Announcing Tech x Social Impact Summer 2020 Cohort
On behalf of Tech X Social Impact Fellowship, we are excited to announce the Summer 2020 Cohort. These individuals demonstrated exemplary passion for tech for change and have already pursued this through their ventures, non-profits, volunteer work, organizations, and academic coursework. We are so excited to have these 19 fellows in our inaugural cohort!
A/N: Bios have been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Anne Raheem, Co-Founder & Co-Lead
Tech x Social Justice x Education
Anne Raheem is a recent graduate in electrical engineering and computer science from Harvard College (May 2019). She currently works as a PM at Microsoft in M365 Security & Compliance. She is an advocate for empowering users through technology and strongly believes that access to technology can revolutionize monumental change. Before joining Microsoft, Anne served as Founder & CEO for SECURE, a Harvard Innovation Labs incubated startup that created a safety mobile app for young women. Previously, she was a Founder & Executive Director for MakeHarvard, Harvard’s first 24-hour make-a-thon and spoke at the White House as part of Michelle Obama’s “Reach Higher” campaign for sparking a “STEM Revolution” throughout west TN. She is also deeply invested in promoting success of underrepresented communities through inclusive & thoughtful policies and programs like serving on the Harvard Undergraduate Council and House Committee to expand access to menstrual supplies, provide bike subsidies and free printing to full financial aid students, create mentorship programs, and more. Anne has been recognized as a recipient of the White House National Excellence in CTE Innovator Award (US Presidential Scholar in CTE), Coca-Cola Scholarship, and Harvard College Innovation Award.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/anneraheem/
Ayushi Sinha, Co-Founder & Co-Lead
Tech x Water Accessibility x Healthcare
Ayushi Sinha graduated Cum Laude from the Princeton University Department of Computer Science and is an incoming member of the Product team at Nines, a startup bringing AI to radiology diagnostics and backed by Accel and 8VC. Having co-founded her own startup, WellPower, a vertically integrated Uber for water filtration and distribution in East Africa, she is particularly interested in social entrepreneurship. Professionally, she has worked at the intersection of ML, geospatial, IoT, and cloud as a Software Engineer & PM at Microsoft and as a Quality Assurance Engineering at Kik in Tel Aviv. She studied facial recognition for her senior thesis and completed independent work at the intersection of accessibility and VR, creating an immersive music education experience. As the co-president of E-Club, Princeton’s largest student organization, she increased the diversity of Princeton’s entrepreneurship community by expanding support of creative arts, biotech, design, and social impact projects and represented the voice of the Princeton’s entrepreneurs to university administration. As the director of TigerLaunch, the largest student-run entrepreneurial competition, she led sponsorship, design, logistics, and marketing and expanded the competition internationally to increase its impact. As the corporate outreach officer for the Princeton Women in CS club, she expands opportunities for women in technology. She is an Entrepreneurship Fellow at .406 Ventures, sourcing startups and performing first-round due diligence on ventures.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ayushisinhahaha/
Alaisha Sharma
Tech x Climate Change x Big Data
Alaisha Sharma graduated with Honors in Computer Science from Harvard College (May 2020), and is an incoming forward-deployed software engineer at Palantir Technologies. She strongly believes that CS x green tech is an under-explored yet hugely impactful space, and is a fierce advocate for applying CS to tackling complex climate and energy problems. During her senior year at Harvard, Alaisha researched the intersection of machine learning optimization and the low-carbon energy transition. Her work on an optimization model that examines energy transitions under adaptive carbon taxes has been featured in the Harvard CRCS Workshop on AI for Social Good. Alaisha is also deeply invested in increasing representation of gender and racial minorities in computer science. She taught introductory computer science to children at underprivileged Boston schools through the Digital Literacy Project, fought to increase funding for students from low-income backgrounds at the annual WECode conference hosted by Harvard Women in CS, and published research exposing gender discrimination within Harvard faculty through the Harvard Open Data Project. Alaisha is especially passionate about helping people from minority backgrounds with no computer science experience, like herself when she began college, break into the field. She served as a teaching fellow for CS50 both at Harvard College and at HBS, and received a Certificate of Distinction in Teaching from the Office of Undergraduate Education.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alaisha-sharma-0a0195128/
Amita Shukla
Tech x Social Justice x Healthcare
