Rohan Kalia: Indian-American teen wins President’s Scholarship for glaucoma detection device
Compiled by: Team GI Youth
(August 25, 2023) It was after one of Rohan Kalia’s family members was diagnosed with glaucoma that the Indian-American teenager began researching an affordable technology that could be used for early detection. A sophomore at Wheeler High School in Marietta, the 17-year-old found that glaucoma ranks as the second most prominent cause of irreversible blindness on a global scale. The startling fact prompted him to look for an affordable solution in the form of a device that can accurately diagnose the condition. This gave birth to EyePal, a portable device that can detect glaucoma with 95 percent accuracy. The invention won the teenager the 2023 IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) President’s Scholarship, which comes with a prize of $10,000.
Glaucoma is an eye disease involving the degradation of the optic nerve that carries visual information, leading to a gradual loss of vision. If not detected early, it can lead to some degree of permanent blindness. The condition is detected from images taken of the retinal fundus (the back surface of the eye’s interior) during a standard examination by an opthalmologist. During his research, Rohan found that a person’s socioeconomic condition impacts the diagnosis of glaucoma. “I learned that there’s a huge disparity in eye care treatment across the world,” Rohan said, adding, “Diagnosis and prevention of glaucoma is not accessible.”
Rohan Kalia
Moreover, he discovered that people in rural areas are worst affected as many individuals face difficulty in accessing glaucoma testing due to a shortage of eye doctors and testing centers, coupled with the expensive equipment, absence of health insurance, and high-test costs. Understanding the severity of the condition, Rohan knew he had to find a solution. Explaining the working of EyePal, he said, “The EyePal uses a quality camera, a Raspberry Pi minicomputer, machine-learning technology, and a mobile app. The camera takes photos of the fundus and sends them to a mobile device that can be examined by a specialist. EyePal showed 95 percent accuracy when tested on sets of fundus images.”
Apart from its accuracy, the device’s portability is yet another plus point as it can be employed in rural medical centres and health clinics as opposed to the standalone specialised equipment that can be used only in a doctor’s office or vision testing center. “The device costs less than $100,” Rohan said, adding, “It’s 50 times cheaper than the average price of ophthalmology equipment, in addition to being highly portable. What I did was create this new ensemble-based system of diagnosis.”
The invention won him the President’s Scholarship, which refers to as a “nice surprise.” Moreover, EyePal was presented at the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) in May in Dallas, Texas.
The inventor, who loves creating solutions and plans to work in the field of research, advices future engineers to keep going despite the obstacles. “In an engineering project, you’re going to face times you want to give up, but keep persevering. Pick a project topic that you really like,” the Global Indian says, adding, “When you’re really interested in the topic, it will give you the motivation to keep pushing through.”
(November 16, 2023) In January 2022, Goldcast, a Bay Area B2B events platform received $28 million in funding. It was a critical moment for co-founders Kishore Kothandaraman, Aashish Srinivas and Palash Soni, after four years of building the company in a country where they had each arrived as students. Now, the company hopes to hit the $100 million mark in the next four years. Victory was hard-won for Kishore Kothandaraman, the small-town boy from Neyveli, an industrial town in Tamil Nadu's Cuddalore district. When he made it to Harvard Business School, he thought he could finally tell his parents that they no longer needed to worry about him. One year later, however, he quit his Ivy League Education, along with his classmate Palash Soni, to found his own company instead, rising above the pressure from a society that continues to value education above all else. [caption id="attachment_34139" align="aligncenter" width="538"] Kishore Kothandaraman[/caption] "I grew up in Neyveli, dad is a civil engineer and mum is a teacher," the Global Indian said in an interview. "Everything was provided to me but nothing in abundance. What I wanted, I had to earn. That's the first thing my parents taught me. And the other
in Neyveli, dad is a civil engineer and mum is a teacher," the Global Indian said in an interview. "Everything was provided to me but nothing in abundance. What I wanted, I had to earn. That's the first thing my parents taught me. And the other - what you earn, you give back to society in a meaningful way." He grew up in a middle-class household learning the value of money while not really wanting for anything.
