2022 NCWIT AspireIT Impact Award Recipients
The NCWIT AspireIT Impact Award honors Aspirations in Computing (AiC) Community members and TECHNOLOchicas for their incredible work to ultimately encourage girls, women, genderqueer, and non-binary people of all ages to contribute their unique perspectives and ideas to future innovations. Award recipients are selected based on their efforts to build and creatively offer hands-on learning opportunities in computing and career exploration, and to bring together advocates and allies of various backgrounds through computing-related events and community groups.
Learn about all of the 2022 NCWIT AspireIT Impact Award recipients here or jump to a specific recipient by clicking on their name below. You can also see and hear members of this inspiring cohort share their experiences and ambitions in their own words by watching the NCWIT AspireIT Impact Award Recipient Spotlight Videos.
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About the 2022 NCWIT AspireIT Impact Award Recipients
Aashika Jagadeesh
Pronouns: she/hers
Aashika Jagadeesh founded a 501(c)(3) nonprofit called MakerSafe, which advocates for the creation of safe and ethical technology. MakerSafe hosts workshops, competitions, and programming camps for students from diverse backgrounds in grades K-12. Through partnerships with universities, local libraries, and other organizations, she is able to bring in guest speakers that can talk about their experiences in computing and increase outreach for her programs. With her work, she hopes she can teach more students about the importance of ethical technology and encourage them to pursue research projects in the field.
Alanis Cruz
Pronouns: she/her
Alanis comes from a low-income community where most students like herself are first generation. In this community, computer science is something very new and uncommon. Thanks to her school and computer science teacher, Ms. Camarena, Alanis found a love and passion for computing. Now, she wants to give back to other students in her community – especially young girls – in order to expose them to the computer science world and encourage them to follow that path in their future.
Angela Yang
Pronouns: she/her
Angela Yang founded the Girls Who Code club at her high school, the largest public charter high school in the nation with 5,000+ students. After seven years of robotics and several hackathons, she's spread her love of computer science by teaching in-person classes for at-risk youth in local nonprofits. In addition, she utilizes her years of speech, debate, and her passion for educational equity as an avid volunteer and mentor in the L.A. Mayor’s Youth Council, which she has participated in for two years. This year, Angela founded a GirlsBuild team and hosted a 2-day hackathon, Highlander Hacks, with technical workshops and team-building activities where girls and non-binary students could get a taste of computer science.
Anika Suman
Pronouns: she/her
Anika Suman is a rising high school senior at the Early College at Guilford and the North Carolina School of Science & Mathematics. Anika’s primary interest is in computer science and computational disciplines, and as the founder and president of her school’s Code Club, she held multiple summer camps and workshops serving over 100 participants in their first year alone to facilitate computer science learning for kids around the state, primarily those from underrepresented communities and Title I schools. Anika also volunteers at multiple tech camps through NCWIT locally in Greensboro, and is working on a national nonprofit organization called Project STEMina to provide young women the foundation for research in computational disciplines through workshops, symposiums, podcasts, and more.
Anna Rosner
Pronouns: she/her
Anna is the community events chair of her school's Society of Women Engineers, which does regular outreach within Charlottesville, Va., and surrounding areas, as well as captain and former outreach lead of one of her school's robotics teams. She currently co-mentors a middle school robotics team and hopes to continue to expand the reach of robotics and tech as a whole to underrepresented communities in Virginia and the world as a whole.
Catherine Yue
Pronouns: she/her
Inspired by the importance of computing as a crucial skill in an increasingly STEM-centered society, Catherine Yue strives to create spaces for computer science students to connect and grow. She is one of the Denver Regional Directors for Steel City Codes (SCC), a 501c(3) nonprofit dedicated to bringing free computer science education to 4th - 8th graders. In just two years, SCC has become the largest organization of its kind in the Denver region; 200 students and 51 volunteers have joined the vibrant SCC Denver community to date. Aside from SCC, Catherine is involved with her school district's Computing/Technology Student Organization (CTSO), where she helped create the first district-wide hackathon. She also takes on leadership roles in her high school's Cybersecurity Club and Tech Club.
