Pritika Kharkwal

Pritika Kharkwal is a current student at Lebanon Trail High School, Frisco TX. Over the years her advocacy work has focused on mentoring and mental health.

Just last year she won the National Corporate Youth Leadership Award at Washington DC where there were thousands of attendees.  She received this award for mentoring young girls in the corporate field through the Step Up girls empowerment organization (a nonprofit organization that helps girls define and achieve their unique visions of success) and at the award ceremony she had the privilege of lobbying by meeting with Senator Cruz's congressional staff regarding funding for youth mentoring efforts, and after the meeting the Youth Mentoring Act was taken into consideration!

Receiving this award wasn't the end of her mentoring/mental health advocacy because it inspired her to continue her work: She currently runs her own mentoring/mental health podcast called "Talk It Out with Pritika Kharkwal" with renowned guest speakers including Dr Emma Seppala, Dr Ronnie Newman, Delores Druilet Morton (CEO of Step Up) and Professor Ellen Langer (first women to be tenured in Psychology at Harvard University
Currently, she is drafting one of the first teen mental health book with the support of her mentors (Dr Emma Seppala and Dr Ronnie Newman).
These are just a few notable highlights of her advocacy journey but there are many more ways she has worked to champion youth mentoring and mental health causes. 

For instance, for two years now she has been running a program called  "Girls In the Corporate World" (which she is Founder and President of) that seeks to reduce the gender gap in the business world through interactive experiences, friendly competitions, bootcamps on different business topics for girls of diverse backgrounds and networking opportunities with inspiring guest speakers! 

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You can find her in her free time meditating and spending time with her family