During the school day, she is known as Madam President to the senior class; however, outside of school, she is so much more, the teen ambassador for the Tennessee Sickle Cell Foundation, a girl scout and a producer, to name a few: meet Ramyla Dahmer (12).

Dahmer’s packed schedule keeps her on the tips of her toes as she balances out all of her jobs and leadership roles. Through sickness and health, Dahmer bulldozes through all of these tasks and remains committed to her passions, dedicating herself to making a positive impact in the world. 

“In 2020, I was given the opportunity to become the first youth ambassador for the Sickle Cell Foundation of Tennessee, and it was decided that they wanted to add the youth perspective to sickle cell treatment and the environment,” Dahmer said.

Dahmer uses her personal experience of having sickle cell to spread awareness of what sickle cell is and to help others find ways to help those who have sickle cell.

“I built a website, and the website is called Dare to Grow Aware,” Dahmer said. “It’s supposed to be like POV. You dared … to know what sickle cell was, dared to relieve [your] unawareness.”

As a 12-year girl scout, Dahmer has incorporated sickle cell in both her silver and gold award projects. For her silver award, Dahmer hosted a series of blood drives where she informed donors of how their contribution is essential for sickle cell patients who need blood transfusions. After accomplishing this, she focused her gold award project on informing youth about the ins and outs of the disease while hosting even more blood drives.

“I started off hosting a variety of online zoom sessions, which I opened up to the youth audience,” Dahmer said. “And [on the zoom meeting], I would be with a medical professional, and the medical professional and I would basically go through a powerpoint that I made just explaining and laying in terms what sickle cell was and [giving] a digestible understanding to youth about what it was, so that they know how to advocate for any friends that [have sickle cell].”

Continuing her passion to advocate for others, Dahmer ran to be senior class president, winning with an overwhelming majority of votes. With this role comes many responsibilities; however, Dahmer is committed to remain true to the promises she made when she was running.

“There’s a lot that comes to it that I didn’t know came with being the class president, but I’m taking it all of it as opportunity to create a more connected class,” Dahmer said. “That’s really my main goal … I think I’ve achieved a little bit of that … we’ve been able to have a safe space in that group chat and being able to implement different things like the trunk or treat and the board game day.”

Going above and beyond for representation, Dahmer is also a MSCS student congress member. In these meetings, Dahmer reveals the concerns of the student body to the board, hoping to bring back favorable policies to her school.

“Student congress is like branch of the … student affairs board on the district, and it’s a group of students from … each school around the district that come together in different meetings and discuss policies and changes that we want to see that reflect the beliefs of our schools,” Dahmer said.

Apart from these passions, Dahmer is also a DJ and a producer. Through an internship called the Memphis Music Initiative, Dahmer gained the opportunity to showcase her band’s music video through the Hershey company, who linked it through a QR code on the back of the new packaging for Hershey’s bars.

“[It] just so happened that around that same time the Hershey company was looking to expand their branding, so MMI contacted me and my group, and they were like, ‘We want to showcase yall’s music video for the Hershey company,’ and then the next few months I was basically like the co-editor for the Hershey’s branding, because we were trying to brand it to where it’d be eye-catching for youth.”

As Dahmer builds electromyography devices and strives to become fluent in Spanish on top of all her other duties, she perseveres with the goal of majoring in neuroscience and then either becoming a researcher or working in the medicine field in underserved Spanish-speaking communities. Dahmer’s endless leadership positions would overwhelm most, but she credits her ability to acknowledge when she needs a break as the reason why she is undefeatable.

“Don’t be afraid to back off of something and come back to it if you need to take the time … because if you’re really passionate about it, it doesn’t matter how many times you break or how many stops, when you come back to it, you’ll be able to have that drive to learn it and master it eventually,” Dahmer said.