Chloe Yan
Pronouns: she/her
Chloe Yan is the lead director of Girl Genius, a nonprofit that empowers women and non-binary changemakers to pursue STEM through its quarterly magazines, virtual events, and media. She grew Girl Genius into a community of 15,000 readers and 5,000 event participants from 100+ countries, enabling them to connect with like-minded students, learn from industry leaders, and expand their horizons in STEM. Eager to continue promoting inclusion in computing, Chloe co-founded CS Hands-On’s unplugged curriculum to introduce CS education into classrooms without Internet access. Her curriculum features 16 computational thinking lessons that make learning accessible and engaging through hands-on activities.
Cindy Shi
Pronouns: she/her
Cindy Shi is a program leader for NCWIT AspireIT and has been teaching STEM to kids in her community for over six years. She establishes and engages young students in fun, educational, and well-rounded robotics and engineering programs. She also hosted classes, workshops, and celebrations for girls to showcase their work, in addition to providing students with swag and resources to pursue STEM in their schools and future careers.
Fara Yan
Pronouns: she/her
Fara Yan co-founded CS Hands-On, a nonprofit providing unplugged computer science education to K-5 students without access to technology. She integrated her curriculum with storytelling, interdisciplinary skills, and hands-on learning to design an approachable and accessible way to learn computational thinking. Wanting to increase educational equity in classrooms, Fara led professional development workshops focused on unplugged computer science education for educators and program providers nationwide. She also organized 50+ career-building events to empower and grow Girl Genius' global community of 15,000 girls and non-binary changemakers in STEM.
Gloria Salas
Pronouns: she/her
Gloria Salas served as a role model for students in underrepresented groups pursuing STEM through Girls Scouts, outreach efforts with middle and high schools near her university, and her work with her university's Advancing Women in Computer Science initiative. Gloria partnered with the nonprofit organization Girls Who Code and local Girl Scouts to create inclusive communities on a K-12 and university level. The Girl Scouts hosted a STEM conference with coding workshops and a hackathon to help Girl Scouts earn their badges – and this was for a group of over 100 scouts. On campus, Gloria helped organize an ambassador program for rising junior and senior girls in high school to pursue computer science at her university, and she mentored more than 20 students.
Gracie Hou
Pronouns: she/her
As an active participant in her school’s computer science community, Gracie helps organize and participates in numerous trips and events both in and out of the classroom. With these experiences, she led her club, Girl Up, through experiments to promote kids' interests in STEM during visits to local elementary schools. Gracie loves seeing the impact she can make with all of her efforts and hopes to expand upon her projects and goals in the future.
Harita Suresh
Pronouns: she/her
Harita Suresh is inspired to bridge the gap in access to computer science and empower any child interested in computer science to learn to code. With her sister, she co-founded Little Apple Academy, a nonprofit organization to teach free coding classes for kids. Through Little Apple Academy, she has taught coding in nine countries and has partnered with several international organizations to teach students in rural and underserved areas. She also built a chatbot to assist students with college and career readiness and was spotlighted in the IBM Developer blog.
Jasmine Garry
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Jasmine Garry co-founded CREATE Tutoring, a nonprofit that provides free and virtual education to elementary school students in various STEM subjects. CREATE Tutoring hosts STEM workshops, events, and weekly tutoring lessons to cultivate a supportive community of tutors and students across the U.S. and Canada and strives to make STEM resources accessible to all. Jasmine makes it a priority to inspire, empower and educate all genders, races, and financial backgrounds to learn STEM. From building websites to building confidence, she finds ways to incorporate students' passions with lesson plans so that they can see their place in STEM.
Julia Huang
Pronouns: she/her
Julia started Bytes & Pieces, a student-run organization, to share what she's learned in two of her favorite passions, coding and music, with other people -- no matter who they are or where they are. The organization provides workshops, events, and more to help others develop passions in computing, and especially, to increase diversity and inclusion in computing fields. Seeing how fast technology is evolving and how many new tech inventions were created in the past decade, Julia is inspired every day to supply critical coding resources, skills, and concepts to enable more people to not only feel motivated to learn technology, but also empowered to create their own innovations.
