Fatimah is CEO of one of the largest youth-led health equity initiatives in Arizona.  She founded SPARKHope in 2019 after she had to stop volunteering in person due to the pandemic. She felt compelled to find a way to help the community and people who didn’t have access to public health. 

“I was a freshman when the pandemic hit and it was very personal for me,” said Fatimah. “I witnessed profound disruptions to my community and knew we had a public health crisis. I saw the health disparities and wanted to do something to help.”

SPARKHope aims to bridge the large health inequities in Arizona. Over the past three years, the organization has grown to support numerous local food banks that serve underprivileged individuals, in particular, single mothers with children.  Fatimah has organized fundraisers, food drives and secured volunteers and corporate sponsors to support her efforts.  She has been recognized for her work and was recently the youngest person to win the Stella Kiarie Innovation for Health Equity Award at the annual Arizona Health Equity Conference.

Fatimah serves on the sponsorship and marketing committee for the Scottsdale Mayor’s Youth Council, is a teen volunteer at Honor Health and interned at Southwest Autism Research and Resource Center. She’s also involved in her high school, where she serves as president of the Mona Foundation Club and is an advocate for UNICEF USA. While Fatimah is not busy advocating for health policy, she is conducting groundbreaking biomedical research on state of the art methods and has presented four poster presentations within the last year!

She’s an entrepreneur committed to excellence, and has learned to balance school work while serving as a CEO! She hopes to grow more SPARKHope chapters across the country and pursue a career in public health, possibly as a researcher. 

“It’s not work to me, SPARKHope is like a family to me,” said Fatimah. “I love the work we’re doing and want to help as many people as we can!”