Meet Our Interns
Ayla Testicioglu
Mountain View High School
Class of 2028
I’m interested in mental health because I’ve seen many of my peers struggle to balance their well-being with responsibilities. It’s made me interested in understanding mental health and supporting those who face these challenges.
I've tabled at about 3 events and in charge of outreach to middle schools and teen centers. I recently tabled at the mental wellness retreat at the Mountain View Teen Center and also presented in a group at the workshops there.
I want to help people learn how to take care of their mental health early on, before things get really tough. By sharing simple tools and encouraging self-awareness, I hope to help folks stay strong and handle stress better.
Sandhya Kumar
Lynbrook High School
Class of 2027
I’m interested in mental health because I have seen the issues associated with poor mental wellness in my community, which encouraged me to learn about the importance of understanding and caring for it. I’m passionate about mental wellness education, and believe it’s crucial to understand the factors that influence mental well being early on.
Since I joined HAERT in 2024, I’ve tabled and presented at our events, worked on event planning and designing many of our activities, and social media posts!
Through HAERT, I think that I’m able to create a positive impact in my community, especially among the youth demographic, by educating people about simple, yet effective methods for mental wellness that can impact their lives. Personally, I apply the skills I have learned at the HAERT Program to my own life every day, and it is incredibly rewarding to be able to teach others about the same tools.
Anika Basu
The Harker School
Class of 2027
I’ve always been drawn to understanding how people think and feel, and I believe mental health should be treated with the same importance as physical health. My interest deepened after seeing how stress and stigma affect students’ well-being, and I want to help make open conversations about mental health a norm, not an exception.
I’ve implemented concepts from our curriculum in local forums, such as tabling events at high schools and mental health retreats. In preparation for these, I’ve helped design interactive teaching scenarios, create slideshows for presentations, and develop graphics to support visual engagement. These experiences have allowed me to connect what we learn at HAERT with real-world community outreach.
I’ve taught the importance of early intervention by helping younger students identify and understand their emotions before they escalate into deeper struggles. As a high schooler, I’ve also seen the stigma and culture that still surround mental health, and I want to change the tone in which we talk about it, especially with older audiences. Long-term, I’m hoping our resources can be adopted in school programs or local youth initiatives to expand their reach beyond just one community.
Raya Aghazadeh
Mountain View School
Class of 2028
I’m interested in mental health because it’s something that affects everyone, but it’s often overlooked. I think it’s very important to create spaces where people feel safe discussing their experiences and learning healthy ways to manage stress.
At HAERT, I’ve been working on social media and outreach. I help create posts that promote mental health awareness and share resources that we offer. I have also helped with our events and workshops! :)
I want to help make mental health something people can talk about openly, and to show students that it’s okay to ask for help and take care of themselves.
Pratiksha Saravanan
Lynbrook High School
Class of 2027
I’ve noticed how much mental health can affect people’s lives, and I think it’s something that deserves more attention and understanding. I want to help raise awareness and encourage others to take care of their mental well-being and feel comfortable reaching out for support.
At HAERT, I’ve been helping facilitate workshops and presentations, as well as working at tabling events to connect with students directly. I’ve also helped create social media posts that promote mental health awareness and share useful skills.
I hope to help build a community where students feel supported and confident seeking help when they need it. My goal is to encourage people to care for their mental health and overall well-being so they can lead balanced, fulfilling lives.
Gina Low
Lynbrook High School
Class of 2026
I'm interested in mental health because it's a big part of our daily lives that we sometimes neglect. Improving our mental health can lead to so many positive changes in our lives.
At HAERT I've been taking the weekly meeting minutes for each meeting, ensuring organization and efficiency. I share my ideas about future events or ideas for social media and collaborate with others on decisions. I've attended one event so far that we were invited to and taught middle schoolers with an interactive game about different mental health strategies they could use.
I’ve helped create moments where people feel seen and supported. Whether during events or team meetings, I’ve seen how compassion and open conversations can help lift others.