Lalitha Gunturi
Pronouns: she/her
Lalitha Gunturi co-founded CREATE Tutoring, a free virtual program where high school students volunteer their time to help younger students with homework and so much more. Her mission is to help students create a brighter academic future for themselves by fostering healthy study habits, learning accelerated educational content, exploring personal interests, and finding an engaging relationship with learning overall. Through CREATE Tutoring, Lalitha hosts workshops about STEM to educate students on the positive impact technology has on our world and motivate girls to be successful STEM innovators. This past summer, CREATE Tutoring hosted its "Empowering Girls in STEM" workshop, and is planning an "Intro to Block Coding" workshop for September.
Laurel Shugart
Pronouns: they/them
Laurel has been fortunate enough to have been given access to STEM at a young age, which directly led them to pursuing initiatives to build equitable spaces for STEM education in their community. Laurel’s hometown, where computer science was once entirely unheard of, is now an epicenter for diversity where rising numbers of young people are exploring computing pathways. After being able to acknowledge their own privilege of receiving STEM education, Laurel chose to use their technological passions to develop a mobile app that provides accessible resources to Alabama’s transient population.
Lauren Wong
Pronouns: she/her
Lauren Wong is the founder and director of Nevada Girls In STEM. Lauren started this nonprofit organization in her sophomore year in high school to help close the gender gap in STEM fields after experiencing gender inequity herself. Nevada Girls In STEM provides girls with opportunities to learn about STEM subjects in a fun, supportive and inclusive environment with hands-on workshops, labs, university tours, and lectures.
Manasa Bala
Pronouns: she/her
Manasa is the CEO, CTO, and co-founder of Notice Platforms LLC, as well as the developer of Notice Volunteer, a cross-platform mobile app that connects volunteers with service opportunities. At school, she initiated a movement toward making club culture more inclusive by developing a network of virtual club groups for students to find monthly club updates, forms to join clubs based on interest rather than invite, club organization tools, and more. Manasa promotes computer science in her historically all-girls school by advertising virtual hackathons by Notice Platforms, teaching middle schoolers web development over the summer, and as an active member of the coding club.
Manika Aggarwal
Pronouns: she/her
Manika Aggarwal founded and runs the ProjectCSGirls Chapter for her city, in which she helps create opportunities for middle school girls in her area to pursue and learn more about STEM. She also leads both the Engineering Club and National Technical Honor Society at her school, where she encourages students to pursue computing careers. In addition, she serves on the leadership team of STEM4Scouts, a nonprofit that helps Girl Scouts learn about technology and earn their STEM badges. Through her initiatives, she helps encourage and support more inclusion, participation, and growth.
Mansi Saini
Pronouns: she/her
After Mansi delved into hackathons and gained an amazing womxn-centric community, she wanted to give back to first-time femme and non-binary hackers and guide them through their own hackathon journeys. As a result, Mansi shifted from a hacker in TechTogether to a mentor where she coaches femme and non-binary individuals on their hackathon projects. In addition, as a Major League Hacking (MLH) Coach, she mentors hackers and organizers in hackathons nationwide as a Hackathon Coach. Through technology, she has also encouraged elementary students to explore STEM through her Girl Scout Gold Award, where she developed a virtual STEM curriculum for school districts during the pandemic lockdown.
Manya Bhagat
Pronouns: she/her
Computer Science is the key to advancing human potential. That's why Manya leads multiple tech clubs including Girls Who Code, Technovation, and TechGirlz. All these organizations are aimed at building confidence in young girls to pursue careers in technology, because we all truly are capable and worthy.
