Edison teen on mission to make STEM more female-friendly

EDISON - Reeva Khokhar is on a mission to make STEM more female-friendly worldwide.

Not content with the current state of STEM studies, the J.P Stevens High School senior is the National Executive Director of Girl Genius, a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering, educating and accelerating females and non-binary individuals in STEM.

This 17-year-old is determined.

"By sharing Girl Genius, I hope to reach more youth and community members and highlight the importance of diversity, empowerment and innovation in STEM education as well as inspire action and change," said Khokhar, who also was honored as a medalist in the NJ Governor's Volunteerism Awards for Service for her work in empowering girls in STEM in the nonprofit space. "This is a great organization, and the best part is that you are with that community of girls that are equally as passionately interested. So it's really like a place you want to be and very inspiring to see what everyone is working on."

As executive director, Khokhar oversees all operations of the organization and leads a team of more than 100 female changemakers.

Khokhar said that considering there is a "vast gender gap in the STEM workforce," she runs Girl Genius "to create a supportive and inclusive environment for girls to explore their potential in STEM fields and embrace their passion."

"Our primary focus at Girl Genius is to empower, educate, and accelerate girls in the field of STEM on a global scale," she said. "Our mission revolves around fostering an inclusive community that empowers the next generation of female leaders in STEM and equips them to pursue their aspirations."

Girl Genius publishes magazines around the year, hosts coding workshops and conferences with female role models, publishes career guides and posts STEM content on its social media.

To date, Girl Genius has reached more than 460,000 middle and high school girls from more than 35 countries through its social media platforms and various initiatives. The organization has established a Slack community of more than 3,300 members and has more than 13,000 magazine readers. There are currently 44 Girl Genius chapters worldwide. Through magazine issues, workshops, events and virtual conferences often featuring notable female role models, the organization strives to bridge the gender gap in the tech industry and empower the next generation of female leaders.

"I am immensely proud of our reach over the last few years," Khokhar said. "As we move forward, our unwavering dedication remains towards creating a bigger impact and driving long-lasting change."

Along with the Governor's Award last year, Khokhar also was one of six finalists for the 2022 International Diversity in Tech Awards in the Young Female STEM Pioneer category, which honors young women who display an incredible potential in the field of STEM.

Inspiration for coding

Inspired by her parents Ravinder and Sudesh Khokhar, who both work in the software industry, Khokhar began coding in ninth grade.

"I was fascinated by their work. Seeing my dad effortlessly write lines of code and witnessing the amazing things he could create intrigued me," she said. "As I grew older, I began to realize the fundamental role that code plays in our world. Behind every website and application there are algorithms, layers of logic, and thousands of lines of code that enable their functionality. This realization truly captivated me. I became increasingly excited about the endless possibilities that code offers. The idea that I could create something from scratch, bring my ideas to life, and potentially make a difference in the world is incredibly empowering and drives me even today."

But, she quickly also noticed there were not many girls in the classes.

"A lot of my friends were kind of shying away from this and from going into hackathons," she said. "Because it was pretty male dominated, and they didn't see a bunch of girls there. When I went into hackathons, I had 'Impostor Syndrome.' Because of this I felt I need to do something to empower and inspire girls who are interested in coding in tech like me, so that they can also pursue their aspirations without shying away from them."

Khokhar found coding attractive because "the world really runs on the web," she said.

"Almost everything is there," Khokhar said. "We have Google at our fingertips, we can search anything, look anything up, we can connect with everyone. And what's behind that is layers of logic algorithms. And code. And I really was inspired by this. If a branch of code can really create something so unique and beautiful that I can use it to create anything I want − I want to be a part of that."

Initially, Khokhar started coding for "that creating aspect" − building a game or website. It then turned into other projects, such as building the app in a startup. She began learning programming languages, with eight now under her belt, and just kept going.

"Coding is definitely a superpower," she said. "It gives you the means and ability to shape the future. I am constantly inspired by the potential of code to address societal challenges, drive positive change, and make a lasting impact."

Hackathons also provided Khokhar with many lessons.

"With every project in a hackathon, you really go with a team − you learn so much out of it, like how to build in a time constraint. Overall, it's a good experience and code is definitely a good skill to have," she said. "You have the power to create and really make a difference in the world."

Khokhar began to involve herself more in STEM-related nonprofit organization (NPO) spaces. She started with hackathons and organized "Superposition VI," a virtual female-centered hackathon in June 2022. This became the Bay area's largest hackathon that year. Then Khokhar became involved with Techgirlz, another NPO, and led approximately 50 virtual workshops for middle-school girls. There, she taught about tech topics and works to inspire the girls to further explore tech and its possibilities as part of its Teen Advisory Board.

More: CNN honors Edison teen as a 2022 Young Wonder hero

Khokhar first became involved with Girl Genius in 2021. When founder Shivali Gulati went off to college, Khokhar stepped in and took over executive director duties. Gulati stayed on as an advisor. It was a passion for the work and topic that she could not ignore, she said. For the past two years she has been working on expanding its role.

"I think the best part has been that we've been able to reach so many girls," Khokhar said. "We get emails from them saying how it's been a great experience, and they're using our content and reacting and engaging with it. I think that's the purpose that I really fulfilled with it."

