Hi, I'm Carrie Dolan. I'm an assistant managing editor at Forbes, and I'm here as part of

Forbes' 2025 list of America's Richest Self-Made Women. I'm here with one of our newcomers.

Sharing her story with us today, Mackie Zangenei, co-CEO and president of Summit Therapeutics.

Maki, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you very much for having me.

You started your life in Iran.

You were born there, but you spent many of your formative years outside of Iran.

How has that affected you and your life as an executive?

I was born in Iran, and that was the moment of the Shah regime, and it was really like a Western

European country.

But then after that, the revolution happened when I was nine years old, and that was a moment

that everything has changed completely.

My parents, the both of them, they're

architect and all of the family is, you know, into the engineering and medical

doctors and we were in Iran and for sure after revolutions, unexpected a year

after that the war started and that Iran Iraq war. That was an Iran-Iraq War in 1980s, and that was, I was around 9, 10 years old.

And for sure, it was very, very difficult, you know, especially the war started by south

of Iran.

And then over time, we got all of the rocket in Tehran.

And that was the moment that we decided, my parents decided to get out of the country.

But then finally, my mom was very smart woman, you know.

She knew a travel agency and they tried to get different flights getting out of Iran.

...