It’s a cold Thursday and the weak sun is already setting, but when Avanti Sharma logs on for our call from her home in Luxembourg City her natural warmth and positivity lights up the room. “It’s so amazing to speak to you again,” she beams, as if me, the journalist, is the most important person in this interview.
She is dressed in a fitted salmon shirt, her hair is tied back and when I ask her to tell me about herself, I realise the questions I have prepared aren’t needed. Avanti has given so many interviews and talks (including the TEDx variety), she lists her many tech career highlights as a coding instructor, WeSTEM+ brand ambassador and app developer with little prompting. All this would be impressive for any woman in the notoriously gender-skewed world of coding. For Avanti what’s most astounding is that she is 18.
“That got me to want to try to inspire other girls and women to do what they really like doing.”
Family role models
Avanti has worked extremely hard to get to where she is today. And yet, she cannot deny that her mother has been a major influence. A programmer and former IBM employee, when Madhumalti Sharma’s computer hard drive needed replacing, her first thought was to call over her six-year-old daughter and show her how it’s done. “I think it’s great to get your daughters or your nieces or anyone, to help you out, because that instills in them that you know they can do this, and to have that maker mentality mindset,” Avanti says.
In 2014, Madhumalti began Workshop4Me, a coding school for children that was initially based in her home. Avanti recalls seeing children piling into her home at weekends and creating “amazing projects” and when she was eight years old, she wanted in. Her first project? A ballerina dancing made using kids’ coding platform Scratch. “It was so fun but I looked around me and realised there aren’t many girls doing this,” she said. She began to lose interest. Fortunately, her older brother, Leo, sat down and talked with her and she realised that if she liked something, she should do it. “That got me to want to try to inspire other girls and women to do what they really like doing,” she says. Aged 10, Avanti started coaching children herself. Together with her mother and brother, they realised the best way to retain girls at the school was by having girls only workshops. “After that, so many of the girls stayed because they felt like they had a community,” said Avanti. She adds that some of the girls who went through the programme are now coaching other young girls.
European skills gap
Luxembourg’s education ministry first introduced coding, computational thinking and problem solving into the public primary school syllabus in September 2020. It’s a first step but, according to Avanti, the training does not go anywhere deep enough to close the technology skills gap in Europe. The European Commission remains a long way off its goal of being able to train half of all ICT professionals. A number of initiatives have been launched in Europe to shift the paradigm, such as the introduction of EU code week a decade ago. Even if countries invest in ICT training now, it will take at least 20 years for the effects to be felt in the workforce.
Given the importance of tech, especially generative AI, this puts Europe at a disadvantage when it comes to driving the technology agenda. Avanti likens coding literacy to that of being able to communicate in English. “Because everyone has to understand how code works, to understand how AI works, how their computer works, as their world around them is getting more and more digital.”
A normal teenager
We hit the half hour mark of the interview and Avanti is still fielding questions with ease. It dawns on me that right now, most of her peers will be doing homework, watching YouTube or playing video games. “I’m also a normal person,” she says, when I ask how she unwinds. “I love watching videos from Cleo Abraham”, she says. This millennial journalist who makes tech explainers is also a big hit with Avanti’s family. I’m reassured that she is enjoying normal teenager stuff when she adds that she also loves connecting with friends on Instagram and playing a game called QS Watermelon. “It’s very silly. Basically, you just have different fruits falling, and you have to combine them to make a larger fruit.” Avanti is in her final year of school in Luxembourg. She has her sights set on studying chemical engineering with focus on sustainable technology, carbon capture technologies and innovative ways to make renewable energy at the Technical University of Eindhoven in the Netherlands.
And then there are the two cyber security projects she’s been developing.
Teen cyber security
R-U-Sure is a browser extension that warns young people about the risks of certain online activities. When a user with the extension visits a site like an adult chatroom, they’re redirected to a page that reminds them of the risks associated with the platform. She demonstrates the extension on her phone, and it brings up a list of risks including high rates of paedophilia or sexual abuse imagery, data tracking, chat logging, third party cookies, blackmail and safety threats. It’s enough to make me change my mind about visiting a site. For young people, Avanti said it’s trickier. Peer pressure can override common sense when it comes to online platforms. Also, she reckons that her generation enjoys the risk and sense of acknowledgement gained from speaking to a stranger. Rather than frighten young people off, the extension also gives recommendations on proceeding safely. Things like keeping their cameras off and avoiding discussing body details or sexual information.
“Everyone has to understand how code works, to understand how AI works, how their computer works […]”
A Luxembourg pilot project
Lived experiences also inspired Studified (student-verified), a tool for verifying student accounts across social media. It comes at a time when AI generated images and voice become more challenging to identify. And it responds to a growing need: “We had a situation where one of our friends was being impersonated by someone and it took three weeks to notice it was a fake account,” she says. She adds that friends’ accounts are frequently hacked.
Studified will work as a software plug-in ensuring it is secure and social media platforms do not have access to personal information. The tool then allows the user to limit their network to other users who have the verified Studified badge, aka “people who you trust.”
The project, which is in prototype phase, won the honourable prize at the largest science expo in Portugal, and Avanti is currently in talks with officials in Luxembourg and beyond to roll out a pilot. She says: “My aim is to have it up and running in two years.”
She pauses for a breath and I realise we’ve hit the hour mark. The time has passed so quickly. And yet Avanti is knocking teenage life out of the park. I’m left with a sense of optimism that the future won’t just be dictated by tyrannical tech billionaires. There will also be the Avantis leading armies of coders, building communities and spreading her infectious positivity. I know who I’m rooting for.
This article was published in the 5th edition of Forbes Luxembourg magazine.