Marissa Liu
Pronouns: she/her
Marissa Liu is an avid advocate for bridging the gender gap in STEM through her efforts in the nonprofit Math Invitational for Girls (MIG) over the past three years. She currently serves as the president of MIG, which regularly hosts STEM webinars and annual math competitions for middle-school girls across the nation with the goal of engaging and helping girls reach their potentials in STEM. MIG has reached hundreds of girls from around the nation each year and has hosted guest speakers from Google, Harvard, MIT, Rice, Duke, and Georgia Tech. Marissa is also the co-captain of her school's CyberPatriot team, a national youth cybersecurity education program that directs students towards careers in cybersecurity and STEM.
Melody Lee
Pronouns: she/her
Melody Lee is a rising senior in North Carolina, with a passion for theoretical computer science and quantum computing. She is currently conducting research in genetic sequence alignment on quantum annealers. She presently is on the CS and ML captain teams at her school, and leads OpenBox Programs, a recently established initiative to bring theoretical CS to middle school students across the world. She previously worked with empowering girls in FRC competitions as a Doyenne Inspiration lead and co-directed the Explore Summer Program, which is aimed at raising funds for underprivileged communities and fostering curiosity in middle school students through unique courses. In her own time, she is an avid cyclist and runner, who enjoys getting lost in the many trails near her home.
Melody Yu
Pronouns: she/her
Melody Yu founded the Inspire Coding Club to inspire people with low access to educational resources to learn computing. Her club has taught coding to more than 800 students through online classes and at local homeless shelters. She also creates and hosts competitions and workshops encouraging and highlighting women and non-binary people in the field. “To me, programming is a glimpse of the future; I love sharing the cool possibilities and creations that computing can bring to life!”
Michelle Wang
Pronouns: she/her
Michelle shares her passion for engineering and technology with other kids through 4-H and school organizations. For four years and counting, Michelle has led workshops in programming, robotics, and STEM at schools, the Boys and Girls Club, and 4-H clubs, as well as statewide conferences. At school, Michelle is a co-founder of Maker Club, and she also leads a team of volunteers who teach competition math to local middle-schoolers. To support these initiatives, Michelle has secured resources from AI4ALL, 4-H, 3D Universe, and DoD. She also lobbied at the Illinois State Capitol for support for 4-H and STEM education.
Nicole Pi
Pronouns: she/her
Nicole Pi co-founded Zipline Theory, a 501(c)(3) dedicated to bridging educational divides and access to STEM fields for more than 5,000 students, especially low-income, non-male, and first-generation youth. Nicole also established her high school robotics team's first extensive outreach program, which advanced respect and appreciation for engineering in her community. Her efforts helped lead her team to their first World Championships qualification, where they won two prestigious awards: the Chairman's Award and the Engineering Inspiration award. In addition, Nicole serves as the captain of her school's only all-female CyberPatriot team, promoting the proactive involvement of women in Linux administration and cybersecurity.
Nicole Xu
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Nicole Xu serves as the president of her school's Girls Who Code and Girls in STEM chapter, where she regularly helps organize hackathons and workshops for hundreds of students in her city and across the nation. She also co-founded alGIRLithm, a programming competition that works to inspire the next generation of female computer scientists by making competitive programming accessible to high school girls. As a youth advisory board member of the National Girls Collaborative Project, she helps guide the direction of various youth STEM initiatives and speaks on panels about the importance of engaging young girls in computer science. Mentoring the youth and seeing them grow and develop is what encourages Nicole to keep advocating for diversity in computing.
Nidhi Mylavarapu
Pronouns: she/her
Nidhi Mylavarapu created and taught an 8-week interactive course for elementary students who lacked the proper resources to be introduced to STEM. Each lesson included an engaging presentation and interactive activity so each student could thoroughly understand the topic. She culminated the project with a final celebration where they reviewed the lessons with more advanced technological experiments. Following the project, the school was left with new activities and resources for future students to explore STEM independently. She hopes that the students' early exposure to this field will encourage them to pursue a technology-oriented career path in the future.
