair, it can be very hard to climb back out. Cancer drove that lesson even deeper. So I made a decision: whether I have a year or a week, I want to spend it doing what I love, serving the people I care about, and living with as much purpose, kindness, and courage as I can. That is how those experiences, little by little, turned from pure hardship into a source of strength.
I’m curious, how long did it take you to build this mindset? It sounds like it didn’t appear right away after your diagnosis.
It definitely didn’t happen overnight. At the beginning, my identity was completely shaken. People would say, “You’re so resilient, you survived war, you can handle cancer,” but behind closed doors I was crying, feeling lost and anything but strong. I didn’t know who I was anymore or what my future would look like.
It took a few months of really sitting with the hard questions and going deeper into what I wanted my life to stand for. The love of my kids was a big turning point. I wanted to model something honest for them: yes, there will be days when I cry and can’t handle it all, but this is a chapter, not the whole book.
When I was going through chemotherapy, I received a card from a cancer organization that said, “Don’t look back. One day your story will be a survival guide for others.” That sentence stayed with me.
During my own diagnosis, I had searched online for someone like me—a professional woman, maybe with a PhD, who had spent years in the lab and then had to face cancer. I wanted to know how she moved through all those stages and who she became afterward. I couldn’t find that story, so I thought, “Maybe I need to be that example for someone else.”
That’s when I began sharing and writing about my experience, and the amount of support I received in return was incredible.
Asking for help was another big part of building this mindset. I joined communities of breast cancer survivors, listened to their stories, and learned what helped them get through. My scientific side also kicked in—I treated it a bit like a research project: What is the problem? What are my options? What might work for me? I even had a OneNote folder called “Breast Cancer” where I organized everything I was learning about cancer.
Over time, all of this—reflection, love for my children, community, asking for help, and my research mindset—slowly built the way I think now. It wasn’t one big moment; it was many small, intentional choices over months that turned chaos into a clearer sense of purpose.
You work especially with women and displaced scientists. Why is this community so personally important to you?
It’s important to me because I come from this community, and I’ve seen up close how many gaps still exist.
From my own experience, I see how often women are not fully supported to live the life they truly want. On paper, there are many programs and opportunities, but in practice there are still barriers, expectations, and invisible limits.
For displaced scientists, the load is doubled. I often compare it to a plant. When you move for study or work, it’s like carefully repotting a plant into fresh soil. But when you move because of war or crisis, it can feel like being pulled out of the pot and thrown somewhere new. Maybe you find soil and manage to grow again, or maybe there’s no soil at all—no network, no recognition, no support.
I lived this myself. In Syria, I was a university professor for 10 years, with a PhD from France. I was active, publishing, supervising students, and well-connected in the research community. I had already come to Canada twice as a visiting professor at McGill and Université de Montréal. By Syrian standards, I was doing very well as an academic.
So when I moved to Canada, I assumed I would become a faculty member here, keep building my research program, and continuecontinue as before. But after a few months, I realized the reality was very different. In Syria, I had done the best I could with very limited resources—restricted access to journals, equipment, funding, and infrastructure. In Canada, the baseline for a “typical” faculty member is built on years of access to exactly those resources. The comparison is not fair, but it is very real.
As a displaced scientist, you’re suddenly starting again at the bottom of a different ladder. You have to rebuild your credibility, your reputation, your research record, and even your professional identity. You also have to learn how to tell your story in a way that makes sense in a new system.
I worked extremely hard to rebuild my career. What bothered me most was realizing that so many other brilliant scientists, —especially women ,—were going through the same thing, often silently. That’s why, in my coaching and consulting work, I chose to focus on displaced scientists and women in particular. I do work with men as well, but women often reach out to me because they see themselves in my story.
For me, this isn’t just a “target audience.” It’s my community. Helping them is my way of saying: your path matters, your experience has value, and you don’t have to navigate this alone.
How did you hold onto your sense of self through such big changes and restarting your career?
When I coach, I talk a lot about personal branding, which for me simply means telling our story honestly and with humility.
I came to Canada with a PhD from France and ten years of experience as a professor in Syria. I was proud of that, but I was also very aware that everything here was different—culture, language, systems, policies. Self-awareness is critical. You have to recognize there are gaps you need to bridge, not pretend they don’t exist.
I always tell my coaching clients: if you keep a learning mindset, you can catch up very quickly. You’re smart, capable, and experienced. But if you arrive and insist, “I have my credentials, I shouldn’t have to adjust,” that closed mindset will hold you back.
I use the image of a bridge: you’re building a bridge between where you were and where you want to be. Building that bridge takes time—learning the language nuances, understanding policies, understanding how things work here. If, for example, someone comes and immediately steps into a high-risk role without understanding local rules, one mistake could end their career. But if they’re patient and intentional, once that bridge is built, they’re on solid ground again. That’s how I kept my sense of self: by respecting my past, being honest about the gaps, and committing to building that bridge instead of denying that it was needed.
What helps with the mental and emotional load of being displaced and starting over?
