Girl Up

Aasha Khan, Co-Chair, Canada
Aasha Khan, a Grade 11 student from Kitchener-Waterloo, is a passionate advocate for social justice and AI literacy. She serves as the United Nations Girl Up Global Teen Advisor Co-Chair and introduced AskEve, a conversational AI created with Gambit Co. to offer safe, anonymous support for discussions around menstruation. Aasha delivered a TED Talk titled “How to Have a Constructive Conversation,” focusing on bridging divides through meaningful dialogue. She additionally founded Youth Tech Labs, Canada’s first AI literacy organization for youth, which equips young people with essential AI skills and has received endorsement from the Prime Minister of Canada.

Beatriz Amorim (Bea), Portugal
Beatriz Amorim is a 15-year-old student-activist from Portugal. Beatriz’s advocacy has been centered on gender justice, STEM, and the access to education. At Girl Up, Beatriz founded her own club impacting +500 people, served as an Inspire Session Speaker at the Girl Up Global Leadership Summit and represented the organisation at the CSW69 Global Adolescent Girl Leadership Town Hall. In her community, she serves as a student representative and has been involved in multiple initiatives, including the Youth Parliament. Beatriz has represented her country in multiple international debate competitions and is an active voice in the Portuguese debate movement. Regarding her passion for STEM, Betariz has participated in various programs and is currently developing her own initiative promoting equity and inclusion in the science field. 
 

During her free time, Beatriz loves to read, roller skate, listen to Taylor Swift, and watch 90s rom-coms! In the future, Beatriz hopes she can pursue a career related to engineering or political science while continuing to spread Girl Up’s message. As a Girl Up Global Teen Advisor, Beatriz aims to create a better future for girls in her community and beyond. 

Emilia Becerra, Peru

Emilia Becerra is a 17-year-old Peruvian student passionate about climate justice and gender equality. In 2019, she became a plaintiff in a climate lawsuit against the Peruvian government for its failure to address deforestation, with support from the Instituto de Defensa Legal. Moreover, her research on the role of Indigenous peoples in the environmental agenda was published in the Harvard International Review. Emilia co-founded her school’s newspaper, Periódico Ángela Ramos, which is recognized by the Peruvian Ministry of Education and is also a Girl Up Club. She has been involved with organizations like the WCS and Quinta Ola’s Feminist Political School, focusing on biodiversity conservation and feminist policymaking. Currently, she is a Young Advisor for the Youth Climate Justice Project at University College Cork, and is excited to continue her journey as a Global Teen Advisor for Girl Up, advocating for the intersection of environmental issues and feminism! 

Eylül Erçin, Co-Chair, Italy 

Based in Milan but forever writing love letters to her hometown of Istanbul, Eylül is a human rights advocate and a mathematics and computer science student, currently co-chairing Girl Up’s Global Teen Advisory Board. In addition to her grassroots activism and the occasional speech on AI ethics at the United Nations Headquarters, she works on research projects spanning everything from detecting heart arrhythmias with machine learning to tackling NP-hard problems using music programming languages no one’s ever heard of. In her free time, she’s a writer, occasionally of code, but generally of poetry and prose, and always of run-on sentences; and a cinephile fluent in obscure sitcom references, meta-commentary, and airport gate announcements. Whether she’s analyzing gender in media or fine-tuning the parameters of a convolutional neural network model, she’s known to make time at the end of the day for a little sweet treat

Keerthisri Kannan (Keerthi), USA 

Keerthisri Kannan is a 16 year old from New Jersey. A coder, writer, and flautist, she is passionate about weaving her interests within the global fight for gender equality. The founder and president of New Jersey’s Write to Right chapter, she loves mentoring students and giving them a platform to voice their thoughts. She has performed at open mics, and is a 2025 Youngarts Winner in poetry as well as a national gold medalist in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards competition. Her work often centers on womanhood, heritage, and the moon. She believes in the power of stories in uniting people. Her current science research interests include operations research and mathematical finance. She is currently working on using operations research to make reproductive treatments more accessible. As a Girl Up Global Teen Advisor, Keerthi plans to connect with girls across the world to achieve reproductive justice and center women’s health more in scientific research. Whether it be through words, music, math, or code, Keerthi believes in the power of an individual to spark change in society. 