Nidhya Shivakumar
Pronouns: she/her
Nidhya Shivakumar is the founder and leader of Boost Robotics, a nonprofit organization, which provides students with guided instructions and video lessons on designing, building, and programming an introductory competitive robot for the VEX Robotics Competition. In total, Boost Robotics has mentored over 200 students and 70 teams, and – through partnerships with many organizations and schools – has reached teams throughout the U.S. and globally, including in Europe, Latin America, Canada, and Africa. She is also a lead organizer for the Girl Powered VEX Robotics Workshop held annually at Google, where more than 2,300 girls have been introduced to STEM and robotics.
Nitya Pakala
Pronouns: she/her
Nitya Pakala is an intersectional gender equality advocate and coder from Houston, Texas. As the president of Girl Bytes, a club dedicated to supporting and motivating girls to pursue computer science, Nitya develops curricula for various coding languages, including Java, HTML/CSS, and Python, and hosts regular workshops with middle school and high school students. Throughout her high school journey, she has impacted over 100 young girls and students across Houston. Additionally, as the President of the Girl Up Southeast Texas Coalition, Nitya organizes annual leadership conferences focused on empowering and inspiring attendees to fight for gender equity. In fact, her most recent summit had speakers from NASA and Harvard. Besides her work in gender equality and her community, Nitya loves tinkering with technology and spends her time programming, designing 3D art, and capturing memories through her camera.
Obianuju Okafor
Pronouns: she/her
Obianuju is a recent computer science Ph.D graduate. She is passionate about increasing the participation of marginalized groups in computing – in particular, people with disability and young girls of color. Her research focus has been on the ways to increase the accessibility of programming environments for people with disability. For her dissertation, she created an application that helps people with upper-limb motor impairments to write code using their voice. She also volunteers as a mentor, board member, and instructor in several organizations aimed at promoting underrepresented minority women in STEM.
Oindree Chatterjee
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Oindree Chatterjee is the host of The STEM Corner, a podcast created when she realized that low-income, minority students are receiving even less exposure to STEM industries than before the COVID-19 pandemic. With diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) being close to her heart, she implemented the concept of DEI into her robotics team’s outreach as the Captain. Additionally, Oindree organized various speaker events as the president of Girls Who Code at her school. Her volunteering with the SEMI Foundation provided thousands of students with inspiration through STEM kits consisting of Micro:bits and Circuit Scribe.
Radhika Goyal
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Radhika Goyal founded the nonprofit organization TechPower4All to empower girls and underrepresented youth to explore technology. Under her leadership, TechPower4All hosts free coding workshops, many of which serve students in rural communities, and provides free online resources to cultivate youth’s interest in computer science. By leading such programs, Radhika aims to break the barriers to entry in technology and instill a lifelong passion for computer science in youth. TechPower4All has impacted more than 350 students across its 16 chapters in 7 countries.
Rebecca Wang
Pronouns: she/her
Rebecca Wang is the founder and director of Hydra Hacks, the West Coast’s largest hackathon for marginalized genders. Hydra Hacks aims to cultivate a welcoming, diverse community in tech. In two years, the organization has empowered 4,000+ high school and college students through technical workshops, career panels, and mentorship circles. Through her work, Rebecca strives to provide everyone an equal opportunity to pursue computer science.
Richael Saka
Pronouns: she/her
Richael's work in promoting computer science and engineering in her community started in the Code Club she created. Spending the summer creating lesson plans to teach Python and engineering using Arduino, Richael taught her peers to program and use these skills to tackle hands-on projects and civic engagement initiatives. Building on this model, Richael plans to further expand the program to local libraries and middle schools so more underserved communities can learn to code.
Riddhi Bhagwat
Pronouns: she/her
As the founder of a nonprofit organization, GenSpire, Riddhi works with students in local and disenfranchised communities to promote education and access to technology in the perspective of innovation in the 21st century. She’s also been involved with global projects to forge international connections and promote the application of technology as a catalyst of change to address real world problems across every field, from mental health to congressional policy. With students and volunteers alike, Riddhi is continually inspired by the individuals she works with. “Their enthusiasm for learning and willingness to persevere through all obstacles motivates, and the gratitude I feel after I work with them emboldens my dreams to continue contributing to this positive cause for diverse communities all part of one global community.”
