Power and Passion Read Online Free PDF Page B

crowded the
edges. Mina liked working for Joan. She had learned so much and
picked up many skills along the way. She loved her job and felt
very fortunate to be part of an organization that made such a
positive impact on the lives of others. Even her parents back home
in India were so proud of the work she was involved with; they
always told her how they would keep all her relatives updated on
what she was doing at her job.
    "Well, we'll have the usual media to deal
with first, of course. Your morning is booked. Two magazines, three
TV shows, a couple of Podcasts."
    "Podcasts?" Joan said with a small laugh as
she brought up her email on the computer. Things sure had changed
since she had started her first job in the nonprofit sector in the
1980s with the American Cancer Society. She had been actively
involved in the first team relay event, the City of Destiny Classic
twenty-four-hour Run Against Cancer. At the time no one had
imagined it would turn into what it is today: every year about
fifty-two hundred Relay for Life events take place across the
United States, and the American Cancer Society has licensed more
than twenty organizations in other countries to hold Relay for Life
events to fight cancer across the world.
    Back when Joan had started, everything had
been done through word of mouth, phone calls, and wheat-pasting
flyers around neighborhoods one at a time. There were no electronic
devices to transmit thoughts in milliseconds and to keep track of
where you were every second of the day. And awards—Joan laughed
again just thinking of herself back then, when she had done the
work because she loved the people, because she wanted to improve
lives and seemed to have a knack for motivating others to help her
do it.
    Over the years some things had stayed the
same, but so much more was different now. She was just as driven
and determined as ever, but now she gained accolades. Not that she
had started Hearts and Minds in order to gain them. No, those had
just seemed to start coming one day, and they hadn't stopped since.
She had never once asked or in any way applied for one. People had
just taken notice of her organization's work, she supposed, and
decided it was worthy of some lavish praise. She was grateful, of
course, and gracious in accepting them. But mostly she was pleased
to know that with every award she accepted, with every thank-you
speech she delivered, she was making more and more people aware of
what she and her company stood for and the essential life-saving
programs that were available to those who needed them.
    Joan was still a rabble-rouser at heart; she
lived for forging new territory, and cancer research and awareness
were relatively new to the people of Dubai. When she had moved
there with her husband five years earlier, the disease had been a
word spoken only in hushed whispers, as if saying it aloud made it
contagious. Then shortly after the move, she had undergone her own
scare when a mammogram had come back with an abnormal reading.
Subsequent tests had come out normal, thank God, but Joan had to be
constantly vigilant, which was not an easy feat in a region where
cancer was still so misunderstood. Now getting the message out was
the most important thing to her so people could find the
information they needed in order to empower themselves in their
fights against cancer.
    She sighed and leaned back in her chair.
"And what about the afternoon?"
    Mina, who had helped herself to a date, took
a moment to swallow as she consulted her schedule diary once again.
"The usual—all-staff lunch meeting at noon, conference calls with
the Middle East Cancer Consortium and World Health Organization,
meet and greet with the execs from the new hospital wing—"
    "All right," Joan interrupted, though Mina
didn't mind. This was their normal banter, a comfortable back and
forth in which they cut off as well as finished each other's
sentences. "I'll do the interviews because I have to." She smirked
at Mina, who held out