Growing up with challenges
Kishore's life changed when he was 13 years old, and his father was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer. "It was not clear if he would make it through or not," Kishore recalls. His father went on to have a series of health concerns after that, including a heart attack a couple of years after his diagnosis. "I was a teen, getting through school and it was hard to see him go through it. But it taught me that if he could overcome such immense struggles in life, I can definitely figure out the smaller obstacles that came my way." Determined to make something of himself, to make them proud and to ensure that they were taken care of, Kishore set his sights on a good school, and a good university. He graduated as an engineer and worked with Blackbuck, a trucking logistics unicorn in India. "I got to see how a small group of ambitious misfits can build something from scratch and win against incumbents." And that, Kishore states, is exactly what he's hoping to do with B2B events.
The Ivy League journey
In engineering college, he noticed that his seniors were applying for MBAs at brand name business schools and going on to do very well for themselves. Kishore decided to do the same and entered the big league when he was accepted at Harvard Business School. However, Kishore was already dreaming of running a big company of his own and entered Harvard hoping it would put him on the path to his dreams. "When I came to Harvard Business School I was constantly looking for ideas and potential business partners," Kishore said. It's not an approach that Indians in Ivy League schools usually have - risking it all to start a company. Luckily for him, he found not just ideas at Harvard but his future business partner, Palash Soni.
One year in, Kishore and Palash both dropped out of school. They founded Goldcast in 2020, just before Covid hit the world. They decided on a SaaS company, a digital events platform for B2B marketers to host events with prospective customers, from webinars to larger user conferences and hybrid events. "The objective is twofold," Kishore explains. "Marketers want a great experience and second, since you're hosting an event, can you collect data on that platform for sales and marketing teams to use post the event."
They knew very little about starting or running a business at the time. What's more, they were both in the US on student visas and couldn't work in that. It was one of the many challenges they faced, as strangers in a foreign ecosystem that seemed to have no place for them. They had savings but those were in Indian rupees and didn't translate to much. What's more, the pandemic brought the world into lockdown and messed up the playing field for immigrant founders like Kishore and Soni. But they knew immediately that the pandemic held a big opportunity. This was their chance to become frontrunners in the digital and hybrid event space. "We were excited because we didn't know what we were getting into," Kishore smiles.
Even the first step was fraught with challenges - funding. "It was a big deal and very tough. We didn't know how to raise funds," Kishore admits. Palash, meanwhile, had a wife and a baby to support and the immigration landscape wasn't looking favourable. Kishore wanted to ensure his parents had everything they needed. Both the young entrepreneurs refused to give up, however. They also didn't know whom to ask for funding. "Investors like to get calls from people they know, or whom they are introduced to personally," Kishore says.
Fighting for a dream
There was only one thing to do - stick with it. The co-founders were frustrated when their efforts didn't lead anywhere but "we believe in the idea so much that we finally managed to get a couple of million in the early funding round." The hardest part, they say, was roping in the first 10-15 customers. Finally, they received $2 million in early funding. "We had some competitors, though and by the time we raised $2 million they had raised $500 million," Kishore says. "How can you compete with that? Putting your heart and soul into it and convincing people to try the product out becomes crucial."
One of their first paying customers was Harvard University itself. The university encouraged entrepreneurship among its students and alumni and paid them $20,000 to host an event for the freshmen. Thirty minutes in and the platform crashed. "It was terrible PR for us," Kishore recalls. "That's how we were being remembered. Goldcast? Aren't they the company that organised that event? Yeah, that's the same one."
The road less taken
Trial and error was the only way to learn, though. "It's a very lonely journey. Only a few people can understand what that really means. Only founders know. It's very hard to express that to your family, to your peers or your employees. I remember reading once, most businesses fail because founders get tired." It is a tiring process, Kishore soon learned, when most people say no to you. As a founder he had to put pressure on his employees too. "You have to put up a good fight because it's a war. You and your co-founders have to be very prepared for it."
