IT’S no exaggeration to say that Datuk Dr Shazelina Zainul Abidin has had a ringside view to two of the events that changed the world.
She was in Washington DC for her first posting abroad as a diplomat when the most horrifying terrorist attacks ever on American soil took place.
“I was on the way to the office. A woman jogging the opposite direction of me on Key Bridge suddenly stopped and went ‘OMG’.
I looked over to what she was looking at; there was a plume of smoke coming from the distance,” she recounts.
It was the day an American Airlines flight was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon in a coordinated Sept 11 attack which also hit New York City.
“No one knew what was happening then. No one at the State Department or any of our US government contacts were answering the phone,” she adds.
By lunch time many embassies had decided to close up, Shazelina says.
“My ambassador had opened an Ops Room. I was on media duty, which meant that I was in charge of handling media questions.”
It was a task that would require her to be up all night to attend to the questions from the Malaysian media, who were 12 hours ahead.
When she went home to get fresh clothes and some food, she saw that the neighbourhood was “eerily silent”.
“There were armoured vehicles on every other street corner. It was scary.”
Security became the utmost concern for the United States. “I saw the world change,” she reflects.
Now, 25 years later, Shazelina is the High Commissioner of Malaysia to Canada, having arrived in Ottawa in November 2024.
She is once again witnessing a historic event which is still unfolding.
Donald Trump was elected US president just three weeks prior to her arrival and Ottawa, the government town often misunderstood as “The City That Fun Forgot”, would soon be on the cusp of a monumental change.
“A month after I arrived, President Trump made reference to Canada as the 51st state of the US. It was a portent of things to come. The world was about to undergo a massive change,” says Shazelina.
Asked about the impact and how she is navigating the situation, she replies:
“This is still a work in progress. The world is still reeling... err, evolving. Ask me in 10 years’ time!”
As for Canada, she thinks it has been interesting.
Justin Trudeau, who had been Canadian prime minister for nine years, announced his resignation two months after Shazelina began her new job.
Mark Carney took over, “turning Canada from a compliant, obedient ally of the US, into a country with a purpose.”
Shazelina isn’t one who is hesitant to voice her thoughts or negotiate in tricky situations, a trait that is seen even in her younger days when her father sat her down one day and asked what she wanted to do with her life.
“I immediately said I wanted to be a journalist, the one that gets sent abroad, dodges bullets, runs towards burning buildings. The superhero kind.”
She was 16 then.
Her late father’s suggestion that she becomes a nuclear scientist was not appealing to her.
“My science subjects were the ones I was really struggling with. So the thought of being a nuclear scientist filled me with dread.”
“After a lot of negotiating with dad, he finally asked what it is that I want to do, career aside. I said I wanted to travel and see the world.”
Her father, an accountant in the public service, asked her: “How about a career as a diplomat? You could travel the world, live in far-flung places, and still have a job.”
“It started me thinking,” says Shazelina.
That seed of thought led to her charting a 30-year career (and counting) with the Foreign Ministry, which she joined in December 1996.
Shazelina’s art of negotiation began at the grand young age of five with her parents.
“I argued hard on the premise that any family should only have one mum, one dad, and one child. I lost that battle; a sister was born after I reached the age of five, and a brother when I turned eight,” she quips.
This KL girl has had much tougher jobs throughout her career.
In April 2024, she was the team leader for a fact-finding delegation from Malaysia to Afghanistan for six days.
“That was a carefully crafted mission. Afghanistan had reached out to the international community, saying that they were ready to do business and wanted the normalisation of relations.”
She went there with a team of experts to evaluate if the Taliban were indeed ready to rejoin the global community and to ascertain the veracity of the reports coming out of Kabul.
Prior to that, Shazelina was in Senegal where she was ambassador from 2018 to 2021.
She has warm memories of the west African nation despite the language barrier as they speak French over there.
“The Senegalese are nice people; loud, but not violent. They are a happy people. Or they used to be before people told them that they should want or demand for more.”
“To me, foreign interference is at its worst when you tell people how they should live their lives, what trappings of wealth is ‘necessary’ for them. The Senegalese I met in the rural areas were happy with their lot in life. Who are we to tell them what they should need?”
And speaking of meeting interesting people, Shazelina was the protocol officer for Queen Elizabeth II when she came to Malaysia for the 1998 Commonwealth Games.
But it isn’t her encounters with royalty that is imprinted on her mind.
In 2024, she was part of the Malaysian delegation during Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s meeting with his counterpart Narendra Modi in India.
“When our delegation were about to leave and the two Prime Ministers were saying their goodbyes, Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar saw me, stepped out of the line of dignitaries, and waved. It was a small gesture that I treasured. He was acknowledging the work that my team had done.”
A similar case happened in Kyrgyzstan where Anwar was about to leave after a two-day visit in May 2024.
“We were all at the tarmac. Foreign Minister Bakhtiyor Saidov, who was rushing to catch up with his president, ran past me. He turned around to shake my hand and say a quick thank you. I was floored.”
“Sometimes we forget how meaningful small gestures are. These are things I tell myself when a team member has done a good job. I must remember to acknowledge it.”
But despite her varied roles from far-flung Dakar to cosmopolitan New York City (where she was based from 2007 to 2011), Shazelina names her Kuala Lumpur posting as director-general of Institute of Diplomacy and Foreign Relations of Malaysia from 2021 to 2023 as the proudest time in her career.
“I always thought that I was best suited for that job - planning a syllabus, challenging young minds, shaping new thoughts,” she says.
These days, Shazelina remains knee-deep in her work.
“My philosophy when it comes to work is simple. Whatever desk you get, embrace it, make it yours. Think as if you are going to be there forever. The minute you keep saying ‘I’m on transit’, then you lose the passion, the joie de vivre.”
“You want to shine while you are there, you want to make a difference so that others who come after you have no choice but to be even better. That’s how we make an organisation excel; everything starts with us,” she says.
A life of exploring the world
Shazelina and her husband Azizi Abdul Aziz with Justin Trudeau, in December 2024. A month later, Trudeau announced that he was stepping down as Canada's Prime Minister.
Shazelina during a meeting in March 2026 with the executive committee of the Malaysian Association of Canada to discuss potential collaboration and how the Malaysian High Commission can support the Malaysian diaspora.
Shazelina says that her art of negotiation began at the grand young age of five with her parents.
Shazelina with the executive committee of the Malaysian Association of Canada.
