Azza Wagdy

I believe my success can go to my family, my husband mainly, because I had nobody here beside me except my husband. I think if he was not supportive, I probably would not be able to go where I am or be where I am today, because I had no parents here in the United States and no sister or sibling. Luckily, my husband is relative, and maybe it's part of it, that's why he was more supportive. My motivation also came from two things - finding a solution for the world, for a better world, because I lost my mom when I was young because of illness, and that's why, part of it, I went to Abbott. I thought that I can make the medicine that can heal everybody. It's important to learn from mistakes too, and learning from the things that happen in your life, what you can do to make our world better and good.

I think the career advice is do not give up, do not never give up. Look for your goal and dream, and focus on it. Never give up. Because you're gonna have obstacles, and you're gonna have things come out in your way, evils that, like, discrimination. I met so many discrimination in my life, because I'm not born here, I'm not one of the Native Americans that they came to America, I had an accent in my tongue. So, there's so much obstacles, so much people, they don't want you to be a winner. But I think if you have the goodness in your heart, and the faith, and the strong determination, and you're focused, you can do anything. You can do anything, as long as you like it, you're passionate about it, and you believe in yourself.

I would say do not believe that because you're a woman, that you cannot make it. Believe in yourself. Be strong. And no matter if someone is putting you down, stick to your goals and your dreams. And stay away from the negative. If somebody's trying to make you down, get out of a relationship, get run, or if you cannot fix it. Because a lot of people, they do want you to succeed. They think they're stronger than you, but there's no difference between men and a woman. Maybe the man is stronger a little bit than the woman physically, but women are good thinkers. We can come up with a solution for hard times. Men always look at things in different perspective, physically, maybe, just like the left side of the brain and the right side of the brain, but you need both to keep the boat sailing.

I think the biggest challenge in the field that I have is having the support of management to fulfill everything you need to achieve in a research environment. So, it's very hard to get the financial support, because every company, they want to make money, not spend money. My field is more spending money because you need tools, you need equipment to come up with solutions, and it's always difficult to prove your point. You know, I need this because this may help in finding out a solution for something, or find out something that's not ethical, somebody's doing it. In research and development, it's really challenging to find the support all the time from corporate to learn new techniques, bring new equipment, all that stuff.

I think the values for me is honesty, believing in others that they can do as long as they are taught how to do it. So you have to share information with others in order for the continuation of life, you know, of being able to give the steering wheel to someone else. So it's important to share and be honest about it, ethically, too. You have to be, you know, you have to have ethics about what you do. This is the most important values for me.