“In my dreams, I am not disabled…” An
interview with Stephanie Scawen
By Ushah Kazi
We were very fortunate to have three stunningly powerful women
speak at the opening talk for ‘ain’t I a woman’ month. But I was
even luckier to have the pleasure of meeting another inspiring
woman en route to the talk. Stephanie Scawen has been a
television journalist for more than twenty years, prior to which
she was involved in print journalism. She is currently a senior
producer at Aljazeera and has been with the network’s Kuala
Lumpur office since it’s inception.
She is also a Multiple Sclerosis (MS) patient, and has been for
eighteen years.
When you attach a title to a name, you inadvertently associate an
image with the person. As a senior producer for one of the world’s
leading news networks, Stephanie Scawen seems like an
inspirational role model. But as a longtime patient of an autoimmune disease, she
With Stephanie Scawen at her desk, Aljazeera
office Kuala Lumpur.
is all the more. So it is no wonder that I contacted Scawen for the ‘success and
women’ talk in early May 2014. Her view of life and success, in lieu of her life
experiences and her achievements in spite of them, begs a questioning of what success is, a