2025-2026 Operating Committee Nominations:

What prior experience do you have?

As head of the Patient Education panel and co-founder of the Lifestyle Medicine service at the ICC, my focus has been on sustainably expanding our clinic’s efforts to address community needs and social determinants of health. I established partnerships with the Northern Illinois Food Bank to provide more fresh food at our clinic’s food pantry, and the Lake County Health Department to distribute naloxone at our SRFC. I collaborated with other students to bring large-scale projects to our community, including Breakfast and Breast Exams, a breast cancer awareness and screening event and the Brown Bag Lunch Program, which provides healthy lunches for the local homeless shelter.

In college, I held executive board positions in my service sorority and served as Volunteer Coordinator for Jumpstart, an AmeriCorps program. As Vice President and later President, my goal was to expand our sorority’s partnerships within the city of Pittsburgh and promote member engagement in service events. During my leadership, my sorority added seven new weekly service events and countless single-day events with organizations on campus and throughout the city. As Volunteer Coordinator, I volunteered alongside two other students to organize Read for the Record, which reached 5,000 elementary school students across the city and surrounding suburbs and provided each student with a book and enrichment activities.

Through these roles, I developed strong skills in project management, interprofessional collaboration, and community engagement. I am excited for the opportunity to strengthen our SRFC network and ultimately improve the care we provide to patients.

What prior experience do you have?

As Executive Director of the GW Healing Clinic, I oversee a 23-member executive board and more than 100 volunteers across two branches: Bridge to Care (B2C) and the Queer Health Collective (QHC). Through B2C, I lead initiatives to improve patient navigation, including developing a community resource database that functions as a “virtual social worker” for patients facing barriers related to housing, insurance, specialty care, language, or immigration status. I also volunteer regularly as a clinic manager. Through QHC, I lead efforts to provide affirming care for LGBTQ+ patients while building partnerships with national organizations such as SMYAL. I have also advanced our advocacy and community presence, highlighted by QHC’s participation in the 2025 D.C. World Pride Parade.
Beyond the clinic, I serve as a Peer Leader in the Medical Education and Leadership Scholarly Concentration, where I’m developing a new illness script component of the pre-clinical curriculum. This project integrates schemas, diagnostic comparisons, and exemplar cases into GW’s courses, reflecting my commitment to innovation in medical education. In college, I was a four-year member of Northwestern University Dance Marathon, culminating in my role as Operations Director. There, I coordinated logistics for a 21-member executive board and over 1,000 dancers, helping raise over $500,000 annually for Chicago-based nonprofits.
By bridging education and service, whether through building sustainable clinic systems, designing curricula, or leading large-scale philanthropy, I have learned to unite vision with action. This combination uniquely equips me to serve as President-Elect of the Society of Student-Run Free Clinics.

What prior experience do you have?

As President of the Interprofessional Community Clinic, I have planned and led multiple events designed to broaden our reach, fund our clinic, and improve care for our patients. These events have been critical to our continued operation while strengthening both volunteer experiences and patient services.

One of my largest responsibilities was co-planning the annual Dance for Health Equity, our biggest fundraiser, which last year raised over $48,000. This required coordinating date, location, promotion, budget, catering, transportation, post-event acknowledgments, and impact measurement. I also partnered with community organizations to plan two health screening events for the homeless population in North Chicago, and this fall, our clinic will host a vaccine drive for the local uninsured community. In addition, I organized several patient education initiatives, including Sun Safety and Breakfast and Breast Exams events, as well as leadership development workshops for our board.

Through these experiences, I have learned to balance big-picture goals with logistical details, from ensuring proper vaccine storage at outdoor events to arranging parking for patients and volunteers. I have also developed the ability to stay adaptable and decisive, managing on-the-spot changes when challenges arise. Just as importantly, I have learned the value of reflection. Many of these events are designed to continue annually, and documenting lessons learned after each one is critical to their sustainability and improvement. These experiences have not only strengthened my practical skills in grant writing, vendor coordination, and building community partnerships, but also reinforced that successful events require thoughtful planning, strong organization, adaptability, and clear communication with all stakeholders to create meaningful and lasting impact.

What prior experience do you have?

As the Vice President of The Monday Clinic at UT Southwestern, I help oversee a range of clinic operations, including patient scheduling, volunteer recruitment, and initiation of research projects. I also serve as our representative and secretary on the Free Clinic Committee (FCC), a governing body composed of representatives from more than ten UT Southwestern SRFCs. In this role, I have organized and led FCC meetings, gaining valuable insight into how SRFCs can collaborate to strengthen patient care. With the growth of specialty clinics and research initiatives, the FCC has become increasingly vital in promoting communication, resource-sharing, and patient referrals among clinics.

