Nonprofit goals for HOSA President

"[HOSA] surrounds you with like-minded people who are ready to learn and grow."

Maira Arshad has always felt driven to help people.

The Biosciences and Medicine Academy student even has experience organizing a nonprofit. The Bashira Foundation, named for Maira’s aunt, helps Muslim students gain an academic foothold through scholarships in Canada. She hopes to expand it into the United States someday.

But she also wants to use her planned field of study, clinical psychology, to provide access to mental healthcare to children who otherwise may go without it.

Maira is a senior at Edmond North High School and has been attending BSMA since she was a sophomore. She is the President of Oklahoma HOSA for the 2023-24 school year.

When she was in 4th grade, her family moved here, and she found that experience difficult.

“I struggled with mental health in middle school,” she said. “After my family moved, I struggled to make new friends. And I do think part of that was due to my skin color.”

She always remembers having an interest in the medical field. No one in her family is connected to the industry, but as a child, she gravitated toward it.

“Even as a kid, I had the toy doctor’s bag with all of the medical tools in it,” she said. “I always felt like a child who wants to help.”

So, she has decided to combine those experiences and pursue a career in clinical psychology to make a difference. Attending the BSMA at Francis Tuttle has helped her work toward this goal in multiple ways.

“At Francis Tuttle, you get personable with the teachers,” she said. “They become sort of like your friends who are helping you along the way. It’s hard sometimes to get that at your high school because the teachers there have so many other students they need to help. But at Francis Tuttle, you get more of that 1-on-1 time.”

Part of Maira’s educational journey involved going through the COVID-19 pandemic and adjusting to distance learning. This experience showed her the importance of expanding access to mental health resources.

“Going through the COVID pandemic helped me to see that a lot of people can’t get the resources they need,” she said. “That encouraged me to look more at nonprofits.”