Shahinda Bahnasy is a final-year PharmD candidate at the Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy at Rutgers University and a 2025–2026 APhA–ASP national member-at-large.
Some seasons don’t announce themselves as turning points until you’re already on the other side.
From the outside, they look ordinary: meetings, deadlines, another day where you’re still learning. But underneath, something quieter is happening. You’re being noticed, in the way faculty, coworkers, and preceptors notice consistency. The way they notice when kindness doesn’t disappear under pressure, when you do the work thoroughly, when you show up the same way even when no one is watching. That is how trust begins. Not as a title. As a pattern.
I used to think leadership would feel like arrival. Like one day I’d step into a role and finally feel ready. But leadership often starts earlier than comfort does. It begins in the space where you’re still learning, yet expectations rise anyway. Where you’re still becoming, yet responsibility is placed in your hands.
Retreat was not an option
This past year started with a door that didn’t open the way I expected. I wasn’t slated initially for the 2025–2026 APhA–ASP National Executive Committee. It’s the kind of moment that can shrink you if you let it—the kind that tempts you to retreat quietly. But the space around that disappointment held something else.
At the 2025APhA Annual Meeting & Exposition in Nashville, I met student pharmacists who had no reason to pour confidence into me. Yet they still did. In conversations between sessions and quick exchanges that turned into real encouragement, they reminded me that timing is not the same thing as worthiness. That preparation doesn’t vanish because an outcome is uncertain. And that sometimes you still speak, not because you’re guaranteed the result, but because the message is true.
So I gave my speech anyway!
I gave my speech not as a backup plan. It was as a decision. And that decision became a hinge in my story.
What followed wasn’t just support—it was trust. Student pharmacists from across the country listened, connected, and believed enough to elect me as a national member-at-large. Somewhere between the disappointment and the podium, confidence didn’t suddenly appear. It settled. It became less like adrenaline and more like steadiness. Less like proving, more like belonging.
I don’t share this because it’s a perfect arc. I share it because it taught me something I now carry everywhere: With hardship comes ease. Not ease as in “no more obstacles,” but ease as in a wider chest, a calmer mind, a stronger voice, the kind you earn when you learn you can move through hard moments and still show up with grace.
The in-between is worth it
And as this chapter comes to a close, I know this much: Whatever I face next, I won’t be starting from scratch.
Six years with APhA has taught me how to speak when it would be easier to stay quiet, how to lead with empathy when the room is divided, how to keep going when plans change, and how to turn setbacks into fuel. I’m not taking just memories with me; I’m moving forward with tools and the quiet confidence that I’ve already practiced becoming, again and again, in the space between learning and leading.
Believe me—the in-between is worth it.