Ryan Ali Karim
Pronouns: she/her
Ryan started the Veterans Tech Transition initiative, which aims to empower veterans who are interested in career opportunities and/or transitions by providing them with technology training in software, product management, design, as well as connecting them with fellow participants and program mentors who are working in the tech industry and/or have served in the military as well. The desired outcomes of this initiative are to introduce veterans to these opportunities in the tech industry and to connect them with career opportunities and a mentorship network to set them up for success during a transitional period that can be challenging for many.
Safaa Hussain
Pronouns: she/her
From organizing hackathons through her school’s Girls Who Code club to helping design introductory CS curriculum for the nonprofit CodELEVATE, many of the initiatives Safaa has been a part of aim to encourage girls in her community to explore the field of computer science. Seeing the eager faces at the Girls Who Code meetings every week and helping build confidence in young, often-underrepresented girls inspires Safaa to take part in the movement to make computing more accessible. She believes that leveling the playing field will allow more women to recognize their potential and consider a career in technology.
Sarah Eckert
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Sarah Eckert is the founder and director of My Maker’s Space™, which is leveling the playing field for disenfranchised girls and their siblings, giving them equal access and opportunity to develop problem-solving, teamwork, engineering and coding skills. Youth are introduced to concepts in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) through designing, building, programing, testing and improving a LEGO model. This fun, immersive camp culminates with kids showcasing their accomplishments. Female STEM professionals and near peer mentors work directly with participants to engage them in all aspects of the program, including exploration of STEM careers. My Maker’s Space™ exists to unlock the powerful potential that exists in all youth.
Shamiya Lin
Pronouns: she/her
Shamiya started Youth Inventa in order to bridge students with learning resources despite their background. Each year, the organization hosts three summer programs, where students join in lectures taught by professors and professionals in their fields. She is also part of Education of Will, a nonprofit organization committed to promote children's educational will in the most needed areas of the world, currently focusing in Rwanda.
Sindhu Sivasankar
Pronouns: she/her
Sindhu Sivasankar started her journey encouraging girls to pursue STEM by joining a school club called Women in STEM Experience. She was able to lead workshops for middle school girls in her community, introducing them to the STEM pathways her school offered. This experience inspired Sindhu, leading her to take other initiatives, including volunteering at Coding4Kids, WomenWired, and Girls Unite For Defense. Sindhu tries to diversify her impact on different communities in order to reach her overall goal of being a role model and creating a better world that allows underrepresented groups to be given a louder voice.
Sonnet Xu
Pronouns: she/her
Sonnet is the founder of Quellie, a STEM education organization that brings opportunities to the underserved. Through hackathons, workshops, and other projects, a wide range of students are taught about computer science. With an emphasis on diversity and inclusion, Quellie has impacted many nationally, and is continuing to expand.
Sreeyutha Ratala
Pronouns: she/her
Sreeyutha Ratala founded Camp Venom, a free, two-week youth-led summer Python coding camp for kids in grades 4-7, when she began witnessing kids in her neighborhood missing STEM enrichment opportunities due to cost. Camp Venom's mission is to mitigate the educational accessibility gap in STEM, so children with limited enrichment opportunities can fearlessly begin their exploration of the world of computer science with the help of volunteers closer to their own age. By representing a variety of individuals in tech, Camp Venom aims to demonstrate how everyone belongs in the Computer Science community regardless of age, gender, or socioeconomic status, so kids ultimately feel empowered to pursue their technical dreams regardless of obstacles they face in the future. Sreeyutha will continue addressing the educational-accessibility gap by recruiting and training high schoolers to direct Camp Venom in future summers. Alongside Camp Venom, Sreeyutha also produced write-ups with advice and resources for teenagers and ML learners, and has served as both a TA for AP Computer Science and a Math & Computer Science Peer Tutor.
