Rangi Ruru Student Wins National Innovation Award

The inaugural GirlBoss Awards were announced in Auckland on 19 Sept and a 17 year old Rangi Ruru Girls’ School student, Tulsi Lathia, took away the coveted Innovation Award.

Tulsi is one of six young Kiwi women aged between 11 and 18 who received a GirlBoss Award, after more than 400 nominations flooded in from around the country.

Each winner received $1,000 with the supreme winner receiving $2,000.

This entrepreneurial and innovative young woman has collaboratively invented a device that helps locate people after a natural disaster, and a second device that is a fire detection, evacuation and control system.

“Winning this award means so much to me. I want to use the award as a magnet to pull in young women like me who have may have felt isolated with their passions. I want to empower them to step up, take charge and make things happen,” says Tulsi.

Tulsi says she thinks young women are not always made aware of the opportunities open to them.

“At Rangi Ruru I feel able to extend myself and be supported to follow my dreams but sometimes some of us can be unaware of our potential and underestimate the power we have. I believe this award will enable me to help change this and positively influence young women. I hope that I can inspire, motivate and empower future changemakers,” she says.

As part of her application to GirlBoss, Tulsi’s submission outlined projects that she has been involved with.

“I wrote about the Paradigm Challenge which was something I worked on with a team of four – two of us here in New Zealand and two in India. I wanted to show that there are no barriers of age, distance and time to innovative collaboration. It all depends on how much passion and drive you have. Self-motivation was crucial as without being face to face with each other we had to stay connected and on task. Our combined enthusiasm for science, technology and innovation for good, helped us grow as people who were more open to share their fascination with others and work hard towards a goal,” she says.

Tulsi and three school friends are about to announce another project but says she will announce more detail in a week or two as it is related to a commercial enterprise and “it’s all about timing”.

Watch this space!