Co-Chair

Alexandra is a junior from Carmel, IN! From competing in the USACO Platinum division to conducting research on high performance computing to being a National Finalist in the Air Force Association-sponsored Cyberpatriot competition, she has pursued her passion for computer science in a myriad of ways. However, she believes that the field of computer science is limited by its lack of diversity, which is why she works to bring CS education to those around her in her community. Partnering with Techbridge Girls to found Indiana's very first chapter, she teaches young girls to code, build, and engineer, and ignites their passion for the STEM field. Alexandra also loves to share her passion for competitive coding with those around her. This spring, she'll be leading and organizing the very first INDIGO Informatics Competition, a competitive programming contest for high schoolers in Indiana! Working with both local and national tech companies, she hopes to spark a love for computer science in high school students across the state.  

Alexandra has had the opportunity to participate in many amazing STEM summer programs, including Canada/USA Math camp and the Program in Mathematics for Young Scientists (PROMYS)! She will be attending the Research Science Institute (RSI) this summer, a six-week long research program at MIT. In her free time, she loves to debate (public forum), listen to music, and spend time with her cat and dog! 

Anika is currently a junior in high school and her deep-rooted passion for STEM mainly lies in the field of biomedical engineering. Anika loves to explore the intersection between drug discovery and artificial intelligence and has spent the last few years conducting research on building a de-novo drug design platform to generate multitargeted drugs against Glioblastoma. She is also the co-founder and president of AcademyAid, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that aims to provide the material and school supplies necessary for underrepresented students in India to pursue a quality education. 

Outside of STEM and academics, Anika has been learning Indian classical dance (Bharatanatyam) for almost 10 years and was selected to perform internationally last year. Anika is very excited to be a part of NGC's Youth Advisory Board and hopes to continue to support girls who are interested in STEM! 

Charlotte is a junior in high school who has had a passion for genetics and biology ever since she can remember. She loves hands-on labs and activities, especially dissections and running gels. She hopes to someday pursue a career in the biomedical science field to help others while exploring her passions. At school, she has been involved in PLTW Biomedical classes. Charlotte has also served as a school ambassador to introduce incoming students to the world of STEM. In addition, she has also attended several STEM programs and camps to further the pursuit of her passion for genetics. Charlotte also runs as a member of her school's cross country and track teams, sings in the school choir, and is part of student council. In her free time, you'll find her buried in a book, baking cookies, or belting her heart out to songs from her favorite playlist. She is very excited to be a part of the Youth Advisory Board and is looking forward to being more involved in STEM! 

Chloe is a sophomore in high school from Huntington, WV. She is one of two girls in her school’s aerospace engineering program. Chloe has grown to realize the difference in treatment from teachers between boys and girls in the classroom, specifically math and science. Because of this, she is an advocate for girls in STEM in hopes of  helping to level the playing field in male-dominated subjects. She has attended the WV Governor’s STEM Institute where she studied space objects such as galaxies and exoplanets through telescopes, and edited pictures using the electromagnetic spectrum. She has also attended the United States Naval Academy’s Youth Leadership Program and founded the STEM club at one of the largest high schools in West Virginia. Chloe aspires to study aerospace engineering at the United States Naval Academy. Her goal is to become the first female astronaut from the state of West Virginia and explore Mars. She plans to use her career to advocate for women in STEM as well as the military. 

Grace Schneider is a current junior in high school and ever since 4th grade, has had a passion for STEM. Throughout middle school, Grace participated in FIRST Lego League (FLL), where she helped build a robot out of legos and develop solutions to real-world problems each year with her team. Grace is currently on a high school robotics team, BONDS 5811. As a sophomore, she was the programming captain for the team and is currently the marketing captain. Grace thinks it is essential to share STEM opportunities with other girls in her community and is working on a Women in STEM workshop to help support girls who are interested in STEM. In school, Grace is taking the PLTW Engineering courses to strengthen her engineering knowledge and help prepare her for college. She is currently planning on majoring in Architecture and Mechanical Engineering. Outside of the STEM realm, Grace runs cross country for her school and is also a lacrosse player. In her free time, Grace loves to read, draw, and watch her favorite movie, Pride and Prejudice.

