At some point during our interview, Shereen Raus drops a very unique fact about herself: ‘I’m afraid of heights, but I’ve jumped off everything.’ Don’t worry, this is not as worrying as it sounds – she is, in fact, a lover of extreme sports. Then again, Shereen is a person of many facets. 

Presently a Partnership Manager at FrogAsia, she has worked with the company for precisely eight years. Her job involves many things, primarily getting partners to collaborate on various events and creating meaningful partnerships. But what does this entail?  

On an average day, she begins work at 10am and, once a week, has a meeting with her team to update each other on the agenda for the week. She stresses that the job scope is ‘independent work’ and the same applies to her teammates – they ‘rely upon each other, knowing that each person is responsible for their own work.’ As a small office, FrogAsia’s various teams are familiar with one another and hence, will inevitably work with each other.  

Prior to working at FrogAsia, however, she had lived in Australia for several years and worked there as a Service Marketing Manager at Siemens Healthcare. Subsequently, following a change of heart, she took an Early Childhood Education course and worked as a relief teacher for two years. This experience proved to be pivotal in leading her to the career she has today: ‘I realised that kids can teach me more than any adult can.’  

Upon returning to Malaysia, it was her love of working in a field related to empowering the younger generation that led her to FrogAsia, where she has remained since. In eight years, there have been many moments to cherish and remember. To her, the Leaps of Knowledge project as an entirety – a series of talks, workshops, conferences, and events where people are encouraged to be gamechangers in the education sector — is one she will always hold on to, as it is a project the team works on often. ‘Memories like being together and seeing students benefit from it,’ Shereen explains, ‘it feels like the hard work is worth something.’  

That is, ultimately, what she strives for in her professional domain: knowing your purpose and ‘being in the right place.’ She views her position as one she currently occupies because she has full faith in what FrogAsia does and believes ‘in the children of Malaysia’. It is a sense of meaning in everything she does, whether it’s travelling to engage in extreme sports as one way of challenging her fear of heights, or shifting gears in her career, that makes Shereen an inspiration to those around her.