Amita Shukla is a recent graduate in computer science and electrical engineering from Columbia University (May 2020). She is currently doing a yearlong postgrad fellowship at Schmidt Futures and is being funded to work as a technical product manager at Code for America. Before joining Schmidt Futures, Amita was a technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union. Before that, she worked at the U.S. Department of Defense on a project with the Marine Corps, at the U.S. Department of State on a data dashboard for diplomats, and at the United Nations on a platform for scientists and policymakers to connect with each other. She is invested in using technology to create good governance, and in improving American government tech. Amita is a strong advocate for community resilience and has also built tools for citizens to advocate for themselves, including a wearable pollution monitor and an app for students to track their progress through college application goals. Throughout her time in school she was involved in the social impact student design group Design for America, through which she created those and other civic engagement tools. Amita has been recognized as a recipient of the Stanford University Innovation Fellowship, the Computing Research Association’s Grace Hopper Scholarship, the Eben Tisdale Technology Policy Fellowship, the James Dyson Design for America Fellowship, and the Columbia Presidential Global Fellowship.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/amita-shukla/
Atharv Naik
Tech x Healthcare x Medicine
Atharv Naik is the Managing Director of the Silicon Fen Venture Fund, an accelerator program/venture fund supporting youth-led ventures with financial capital, R&D capabilities, and subject-matter expertise from industry leaders. He works towards accelerating action in solving problems and creating social impact through consolidating resources, convening talent, and developing new technologies. At the intersection of entrepreneurship, innovation, and healthcare, he is a tech-futurist aiming to pioneer the translation of technological progress and scientific research into impactful solutions. Previously, he was the founder of Unified Cancer Network, an award winning medical devices startup developing affordable skin cancer diagnostic solutions. With a personal mission to deeply impact > 10 million people positively, he is committed to supporting and creating purpose-driven initiatives, especially healthcare ecosystems in developing regions.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/atharvnaik/
Austin Mejia
Tech x Climate Change
Austin Mejia is a rising Senior at Princeton University pursuing an independent concentration in Computer Science and Public Policy, one of two people his year to create his own degree program. Professionally, Austin has worked at a wide range of start-ups and large tech firms: he is the founder of Donera, which helps young donors give to combat the climate crisis, and previous served as Head of Engineering at JUV Consulting, a Gen Z consulting firm that’s worked with over 20 Fortune 500 companies. He was a Software Engineering Intern at Syte.ai, a Tel Aviv-based AI startup, a Software Engineer Intern at Google on Assistant, and is currently a PM Intern at Microsoft on Azure Firewall. On campus, Austin is an active member of the student community. As the co-president of the Princeton Entrepreneurship Club, Princeton’s largest student organization, he expanded the university’s entrepreneurial ecosystem by partnering with the likes of TechCrunch and Human Capital and collaborated with university administrators to create a tighter community. He also serves as an RA, mentoring a cohort of 16 freshman as they adjust to their first year on campus. Austin was director of igniteSTEM, an international conference series that help k12 educators create dynamic STEM curriculum, and currently serves on their advisory board; he was the lead TA for EGR 201: Foundations of Entrepreneurship, where he held office hours and graded students work. Academically, Austin has been recognized by Princeton for his unique research on user rights and the potential addiction that new tech poses, such as loot boxes in video games.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/austinmejia/
Bevin Benson
Tech x Technology Policy x Sustainability
Bevin Benson is a rising senior at Princeton University (’21) studying computer science. She is currently a software engineering intern at Anduril, a startup building cutting-edge defense technologies for America and its allies, backed by Founders Fund, a16z, 8VC, and more. Bevin is passionate about building products and communities that can revolutionize the way people do work and experience life. Previously, she has worked at Facebook on the Integrity team helping to keep harmful content off the platform and spent a summer building Venture, an app to empower travelers to discover and support small businesses. At Princeton, she is the Director of New York TigerTrek, an organization that brings 20 of Princeton’s most entrepreneurial students to NYC over spring break to meet with founders, VCs, and other leaders in tech. Bevin aspires to use her technical experience alongside her warm personality, organizational strength, and go-getter spirit to expand access to knowledge and resources in underserved communities.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bevinbenson/
Blake Stoner
Tech x Social Justice x Journalism
