Sahana Sasikumar is a 16-year-old female leader. Noticing a gender imbalance in STEM, she co-founded a non-profit organization, Legion of Bot, through which she shares her journey as a woman in STEM panels and conducts coding workshops at public schools and libraries in multiple cities. Through these efforts, she evangelizes STEM among young girls, inspiring them to pursue careers in technical fields. Sahana has also founded another non-profit, STEMACA, to take STEM education to underserved communities. She redesigned a popular board game from India, building Thaayam++, to teach critical thinking and Python programming to students in communities with limited access to computers. Last summer, she visited India, where she conducted STEM workshops and helped launch two robotics teams, including an all-girls team, that competed in the FIRST Lego League competitions.

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Sahana collaborates with her peers to build and present interactive robots at her local maker fair to inspire young children towards STEM. Working with other non-profit organizations, she created an online coding curriculum for high school girls in Kenya. She also helped develop STEM educational materials and donated her board game to 23 schools in Federal Way, WA. Through these efforts, she helps bring STEM to girls within their classroom.  

 

With her consistent efforts towards empowering girls and making STEM accessible in all communities, Sahana shows her compassion and leadership as a female role-model in her community. 

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