Growing up with eight siblings as a first-generation Yemeni American, second-year PharmD student Selma Alamarie learned to blaze her own trail.

Education was valued in her traditional family, but opportunities were limited, especially for women. Her parents emphasized the importance of finishing high school, which Alamarie took as motivation to go further: first traveling to Yemen after graduation for a gap year of volunteering, then moving across the country from New York to earn her degree through community college and UC Santa Cruz, and eventually working at Stanford University before arriving at UCSF, where she’s pursuing her passions for improving diabetes care and advancing health equity.

"When I graduated from high school and finally got to go to Yemen for the first time, I volunteered with a shelter for mothers and children and talked with some health care providers who were also volunteering,” she said. “I liked how they were connecting with patients and seeing them for their whole story, not just coming in to treat them without knowing any context. I came back to the United States and decided to go to college.”

Understanding opportunities in pharmacy

While working as a clinical research coordinator in Stanford University’s Department of Endocrinology, she received training to become a diabetes interventionist, a role that inspired her to apply for pharmacy school.

“I had never worked in health care at that point, but when I would meet with patients, I felt like I was giving them what they needed in terms of talk therapy and problem solving. It built a lot of empathy in me,” she said. “But there was a missing piece of what else could change, in terms of medications, that could make me feel like we were leaving the conversation headed in a positive direction.”

Alamarie shared her desire to do more with her mentors, who encouraged her to speak with pharmacists. She realized she didn’t know what pharmacists actually do, nor that pharmacy is a doctorate program.

“There's so much that pharmacists do that I don't think is highlighted very much,” she said. “Even within my own cohort, we're still learning a lot of things about where pharmacists play a role, and about new opportunities for pharmacists.”

Giving patients a voice through research

Friends questioned her decision to pursue pharmacy, wondering if she had given up her interest in research.

“I’m still interested in and very active in research," said Alamarie, who is doing her discovery project, a required component of the PharmD curriculum, in the research lab of  Akinyemi Oni-Orisan, PharmD, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Clinical Pharmacy. “Originally, I joined because I was interested in health equity. But when I learned about [Oni-Orisan's] focus on heart-related research and statins, I told him about my background and interest in diabetes and asked if we could collaborate.”

In her work at the Oni-Orisan Lab, Alamarie is learning to use tools like R Studio to analyze health data. Her research explores how medications, devices, and genetic information can be combined to guide more personalized care for people with diabetes.

“I have no computational background at all, but I've learned a lot through Akin and members of his lab who are PhD students,” she said. “Research takes us a long way toward giving patients a voice, especially behavioral research.”

Building community through care

Alamarie’s passion for serving others extends beyond the lab. She’s clinical board liaison and elective coordinator of the Pharmacy Homeless Clinic, where she and other UCSF student pharmacists provide health screenings and medication counseling for people experiencing homelessness. She is also collaborating with medical and dental students to organize a free health fair at the Islamic Center of San Francisco through the Muslim Student Association.

Coordinating such efforts comes with challenges, like navigating licensing requirements and community partnerships. Alamarie sees these experiences as vital to her growth as a future pharmacist.  

“Community outreach ties together health equity with cultural understanding,” she said. “Everyone has a very different background, and what’s important is that you don't have to have the same experiences to understand someone. It's about taking the time to build trust and connection."

Representation and role modeling

While Alamarie’s parents were initially hesitant about her decision to pursue a career in health care, they’ve become not just supporters, but advocates. Now, family friends seek her parents’ advice when their daughters prepare for college.

“Both of my sisters didn't go to college. When you’re doing something different, there’s fear,” she said. “But when I started telling my family about what we do in pharmacy, my parents were like, ‘Wow, we would have encouraged you to do that if we knew that's what it was!’”