They had to push themselves and the product in the market, to get in people's faces and share their story and message. "People are biased towards those they are comfortable with, and being a non-native speaker in a foreign country makes it even more challenging." Watching his competitors receive hundreds of millions in funding, and learning to live with the decision to quit an Ivy League school and a very coveted degree for a startup - Goldcast's founders had many 'why bother' moments.
Bright future
They persisted, though and they're glad they did. "Now, people are realising that this is someone we want to partner with." Goldcast has a solid team of people all working to build the company, and make sure that it becomes a single platform that marketers can use for all events. "Reaching $100 million in revenue is a big milestone for SaaS companies and we want to achieve it in four years," Kishore says, adding, "I want to go to NASDAQ and ring that bell.
(July 3, 2024) For someone keen to become a scientist, Indian American Prathik Naidu jumped on the bandwagon at an early age when at age 17, he won $70,000 in the Regeneron Science Talent Search for developing DNALoopR. "What I essentially did was built an easy-to-use software that can analyse the cancer DNA. Using the software, I was able to analyse some new aspects of the cancer genome," he said. With cancer being the second leading cause of death in the world, the Standford University graduate was keen to find help a way to understand the structure of the genes behind cancer. So much so that he was one of the three US student representatives to present the research in Stockholm for the Nobel Prize Awards ceremony in 2017. A scientist in the making Growing up in Fairfax, Naidu was always intrigued by the idea of being a scientist. He often envisioned himself wearing a lab jacket, and such was his passion that he performed his first experiment using a chemistry kit that was gifted to him on his birthday. The venue was his parents' kitchen, and the objects were his kit, a lab coat, and miniature goggles. This was
, a lab coat, and miniature goggles. This was enough to keep the fire of becoming a scientist alive in him.
[caption id="attachment_23956" align="aligncenter" width="460"] Prathik Naidu is an Indian-American innovator[/caption]
The dream translated into a passion when he applied for internships at Johns Hopkins University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology while attending Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County. During one such summer spent at Johns Hopkins University, he discovered computational biology - a field wherein scientists make predictions on computers using biological data. The revelation broke his myths around science, and he knew he had found his calling.
"I always envisioned a scientist to be someone who is in a lab coat and pouring chemicals wearing goggles. But what I didn't realise was that science also comes in the form of working at a computer and analysing data and making predictions and writing software. That transitionally helped me understand what science is. It's not just about mixing chemicals, it's really about answering tough questions," the young Global Indian said in an interview.
[caption id="attachment_23957" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Prathik Naidu at the Regeneron Science Talent Search[/caption]
He knew computation biology was his way of answering those questions. "Computational biology is using computer science techniques to solve biological problems. This was something I was trying to pick up when I was in high school as genetics started to get popular. And I was reading more about it in the news and classes, that's when I got interested in the field," added Prathik Naidu.
Curiosity led to innovation
This interest made him dive deep into the subject, and one such class on biology made him interested in the fundamental aspects of how genes are activated or deactivated, which impacts the progression of cancer. "Even after decades of research on the genetics behind cancer, there's still a lot more work to be done in this area and I wanted to see if I can help answer some interesting questions in the field," he explained.
This curiosity led him to explore more on the subject during a summer internship at MIT wherein he developed DNALoopR, a fast and easy-to-use tool, that examines the genes of cancer cells in a three-dimensional way and helps discover new biological patterns. "The software can help scientists find new ways of reactivating genes that could help stop the growth of cancer cells and also lead to new types of genetic-based treatments that are more targeted than conventional methods," he added.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQyLPgO6Aqs
For months, he focused incessantly on learning math, algorithms, and statistics that were useful in creating the software. This project helped him take home $70,000 in the Regeneron Science Talent Search, also known as Junior Nobel Prize, where he secured seventh place. Later, this passion for computational biology took him to an international conference in Dublin, making him the only high school student to present a research paper. He even established a computational biology conference to get more high school children interested in the real-world applications of computer science. "If I learn something cool, then someone else should know it, too," he added.
The Indian American, who has his roots in Chitoor, now works as the product lead at Rutter. When not busy with research and work, the 22-year-old loves playing basketball and hiking.