And for Khokhar personally, Girl Genius allowed her to face "Imposter Syndrome" head on.

"Facing that 'Impostor Syndrome,' to now helping other people combat it and really move forward with their aspirations in tech − it is why I do the nonprofit work that Girl Genius and Tech Girls that I do," she said. "I think that's the main objective we have here. It's really easy to face it. But if you can combat it, you're really setting yourself up for success."

Growing Girl Genius

Khokhar intends to grow Girl Genius though social media. The NPO recently began a chapters program, with regional chapter heads "representing the spirit of grow genius in their own neighborhoods, schools and communities," Khokhar said. She wants the number of chapters to grow. Though mainly established in the U.S., chapters have been created internationally with the latest ones started in Nigeria and Bangladesh.

"Right now we've reached a certain number of girls and I definitely want to amplify that by the thousands," she said. "Where our mission succeeds is when people start to know Girl Genius, and they start to create chapters in their own communities. It's been amazing for us because we never thought that we would have chapters in countries so far from where it started. We really want to do is have this name and spirit of diversity, education and inclusion really advocated because the only way the STEM field can really have that gender balance and take the Imposter Syndrome out is when people actually pursue their aspirations and don't shy away from them. And they need that support level that we want to provide. We provide them those opportunities, connection and inspiration to really continue their journey and grow."

Though Girl Genius began as a virtual entity, in the last few years, Khokhar has added more in-person events and workshops around the Garden State.

"We've done meetups at libraries. I've hosted in personal hackathons, and we do meetings and school chapters where we advocate and teach a tech topic," she said. "For the future, I definitely do want to have more important events and that's why I started this chapters program − to have more of an in-person impact. And we do virtual events to make sure that everyone can access something and have that opportunity."

In her 'downtime'

Besides her involvement with Girl Genius, Khokhar conducts side research on uveal melanoma, tissue engineering, sustainability and adverse drug reactions. For her sustainability research, she was awarded Outstanding STEM Achievement at New Jersey State Science Day which is co-sponsored by the ​​NJ Science Teachers Association and Research and Development Council of New Jersey.

Having interned at the startup accelerator iStartValley, Khokhar co-founded a health-tech startup focused on addressing the Global Adverse Drug Reaction crisis. This impacts more than two million people on an annual basis.

"The fact that I could do that and I had the ability to do that was all possible because I had that technical skill set," she said. "That kind of drives me − the fact that I can have that mark and build something that's meaningful and can make a difference to someone or have a positive impact in someone's life. That is my aim."

Khokhar created an app that can identify adverse drug reactions between medications. Not on the market yet, she is still working on the algorithm and approvals for the project. She hopes to have it ready soon.

"Initially, I saw that a lot of people consuming a lot of medications - my grandparents especially. And adverse drug reactions are basically when two medications can adversely react and cause a reaction that's actually can be fatal," she said. "I realized that in America, a lot of people do that. And with over the counter medications accessible to everyone, we just take them without second checking if there could be a potential reaction with something we already consumed. So this was a major problem. The fact that a lot of people don't check was alarming. So I started to create an application that could solve it − something that you can log your medicines in. And a common problem was that people type them in correctly. Other websites that do this ask you to type each and every ingredient and that's very time consuming. I know I won't want to do that with any medication I consume. So, I tried to create an application that could just scan your medicines and the ingredients and identify them using technology like machine learning and OCR (Optical Character Recognition). If any medicines adversely react, the app provides a warning and suggests to seek help from a medical professional. This made the process more convenient for users − instead of typing in everything, it is just a click of a picture."

She also serves as the President of iStart's Youth Executive Committee, where she organizes events like Global Entrepreneurship Weeks and Hackathons to motivate high school students to embrace entrepreneurship and make a difference in their communities through innovation. Khokhar was named one of Major League Hacking’s Top 50 Hackers of 2022. The youngest on the list, she was selected out of more than 150,000 individuals in MLH’s community for her story and work on coding applications that provide solutions to societal challenges.

"I am a strong believer in the power of code and am dedicated to creating impactful projects," she said.

When not behind a computer, Khokhar can be found participating in Bollywood dancing events through Arya Dance Academy in Edison and has been a Silver Award Girl Scout for 8 years.

Next year, Khokhar plans on college and taking Girl Genius with her. Her dream school is University of Pennsylvania and she intends on pursuing a dual major or major/minor in computer science and business as she is "passionate about the intersection of computer science and entrepreneurship."

"I think that a startup field that intersects these two is something I want to pursue," she said. "I think I actually will keep doing this because I truly found a space in my life. And I'm going to continue doing it wherever I go. I strongly believe it is crucial to create an inclusive environment where everyone feels valued and has equal opportunities to thrive."

For more information about Girl Genius, go to http://girlgeniusmag.org/.

email: cmakin@gannettnj.com

Cheryl Makin is an award-winning features and education reporter for MyCentralJersey.com, part of the USA Today Network. Contact: Cmakin@gannettnj.com or @CherylMakin. To get unlimited access, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

This article originally appeared on MyCentralJersey.com: Edison NJ teen on mission to make STEM more female-friendly