Simone Sharma , 16, is the Founder and Executive Director at YouthGrowYouth. She is a Published writer, a basketball player, and the National Spell Bee 2019 Runner up. She enjoys playing the ukulele and writing during her leisure time. Alongside, she also actively advocates for social causes be it gender equality, climate change and Asian youth intersectional activism as she holds immense interest in the politics of analyzing social issues especially ones existing in the present era; she upholds the content creation department of some of today’s Global leading youth-led organizations on Instagram that revolve around fighting intersectional issues. Simone is also the co-executive director of the Women of Color Conference. The 2-day conference held in March united 4,850+ girls of color to engage with career-oriented panels from 31 renowned speakers, mental wellness workshops, a mentorship program, $4000 in scholarships, and performances from creatives of color. From the conference, Simone witnessed firsthand the sheer power of unity and solidarity among women of color. Simone’s business acumen has also led to some significant accolades, including being selected for the Harvard 2022 Cohort of Entrepreneurship where her project was selected from a pool of thousands of applicants. The Crimson Youth Entrepreneurship Society is a startup and nonprofit accelerator run by Harvard University students dedicated to helping young founders create meaningful impacts in their communities and beyond. Besides business, leadership, the environment, and addressing youth social causes, Simone has a great passion for poetry. She started writing at an early age and eventually grew up to address issues like body positivity and self-love through her poems. She is also a published writer with some of her work previously published. Simone is also the finalist of “Miss teen India 2022” and is elated to represent her cause for gender equality on a National platform. The youth leader has also co-founded a high school business called Hands4Paws, the mission is to help animal welfares by selling eco-friendly products and thus the business utilizes 40 per cent of its profits towards dog feeding programs and old age centers for animals. Notebooks and Ceramic Mugs are known to be a leading cause for plastic pollution, and thus she is in tandem with her classmates created products that are 100 per cent biodegradable, recyclable and reusable. “For me, I founded YGY just personally through my own challenges and wanting to create more opportunities for young people because I realized there was a huge accessibility gap between the youth and an ample amount of opportunities that were getting met, there was opportunity out there for youth to volunteer, to get jobs, to get scholarships to fund their education after high school and yet it was so difficult for youth to find these opportunities and I felt that way because I was one of those youth. So what really inspired me to bring this idea into real-life definitely was ‘how can we make sure that young people get access equally to the same opportunities that anyone else would’, ‘how do make sure that they’re picking their careers based off of all the knowledge surrounding them’, so just having these opportunities in various forms helped me get a lot clearer about what i wanted to do in future and my goal is that young people grabbing these opportunities can also figure out what they wish to pursue after high school.”