Prathik's creation of easy-to-use software for analysing cancer DNA is a big step forward in cancer research. By making it simple for researchers and doctors to study the genetic details of cancer, his software helps improve the understanding and treatment of the disease. Naidu's work shows how innovative thinking can make a real difference in health care, giving hope for better, more personalised treatments for cancer patients everywhere.
(October 1, 2024) "Find out what you care about and then see what questions you can ask about it." Rhodes scholar Swathi Srinivasan is a great believer in pursuing the things one is truly passionate about - that's why she's able to put so much on her plate. She had a patent by the time she finished high school, did a double major at Harvard University and was selected as a Rhodes Scholar 2021. Swathi also has a slew of recognition to her credit - she is a 2016 Melvyn Scholar, a Science Day alumna and an AJAS scholar too. Ever since she began her research work in high school, Swathi has gone on to work for UNAIDS in Geneva to understand the work being done to address HIV at an international level. She is part of the policy programme at the Harvard Kennedy School and has travelled the world for research on global healthcare for HIV/ AIDS, the opioid crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic and has also worked with the government of Massachusetts. Swathi was raised in an exceptionally well-educated and accomplished household. Her mother, Rekha, arrived in the US over two decades ago, after her wedding to Swathi's
wedding to Swathi's dad. She earned a PhD in the US and began teaching organic chemistry. Rekha is also a Fulbright scholar - in 2019 and 2020, she came to India and Nepal to offer STEM workshops across the two countries. Swathi's dad, a biomedical engineer, is credited with creating an improved incubator, among other paediatric devices.
It's the sort of atmosphere, one imagines, that would have given the young Swathi a leg-up like no other. The accomplished Rhodes scholar, however, has faced more than her fair share of challenges. In late 2019, she was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a fairly aggressive cancer that attacks the lymph nodes and immune system. "I would ride my bike to chemotherapy everyday," she says, recalling her daily six-mile trip to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. She would ride in sunshine, rain and snow, despite having lost her hair. She managed all this without missing a single class.
Instead of lamenting her lot in life, Swathi used even this time to ponder the struggles of global healthcare, especially among the marginalised. "I was thinking of the side effects of chemotherapy, which is a really big issue too and matter differently to different people. I'm in school, I can take a day off when I feel nauseous but a single parent can't do that, can they? They have to show up at work no matter what." She could ride her bike to the hospital but wondered "how other people do it, if they live further away from the hospital and don't have a car. I was back to the question of inequality and this time around, I was a lot more connected to it." It inspired her to go back to the lab, to work on a form of chemotherapy that reduces side effects.
A low-cost incubator
Growing up, Swathi was always encouraged to pursue her interests, which were quite varied. When she wanted to be a fashion designer, her mom bought her a sewing machine. When she wanted to make jewellery, her mother helped her buy gemstones online. If she wanted to conduct an experiment, her mother would bring home the ingredients she needed. As for Swathi, she gives full credit to her parents and her mentors and its eager, she says, "to pay it forward." Her mother would take her to the lab when she was still a toddler and she had observed her father working. And when she still in high school, she had devised her own incubator.
"I burnt my hand on a resistor in the Physics lab one day," Swathi said. "And I was like, this device is pretty cool. So I created a grid of resistors and made a heating pad." She was inspired by her father's work but the incubators he created were very expensive, Swathi wanted accessibility. She discovered the MIT Think initiative for high school students and applied, even though she wasn't affiliated with a lab at the time. "I had no mentors or a lab to support me but I needed the money and said so. They said 'sure'," she recalls. "They brought me to MIT and I met all these crazy scientists doing amazing work. I even met a scientist I had cited in my bibliography." Her prototype involves a secondary heating mechanism embedded into a gel-based incubator, which keeps the gel hot for more than 30 hours.