Blake Stoner received his MS in Strategic Communication from Columbia University and his BA in Economics from Morehouse College. He is a social entrepreneur and the founder of Vngle, a decentralized grassroots news network bringing “various angles” of local reality coverage to news deserts. He is also on the board of the Columbia Venture Community, the largest community within Columbia’s innovation ecosystem, serving as a co-lead for Global Programs. Blake’s background is rooted in community organizing and tech startups. He’s been apart of 8+ grassroots campaigns, most notably serving as a Communication Director for a Mayoral campaign and being on-the-ground in Ferguson, Missouri registering people to vote with the NAACP. He has also served on 5+ startup teams. While in school, he was an Oprah Winfrey International Leadership Fellow, a Design Fellow at the Columbia Design Studio, and a SIEML Business School Fellow at UC San Diego & UC Davis. Most recently Stoner has taken part in Mozilla’s Fix-The-Internet Incubator and the Envision Accelerator.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/blakestoner/
Christina Tuttle
Tech x Global Affairs x Education
Christina Tuttle is a rising junior at Yale studying computer science and global affairs. This summer, she is at the University of Chicago SAND lab, researching machine learning techniques to reduce voice bias. She is also working with the Sierra Leone Ministry of Education on their “One Tablet per School” program, which aims to provide a tablet for data collection and research to each school in the country. Christina is a fellow at Bluebonnet Data, a national nonprofit that provides data analysis to down ballot Democratic campaigns. She is currently partnered with a Colorado State Senate campaign, analyzing political and demographic data to inform voter targeting strategy. As president of SheCode, she leads a team of Yale women in computer science to teach free programming classes to girls in New Haven. Christina is an advocate for centering technical decisions on the stories of people it may affect. Outside of technology, Christina also has interests in journalism. As an associate print editor for The Politic, Yale’s political magazine, she works with staff writers to draft and research articles on national and international politics. She spent last summer on a journalism program in Singapore and Cambodia to research the influence of Chinese investment in Southeast Asia. She also received the Richard U. Light Fellowship for intensive Chinese language study and the President’s Volunteer Service Award.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/christina-tuttle/
David Awad
Tech x FinTech x Social Justice
David Awad is a Georgia Tech alum with a master’s degree in computer science and a Rutgers alum with a double major in computer science and physics. He has been primarily a software engineer but has branched out quite a bit. He is currently a Developer Evangelist at R3 (https://r3.com), writing and advocating for Corda for the blockchain developer community, and sourcing deals for Principium Ventures as an associate finding. He has worked on building community and enabling people to aspire to something greater with CSF (iconectiv), Tumblr, Major League Hacking, Codecademy, and Georgia Tech. He started a nonprofit organization with the goal of delivering as many meals as possible to the Central Jersey homeless population. They have managed large programs for food donation and distribution and have built out a large network of small businesses and contributors that help us run larger community events and initiatives such as the Mobile Assistance Unit they will be deploying this coming Spring (More information on that here: https://arm.gives/). The ultimate goal is to build a “shower bus” with fully functioning showers and bathrooms and drive this around the municipalities in Central New Jersey and give everyone access to hygiene. He also serves on the board of another non-profit, TISLA, The Institute of Student Loan Advisors. He has been working with Ideas beyond Borders to translate books and create some of the first audiobooks for the middle east.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidaawad/
Devina Singh
Tech x Social Justice
Devina Singh graduated in 2019 from Princeton University where she majored in Computer Science. She currently works as a software engineer at Microsoft on their Azure Machine Learning Team where she is deeply passionate about bridging the communication gap between research scientists, engineers and PMs to produce high quality ML software. After spending a summer performing data analysis for a domestic violence shelter in DC, she became extremely interested the intersection of social impact and technology — the result of which is “LEAT” — a police accountability mobile app she is currently developing with her colleagues at Microsoft. As a former Pre-med student, Devina is also invested in the convergence of tech and healthcare and at Princeton, her senior thesis explored computational approaches to diagnosing Glioblastoma brain cancer.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/devina-singh-999445126/
Ibby Syed
Tech x Education x Big Data
Ibby Syed graduated in 2019 from Harvard University with a degree in Statistics — he is currently a Data Scientist Lead for Peloton Interactive, starting a team focusing on retention and engagement for their connected fitness products. Prior to Peloton, Ibby was an NLP-focused Data Scientist for Drift, focusing on language models and product integration. He helped found Jinn in 2017, a startup focused on providing remote R&D teams for businesses, and led a team of 9 in-house employees and 45 contract designers, engineers, and product managers. He has also interned at Instagram as an APMM and at LINE/Venture Republic in Tokyo as a product manager. Ibby likes tinkering with data-focused product ideas in his spare time — a latest obsession is building a product to better find and build lookalike audiences.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ibby/
