MALAYSIA changemaker and youth entrepreneur Harsha Ravindran, 22, is motivating her global peers to shoot for the stars.
The NextGen Entrepreneurship Network (NGEN) executive director played a pivotal role in bringing together over 120 of the brightest student entrepreneurs from top tertiary institutions, including Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Wharton, Yale, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell and New York University, for the Trailblazers Conference recently.
Held on Oct 11 in New York City, United States, the conference, organised by NGEN, showcased the power of young entrepreneurial minds connecting to create change.
“This is a place for people to exchange ideas and learn from one another, and that was definitely something we observed during this conference.
“The quality of the entrepreneurs we brought in was reflected in the quality of the conversations and the impact they would have on each other’s careers,” said Harsha in a press release.
The University of Pennsylvania student also emphasised the importance of passion and purpose in driving entrepreneurial success.
Harsha is a recipient of the prestigious Diana Award, which was established in memory of the late Diana, Princess of Wales, to recognise youths for their social action or humanitarian work.
She was among four Malaysians to receive the recognition in 2019 for Ascendance, a global youth organisation she co-founded and heads as its chief executive officer.
Together with Jackson Lehner (a Princeton alumnus) and William Borges (from Yale), she co-founded NGEN to address the need for collaboration across the undergraduate entrepreneurship landscape and to unite student ventures through a thriving intercollegiate platform.
The Trailblazers Conference featured keynote addresses, panel discussions with industry pioneers and executives, mini workshops, and breakout sessions with tech innovators and business lawyers.
The conference speakers included executives and entrepreneurs such as Morgan Stanley Investment Management managing director and Girls Who Invest founder Seema Hingorani, who shared her inspiring story of growing up and choosing her path of giving back solely by following her heart.
“If you can say by the end of your college experience that you can think and you can write, you have hit a home run.
“Push yourselves, explore, learn how to think, learn how to write, and have fun! You really can do whatever you want to do; you just have to figure it out,” she said.
One of the attendees, Aryaditya Lankipalle from the University of Pennsylvania, said, “Being an aspiring entrepreneur can seem like you’re stuck in your own bubble. So, being able to connect with different students from different universities with different perspectives is my favourite part of the conference.”
