Theme: Ikigai

The Japanese concept of Ikigai is the the intersection between passion, vocation, profession, and mission. In simpler words, it means "a reason for being."

The Harker School
500 Saratoga Avenue
San Jose, California, 95129
United States

Chinmayi Balusu

Founder & CEO of Simply Neuroscience

Chinmayi Balusu is an undergraduate sophomore studying neuroscience and medical humanities at Columbia University. She is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of the international nonprofit organization Simply Neuroscience, which works to foster students' interdisciplinary interests in the brain through neuroscience and psychology education, outreach, and awareness. She is passionate about youth science communication, women in STEM advocacy, and mentorship. Chinmayi is an International Science and Engineering Fair finalist, the California Science and Engineering Fair's 2019 Student of the Year, USA National Brain Bee competitor, three-time National History Day California finalist, and Presidential Volunteer Service Award and Daily Point of Light Award recipient for community service efforts. In her free time, she enjoys practicing taekwondo, gardening, exploring nature trails, discovering new music, and watching old Telugu films with her family.

Nisha Talagala

Founder & CEO of Pyxeda AI

Nisha Talagala is the CEO and founder of Pyxeda AI, having earned her PhD at UC Berkeley where she did research on clusters and distributed systems. She is also the founder of AIClub.World which is bringing AI Literacy to K-12 students and individuals worldwide. Previously, Nisha co-founded ParallelM, dedicated to Machine Learning production for enterprises - acquired by DataRobot. Nisha has also driven the USENIX Operational ML Conference, the first industry/academic conference on production AI/ML. She has worked as technology lead for server flash at Intel - where she led server platform non-volatile memory technology development, storage-memory, and convergence. Prior to Intel, Nisha was the CTO of Gear6, where she designed and built clustered computing caches for high performance I/O environments. Nisha holds 71 patents, over 25 refereed research publications. She is also a contributing writer to Forbes and other publications and a frequent speaker at industry and academic events.

Sophia Gottfried

Harker Student and Philosopher-Poet

Sophia Gottfried is a Harker senior known best as a philosopher-poet. She is Philosophy Club President, HELM co-editor, and the treasurer for the writers advocate. In the past, she has had writing published in Philosophy Now, Questions, and on the Society of Classical Poets' website. Currently, she is working on researching Nietzsche’s influence on anarchism for her Mitra project, as well as planning a philosophy conference.

Tania Safi

Video Journalist + Rights Activist

Tania Safi is an Arabic-Australian video journalist and rights activist. Her family has Palestinian, Syrian, Egyptian, and Lebanese roots, prompting her to move to Tripoli at the age of 19. While she was there, a civil war broke out. Under curfew, Tania drew in order to catalogue the traumatic events that followed and turned those drawings into an animation, ‘Trab Laus’. The film won first place at the United Nations Plural+ Film Festival and was the catalyst behind her career as a visual storyteller. Tania has since worked as a producer for The Chaser, The Roast (ABC), BuzzFeed, SBS and Happy Media. Tania moved back to Lebanon in 2019 and founded a self-funded documentary series called Shway Shway (meaning “ little by little” in Arabic), which featured fearless women, NGOs, and change-makers across Lebanon who are helping better the world. Her passion for education and entertainment through accessible and innovative video has been a great gift to our community and the world.