Jane Ananya Jain
Tech x Mental Health x Climate Change
Jane Jain (Ananya) is the CEO of FullCircle LLC, a technology startup for mental health in Atlanta (teamfullcircle.org). She is a final year materials engineering student at Georgia Tech as part of the GC scholars program(top 2% of all students). Jane will complete her thesis in quantum and nano tech at ETH Zurich, Switzerland and at the Wyss, Harvard as a Swiss government funded scholar. Under her leadership, FullCircle gained funding and international acclaim in the Global Biomimicry Design Challenge. The Royal family in the UK have bestowed the “Diana Award” upon her for her work at FullCircle. Her first fertilizer patent was awarded by the President of India, Dr. Kalam. At Georgia Tech, Jane has been the recipient of the “Genius award”, The President’s award for Research, and the Highest Institute award for Entrepreneurship- “The Ferst”. Jane is a staunch advocate for mental health, and has been featured in the BBC and other media in South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, and other countries. In her free time, she can be spotted playing guitar under shady trees, and chasing squirrels on campus.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ananya-jain-gatech-edu/
Kaylee George
Tech x Sustainability x Education
Kaylee George is an incoming sophomore undergraduate student at Stanford University studying Symbolic Systems, an interdisciplinary major combining Computer Science, Psychology, Linguistics, and Philosophy. She is currently a Product Manager intern at Dragonfruit.ai, a video storage and analytics startup. Kaylee is interested in how we can make technology more equitable to spark positive change, and is especially passionate about education and sustainability. She works as a computer science instructor for multiple companies and loves working with kids. Kaylee also volunteers as a college application mentor and tech counselor/teacher to low-income students, and would love to have a further impact in the equitable education space in the future. She also is currently helping with a sustainable bottled water startup, where she is working on product and frontend development. Kaylee is a Data Science Fellow at Blue Bonnet (works with a democratic campaign) and is a fellow at Women Rewriting the Code, where she is able to further her passion for inclusivity/diversity in technology. At Stanford, Kaylee is co-executive of the Intern Program on Stanford Women in Computer Science executive board, is the head of farm projects on the Stanford ROOTS leadership team (sustainable agriculture club), and is a sustainability intern at Stanford Residential & Dining Enterprises. Previously, she has done research at Stanford University studying how team-building activities influence creativity in brainstorming processes within companies. Kaylee has also been a founder in a student incubator, where she led students nationwide to develop Jobscopia — a resource for students to learn more about jobs — and hopes to become more involved in entrepreneurship in the future.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kayleegeorge8/
Kevin Sadhu
Tech x Education x Big Data
My name is Kevin Sadhu and I recently graduated from Harvard University, with a degree in computer science and economics, and a citation in spanish. I am originally from Queens, New York and I am the first in my family to attend college. I’ve always been passionate about technology, but I never truly had the means to learn or engage with it, until I attended Harvard. At Harvard I’ve learned about the impact technology could have on many of the societal problems we currently experience. This insight led me to join HackHarvard, Developers 4 Development and Harvards Entrepreneurship forum, organizations focused on bringing others together to solve major world problems. I’ve also learned about the importance of traveling the world and experiencing other cultures and perspectives when trying to tackle systemic problems that affect large populations. I’ve managed to visit over 10 countries in the last 4 years through Harvard programs. These collective experiences have inspired me to launch my own startups to, at first impact my local community, and then to impact the rest of the world. As a recent Harvard graduate, I will be joining Goldman Sachs to build and I will be working part-time on a startup which aims to provide quantitative consulting to local governments and municipalities that don’t necessarily have the resources to conduct their own analyses. I hope to grow the startup in the coming years to the point where I can diversify its functions and tackle issues that I deeply care about, such as educational inequities, economic mobility, international development and more.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-sadhu-3b4823126/
Kristen Fang
Tech x Education x Finance
