Aisha Ovando Fernandez
2025
Dunwoody, Georgia
Neuroscience
Hi, my name is Aisha and I am a junior at Duke who is majoring in Neuroscience. As a child, I was often taught of the "greatness" of our country and how we were lucky to have everything in abundance. However, as I grew older, I became aware of a certain scarcity issue in the United States' medical field. This issue largely encompassed both language barriers and the lack of women/and minority people in the field. Being a minority myself, it was evident to me that these issues needed to be addressed for the sake of healthier lives. In Durham, I have been able to experience what it means to actively combat these issues through the Root Causes Fresh Produce Program. The Fresh Produce Program works to package and distribute bags and personalized crates of fresh produce to low-income patients every Saturday. These patients tend to be of minority populations and in my volunteering opportunities there, I was able to help translate for these families what produce they needed for the week.
Additionally, I have participated in the Duke Engage Program called "Migrant youth, families, community understanding, and justice." This program aimed to provide immigrant families with different resources to help them get settled in. In my program placement at Durham Public Schools, I helped families enroll their children for school, provide them with different summer learning programs, and translate any questions that they had both in person and over the phone. Furthermore, l have been involved in a Bass Connections Program that aims to celebrate Latinx culture by helping native Spanish-speakers, who are now fluent in English, be able to reconnect with their native language and recognize the significance of the language in the world.
Duke has provided me with the opportunity to be a part of many different experiences. Additionally, this summer I was involved in a lab at Duke that used antibodies to study postoperative delirium-like behaviour in mice. In this lab, I was able to learn how to genotype, slice brains, and analyze brain images.
“Being a Cardea Fellow means being surrounded by a people who think, hope, and desire the way you do. It is a community of classmates who are working with the same end-goal in mind. Specifically, I enjoy having an overwhelming support from my peers that is always combined with guidance from my mentors. Although I am in control of my own path, it is comforting to know that this circle of people believe that I will achieve my goals and that they also provide me with resources to do so.”