Not many kids have parents who assign them workbooks to complete during summer break. Claire Reyes did.

Claire Reyes (left) with Marie Martin-Murphy, director of educational opportunities and student success. (Purdue University photo/Charles Jischke)

“My parents immigrated from the Philippines when they were in their 20s,” Reyes says. “They had very high expectations for their children’s education and assigned us supplemental learning to get ahead.”

At the time, Reyes would rather have been reading one of her favorite Japanese manga series, Snow White with the Red Hair. Its pharmacist heroine, Shirayuki, works in an apothecary and uses her knowledge of herbal medicine to heal others. Forced to flee to an adjacent kingdom, Shirayuki faces poisoned apples, political intrigue, a dastardly prince and tests of her skills and wit. Time and again, she proves herself to be brave, clever and indomitable.

“A pharmacist who carried around plants so she could make medicines for people seemed like the coolest thing you could possibly do,” says Reyes, who is entering her fourth year in pharmacy school. “I knew I wanted to be a pharmacist by the time I was in seventh grade.”

A story of adventure in health care felt very relevant to Reyes. After all, her parents modeled a similar path with their lives. Both earned degrees in physical therapy at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila before coming to the United States to raise a family. They settled in Sellersburg, Indiana, a city with a population of 9,000 on the Kentucky border. There, they sought out other Filipino families to build a home away from home.

“Many areas of the Philippines are not as developed as the capital city,” Reyes says. “There’s a lot of poverty throughout the country and some people don’t grow up with much. If they have an opportunity to come to the U.S. and get a good job, they will take it because it’s the best chance they have.”

As a student, Reyes joined the Purdue Filipino Association to connect with others who could relate to her cultural identity. Understanding the value of finding community motivated Reyes to join Voices in Pharmacy, a student organization committed to supporting the cultivation of a safe and inclusive culture for all students who identify as a member of a historically marginalized group. The group is advised by Marie Martin-Murphy, director of educational opportunities and student success. Reyes became the president of Voices in Pharmacy in 2024.

“Voices in Pharmacy provides a space for people to be themselves and explore who they are and what their purpose is,” Reyes says. “I want to educate people about the various cultures around us, and how they influence all the different aspects of our lives. There’s not just one singular culture that defines everyone, and your ethnicity also does not define your culture. Your culture is made by everything around you. Belonging to Voices in Pharmacy really helps me to bring that to other students as well.”

During the 2024-2025 academic year, Voices in Pharmacy co-hosted an event with the Spanish Language Track to demonstrate the challenges of communicating about medications and disease states with patients who learned English as a second language or may not be fluent. The organization held another event that examined the role religious preferences play in health care and discussed how pharmacists could still care for a patient respectfully despite religious differences.

“Understanding different viewpoints makes us more empathetic people and more holistic pharmacists,” Reyes says. “That feeling of not quite fitting in, not belonging anywhere, not having a community to call your own — I’ve been there. Every one of us is more than a pharmacist or more than a patient. We are more than just one thing. Participating in Voices in Pharmacy is one small way that I can help other students who are searching for a way to be heard.”