Ananya Akkaraju is a junior at Dublin High School in Dublin, California. Passionate about public policy, public speaking, and women's rights, she is a strong advocate for supporting the education of girls in developing nations. She is the founder of EmpowerHer Education, a youth-led 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that empowers girls in education. She is also actively involved in educational reform; she is an appointed student commissioner on the California Department of Education’s Instructional Quality Commission and chief of partnerships at GENup. She hopes to continue expanding her nonprofit to help as many people as possible, and to continue changing the world by building a future where every girl has access to education—one book, one student, one story at a time.