MEET SHELBY WRIGHT
Age: 30
Hometown: Fort Worth, Texas
Apprenticeship: Medical Assistant, Best Start Pediatrics

MY BACK STORY

My family is actually from Albuquerque, New Mexico, but we moved to Weatherford, Texas, when I was 4, going on 5. My family’s kind of what we call a patchwork family. My parents got divorced and remarried, so I have one biological brother and three step siblings. My biological dad works on AC units, and my mom, who was a stay-at-home mom until they got divorced, worked with loans at a bank for several years until she got into real estate with my stepdad. We moved to Texas because the schools were better and it was more of the environment that my parents wanted to raise kids in, but during summers and holidays we would visit my grandparents in New Mexico. I still like to go and visit for the food and culture in Santa Fe.

When I was growing up, my mom always told me I could do anything that I put my mind to, and in church I was taught to serve others. I was a creative/artsy kid even throughout high school, and did a few mission trips and volunteer serving in our community. So even if my mind always changed on what I wanted to do as a career, I knew whatever I did had to have a component of helping other people. The “medical” field wasn’t anything I ever thought I would go into, although I did have in mind doing something in the area of art therapy.

MY EDUCATION (Part One)
In 2013, I graduated from high school in Fort Worth. That was it for my education, for a long while.

MY WORK LIFE (Part One)
My first job was at Kohl’s department store, and I worked there for a little over three years. I started out as a Sales Associate, which meant I assisted customers with any questions, backed up the cash registers when needed, and was responsible for cleaning up the fitting rooms and department floor. Later I became a Visual Assistant, responsible for keeping the mannequins and the store graphics up to date. I also supervised the Young Men’s department. Eventually I became a Beauty Advisor, a position that entailed doing customer makeovers and helping with store events.

MY WORK LIFE (Part Two)
In 2016, I started work as a Beauty Advisor at Sephora. At the time, Sephora actually did a lot of training, which is what attracted me to them in the first place. So they put me through some courses that taught me how to take what I already knew art-wise and apply it to the makeup world. I had been experimenting on myself in that way, and now I was learning how to use my creativity professionally. For a time, I was the store’s Beauty Studio Coordinator, where I trained new employees and coached other artists on how to do certain techniques.

It was a really cool opportunity, and for a while I was going toward a career as a makeup artist. I did that for several years, and then the pandemic hit. By then I had figured out that being an artist wasn’t what I wanted to do, and I decided to go back to school while I kept my job at Sephora.

MY EDUCATION (Part Two)
I enrolled at Tarrant County College in Fort Worth with the goal of getting my Associate’s Degree in Psychology. But after one psych course I decided I wanted something that would allow me to interact with people in a more hands-on way, so I switched to studying Sonography. That area also included basic anatomy courses.

I only took about two semesters of classes at the community college, but they had an impact—in July of 2023, I made the move to the medical field.

MY WORK LIFE (Part Three)
While I was in school, I’d been trying to find a way to get my foot in the door in the medical field. As it turned out, I had a friend who’d worked at a doctor’s office and they were looking for a new receptionist. So through my friend, I was able to get an interview with Dr. Jinping Chai, who had a small private practice in Arlington, which is part of the greater Fort Worth area. It was just the doctor and us three staff people who helped with doing vitals, doing testing, and just keeping her office running. I worked with Dr. Chai mostly as a receptionist, but I also helped with various medical assistant duties, though I never got the actual certification; she just trained us and we worked under her.

MY TURNAROUND MOMENT
I haven’t mentioned that I’m married. My husband is originally from Little Rock, and his family had moved to Texas when he was younger. A couple of years ago, he and I decided to move to Northwest Arkansas, where we both wanted to be. We got here in May 2024. And as fate would have it, my mother-in-law works for Best Start Pediatrics, which needed a receptionist, so she arranged for me to interview with some of the managers. And I got the job.

MY APPRENTICESHIP
In the fall of 2024, Best Start was trying to find another medical assistant to fill a spot in the office. But instead of just hiring somebody from outside, they were working with Apprenticely and asked me if I wanted to go through a medical assistant apprenticeship program—which I was already trying to figure out how to do! I started the program in November of 2024 and finished last May, and then got my certification in July of 2025.

It was very much a self-paced program and all online, so it was nice being able to work that way with the schedule I had. And as I progressed in my studies, here in the office they started letting me practice some of the stuff that I was learning. So I had the book learning at home on my own, and at work I got to have some hands-on experience. Being able to put the two together really helped me, because I’m very much a visual hands-on person.

I have to say, this Apprenticely program gave me the opportunity that was starting to feel impossible to accomplish, and I really love my job. I love the interactions. I mean, working with kids is a lot of fun, but it’s really rewarding to be able to help the parents figure out what’s going on with their child just being a part of their growth process. Seeing the same kids pretty much for every visit and keeping track of their development and how they’re improving, I feel like I’m growing with the families. It’s really fun and really rewarding, to be honest. I’ve always wanted to do something involving working with people and helping them—I just didn’t know what that was going to look like.

MY CAREER GOALS
I’d like to continue growing in the medical field. I have thought about going into nursing school, now that I’ve gotten a taste of what that might be like—not to say that medical assistant is anything remotely like being a nurse! But there are some similarities. So I’ve been debating about going back to school and growing more in that role. Meanwhile, I’ll just keep enjoying where the medical assistant experience takes me.