By Susan Gallagher, American Red Cross

Red Cross Mahima Kommerla was born and raised in a family of teachers in Tenali Village, India. A small town with a population of 746, 20 hours south of India’s capital New Delhi.

“My father teaches English there, and he is committed to honoring significant dates. I was born 25 years ago on May 8, World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day so he named me Red Cross Mahima Kommerla. That is my legal name.”  This date honors the birthday of Henry Dunant. In 1863, Dunant founded the International Committee of the Red Cross and was the first recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. 

Is she unusual in having such an interesting first name?  “Oh, no. My brother and sister were born on December 10, Human Rights day. They both have ‘Human Right’ as part of their legal names,” she said.

Red Cross Mahima earned her bachelor’s degree from Sam Higginbottom University of Agriculture, Technology and Sciences (SHUATS) in India. It was founded in 1910 by an American Presbyterian missionary and is a prominent agricultural university in Prayagraj, India, about 22 hours from her hometown in the southern part of Uttar Pradesh, India.

With her entire family living in India, how did Red Cross Mahima end up in Springfield, MO, in 2023? “I applied to Missouri State University’s graduate program in project management and earned a master’s degree there,” she said.

This master’s degree as well as her graduate certification in information technology build on her work in India both in doing field trials and validating data sets for cotton research.  She also served as an employment officer for Unnati Organization. This voluntary, non-profit organization based in Karnataka, Bangalore India, focuses on social inclusion and strengthening democratic governance. There she developed and led 25 professional development workshops for more than 1,000 students, helping them to increase their employability. She also built a centralized database tracking student progress and enabling data-driven decisions.

This background made Red Cross Mahima ideal for volunteering at the American Red Cross. In 2024, she became a Red Cross volunteer screening coordinator in Springfield. The Screening Coordinator role involves conducting interviews, matching volunteers with positions and, in Red Cross Mahima’s case, managing data. She managed 1,500 accounts, improving engagement accuracy and compliance by 18 percent and helped to streamline workflows and reduce inactive records.

In October 2025, life took Red Cross Mahima to Edmond, Oklahoma – a rapidly growing, affluent city in the Oklahoma City metropolitan area. There she took a job in training at a local business and connected with friends from India.  She did not forget to connect with the local Red Cross chapter there. Red Cross Mahima Kommerla is soon to to be a volunteer screening coordinator with the Red Cross of Central and Southwest Oklahoma, always living up to her name.