Harvard calling
Unsurprisingly, Swathi graduated from high school and went to Harvard University with stars in her eyes, intent on becoming a neurosurgeon, with a special interest in the prevalence and treatment of Alzheimer's Disease. As she sat in class, she wondered - say there was a breakthrough in a cure. Would everyone with the disease have access to treatment? The answer was simple: no. Swathi found herself more intrigued by this question than the one she had intended to ask in the laboratory. She switched her major to public health, studying a double major in Economics, Sociology, Philosophy and History.
Here, Swathi's focus remained on studying public health epidemics and her thesis was on the impact of inequality on HIV/AIDS and the Covid-19 pandemic. She also did a minor in chemistry, which she uses to formulate her chemotherapy research. She was in an atmosphere where her talent and academic rigour were matched by her peers. "Some of my peers were featured in Forbes 30 Under 30," Swathi remarked. "They have published multiple papers, were ballet dancers in national companies... this naturally gets in your head and requires some adjusting."
The Rhodes scholarship
A highly-rigorous selection process precedes the Rhodes scholarship. For Swathi, it involved eight letters of recommendation and a letter of endorsement from her university, which put her against 125 applicants. Harvard selected 45 and she was among them, going on to become one of the 32 scholars selected from the United States. Every year, 100 students are selected to join the world's academic elite at Oxford Universiy, as the Rhodes Scholars for the year. In her personal essay, she talked about her own life and her roots, and how she saw poverty in India. "I actually woke up one morning and it showed up on my Facebook feed on US News, Yahoo and AP," she said in an interview.
Now at Oxford University, the Global Indian's purpose has not changed, she lives by the same lessons she earned from hermother. "We have gotten to where we are because so many people have lifted us up," she said. "Therefore, it's our job to lift up others."
(March 17, 2024) In the scenic mountains of Himachal Pradesh is a river valley - Kangra - home to warm Himachali people who cherish their language and customs. The beautiful language extends its influence to Northern Punjab - where Delhi teen Navvye Anand has his familial roots. Though his family settled in Delhi, his connection to his culture and heritage remains strong through the Kangri language. Upon discovering that Kangri language was among UNESCO's list of 10 endangered languages, he felt called to take action. "I started to look for ways to revitalise the language, and focused primarily on leveraging the oral medium. Recognising the dearth of written literature in Kangri, I turned to ASR (Automated Speech Recognition) - which converts human speech into written text," he tells Global Indian. [caption id="attachment_36635" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Navvye Anand[/caption] Traditionally, linguistics would spend hours engaging with local people to manually transcribe oral traditions, often encountering bottlenecks due to the enormous amount of time and effort required, along with scope for human error. "ASR can be used to streamline the transcription process. Recent advancements in AI made it possible to use ASR at a much higher level than before," adds Navvye, whose project, Cross-Lingual
ttlenecks due to the enormous amount of time and effort required, along with scope for human error. "ASR can be used to streamline the transcription process. Recent advancements in AI made it possible to use ASR at a much higher level than before," adds Navvye, whose project, Cross-Lingual Automatic Speech Recognition for Endangered Languages won him The Spirit of Ramanujan Grant, worth $4800. Each year, the University of Virginia and the Templeton World Charity Organization jointly award a grant to high school students who demonstrate exceptional talent in mathematics and science.
With the grant, Navvye attended the Wolfram High School Summer Program in the US. "I learnt from Dr Steven Wolfram, who is a pioneering computer scientist and a linguist, and I had the opportunity to refine my linguistic abilities and learn more about linguistics," says the teen, who also attended Euler Circle Program on number theory. "I used the grant to support my education."
Love for words and languages
Growing up with a grandfather who was a polyglot fluent in seven languages, Navvye was attracted to words and languages like a moth to flame. "My love for languages is inherited, it played a crucial role in my upbringing," says the teen, adding, "We bonded over our common love for language, and every time I found a new Pandora's box in an unknown language, I'd walk up to him and discuss. I loved talking about languages with him. We'd often fixate upon certain peculiarities of a language - such as resemblance between shakkar (jaggery) - an Urdu word and sugar in English. My love for linguistics was innately embedded in me."
