Dr. Naveena Singh, Dec 7 1964 – Oct 5 2023
It is with profound sadness that we inform you of the passing of Dr. Naveena Singh. Naveena was born in Washington DC and in the course of her father’s diplomatic career spent formative years in London, Madrid and Khartoum, before returning closer to home when he became the Indian Ambassador to Nepal and then Myanmar/Burma. Naveena attended medical school in New Delhi and did her residency at the Post Graduate Medical Institute in Chandigarh, where she formed lifelong friendships. She was proudly Indian and was especially proud to be the first Indian to be elected president of the International Society of Gynecologic Pathologists.

While in India she met the English artist Stuart Robertson, and after an eventful courtship over a period of years, they married and moved to London where their three children, Arjun, Amrita and Lakshmi, were born. Naveena completed residency training and took a staff position at Barts Health, where she remained until moving to Canada. She was active in the British Association of Gynecological Pathologists, serving as meeting secretary and then president. It was in these roles that she was able to demonstrate her leadership, organizing meetings, guidance documents, and collaborative studies. She established criteria for assignment of primary site and assessing response to chemotherapy in tubo-ovarian serous carcinoma, and these criteria were rapidly adopted by the International Collaboration on Cancer Reporting, College of American Pathologists, Royal College of Pathologists and are featured in the WHO blue book (Female Genital Tumours).

She moved to Vancouver in 2021 for the opportunity to work at Vancouver General Hospital/UBC with the multidisciplinary team here doing research on gynecological cancers. She was just hitting her stride in that work when she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Over the last year of her life she continued to be active and her characteristic cheerful commitment to doing the right thing never wavered. She was able to fit in trips to the Okanagan wine country, London, New York, New Delhi and Hawaii during her final year, before the cancer progressed and prevented further travel. We offer condolences to Stuart, Arjun, Amrita, and Laskshmi; her family was always first in her heart and mind.