Her Story
About Tahmeena
I have been in the healthcare and medical field for 26 years, and after working in insurance, I experienced a catastrophic illness when my mom was diagnosed with cancer. This led me to take early retirement so I could dedicate most of my time to causes that matter to me, with cancer being number one. I'm very active in the community here locally in the Houston area, and I've spent years volunteering and raising funds for people with different disabilities and just trying to help people in general. Now I do mostly consulting, and my day-to-day activities include yoga, meditation, and health and wellness work. I set aside volunteer hours at the community center, and I've been doing clinical research, though the past two months I've been in and out of hospitals taking care of family. I'm also working on certification in machine learning to get myself acquainted with AI and doing continuing education classes. Throughout my career, I've trained medical students, worked with principal investigators on big pharmaceutical research for communicable diseases and drug development, and I even had the pleasure of working with some of the NASA scientists and astronauts and their families here in Houston.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Tahmeena
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to my leadership roles and fundamentally, I acknowledge the environment in which I was raised to be ethically and morally right, stand up for myself, and always speak my truth. I believe in being my authentic true self. I also believe that paying it forward works, because if you do the good now, in the future it will help. I approach everything one mission at a time, one person at a time. I respond better with critical thinking and assessment, but I also take personally my values, ethics, morality, and spirituality, which is one of my fortes.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I've ever received is to be a good follower, because directors and leaders are also the best followers. I always respond better with critical thinking and assessment of that, but I also take personally my values, ethics, morality, and spirituality.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I would tell young women entering my industry to be ethically and morally right, stand up for yourself, and always speak your truth. Be your authentic true self. This is the same foundation that has guided my success throughout my career.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The biggest challenge right now is compatibility when it comes to provider roles and making better decisions for patients. There's a backlog in sustainability and viability because physician burnout is real, and healthcare workers are not compensated as much as they should be. Women are still not compensated as much as men, even in 2026, and are not given equal opportunities. In Houston, which is a very diverse and cosmopolitan international city, the average person is still working 80 to 100 hours, and if you look at the specialties and compensation for women, inequality still exists. This is not justified because when you are caring for people, the compensation doesn't match the criteria for women as much as it does for men. With inflation increasing, people are having to decide between buying food versus buying medicines. The hospital staff is under-compensated while insurance companies, the middlemen, are racking up profits. People who have studied for two to three decades of their life are not as compensated well as they should have been in the past. The problem of having infrastructure in terms of AI and managing disease is a challenge because we still need empathy and the human touch in this field, even as AI is going to come in and replace most of the jobs.
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