Sahra Hassan, Esq., Casco Bay High School Class of 2015, is doing exactly what she’s meant to be doing. She’s so sure of it, she’ll tell you twice.

“This work is what I’m meant to be doing. This is what I'm meant to be doing.”

Hassan, an immigration attorney at Gillies Law in Portland, knows how the system works in part because of her own lived experience. She was born in Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya and moved to the United States at age eight. Her family lived in California for a time before moving east. They settled in Portland, where her mother’s family was already living.

Sahra Hassan, Esq., Casco Bay High School Class of 2015, and winner of the 2026 Distinguished Alumni Award

“I’ve always felt incredibly safe and comfortable to be in Portland,” she said. “For a really long time, I never said that I was a Mainer—I was a Portlander. To me, that was my identity. As I’ve grown up and seen the world and come back to Maine, I’m like ‘OK, Maine is my home.’”

Coming to Portland the summer before her fifth grade year, she went to Reiche Elementary School and then to Lincoln Middle School before attending Casco Bay. That’s when she found herself.

“I feel like who I am, my identity as an adult, the person that I’ve become, the way I see the world and understand how the world sees me all began when I was in high school,” she said. “I credit that to the teachers at Casco Bay. They were able to teach me as a person of color, as a woman, as a Muslim that this is the world that we’re in and this may be how you’re viewed, but you can present yourself and you can show up in the ways you want to show up. I found that to be incredibly impactful.”

Hassan made an impact on the faculty and staff of Casco Bay too. They’ve chosen to present her with the 2026 Distinguished Alumni Award.

Casco Bay impacted Hassan’s life in many ways, including introducing her to the outdoors. She learned to kayak, went hiking for the first time, and learned to swim.

“A lot of firsts and so much of my passion and the things that I love in life came from Casco Bay,” she said. “I could have easily been the type of a kid, based on my experience as a refugee and immigrant, that internalized everything and locked out the world, but the culture at Casco—the people, the teachers, the staff—they don’t just let kids get pushed to the side.”

In her junior year at Casco Bay, the faculty and staff recommended Hassan for a full scholarship to the University of New England. One of the requirements was that it had to be a four-year institution and that the student had to live on campus. It was a controversial requirement for her family, but Hasan’s crew advisor, Susan McCray, the school’s guidance counselor, Stephanie Doyle, and then-Principal Derek Pierce met with her parents to bring them around to the idea.

“It was done in a very compassionate and empathetic way,” she said of the Casco Bay team’s talks with her family.

Her parents agreed that it was an incredible opportunity.

“That scholarship allowed me to graduate from UNE with absolutely no debt,” she said. “That opened up a lot of opportunities for graduate school because I was not tied down by this financial burden the way a lot of people are.”

She graduated from UNE with a degree in Social and Cultural Studies, but did not know yet what she wanted to do for a career. She went to work as a counselor at Seeds of Peace, a camp she had worked at in previous summers. She got a call from the folks at Casco Bay while she was there. They wanted her to apply for the Make It Happen! (MIH) position at the school. The program focuses on multilingual students with a pathway to academic success and college readiness.

“I had always worked with young people—at camp, at UNE, I’d volunteered at Casco throughout college,” she said. “It was so cool to be back at this place that had taught me so much and brought so much to my life, and to be able to work with teachers who were my mentors.”

Hassan worked as MIH coordinator for two years. Half her time there was during the COVID pandemic. Through that experience and working with her students at MIH, she was inspired to do immigration law.

“I really credit the students that I had with inspiring me and motivating me to go,” she said. “I was studying for the LSAT and they were checking in and rooting when I got in. Some of them came when I graduated. Two of them are in law school right now!”

She hit the ground running at the University of Maine School of Law, working at the Refugee and Human Rights Clinic for a year and a half. By the time she graduated, she felt like she had a good grasp of the people who had come to Maine and what brought them here.

“I feel like it was such a privilege to get to do that,” she said. “A lot of people work with asylum seekers but they rarely have some sort of insight as to how people got to the place where they're at. I was able not just to provide legal aid, but human connection.”

Hassan is now a part of Gillies Law, working predominantly with asylum seekers. She also works with some who are applying for some other forms of immigration relief, like through the Violence Against Women Act, in instances such as when an abused spouse of a U.S. citizen or green card holder is able to file for immigration status on their own.

“This is where I’m meant to be,” she said. “I am grateful everyday, even in the hard days, that Allah SWT has blessed me with the opportunity to help people and be of service. That is my life’s purpose.”