Justine Smyth (PMD 77, 2002) remembers a time when no one in New Zealand talked about breast cancer. It was 1980, and her mother, just 45 years old, had been diagnosed. Her mother underwent a mastectomy and survived, but “we weren’t allowed to tell anyone,” Smyth recalls.

That’s all changed now—in part thanks to Smyth, who joined the volunteer board of the fledgling Breast Cancer Foundation NZ in the mid-1990s and became its chair in 2009. Her work with the charity has been informed by her business career, she says. A partner at Deloitte when she joined the effort, Smyth went on to run her own businesses and is now director of the Auckland International Airport and chair of Spark, New Zealand’s largest telecommunications and digital services company. “Measuring performance in charity is as important as in a commercial enterprise,” she observes. “I’m conscious of how we spend every dollar we raise from the community. It’s about making sure you do the right thing for the people who have given you that support.”

Starting a public conversation about women’s health was not easy, but awareness—among both women and their doctors—is essential to early diagnosis and improved outcomes. Today the foundation remains focused on education—it’s “an old message but it’s still the right message,” Smyth concludes—but also has expanded into patient support and research, becoming the biggest nongovernmental funder, and into advocacy. With encouragement from the foundation, in 1998 the New Zealand government instituted free breast cancer screenings for women ages 50 to 64, later extended to 45 to 69. The foundation is currently working to extend those screenings to women up to the age of 74.

Data shows that access to these free screenings has reduced the breast cancer mortality rate in the country by 34 percent, says Smyth, but she and the foundation are not finished yet. She has set an ambitious goal for New Zealand, one she believes can be achieved through early detection and ever-improving breast cancer treatment: zero deaths.

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