After his grandfather passed away in 2022, Navvye decided to pay him homage by working towards revitalising a dialect of his native language. Moreover, his visit to the Kangra Valley region in 2018 made him fall in love with the warmth of the people. "They always had some folklore or a story to tell and were proud of their culture and heritage. I thought it was paradoxical that Kangri was an endangered language because these people love their culture and heritage. I thought if I could unite their love with advancements in AI, then that would be a great project to start," he reveals.
Using AI to preserve Kangri
This led him to read papers from past researchers who had used ASR for other languages. One particularly intriguing study was by Emily Prud'hommeaux, an assistant professor at Boston College, who attempted to revitalise Seneca - an endangered language in the US. "Her research papers helped me understand the methodology and how researchers use ASR." Later, he reached out to Dr Shweta Chauhan, a researcher at the National Institute of Technology Hamirpur, who had curated a text corpus for the Kangri language. "She invited me to intern at her lab, and ever since she has been an invaluable mentor."
The innovation in ASR allows linguists to record conversations in their natural environment and to capture their essence without manually digitising any oral medium. Explaining the process, Navvye elaborates that a regular mic can be fed into the ASR model which helps give an accurate transcription. The audio is being converted into text via ASR. "Currently, the accuracy stands at 85 percent, and over time, my aim is to gather additional data and enhance the system to achieve a target accuracy of 95 percent." The project operates on two fronts - one, where Navvye personally collects data by recording conversations using ASR, and second, where he connects with local translators who send audio transcriptions to him using ASR. "This allows me to build a robust audio repertoire. Additionally, I'm partnering with the Indian government through their Bhashini program, leveraging their resources to collect more Kangri data. I'm looking forward to expanding the audio repertoire as it will provide vast dataset to further fine-tune the model with improved accuracy."
When Navvye started he was only 15, but his passion to translate his dream into reality kept him going along with the support of his parents and the people of Kangra. However, along the way he encountered some technical hiccups in his journey, primarily related to data collection, cleaning, model selection and fine-tuning. "After experimenting with other models, I settled for Open AI's Whisper, which is the state-of-the-art speech recognition model. It is difficult to bring a simple idea to fruition but when the cause is noble, people will support you," he adds.
In the last two years, Navvye's work has empowered various translators by connecting them to MNCs operating in the Kangri domain. "I've helped a couple of translators gather the requisite information to contact Lenovo, created their LinkedIn profile, and filled out technical documents for them," says Navvye, who is also creating awareness about the importance of the Kangri language among school children. Ask him the potential reason behind Kangri being an endangered language, he promptly replies, "More people are now speaking Hindi as compared to Kangri as they are dissuaded from speaking their native dialect due to globalisation. It's not considered cool enough - something we need to counter," says the teen.
Proud to be preserving his ancestor's fading language, Navvye says the fruit of labour has been immense but the job isn't finished yet. "There is a long way to go but I'm happy with the way it's been going. I'm honoured to join the efforts to the preservation of my language which is a rich amalgamation of history and discourse," adds Navvye. As he plans to join the California Institute of Technology this fall, he wants to stay committed to the project, confident in his ability to utilise the power of technology to further work towards the project remotely. "I will have a proper support system to enhance my knowledge. I already have a new idea about classifying dialects using embeddings which can help clusters different dialects and identify them," reveals Navvye, adding that it can be used as a model for other languages.
Imparting advice to fellow teenagers, Navvye asks them to stop being afraid of taking the leap of faith. "Being afraid of failure is a sign of failure itself," he says, adding, "Don't worry if it will work out or not, you will find your way. In case, it doesn't work out, you will learn something new in the process. Maybe you can tweak it so that it works better in the future."
