The American dream is reaching out to help other people, no matter what they look like
Through July 4, The Post, in conjunction with the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream, is featuring US citizens explaining what the American dream means to them in 2026 — including Padmanee Sharma.An immunologist and oncologist at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, she is one of the nation’s preeminent researchers into specialized cancers.It feels, to me, like I’ve been living the American Dream from the time we arrived in this country in 1980. My family is from Guyana.
We were refugees running away from a terrible situation in the country.I came to a country [in America] where men and women went to school, boys and girls went to school, all religious backgrounds went to school — everybody, with any skin color, it didn’t matter — they all went to school and had an education.That, to me, was already the American Dream.My parents could not afford to send us to college.
When we came to this country, they each worked about three jobs, just to afford for us to live in a very tiny one-bedroom basement apartment.So, philanthropy was a big part of me achieving my American dream. I won a scholarship to go to Boston University.
From there, I went into an MD-PhD program, which was also funded, initially, from philanthropy.My first grant to do my research work was through philanthropy through the Prostate Cancer Foundation. I hope that every time I’m taking care of my patients, I hope that every time I’m making a discovery in my lab, I hope that every time I’m writing a new clinical trial to try and test better treatments to cure cancer — I hope these are all ways that I’m giving back. I also hope that I’m giving back by mentoring the students in my lab, mentoring the clinical fellows in my clinic.
By teaching my children about compassion and being a bigger part of society, that’s also giving back.It really is up to each of us to reach out to each other and not be worried that we don’t look like each other or we�...