AI Ethics Journalist · Founder
I write about teen voices in AI: what teenagers see that the people building these systems don't, and why our perspectives belong in this conversation now. Vanguard Voices columnist at WAIV Magazine since 2025. Founder of the RIYA Project, in partnership with Tamil Nadu Foundation USA.
I grew up in London, where some afternoons after school my mom and I would race down the escalator to the Marks & Spencer food hall, naming as many foods as we could from the wall displays before we reached the bottom. Whoever named the most took the basket. I always took the basket.
The food hall was my very own museum, every label a small geography lesson, every section its own installation, arranged with a logic that felt like respect for the food, for where it came from, and for the person deciding whether to buy it. When my family moved to Florida, I stood in a Publix aisle staring at a single shelf marked "International Foods" and understood something I couldn't yet name: that flattening is a choice, and it has consequences.
That instinct, that specificity earns respect, has driven everything since. I write about how AI is reshaping the lives of teenagers: what these systems do to us, what they do without us, and who's missing from the rooms where they're built. I study how bias hides inside the platforms my generation uses every day. I build programs that refuse to leave girls in Tamil Nadu on someone else's shelf.
I am a rising senior at Riverview High School in Sarasota, Florida, pursuing the International Baccalaureate Diploma. I intend to study pre-law with a focus on AI ethics and human-centered AI policy.
"The world has so much in it. And I am not interested in the version that fits in one aisle."
"Don't make AI-enabled tools and platforms your entire personality. Use these tools and apps if you must, but don't let them use you." — Mia Shah-Dand
Less formal pieces, written outside the column.
I am always interested in conversations about AI ethics, responsible technology, girls' education, and youth voices in policy. Reach out.