(May 11, 2024) Rarely does a budding actor strike gold with their inaugural venture, yet Ashley Ganger defied the odds. Making her debut on Netflix's acclaimed drama Grand Army, the 23-year-old Indian-Canadian actress captivated audiences since its October premiere. Portraying Meera Pakam, a feminist artist/playwright addressing topics such as sexuality and consent, Ganger shines amidst the backdrop of a Brooklyn high school. "I am quite grateful that I got this part, and it was a great experience," shared the actress, in a recent interview, "Actually, Grand Army was my second big audition with an actual character. Before this, I was going to commercial auditions. As soon as I read the character description for Meera I wanted it badly. I worked on the scene with my acting coach and went to the audition. In my head, I thought, “How often is it that someone books the first huge thing that comes their way, haha yeah right no way!” Fast forward to two callbacks later here we are. Funny enough Sydney Meyer, who plays Anna Delaney, was the reader in my second callback and then I reconnected with her on set, so that was fun." Donning many hats Her parents were born
r way, haha yeah right no way!” Fast forward to two callbacks later here we are. Funny enough Sydney Meyer, who plays Anna Delaney, was the reader in my second callback and then I reconnected with her on set, so that was fun."
Donning many hats
Her parents were born in Punjab, India, and moved to Canada in the early 80s in search of better career opportunities. Sharing about her family, the actress said, "Ganger is my dad’s last name, and my family is from India. Both of my parents were born in India and the majority of my extended family is split between England and India. Ganger is a very uncommon Indian last name so sometimes it throws people off; I remember Googling it one time and seeing that it comes from Ireland, no idea about the connection but my family is from India. As far as my first name, my mom wanted to name me just Ash after Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai… so they took the shorter, more Canadian version of that, I guess."
Growing up, Ashley loved dancing to Bollywood songs and dressing up whenever she could. But her one true love was swimming. While she thought that she would pursue a career in swimming, after six years of winning numerous medals the youngster shifted her focus to acting. "I think being an athlete, you must push yourself to always work harder because you have this need to constantly evolve and improve. Once I fell in love with acting, I felt that way again. I am constantly pushing myself and trying to find ways to work on my craft. I think it also taught me resilience; in this industry, you must realise quickly that there are going to be a lot of challenges to overcome. When you’re an athlete and train eight times a week in addition to a full course load in school you have to learn to keep pushing and keep your head up all the time," said the actress.
Interestingly, when she was younger, Ashley's mother decided to send her to summer theater camp to help her overcome her shyness. "I was super shy and speaking to new people was extremely nerve-racking," shared the actress, "Going to the camp pushed me out of my comfort zone. Imagine facing one of your biggest fears head-on. One of two things can happen, either you don’t respond well to it and find yourself not participating and sitting in the corner or you can try your best and see what happens. I’m glad I chose the second option. Once I broke the barrier and found my footing loved performing."
Behind the scenes
After finishing school, the actress acted in several stage shows and eventually enrolled with an acting coach. "Her name is Christina Collins and she is the absolute best! She has been a part of my journey since the beginning and was the one who encouraged me to get an agent," shared the actress, adding, "I also absolutely love acting classes, it’s honestly such a stress reliever and it’s also a fun way to meet other actors and creatives. I think it’s important to always keep working on your craft, there should never come a time where you feel you’ve learned everything. There is always something new to learn."
Currently working on the second season of Grand Army, the actress shared that she fell in love with the role as soon as she read the script. "Meera is a badass. She is a young girl who is very firm in her beliefs and loves to challenge her parent's old school mentality. She isn’t perfect, she makes mistakes, which is completely normal for a teenage girl but she handles situations so well. She’s bold and unashamed. She’s super close with her brother Sid but doesn’t like it when he interferes with her independence. I like her," the Global Indian said.
"I’m currently figuring out my next project. My agent works hard and finds me great auditions and I am extremely grateful for her. In the meantime, I continue to work on my acting and I’m excited to see what lies next for me," shared the actress talking about her future projects. Ask her what would be her advice to upcoming actors, and she quipped, "I would say to just be so passionate about life, and storytelling and don’t let anything stop you. It’s a tough industry and career path but if you believe in yourself enough you can accomplish whatever you set out to do. Keep your head up and don’t give up!"
Prathik Naidu is an Indian-American innovator[/caption]
Prathik Naidu at the Regeneron Science Talent Search[/caption]
Rhodes scholar Swathi Srinivasan[/caption]
