During this year’s 2025 Club Fair, the Young Leaders in Healthcare Club made its debut. Founded by co-presidents, sophomores Hannah Schexayder and Amora Arango, the two have established a space for students to meet with medical professionals and learn about healthcare careers.
Fueled by their joint interest, both Schexayder and Arango wanted to create medical opportunities for students where there were previously none offered. The club had been a work in progress for many months while coordinating certain opportunities and visitors, finally becoming available to students this school year.
“Our club is one of the only healthcare clubs at Carlsbad High School,” Arango said. “We offer current opportunities you can do to learn more about the medical fields, and there’s an internship involved that could help [students] in the future.”
The club not only allows students to learn more about healthcare, but also allows Arango and Schexayder to make their lifelong dreams a tangible reality. Both girls have been looking for something like this on campus, but when they found no such program, they decided to create it themselves.
“I had known since I was little that I wanted to go into medicine,” Schexayder said. “Freshman year, I was looking for clubs on campus that fostered health care…I wasn’t able to find any then, but recently this year, I found the organization through Scripps, Young Leaders in Healthcare.”
Using the existing organization to guide the foundations of their club, Schexayder and Arango were able to bring their vision to life on campus. A pinnacle feature of the club is the opportunities for students to meet with healthcare workers and learn about their career paths firsthand.
“Our club is turning medical information into a fun experience and learning about it,” Arango said. “We get to learn from real professionals in the medical fields and about what opportunities we can pursue at the moment.”
This club is not simply a pastime for participants, but has many real-world benefits. While it connects students on the basis of shared career interests, the club provides a space to create professional relationships that can assist them in building foundations in the medical field.
“In the real world, we will better understand the pathway we will choose going into college to correctly pursue the profession we want in the healthcare field,” Arango said. “This will better help us get there.”