This commitment to improving systems also guided a quality improvement project I helped lead focused on improving cervical cancer screening documentation at Now Forward Community Clinic. The EMR was unable to interface with certain laboratory and pathology results, preventing generation of accurate reports identifying patients overdue for screening. Our intervention improved documentation rates by over 80%, an approach we plan to standardize and share given the prevalence of this challenge across SRFCs that rely on rotating staff and volunteers. Additionally, I bring prior financial management experience from several years of undergraduate leadership in Habitat for Humanity. As a Habitat officer, I secured corporate sponsorships, organized fundraisers to sponsor build events, and managed the budget for service trips. These combined experiences have equipped me with the organizational, financial, and communication skills necessary to serve effectively as the SSRFC’s next Finance Chair.

What prior experience do you have?

My reasons for wanting to serve as Finance Chair come from a very personal place. I grew up in Zimbabwe, where I lived through many of the same challenges our patients face today – long distances to care, financial constraints, and a lack of reliable care systems. Those experiences inspired me to pursue medicine and, just as importantly, to learn how to strengthen the structures that allow care to reach the people who need it most.
That calling led me to major in both Biology and Healthcare Management. Alongside my studies, I volunteered as a business associate at a local free clinic. There, I cared for a community I loved while gaining firsthand experience with budgeting, patient resource navigation, and the administrative side of keeping a clinic sustainable. I learned that even small improvements in organization and efficiency could expand what we were able to offer patients.
I built on that foundation at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, where I spent my senior year in the Business Development Department. I helped identify underserved areas in the DFW metroplex and developed strategies to allocate funding and resources for new cardiology service lines. This strengthened my skills in data analysis, evaluating community needs, and aligning funding with long-term goals. More importantly, I saw how careful resource planning can directly open doors for patients who would otherwise be left out.
I am still learning, but I would be grateful for the opportunity to bring these experiences to the SSRFC and the clinics we serve.

What prior experience do you have?

I have extensive research experience in the fields of Developmental Psychology, English Literature, Computational Neuroscience, and Clinical Nursing. During my undergraduate career, I published research showing that children aged eight- to nine-years-old start to significantly decipher when an individual is sick (versus healthy), with this ability improving into early adulthood. I also published an abridged version of my English literature thesis, delving into the intersection of legal ethics and religion in selected works written by PD James. These research experiences exposed me to the world of research: writing grant proposals and IRB proposals, conferences where I presented my findings in several conferences across the country, and the art that is writing a research article. Currently, I serve as a co-Executive Officer (EO) of Interpretation Services in my institution’s student run free clinic and am presenting on two different topics regarding language inclusivity and working with marginalized patient populations in our clinic. During my time as EO, I have also expanded our interpretation assessments to tailor the various services our clinic offers, ironed out details of our Uber Voucher pilot program to address transportation barriers, and have extensively recruited Mongolian and Spanish interpreters through community partners to expand our pool of interpreters. I plan on continuing health equity research through the clinic and other avenues offered in my institution, as well as lay the necessary groundwork for future EOs to sustainably service patients that speak other non-English languages in future expansions of the clinic. All of these opportunities have allowed me to learn the inner workings of collaborating with several universities to create meaningful research, while serving as a reminder to prioritize the empowerment of the patients we see in our student run free clinics.

What prior experience do you have?

My formative research experiences lie, primarily, in bench-top research, in which I learned how to formulate compelling questions that address the “why” through the scientific method. During my undergraduate studies, I received Major Honors for my thesis and published work evaluating cetylpyridinium chloride – a common oral care detergent – against a broad spectrum of bacteria responsible for recurrent urinary tract infections in a diverse genetic population of postmenopausal women, an often understudied demographic.

A unifying theme across my work has been the focus on diverse populations so that I can work to better ensure that the benefits afforded through research reach all communities. This commitment carried over to my work at St. Vincent’s, our student-run free clinic, where I serve as Junior Director of the Administration Committee. I collaborate with uninsured patients to secure life-saving medications at no cost and contribute to evolving quality improvement projects. In these projects, we evaluate the factors that lead to the delay in approval of medication applications and brainstorm how to mitigate them by analyzing outcomes and making correlations with our current pipeline to optimize our approaches to better serve our community members.

Spanning molecular experiments to community-based quality improvement, my diverse research background taught me that the impact of research is measured not only in discovery but in its reach – discoveries translating into tangible, equitable change for every patient. This principle continues to guide my future practice of medicine.

What prior experience do you have?

My path from basic science/translational research to clinically focused and SRFC projects has equipped me with the skills to support collaborative and impactful research initiatives across student-run clinics.

I began in basic science tissue engineering, where I contributed to a Duke-Coulter Research Grant, gaining experience in rigorous experimental design, data analysis, and grant writing. I later transitioned to translational research at a biotech company, where I collaborated across teams on regulatory and research challenges. These experiences gave me a strong foundation in project design and collaboration that I now apply to free clinic work.