Esther Seok
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Alumni
Chantelle Mendis
Mountain View High School
Class of 2025
I'm interested in mental health because it's always been a topic that's taught at school. I believe that learning about mental health can help me improve myself and I want to be able to help others improve themselves as well.
I've been working on creating signs for our tabling events, making the games or activities for those events and I'm currently in charge of the interns’ social media. The social media includes making videos for YouTube and updating the Instagram.
I'm hoping to improve my fellow students mental health and I want to help people understand how they can help themselves in rough times.
Richard Lim
Lynbrook High School
Class of 2024
Mental Health is what I appreciate and wish to learn more about. Not that I like mental health because I know a lot about it but because I am curious about how people go through the barriers and how we can further galvanize our mentalities for productivity and consistency.
I developed the HAERT Intern website, which I definitely enjoy doing. This includes designing, writing event instructions, creating descriptions, drafting contents, and linking sources I created with the HAERT interns. I’ve also taken a part in drafting the storyline of our cartoon and the Tabling Event Instructions.
If possible, I would like to make insights from psychiatry and neuroscience (or “mental health resources”) to be understood as tools for mental strength. Still, many people joke about the openness and softness of solutions to mental health, but I do think, on the other hand, that more and more people become mentally tough and immune against challenges or pressures. And, I hope that I can take a part in this growth.
Miriam Law
Monta Vista High School
Class of 2024
I want to explore the psychological changes adolescents and teenagers face due to differing environments and peers. Mental health is a prominent topic that is beginning to be prioritized within the rigor of high school, and I want to continue to encourage more discussion on this important subject.
I coordinate with the other members to brainstorm the logistics and content for future school events based on the HAERT curriculum, and help maintain the organization for creating social media posts and graphics.
I want to make mental health resources easily accessible to adolescents and teenagers—encouraging more to reach out for help—and mitigate taboo that prominently arise in Asian families around mental health topics.
Aditya Hariharan
Aditya is a senior at Homestead High School.
He really began to take interest in mental wellness as the pandemic began because of the benefits of it as well as his passion to help others. He joined HAERT in Summer 2020 as one of the first interns and has worked on backend development, module content, and social media outreach.
In the summer of 2021, he mainly focused on presenting the importance of prevention based mental wellness to middle school staff and working with the intern team to organize and enhance HAERT’s curriculum.
Marina Raynaud
My name is Marina Raynaud and I'm a Freshman at UC Santa Barbara.
I enjoy playing tennis, dancing, doing theatre, talking to her friends, learning new languages, and spending time with her family.
I am passionate about mental health and wellness because I have personally dealt with mental health issues and want to help other students and people understand what they're going through and help them cope with it.
I've also noticed that there are numerous students that have dealt with a large set of mental health problems, which makes me understand the significance of this type of education. This passion led me to create a petition for mental health change in my high school, and connect with the HAERT Program so we could find solutions to the mental health crisis together.
As an intern for the HAERT program, I have given feedback on curriculum, created a glossary for vocabulary words, researched prospective customer organizations, gathered statistics and feedback from students and teachers during Covid, and summarized modules to make them more concise. I have also contributed to making the curriculum more engaging and relatable to students, and to creating more interesting discussion questions and classroom activities. I love working at HAERT so that I can help people conquer their issues!
Shreyas Jena
Shreyas is a junior at Monta Vista High School and is a member of the mental health group for the Youth Public Policy Institution.
He thoroughly enjoys video games, walking his dog, and listening to music.
Outside of YPPI, he is an active part of the debate team and is an intern for the Boys and Girls Club. His love for community impact stems from his hopes to foster a healthy environment for all kids suffering from mental health issues.
Aditya Manikonda
Aditya graduated from Lynbrook High School.
He enjoys playing video games, going on long walks with his friends and cooking semi-edible food.
He has a strong passion for education and coding, which led him to help organize and conduct various coding classes for students across the globe. When he is not running at cross country/track and field meets or pulling all-nighters at hackathons, he usually volunteers at local libraries. His passion for volunteering ultimately inspired him to want to have a bigger impact on those around him, which led him to join Sunnyvale’s Youth Public Policy Institute, where he found his passion for mental wellness.