The Organizer

Working with children with disabilities brought back a rush of emotions for Ripal Shah, who remembers what it was like to feel different. She grew up in rural West Virginia as part of the only nonwhite family within a 60-mile radius. After 9/11, her parents sent Shah and her twin sister to boarding school to protect them from threats in public school.

In the multicultural environment of Duke, Shah met people who completely changed the way she perceived the world. “The environment at Duke fosters changing ideas and changing the way people think about things,” Shah says.

As president of the Duke chapter of the Red Cross during high demand years, Shah increased membership to an unprecedented 900 students. She raised six-figure donations to aid victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and earthquakes in South Asia. She also led relief trips to India and established a nonprofit center where people in developing countries could get certified to conduct CPR.

Back in Durham, she organized a nonprofit, From the Ground Up, to design and build wheelchair-accessible playgrounds with play stations for children with autism and hearing and vision impairments. Shah also devoted time to the Center for Economic Empowerment, which helps the homeless find jobs.

Shah plans to enter medical school in 2007. Meanwhile she is working to more firmly establish the organizations she has begun. “Duke offered unlimited resources and unlimited opportunities. I wouldn’t have been able to do half the things I did if I weren’t a Duke student.”