Born and raised in Southern California, LaShyra “Lash” Nolen is a writer, activist, and dual-degree MD/MPP student at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where she is serving as student council president of her medical school class—the first documented Black woman to hold this leadership position. A fervent advocate for marginalized populations, her voice has been featured in The New England Journal of Medicine, Health Affairs, and NPR, among others. She is also a co-host of the Clinical Problem Solvers Anti-Racism in Medicine Podcast and served as a member of the White House Health Equity Roundtable. In 2021 she founded We Got Us, a youth-led grassroots community empowerment project with the mission to increase access to education and healing for marginalized communities. An emerging leader in public policy, she is a 2023 New Leaders Council Fellow and Harvard Kennedy School Center for Public Leadership fellow.
Lash attended Loyola Marymount University where she served as student body president and graduated cum laude with a BS in Health and Human Science. Following her graduation, she was selected as a Fulbright Scholar and served as an AmeriCorps member where she led public health initiatives to improve care for vulnerable populations. Her work has earned her the honor of being named a Forbes “30 Under 30” Leader in Healthcare, the 2020 National Minority Quality Forum’s youngest “40 under 40 Leader in Minority Health”, a Boston Celtics “Hero Among Us”, and a Rock Health “Top 50 Leader in Digital Health”. Lash plans to continue to use policy, writing, and medical education reform as tools to impact the health of her future patients and community as a physician activist and public leader. She is applying into internal medicine residency with plans to become a primary care physician.