At the Agape Dermatology Clinic, I have helped lead several projects addressing operational challenges. One QI initiative analyzed medication distribution patterns to improve patient access, which is being expanded into a medication tracking platform that optimizes procurement and offers a scalable model for systems-based education in SRFCs. A cost-effectiveness analysis is also underway, evaluating commonly prescribed dermatologic medications at various pharmacies to sustainably reduce patient burden. Through these efforts, I have learned how to bridge day-to-day clinic needs with scholarship and am prepared to help peers across SRFCs do the same.

I also serve on UTSW’s Free Clinic Committee as an application coordinator, managing over 120 applicants across 13 SRFCs, and as an elective coordinator for our SRFC manager training course, where I help organize sessions on IRB/QI/research methods, legal guidelines, and financial assistance programs. These roles have strengthened my ability to build infrastructure, streamline processes, and support peers, aligning with my vision to expand collaboration and empower more students to transform their clinic work into meaningful scholarship.

What prior experience do you have?

As an MD/PhD student in Biomedical Engineering at the Indiana University School of Medicine and Purdue University, I have received formal training in research design, statistical analysis, and academic dissemination. I have authored several peer-reviewed manuscripts and presented at national and international conferences, including the Society for Student-Run Free Clinics, where my team earned second place for Outstanding Oral Presentation in 2024. These experiences have allowed me to develop expertise in conducting rigorous, high-impact research that addresses real-world healthcare challenges.

As Research Co-Chair of the Indiana University Student Outreach Clinic, I oversaw a portion of twenty-two research projects presented at this year’s SSRFC Conference alongside my co-chair. I managed project timelines, guided students through IRB submissions, and reviewed abstracts to ensure scientific rigor and ethical compliance. I coordinated interdisciplinary collaborations among medical, pharmacy, and social service teams and helped implement internal research review procedures that strengthened oversight and accountability for studies involving vulnerable populations. These efforts directly contributed to the success of IUSOC projects, several of which will positively impact the patients we serve.

Beyond clinic leadership, I have engaged in research and policy initiatives focused on health equity and advocacy. I have contributed to national projects addressing professionalism and inclusion in medical education, presented on strategies to improve patient education in free clinics, and authored work promoting equitable and student-centered practices in medical education, including efforts to shape curricular policy and grading systems.

Through these experiences, I have honed the organizational, ethical, and analytical skills necessary to manage and elevate the research activities of a national society like SSRFC. I bring practical experience in research administration, mentorship of student investigators, and program evaluation, along with a deep understanding of how student scholarship can drive meaningful systems-level change.

What prior experience do you have?

I have extensive experience in community health and clinic based research, including quantitative and qualitative research, idea generation, data collection, data cleaning and coding, manuscript writing, presentation, editing/revisions, and publication in various journals.

I have experience with interprofessional research and collaboration and have worked to foster connections between our clinic and two other student run free clinics from different universities.

I would love the opportunity to contribute to SSRFC in any capacity, thank you for your consideration!

What prior experience do you have?

At UT Southwestern’s Brother Bill’s Helping Hand Free Clinic and Now Forward Women’s Clinic, I have helped design and implement initiatives to increase cervical cancer screening rates for uninsured women in Dallas. This included developing patient education materials, creating step-by-step volunteer training guides, and coordinating multilingual outreach to ensure that our messaging was clear, accessible, and culturally responsive. At the Women’s Clinic, I also run weekly clinic operations, coordinating volunteers, managing patient flow, and troubleshooting in real time to keep visits smooth and patient-centered. These experiences have given me a deep understanding of the day-to-day challenges and rewards of providing care in a free clinic setting.

Beyond clinics, my Masters of Public Health training has equipped me to frame communications around health equity, health literacy, and systems-level change. As student senator and orientation leader at my medical school, I have managed event publicity, written newsletters, and designed inclusive materials that welcomed incoming medical students and encouraged peer mentorship.

These roles have strengthened my ability to tell stories that connect people, align teams of different healthcare providers, and inspire action. As communications chair, I would bring this combination of creative storytelling, data-driven strategy, and a passion for amplifying student and patient voices to the national SRFC community.

What prior experience do you have?

I have 1.5 years of experience serving on the steering committee for my medical school’s free clinic. During my time, I have served as a community outreach co-chair. This position involves extensive communication between myself, our community partners, other members of the steering committee, and our student volunteers. I really enjoy this position because it allows me to come up with fun events for our student volunteers and the community we serve, and connect us as a group committed to serving others. Throughout my time on the steering committee, I have gained valuable experience communicating with multiple stakeholders regarding the clinic and our outreach events, which I believe will be helpful should I be elected to this position.

What prior experience do you have?

