KIP Student Feature – Arnab Misra
As a high school Athlete Advisor, Arnab Misra (CAS’28) volunteered with LiFe Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to the mental health of athletes and coaches. As a college neuroscience and psychology major, Arnab used those connections to create a summer internship for himself at LiFe Foundation, furthering his experience in the field.
Q&A With Arnab Misra
Could you give us a brief description of the organization you are interning with and what your primary responsibilities are during this internship?
I interned with the LiFe Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to improving the mental health and emotional well-being of athletes and coaches. It was founded in honor of Freddie Torres, and its mission is to reduce the stigma around mental health in athletics through education, community events, and open dialogue. My primary responsibilities include supporting program development via fundraising campaigns, contributing to the development of new outreach initiatives, and helping create educational efforts aimed at building safe spaces where young athletes can talk openly about mental health and access support. I’m also contributing to the foundation’s social media outreach and continuing development of the “Life Now” app, a digital platform that gives athletes accessible mental health resources.
What area(s) of justice does this organization work in and how did your internship help promote/fulfill these justice goals?
This internship falls under healthcare justice, specifically addressing inequities in access to mental health awareness, resources, and prevention within athletic communities. Athletes are often discouraged from expressing vulnerability because of cultural expectations of toughness, and that pressure disproportionately harms young people and marginalized groups. By promoting mental health literacy, advocacy, and community support, my work with the LiFe Foundation helps dismantle that stigma and empower people to seek help, treating mental health as a fundamental part of well-being rather than a weakness to hide.
Has your work this summer changed how you think about justice issues?
This summer taught me that justice is woven into every corner of society, often in places I never thought to look. I used to think of justice in simple terms. Someone is in the right; someone is in the wrong. This summer showed me how far from the truth that is, especially in the world of mental health. Working with a foundation whose entire mission is to provide mental health support, while operating inside a culture that still stigmatizes the very idea of needing that support, taught me that justice work is rarely about correcting a clear wrong. More often, it’s about slowly, patiently shifting the conditions that keep people silent, building trust where there’s been shame, and normalizing conversations that an entire culture has spent years teaching people to avoid. That’s a much harder, much more human kind of justice than I understood before this summer, and it’s one I hope to carry with me into medicine.
How did you find out about this internship, and what advice would you give to students hoping to apply for this funding opportunity in the future?
I volunteered for the LiFe Foundation in high school as an Athlete Ambassador, and I just reached out to my old coaches and mentors from the foundation to see if they would be open to creating an internship position so I could continue contributing to the foundation in college. Advice I would give future applicants is to reach out to old mentors and be open to further developing your skill set in places you may least expect.
How has the Kilachand coursework and/or the KIP summer mentoring sessions helped prepare you for the work you are doing during your internship?
HC301 and HC302 opened my eyes to the disparities and existing problems worth tackling in the world and helped me realize that I could contribute to a community-based organization working to solve these health and social inequities. This internship, along with our KIP mentoring sessions, further reinforced my passion to keep learning from and contributing to my foundation’s work. I got to learn and discuss these concepts in the classroom, but KIP allowed me to put those thoughts into action — helping me tangibly contribute to outreach and program-development work hands-on.