For me, community was very important.
We are human. We all have moments when we lose confidence, feel small, or look in the mirror and think, “What happened to me?” In those moments, having someone beside you who says, “I see you, you’re doing better than you think—keep going,” can change everything.
I see this even with my son, who is a wrestler. One day he sat beside me after a tournament he didn’t win and said, “I’m not improving.” I had watched him all year—his discipline, his growth, his effort. I told him, “You’re not seeing what I’m seeing. Let me show you the full picture.” That’s what community does for us: it gives us a more accurate reflection of who we are when we’re too tired or discouraged to see it ourselves.
In my leadership training, I actually have an exercise called the “Personal Advisory Board.” Just like CEOs have a board of directors, each of us can create a small “board” for our life—people we go to for different roles: career, parenting, emotional support, health, faith, etc. I ask participants to write down names. It sounds simple, but when you know exactly who you can call when things get hard, you feel less alone. That network doesn’t remove the hardship, but it makes it bearable.
If someone reading this right now is going through their own hardship, what’s one thing you want them to hold onto?
That they are not alone—and that this is a chapter, not the whole book.
Someone else has gone through something similar and come out the other side, and so can you. We often compare ourselves to others and forget that each of us has our own life cycle, our own mix of experiences and challenges. Struggle is not a sign that you are failing; it is a sign that you are alive. If we had no problems at all, it would mean we weren’t really living.
So I would say three things:
- Remember it’s a chapter, not the whole story.
- Ask for help—don’t try to carry everything alone.
- Build a circle of support around you, even if it starts with just one person you trust.
In your proposal to ROSE, you talked about “leading with authenticity and courage.” What does that look like on a difficult day and on a good day?
On a difficult day, authenticity and courage start with three simple words: “I need help.”
Being authentic means being honest with yourself and others about where you are—mentally, emotionally, physically. Courage is admitting, “I can’t do this alone right now,” and reaching out. It takes strength to drop the mask and say, “I am struggling.”
On a good day, courage looks more like stepping fully into your purpose. It means letting your values guide your decisions, even when it’s uncomfortable. That could be speaking up, making a tough call, starting something new, or saying no to something that doesn’t align.
For me, authenticity is staying connected to my purpose—why I do this work—and checking my decisions against that. Courage is acting on that alignment, even when it would be easier to stay quiet, stay small, or please everyone else.
How do you help people discover their purpose, especially if they’re not in a crisis?
I sincerely hope no one needs war or cancer to connect to their purpose.
One exercise I love—and that anyone can do—is to imagine yourself at a very old age, say 80 or 90. Ask: “When I look back, what will I want my life to have stood for? What will matter to me then?” When you’re clear on that, you can reverse-engineer: if that’s the destination, what does that suggest about my purpose now?
Purpose isn’t fixed; it evolves. My own goal of being a faculty member shifted when I came to Canada and realized the cost it would have on my health and energy. After cancer, I accepted that it was okay for that dream to change. The deeper purpose—working with people, helping them grow, creating impact—stayed the same. I just expressed it differently through leadership coaching and facilitation.
I also think it helps to treat life a bit like we treat research: you have short-term goals and long-term goals. And you stay open to learning. Talking with people from different generations gives you a perspective that you might never reach on your own.
Self-awareness is the foundation of purpose. That’s why I keep mentors, a coach, and close friends around me—my own “personal advisory board.” They help me see what I sometimes miss about myself, and that feedback loop keeps my sense of purpose alive and aligned.
You’re writing an article for ROSE’s inaugural issue in May. Without giving too much away, what themes are you planning to explore?
The piece I’m writing is called “Rising Through Fire: Finding Purpose Beyond Survival.” It’s for anyone who has ever looked at their life and thought, “I didn’t sign up for this – now what?”
I’ll be writing honestly about how we move from simply surviving hardship—war, displacement, illness, career loss—toward building a life that feels meaningful again. I don’t want to sugarcoat anything: these experiences are not “blessings in disguise.” They are real losses, and they hurt. We need to acknowledge that before we can transform anything.
From there, I’ll explore how we can slowly turn those experiences into sources of clarity, compassion, and direction. How do we rebuild identity after everything changes? How do we carry our scars without letting them define our future? And how can the hardest chapters of our lives become a quiet kind of strength we offer to others?
A thread that runs through the article is a simple reminder: this is a chapter, not the whole book. My hope is that readers who are still “in the fire” will feel seen—and that they’ll walk away with both a bit of comfort and a few concrete ideas for how to start rising beyond survival into purpose.
As Rana says, “This is a chapter, not the whole book.” It’s the reminder she needed when her own story felt unbearable, and it’s the hard-won truth she now offers others freely: your story isn’t over. Some chapters are written in tears, some while fleeing war, and some in hospital beds. But asking for help when you need it is how you keep writing. It’s how you keep turning pages even when the ink runs with grief. And sometimes, the chapters that burn hottest, the ones written in fire, become the forge where our will to survive is hammered, heated, and transformed into something stronger.