My experiences in patient care coordination and clinic leadership have centered on using organization and technology to make systems more efficient and sustainable, skills I believe directly align with the responsibilities of Technology/Webmaster Chair.

For the past year, I have served as Patient Care Coordinator at the UT Southwestern (UTSW) Agape Multidisciplinary Clinic. In this role, I organized health fairs for outreach, scheduled appointments, and managed patient follow-up to strengthen continuity of care. I also contributed to the founding of the new Women’s Health Clinic at Agape, helping to design and launch services that address critical gaps in our community.

In addition, I serve on the Free Clinic Committee, which oversees and promotes collaboration among all student-run free clinics (SRFCs) at UTSW. As Research Coordinator, I led the development of an automated system to track and manage ongoing projects. This system created automated project intake, centralized storage, and independent updating, replacing a fragmented manual process. It now standardizes project information across clinics, improves accessibility, and reduces reliance on individual record-keeping.

These roles have strengthened my skills in project management, systems development, and inter-clinic collaboration. More importantly, they have shown me how technology can transform operations from a challenge into an empowering tool. I look forward to bringing this perspective to the Technology/Webmaster Chair position to build digital foundations that reflect the value of SSRFC and strengthen its long-term impact.

What prior experience do you have?

My most meaningful experience has been serving as a student leader at the Lubbock Impact Free Clinic, where I worked as the Women’s Health Coordinator. In this role, I planned and ran our annual Women’s Health Day, which is an event dedicated to providing our community with free pap smears, mammograms, and other essential services. This position required not only organizing logistics but also creating a recognizable brand for the event and ensuring that our message reached those who needed it most.

To make the event successful for multiple years in a row, I had to think carefully about how to connect with the community: what information people needed to spark their interest, what details they would seek next, and how to best present that information in a clear and engaging way. I used design skills to create outreach materials and developed strategies to disseminate the resources across multiple channels, such as local news networks. I had the opportunity to work with Ramya Yedatore in this role, and together we built systems and outreach strategies that made the event successful. I feel very strongly about our ability to collaborate in this role.

This experience gave me a strong foundation in outreach, design, and communication. These skills translate directly into maintaining and growing the SSRFC’s digital platforms. Just as I learned how to design messaging that resonates with patients and community members, I want to bring that same perspective to maintaining a user-friendly, impactful online presence for the SSRFC.

What prior experience do you have?

I feel like my experiences throughout college and after have strengthened my ability to serve in this position, at the intersection of technology and service in medicine. I studied Biomedical Engineering with a Certificate in Humanitarian Engineering at UT Austin, where I gained skills in design, programming, and problem-solving with a focus on underserved communities. I have served in student-run clinics since college and I most recently served as Patient Assistance Program Coordinator for the Free Clinic at Lubbock Impact, where I worked on helping patients access their medications at no cost through the pharmaceutical manufacturers.

Aliya Khan and I served on the Leadership Team at the Free Clinic at Lubbock Impact together and I feel so strongly about our ability to work together for a greater cause – we align on communication, values, and our commitment to service in medicine, as well as respecting and learning from each other as friends! I have also volunteered during COVID-19 as a Peer Reviewer for the Journal of Student-Run Free Clinics, deepening my perspective on clinic challenges and how communication among clinics can heavily rely on technology. Before medical school, I worked with International Medical Corps on their Resource Development team, where I maintained donor databases and tracked fund needs – experience I feel would be directly relevant to building and sustaining the SSRFC database.

These roles have combined my passion for service with technical and organizational skills, and I would love to be able to apply them to support SSRFC’s mission.

What prior experience do you have?

I bring a combination of technical skills, leadership experience and a strong commitment to student-run clinics. At my medical school’s student-run clinic, I serve as one of the student leaders for Care Coordination, where I help manage scheduling systems, streamline communications with patients and volunteers, and coordinate many initiatives that are mostly based around technology. Within this role, I’ve worked with secure databases, digital sign-up systems and online communication tools to help reduce barriers for patients and improve overall efficiency.

I also have experience with research and data management. I have designed and implemented projects that require database development and survey integration. Through these projects, I have become comfortable with learning new platforms quickly and being able to troubleshoot problems effectively. One recent example of this would be a quality improvement project that I helped lead regarding the impact of Uber Vouchers at our student-run clinic. This project required organizing large datasets, identifying trends and analyzing outcomes. The experience I gained from just this project would be useful as Technology Chair.

While I am not formally trained in IT, I have demonstrated an ability to adapt and apply technology to improve systems. Beyond technical knowledge, I bring strong organizational and communication skills, ensuring that tools we built are not only functional but user-friendly.

Together, these experiences have prepared me to contribute meaningfully as Technology Chair. I will support the Operations Committee, maintain the website and listserv, and help advance the SSFRC’s technology initiatives with reliability and inclusivity.