Born in 2005, Gitanjali Rao is 18 years old this year with a resume that reads like a tenured professor’s:
- Inventor of Tethys, a lead-detection tool
- Inventor of Epione, a clinical tool to diagnose prescription opioid addiction
- Inventor of Kindly, an anti-cyberbullying tool
- Winner of the Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge in 2017
- Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2017
- STEM Scout of the Year in 2017
- EPA President’s Environmental Youth Award in 2018
- Top “Health” Pillar Prize for the TCS Ignite Innovation Student Challenge in May 2019
- Time’s Top Young Innovator in 2020
- “Kid of the Year” Time cover in 2020
- Laureate of the Young Activists Summit at UN Geneva in 2021
- 3x TEDx Speaker
- Author Young Inventor’s Guide to STEM: 5 Steps to Problem-Solving, published in 2021
- Conducts innovation workshops around the globe to promote a problem-solving curriculum.
- Entered college at MIT in Fall 2023
It all started with small actions by mentors who recognized and then fanned the flames of Gitanjali’s burning desire to do good in the world.
- Her uncle gave her a science kit when she was four, which sparked an interest in inventing.
- Her second-grade teacher, Ms. Jennifer Stockdale, encouraged this interest. Gitanjali recalls, “She told me I was going to change the world someday.” Ms. Stockdale gifted Gitanjali her first college flag – from MIT.
- Intrigued, Gitanjali explored MIT’s website and learned about carbon nanotubes.
- At age 10, she heard on the news about the Flint, Michigan water crisis and felt compelled to take action – why wasn’t there a device to measure lead content in water?
- At 11, she invented a lead-detection device based on the carbon nanotubes that she had discovered on MIT’s website that Ms. Stockdale had inspired her to consider.
Gitanjali shared some insights on a recent episode of “Tell Me More” with Kelly Corrigan on pbs.org.
- Teach yourself how to stop stigmatizing failure. Gitanjali generated many terrible ideas (her words, not mine) before inventing her patentable solutions.
- Adopt a habit of empathy to help solve problems – it nudges us to think of the bigger picture.
- Make a difference by standing on the shoulders of giants who have come before us (mentors!) and leveraging their incredible research.
- Don’t apologize for being you.
In Gitanjali’s words, “If no one else is going to take that first step, I need to take it.”
Amid a slew of helplessness and powerlessness in various corners of the world, Gitanjali reminds us that we always have the power to start solving problems.
© 2023. Ann Tardy and MentorLead. www.mentorlead.com. All Rights Reserved. |