Sreyashi Mondal
Pronouns: she/her
Sreyashi Mondal aims to inspire young women to pursue their passions for technology. She serves as a programming lead on the Girls of Steel robotics team, president of her school's SciGirls club, and vice-president of Programming Club. Through Girls of Steel, Sreyashi provides STEM opportunities for young women to explore computing and technology. She also serves as a mentor for FLL and FTC teams, and teaches middle schoolers how to code through the Steel City Codes program. In workshops for her SciGirls club, she inspires team members to learn and explore STEM career paths and discover what they are passionate about. Through her work with Programming Club, she helped organize Hack The Ram, a hackathon with over 200 attendees, where students with any level of programming or hardware experience are invited to work together and create a technology project from scratch.
Sruthi Sentil
Pronouns: she/her
Sruthi is the founder and director of BuddyKnit. At BuddyKnit, they are determined to uplift and support students of all backgrounds through relatable peer connections. They’re helping to develop equal access to traditional forms of academic support in the most critical years of a student’s life. Peers provide the support in need rather than an adult, alleviating concerns of the mentor being intimidating to the student while creating an air of relatability, especially for ones that have experienced the trauma of child abuse and separation from loved ones.
Stuti Agarwal
Pronouns: she/her
Stuti co-founded STEMPower4Girls, a 501 (c)(3) certified nonprofit organization that is dedicated to empowering young low-income girls in the field of STEM. By hosting weekly STEM workshops on topics girls are not exposed to through their middle and high school classes, they aim to instill a passion for STEM in these girls at a young age. Additionally, they hold an annual tournament for over 500 low-income girls in India where the winners receive laptops, tablets, books, and other educational resources necessary to furthering their education. Ultimately, Stuti wants to continue to break the stereotypes of what careers girls are capable of pursuing -- which is what she is doing through STEMPower4Girls.
Subhadra Vadlamannati
Pronouns: she/her
Subha is the founder of Linguistics Justice League (LJL) with a mission to leverage technology for language learning, increasing awareness for marginalized communities that speak low-resource languages and helping other nonprofits with their translation needs. LJL builds applications that enable English language learning by applying Natural Language Processing (NLP), Machine Learning and mobile/web app development. LJL recently launched ‘EduLang’, a mobile multilingual app that presents a multilingual library of short story books with English and low-resource languages (like Pashto, Ukrainian Xhosa, Somali, etc). Her nonprofit provides opportunities for volunteers from across the world and with varying skill levels, ranging from high school students to PhD students and professionals, to learn and apply their computer science skills to address real world needs.
Sweta Das
Pronouns: she/her
Sweta Das serves as the co-president of Mclean High School's Girls Who Code Club, where their mission is to foster a supportive community of girls through club objectives. So far, they have helped many girls, primarily those from underrepresented backgrounds, explore their interests through coding workshops, hackathons, and more. After being given many opportunities to immerse themselves in the world of technology, Sweta realized the role that diverse perspectives play in tackling important issues. This served as the ultimate reason as to why she joined Girls Who Code, and it’s why she is excited to enhance current aspects of their club as well as add new things to their curriculum.
Vanesha Hari
Pronouns: she/her
Vanesha Hari is passionate about the intersection of technology, engineering and social impact. As a co-founder of a nonprofit initiative called Joys of Giving, she has a vision to fight educational inequity and gender disparity in STEM, especially amongst underserved populations. Through her nonprofit initiative and volunteering with several nonprofit organizations to teach computing, she has impacted at least 400 lives thus far. As an elected Girls Who Code board member, robotics enthusiast and passionate mentor for girls in computing, she aspires to leave this world better than she found it.
Victoria Paesano
Pronouns: she/her
Victoria Paesano is the founder and director of CyberGirls, a nonprofit organization that introduces middle school girls to cybersecurity and computer science topics through workshops and other initiatives. Based in Miami, Fla., CyberGirls has worked with over 360 students in 20+ interactive workshops and has distributed resources, including courses, conferences, and games, to encourage more girls to explore different technology fields. Additionally, Victoria has developed a curriculum for teachers around the world seeking to bring CyberGirls to their classrooms and has increased the organization’s social media presence, furthering its mission of creating a larger community of girls in cybersecurity.
Learn about the 2021 NCWIT AspireIT Impact Award recipients here.
