story by: GEOFFREY JOHNSON

In 1980, Eve Conway-Ghazi arrived in Evanston, Illinois, to study at Northwestern ​University’s Medill School of Journalism. A graduate of Queen Mary University ​with a degree in English, she’d recently been a reporter for a newspaper in East ​London. It was there that her editor, a Rotarian, had told Conway-Ghazi about ​Rotary’s Ambassadorial Scholarships program.

She secured one of the scholarships and found herself in this new country and a ​new city. Little did she know the changes that lay ahead, or the reason she’d find ​herself returning to that city in the years to come.

“The scholarship was my first gift from Rotary,” says Conway-Ghazi, who today is ​serving as a director of Rotary International, one of several prominent leadership ​roles she’s held at the organisation. “It transformed my life, and it left me ​wanting to transform the lives of other people around the world.”

But first those changes. While at Northwestern and working toward a master’s in ​broadcast journalism, Conway-Ghazi was assigned to serve as the Washington ​correspondent for KOTV, a CBS affiliate in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The news director ​may have admired the rookie reporter for some unexpected reasons — ​“Everything you say sounds so intelligent with your British accent” — but the ​skills Conway-Ghazi acquired at KOTV and Northwestern allowed her to ​transition from newspapers to radio and television when she returned home to ​England. After working for a number of broadcast outlets, she spent 20 years at ​BBC News as a reporter and producer.

While all of this was going on, Conway-Ghazi slowly found her way back to ​Rotary. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that Rotary — which did not admit ​women as members until the late 1980s — found its way back to Conway-Ghazi. ​While suffering from the flu, she consulted a doctor, who, as with her early ​editor, was a Rotarian. He invited her to speak at his club, and after speaking at ​several other Rotary clubs, Conway-Ghazi joined the Rotary Club of Redbridge, ​based in Greater London, in 2000. (The club recently merged with another to ​become the Rotary Club of Barkingside and Redbridge, and Conway-Ghazi ​remains a member.)

Conway-Ghazi quickly rose through the ranks of Rotary, serving as club president ​and, in 2012-13, as the first female district governor for Rotary in London. She’d ​follow that, in 2016-17, with a term as president of Rotary International in Great ​Britain and Ireland.

By then, Conway-Ghazi had been married for a decade. The fact that she and her ​husband, Robert Hossein Ghazi, met had, in a way, been another gift from ​Rotary. The two first ran into each other in April 2003 while hurrying to a Rotary ​district assembly in London’s Covent Garden. Ghazi gave her his business card ​and invited her to join him on a boat ride. As it happened, Conway-Ghazi was ​about to depart to the United States for a month and was unable to join him. In ​the months that followed, Ghazi extended other invitations, which she continued ​to decline. “He was very persistent,” she’d later remember, “and I was very busy.”

After a year, the two finally had dinner at a Russian restaurant in London. And in ​April 2006, three years after Rotary had first brought them together — and three ​days after Conway-Ghazi had returned from filming a BBC documentary about ​women battling breast cancer in Pakistan with Cherie Blair, the spouse of Prime ​Minister Tony Blair — the couple were married. It’s another reason, says Conway-​Ghazi, that “joining Rotary was the best decision I made in my life.”

At each step of her Rotary journey, Conway-Ghazi followed through on her desire ​to transform the lives of others. In 2007, wanting to promote inspiring stories ​about young people, she founded the Rotary Young Citizen Awards in association ​with BBC News. Five years later, working with Rotary members in London and ​Mumbai, she organised a vocational training team of medical professionals from ​London who traveled to India to train doctors, nurses, and health workers in ​rural Jawhar — a project that helped improve childbirth outcomes there.

One of Conway-Ghazi’s great passions remains fighting polio, and in 2016 she ​launched the Purple4Polio campaign in Great Britain and Ireland. That passion ​stems from what Conway-Ghazi describes as her Rotary moment. At her first ​National Immunisation Day in India, she administered two drops of the polio ​vaccine to a child as his mother looked on. “She couldn’t speak English, but I ​could see it in her eyes,” Conway-Ghazi recalls. “Her child had been immunised ​against polio, and it had been transformative for them. It touched my heart.”

Rotary’s investment in that young journalist has paid off in other ways. Using ​skills she acquired during her career, Conway-Ghazi produced video interviews ​for Rotary GB&I’s marketing and membership campaign. “We have to tell the ​story that what Rotary is all about is projects with impact that save lives,” she ​says.

Sadly, Robert Ghazi died last December. “The Rotary family is helping me get ​through,” Conway-Ghazi explains when back in Evanston for a Board meeting. ​“And I continue to be very busy working as an RI director, which is such a ​privilege.”

“Rotary transformed my life,” she continues, repeating something she’d said ​earlier, only this time talking about much more than her Ambassadorial ​Scholarship. “In a remarkable way, through a network of people, it allowed one ​person to change the world. Helping to eradicate polio and making history: I ​never would have done any of that without Rotary. And Rotary continues to offer ​me so many wonderful opportunities to help others.” The transformed has ​become the transformer.

This article was originally published in Rotary Magazine (Rotary International) in ​October 2024.