Isabella is a junior in high school from Queens, New York. She loves STEM, especially the science fields. Additionally, she is very passionate about world history and is fascinated by the progression and treatment of human diseases and their impact on society. She plans to pursue a career as a dermatologist, and she has been wanting to become a doctor since she was a young girl. Isabella hopes to become a doctor not only to help people, but to help bring more diversity to the medical field and to advocate and create a space for those like her who have been left hopeless by their medical providers. She actively volunteers at a nursing home, where she interacts with residents and assists nursing staff with errands. 

Co-Chair

Maddy is a junior in high school who has developed a passion for STEM through exploring the ways technology and art are combined to bring innovative ideas to life. She is the image and graphic design lead on Carnegie Mellon University’s FIRST robotics team, Girls of Steel, and enjoys mentoring at Girls of Steel’s FIRST Lego League among other outreach initiatives. She is also an alum of Young Women in Bio’s Ambassador Program, where she designed its program flyers for all chapters across the United States and Canada. Young Women in Bio has also inspired her to start a biology club at her school to empower girls to explore STEM careers and become future leaders in STEM.  

Along with pursuing STEM, Maddy enjoys creating digital art as well as writing poetry. She has won five gold keys in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and placed top 10 in BLICK’s National Celebrating Art Contest. She continues to explore interdisciplinary majors that cross her interests in design and writing with computer science, such as Human-Computer Interaction, UI Design, and Technical Writing. 

Jr. Co-Chair

Mary is a rising sophomore in high school who, from a young age has been extremely passionate about the technological aspect of STEM. She was first introduced to computer programming in a middle school computer science elective, where she was one of the only three girls in a class of twenty-plus students. However, thanks to an inspiring teacher that introduced her to the vast world of computer science, she absolutely fell in love with STEM and all things that have to do with coding! Today, Mary is currently proficient in a surplus of programming languages including Python, C, C++, Javascript, HTML, CSS, etc, and is working on various research projects using a few of those languages. In the future, she intends on going into the field of Computer Science (specifically Artificial Intelligence), and would love nothing more than to make an impact on the world we live in! 

 In regards to her extracurriculars, Mary is an active member of her school’s STEM Club, Robotics Team, Speech and Debate Team, and Student Council (where she serves in a delegate position).  She is also an avid writer and has works that have earned a few Scholastic Regional awards. Finally, Mary is extremely honored to be on the Youth Advisory Board of the National Girls Collaborative Project, and can’t wait to encourage more girls around the world to explore various fields in STEM! 

Jr. Co-Chair

STEM has always been important to 15 year old freshman Melissa. Melissa is a first generation American, born and raised in Ruston, Louisiana. At school she is involved in Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA), Speech and Debate, Student Council, and Swim Team. She is a classically trained pianist and vocalist, musical theater actress, small business owner, and volunteer. Melissa placed first at her region MathCounts and Science Olympiad competition last year and first in the randomized team MathBee at MathCounts State. As a STEM lover herself, she chose to advocate for STEM when she was selected as the A.E.Phillips (AEP) Laboratory School 5th Grade Student of the Year. Three years later, she chose to focus on it again when she represented AEP as its 8th Grade Student of the Year. She then went on to win the Lincoln Parish, Region 1, and ultimately the Louisiana Middle School Student of the Year title this past April. Melissa has been partnering with the Lincoln Parish STEM Center and the Region 8 SCILS STEM Center at Louisiana Tech University to provide opportunities and resources for community members and empower their engagement in activities. In January 2022, she helped co-found SCILS STEM Leaders: Stand Together to Empower Many, a club that connects middle school girls with women in science, builds their leadership skills, and exposes them to different fields that they could one day go into. Melissa is also a former Miss Louisiana Teen Volunteer (2022). Her platform was “Promoting STEM Programs for Girls' and she took that across the state and to the national competition where she placed 4th Runner Up and People’s Choice. As the current Miss Louisiana Stockshow’s Teen 2023, her community service initiative is “STEM to Bloom: Investing in STEM Education for All”. She tweaked her platform from “STEM for girls” to “STEM for all” because through her work at the SCILS STEM Center she realized that not only girls but also many other groups of people are underrepresented in STEM. With these titles, Melissa has had opportunities to discuss STEM education at conferences and schools across the state of Louisiana. 