Kristen is an Associate Technical Product Manager at Cengage and independent college counselor with her small business College Lead. She has a Bachelor’s degree from Harvard Harvard University in Computational Neuroscience. Her interests range from education, to social impact, to entrepreneurship.Previously, she co-founded StrattyX, a Y Combinator Winter 2020 fintech startup, where she led a $450k pre-seed round. She has also interned at Lazard’s Investment Banking Healthcare M&A group, where she supported the firm in advising Gilead on a $5.1+ billion research and development partnership with Galapagos. She received a return offer for Lazard’s headquarters in New York. Additionally, she is a 2013 alumnus of the National Youth Orchestra of the USA and boasts extensive research experience from her work at the Uchida Lab at Harvard and the Yamamoto Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristen-fang/
Krystal Maughan
Tech x Education x Privacy
Krystal is a current Computer Science PhD student at the University of Vermont, where she is researching Differential Privacy, Machine Learning and Provable Fairness. She is motivated by the need to provide access and opportunity for marginalized communities. Before she started her PhD, she pursued an Undergraduate degree in Film, Photography, Visual Arts, and a double minor in Art History and Theatre Arts at Ithaca College, which awarded her the Best of Major award for her senior year and recognized her as a Leader at her school via their yearly Women in Leadership retreat to the National Women’s Hall of Fame. During her time at Ithaca College, she also volunteered at the Sulayman Junkung General Hospital in Bwiam, the Gambia, through a Disney sponsored program and volunteered to review resumes for students at the school’s career centre, while working three part-time jobs. She has worked in New York Theatre, Hollywood and Silicon Valley in startups and large companies, and has also volunteered to serve on panels for underserved communities, as her path involved working full-time and attending night school and being a part of those very communities. She has spoken at schools in her home country of Trinidad and Tobago, on podcasts, and in groups focused on helping underpaid and unemployed persons looking to make a career change and social impact in tech. She believes that those groups are especially important in influencing the future of technology by bringing their unique perspectives and empathy. She is passionate about change and leadership, having been selected as an NCWIT Change Scholar and a Code2040 Fellow for 2020, and loves making things with interdisciplinary groups.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/krystal-maughan-3563a215/
Nuzhat Minhaz
Tech x Social Justice x CyberCrime
Nuzhat Minhaz is an undergraduate student at Rochester Institute of Technology, from Bangladesh, with a major in Computing & Information Technologies, concentrations in Computing Security and Databases, and a minor in Criminal Justice. She’s the Founder & CEO of Bangladesh’s first non-govt cybercrime countermeasure services organization, PrivaC, which consists of a trained team of responders who help victims of cybercrimes by connecting them to verified professional services such as legal, technical, and medical. She also organized the first virtual hackathon in Bangladesh, to connect women in STEAM to employment opportunities during the COVID19 pandemic; after her own experience of being connected to industry professionals at hackathons in the U.S. where she won JP Morgan’s Best Hack for Social Good, Datto’s Data Mining for Community Impact, and Constellation Brands’ Best Omni-Channel User Experience. She’s currently on IT/Software Dev co-op at Wegmans for their customer-facing web team. She works in multiple positions ranging from Webmaster to Resident Advisor, for RIT’s Global Union, Division of Student Affairs, and Center for Residence Life, to promote inclusion and diversity through global citizenship and wellness. On the side, Nuzhat is a self-taught artist who completed 4 art exhibitions in Dhaka, before heading for her undergraduate degree in New York, where she combines her artistic pursuits in technology via visual factors of user experience design in front-end systems. Nuzhat has made it her cause to utilize technology with an understanding of accessibility as well as the legal implications of applying such innovations in developing countries, to help communities that are easy targets of social injustice and victimization.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nuzhatminhaz/
Truman Sacks
Tech x Social Justice
Truman Sacks currently studies Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the Honors Program at Yeshiva University (June 2023). He serves as Founder and CEO at BotBroker, the first and only automated marketplace for sneaker bots. Since launching last year, he’s successfully completed 21,000 secure sales, totaling over 15 million dollars in gross transactional volume. In response to the tragic death of George Floyd, Truman raised over $100,000 in under 48 hours for the BLM movement through BotBroker. Truman is also Co-Founder and CEO at Scout, an AI powered inventory tracker for resellers. Within 1 hour of launch, Scout had over 1,200 subscribers and $17,500 in monthly recurring revenue. Truman is also the Co-Founder at Tranton, a startup incubator for teens with a portfolio of eight companies located throughout the USA that specializes in online SaaS platforms and nets $75,000 in MRR. Truman manages all the CEOs and provides product expertise to grow the business.
