Ermina Hassan and Matthew Pactol aren’t only NHS presidents.

Ermina holds many inspiring leadership roles as President of Medical Club, Captain of Speech Team, GEMS Ambassador, and Clinical Assistant Volunteer at Northwest Community Hospital.

Matthew takes up strong and diverse roles at PR, participating in Math Team, Scholastic Bowl, Science Olympiad, and lights crew for PR’s theater productions. While juggling all these extracurriculars, they make time to make NHS a fun and creative learning space for sophomores, juniors, and seniors.

Both ran for President of NHS when they were sophomores. Taking up the role of NHS Presidents is no light task, and as sophomores they were willing to take on the multitude of challenges that come with organizing hour long meetings, answering questions from a huge group of students, and dedicating their time to come up with meaningful projects for charity.

“Someone elected me to run …I followed through and ran for President,” said Ermina.

Matt and Ermina both had to present in the theater in front of all the NHS members, and then wait for the results of voting. This might seem stressful. However, both of them succeeded at impressing their audience and getting the majority of votes.

“I presented some aspects of myself at the meeting and explained why I believed I was meant for the role. The members voted, and I became President,” said Matthew.

Like I said, it was no light task.

“There are also some challenges that involve how to publicize our events better and how to make our NHS members more involved,” said Ermina.

When she faced disagreements between members of the board, it was up to her to handle the situation properly in order to increase efficiency. Meanwhile, Matt had to step up as well through making the meetings unique with projects to better the community.

“As does every board member, I had to learn to facilitate every meeting, maintain interest, and mediate between the fun and important aspects of NHS,” said Matt.

Leading people doesn’t translate to just telling people what to do.

Not only are Ermina and Matt extremely capable of handling challenges, they were resilient and insistent on making NHS better. They demonstrate that leading people means working well with others, coming up with ways to improve what’s already been done, and making sure people are connecting to what has been said.

Leadership is a lot of multitasking.

If you want to be NHS president, or just a leader in general, here are their suggestions:

“Don’t be afraid to call people out! Being a leader means voicing your opinion even if everyone doesn’t agree. Shy leaders are not going to make a difference!” said Ermina.

Matt emphasized that being NHS President meant having the opportunity to use your creativity to make NHS even better than it already is.

“Know that you were selected among great people. But also learn to have fun! As leaders, you can steer NHS into the unknown and could get so much out of it.” said Matt.

It’s obvious that being a leader leads to a lot of opportunities. Ermina and Matt share a common view about speaking out and not being afraid of having a different and completely unique idea. Ermina and Matt themselves have big plans.

“During my last year at NHS, my goal is to make [an] impact. Specifically, I am working on raising money for Australia Fire,” said Ermina.

While Ermina plans to make a global impact, Matt aims to make the NHS meetings more engaging and productive. And both want to reach many communities in their attempt to help more and more people.

“My main goals are to establish better relationships of the board with the members and the members with each other. I aim to make each meeting more interactive and to attempt to create different community projects at each meeting,” said Matt.

It takes many leadership qualities to create a fun and impactful NHS experience for the community, so clearly this makes Matt and Ermina perfect presidents for the job.