Meliyah is a Junior in High School from Far Rockaway, New York. She has a great passion for design in architecture and engineering. She has joined the Cooper Union STEM Saturday classes to engage herself with more parts of the STEM field. She has also worked with RISE to learn more about urban planning and engineering. During the summer Meliyah joined NYU. NYU provided classes on Architecture, to help students understand the history of it as well as all the different jobs that take place behind the scenes, like engineering and design.   

Outside of STEM, Meliyah finds enjoyment in Volleyball. She was on the school Varsity volleyball team for two years and is currently in a Varsity volleyball club for Creole; In Flushing, Queens. Meliyah hopes that joining YAB will help and encourage other women of color to come to love STEM too. She is very excited to be joining other girls who have the same love for STEM as she does. 

Nikhita Penugonda is a high school junior in Bellevue, Washington who is passionate about math, astronomy, and physics! She was selected as one of sixteen inaugural Flight Crew members by Million Girls Moonshot to amplify youth voices in the national conversation around STEM equity. She is also the director of GRASS (Girls Rock at STEM Seminars), where she conducts lessons, seminars, and workshops for middle school aged girls. In addition, Nikhita has been a member of the Toastmasters Rising Speakers Gavel Club since 2018, and is the current club President. Nikhita loves thinking outside of the box! She has participated in Destination Imagination for seven years and most recently won first place in the Digital Open 2022. Nikhita has also been a Girl Scout since kindergarten and earned her Silver Award for raising awareness about climate change. She has many hobbies and enjoys camping, hiking, rowing, stargazing, reading, and playing video games! In the future, Nikhita aims to study astrophysics and computer science to make new discoveries about the cosmos.

Subha is a junior in high school, founder of Linguistics Justice League, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, and a board member of Young Nonprofit Professionals Network (YNPN) and Youth Board Member of Invest in Youth. Subha’s work at the intersection of Data Science, NLP, ML and Community Service led to a Society of Women Engineers Next (SWE) STEM in Action award, National Center for Women and Technology Aspire and Impact award, a publication in the Journal of Student Research, and a renowned TEDx talk. Her work was featured in GeekWire and recognized by Puget Sound Business Journal’s “Seattle Inno Under 25”. As she offered STEM after-school programs at several local nonprofit organizations, she observed that only a fraction of the kids could take advantage of the programs she offered because of a lack of English skills.  

 Subha wanted to provide all individuals with bilingual content to preserve their own language and cultural heritage, promoting multilingualism nationwide. Many languages that local Native American tribes and refugees speak are considered “low resource” languages that are underrepresented in the media. Her nonprofit organization’s mission is to build fun and engaging bilingual educational content and apps for language learners who speak low resource languages by leveraging Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning and Gamification." 

Yumi is a sophomore who attends Special Music School in New York City. When she was young, she discovered her love for animals and science. Science has always been her favorite subject in school aside from music. She loves learning about the general STEM field but is captivated by biology, specifically animal sciences. In middle school Yumi got accepted to a 7-year program called the LANG Science Program at the American Museum of Natural History. In the program she conducts lab investigations and does fieldwork, to answer research questions which she eventually presents. Currently Yumi also works at the New York Hall of Science as a science explainer. At school she participates in the science club.  

Additionally, Yumi is a violinist. She has been playing the violin since she was 5. She’s won various competitions and loves playing in a violin quartet with her friends. She also enjoys performing in hospitals and places where she can spread music with others. Yumi is excited to be a part of the Youth Advisory Board and continue supporting non-binary youth along with girls who are looking into the field of STEM!