LEWISTON — Zam Zam Mohamud, a certified nursing assistant at Central Maine Medical Center, has been named the organization’s latest Sunshine Award winner for providing compassionate and exceptional care.

Mohamud was recognized for her commitment to patients and the extra care she provides to patients on the inpatient rehabilitation unit. She routinely adds special touches to her list of responsibilities, such as washing and braiding women’s hair and shaving men, according to those she works with.

Mohamud is described as a calm and skillful care provider with a positive attitude, evidenced by the “smile that is on her face every day when she comes to work,” according to her award nomination composed by colleagues and fellow patients.

Mohamud is well known in Lewiston, where she lives. In 2013 she became the first Somali citizen to serve on the Lewiston School Board. A mother of two, she was nominated by Mayor Robert Macdonald and approved by the City Council after Superintendent Robert Connors resigned for health reasons. In 2011, she was one of three residents who ran as write-in candidates for an open, at-large school committee seat, finishing a close second to the man she would end up replacing.

She has served on the Lewiston Police Department’s Civil Rights Team, the Lewiston Library Board of Trustees, Lewiston Mayor Larry Gilbert’s Downtown Neighborhood Task Force, at school-based health centers, and with social groups such as Welcoming Maine, which seeks to forge strong, supportive communities between new Mainers and their native-born neighbors.

She moved to Lewiston from Atlanta in 2001. She fled Somalia because of civil war and spent 10 years in Kenya before coming to the United States. In Maine she attended school, ultimately graduating from Central Maine Medical Center College of Nursing and Health Professionals. She has been a U.S. citizen since 2006.

Mohamud’s dutiful and skillful work, her compassionate and thoughtful nature, her attention to detail and her desire to enhance the lives of those around her, whether at the hospital or in her community, are exemplified by her receipt of the Sunshine Award.