84 Time February 28/March 7, 2022
GiTanjali rao was TIME’s firsT kid of The
Year, named in 2020 for her work as a scientist
and leader. Now 16, Rao remains focused on her re-
search and on expanding access for kids to use their
unique perspectives to innovate as well. She spoke
with TIME about what she has done with her title.
It’s been a year since you were named TIME’s
Kid of the Year. What have you been up to? It
has been an absolute whirlwind of emotions. I’m
glad that it has given me a more impactful voice.
I work very closely with the Maddox Jolie-
Pitt Foundation and Angelina Jolie, and I worked
with students in Cambodia for their workshop.
Also, I have spoken at so many conferences now.
I’ve talked on the future of education, education
inequality, the use of tech for problem solving,
the need for youth in the workforce, women in
STEM—all sorts of things.
Kindly [Rao’s app to monitor cyberbullying], in
partnership with UNICEF, is now a solution that
can be used all over the country. And it is the same
mission, same goal—it’s just modified to be more
clean, and provide more resources for students.
My newest project is looking at detecting para-
sites in water in third world countries. I’m thinking
of going into biogenetics, product development,
and public administration—some combination of
the three.Last year, you reached your goal of mentor-
ing 30,000 students through your innovation
workshops. How is that going? I’m at over 57,000
students right now. I also wrote a book that was
released in March 2021. Now it’s available in five
languages all over the world. I’ve raised more than
$70,000 to help refugee camps and Title I schools
with purchasing books as well. And, in partner-
ship with Transformation Ghana, I’ve provided
books to high schools there as well. As a National
Geographic Young Explorer and the laureate for
the Young Activists Summit in Geneva, I was able
to improve the Makerspace in the Kakuma refu-
gee camp, providing them with more laptops and
printers and iPads and ways that they can improve
their own innovation careers. On top of that, I’ve
also been really passionate about mentoring stu-
dents for challenges, so that they have the compe-
tition to bring their ideas to life.Why do you want to especially mentor kids in
other countries? It’s weird to think that I have
privileges that a lot of other people don’t. I believe
that innovation should have an equal playing field.
We shouldn’t put a price on coming up with ideas.
And that’s exactly why I’m trying to help out some
of the people who do come up with an amazing
idea but sometimes don’t know where to start, or
don’t have the resources to.What’s next for the year ahead? Honestly, I’m
looking forward to doing some more research
and getting back into the lab. I want to get more
into this era of personalized medicine. And I’m
hoping to develop a more in-depth K-12 curricu-
lum. At the end of the day, the biggest thing that I
want to do is look at inequality in education, and
how we can create an education system that suits
everyone.How are you going to do all of that while keep-
ing up with high school? Thankfully, I’m almost
done with high school. Just three semesters left.
And, you know, managing college apps and things
like that is a lot. But I strongly believe that if you’re
doing everything that you want to do—not what
you need to do—it makes everything that much
easier to balance out. —raisa brunerCatching up with
Gitanjali Rao
KOTY 2020
Rao was picked
as TIME’s 2020
Kid of the Year
for her efforts to
help kids get into
STEM fieldsKid of the YearCOURTESY FAMILY
Rao speaks on the need to involve
youth in innovation at the 2021 World
Knowledge Forum in South Korea