Dr Farah Essa Zaidi: A Journey of Healing and Advocacy

Dr. Farah Essa Zaidi is an accomplished physician and Clinical Educator with more than 20 years of global experience in multiple countries including Canada, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

Dr Farah completed her Advanced Ultrasound postgraduation from Michener Institute at UHN in 2008 and her clinical training from St. Michael’s Hospital (now Michael Garrison) Toronto, Canada, in General and High-Risk Materno-fetal Ultrasound. Armed with her multifaceted and rich experience in the healthcare field and her passion for clinical education and impacting women’s education in Saudi Arabia, she played a leadership role in training more than 500+ Saudi medical and allied health students at Riyadh Military Hospital and Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University, the largest women’s university in the world.

Dr Farah Essa returned to Pakistan in 2018 with a spirit and responsibility of giving back to her motherland, Pakistan. Taking charge as Director, Dr. Essa Laboratory & Diagnostic Center, she successfully revamped and fostered the expansion and training of staff, cultivating Essa Labs, CSR activities by providing free health education, health camps and services to the underserviced, underrepresented and marginalized communities.

Deeply committed to improving healthcare, she identified the nation’s critical need for quality healthcare and the ever-increasing demand of qualified, skilled healthcare staff to be trained at par with the international standards and operating procedures. This critical gap identification led to the launch of Dr Farah Essa Academy (DFEA), a health career and skills training institute. DFEA mission is to bring about a paradigm shift by providing quality education and developing world-class, skilled healthcare professionals with the ultimate goal to improve patient care and quality of healthcare delivery in the country and globally.

Dr Farah Essa actively participates as a member and speaker at the First Lady’s Breast Cancer Task Force. She also contributes to environmental conservation efforts through the Karachi Zoo/ Safari Park, Government of Sindh Task Force, and serves as dedicated Goodwill Ambassador at Al Furqan Welfare Organization, advocating for humanitarian causes and community welfare.

A champion of women and transgender health and empowerment, Dr Farah Essa believes that all individuals from every stratum of the society should be empowered to make their own choices and develop their sense of self-worth. The only way to make headway in this field is to work extensively on their education, health awareness, literacy and skill-based training. It arms them with confidence and resources to be impactful in the improvement of their political, social, economic and health status. She actively supports home-based female doctors seeking to return to work, while also encouraging young women to join the healthcare field and have a promising career.

Deeply committed to improving healthcare, she identified the nation’s critical need for quality healthcare and the ever-increasing demand of qualified, skilled healthcare staff to be trained at par with the international standards and operating procedures.

Representing the bright minds of Pakistan, Dr Farah Essa has the honour of being the first Pakistani female president of OPEN (Organization of Pakistan Entrepreneurs Network). Charged with the primary aim of OPEN to promote entrepreneurship and innovation, her aim is to encourage entrepreneurs, especially women, transgenders and marginalized communities through developing networking, mentoring, incubation and acceleration programmes, both domestic and international, and engage private sources of finance and creation of angel investor networks to provide funding for start-up ventures. Her highlight is to promote the accomplishments of local entrepreneurs. As a strong advocate of female entrepreneurship, she believes that increasing the ratio of female entrepreneurship in the society can have a profound impact on the economic growth and stability of society as a whole.

Dr Farah Essa serves as Rotary chair of Maternal & Child Health and has been honoured with Government of Canada’s Health Achievement Award, Best Health Innovation Award at MIT, Harvard Med School and recognized as Best Faculty by Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University. She is currently on the top 15 list Global BIPOC & South Asia Voices on LinkedIn.