Kieran Murray (Coco), USA  

Coco Murray is from Washington D.C.! Ever since she was little, she has been running track, and it not only is her favorite hobby but also makes her feel so empowered as a woman. She’s grown up with four sisters, and they have taught her just how important gender equality is to the world and how she can make a change! She believes herself to be very enthusiastic, energetic, and kind, and she is so excited to be a Global Teen Advisor.

Lana Nguyen, USA 

Lana (she/her) is a youth advocate from Houston, Texas, and she is dedicated to creating positive change by empowering girls to use their voices for social justice. She believes in emphasizing the intersectionality between various world issues and identities, and she values grassroots advocacy and believes it is the backbone of global movements. Lana has been involved with Girl Up throughout her advocacy journey, and she is currently the President of Girl Up Houston, leading her school’s club. Lana was a speaker at the 2024 Girl Up Global Leadership Summit, where she represented the United States on a panel about civic engagement for girls. She continues her work to promote civic engagement for youth as Chief Marketing Officer of her school’s student-led startup company, EVOtopia, a board game that instills a deeper sense of civic engagement for younger children. Further, as a woman in STEM and advocate for women’s reproductive health and access to care, Lana spearheads breast cancer awareness initiatives as a National Breast Cancer Foundation Ambassador, and she works to eradicate period poverty in her community through workshops and product drives. Lana has also served as a youth delegate at the United Nations Summit of the Future Action Days and at the 69th Session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. Her work has allowed her to reach advocates from across the world and work with youth from diverse backgrounds. In her free time, she dabbles in graphic design and filmmaking, and she loves playing piano and scrapbooking. 
 

Lmar Elnajjar, Egypt  

Lmar Elnajjar is half Egyptian, half Palestinian. She loves leading and public speaking, and enjoys talking about women’s empowerment like she has done at the Girl Up Leadership Summit in Egypt. She loves her family, friends, the beach, and enjoys her culture and the country she lives in more than anything. Lmar is passionate about health equality worldwide and wants to dismantle any health disparities that women face around the world! Beyond this, she enjoys traveling the world and creating an impact wherever she goes, and she dreams of pursuing a career in fintech or software engineering! 

Luiza Vieira Caleia (Lu), Brazil  

Luiza is an energized girl, and connecting with people moves her. She lives so that her time on Earth is one of great kindness. She feels most curious about biodiversity and wishes to become a biologist to help preserve it. In her city, she leads a charity organization that organizes campaigns every month and impacts over 3,500 people. Moreover, she teaches rural students socio-emotional learning, orienting them to understand and achieve their dreams. Dreaming bigger, she founded Passaredo environmental groups and the Biology Feminine Olympiad, supported by Girl Up Project Awards. These youth-led initiatives integrate the triple planetary crisis with a social perspective. She also deeply values literature and culture, as she is always interacting with multicultural environments and using poetry to sensibilize people. She is an advocate for Girls on the Path of Change NGO and Girl Up Brazil Organic Food Campaign. She fights for collective thinking, peace, and, most importantly, love. 

Mumba Chikumbi, Zambia 

Mumba Chikumbi is a 16 year old from Zambia who thrives on creativity, curiosity, and finding ways to make a difference. She lives by the Latin phrase Sui Generis meaning one of a kind and she believes in carving her own path while empowering others to do the same.   
Her passion for technology and education led her to launch Youth Skilled, a registered organization dedicated to equipping young people with practical skills to tackle unemployment in her country. Over the past two years, she has built her expertise in web development, earning a Diploma in CSS and HTML and expanding into JavaScript, PHP and database management.   
Outside of tech, Mumba serves as the Clubs Prefect at her school, where she works to create a strong sense of leadership and community. She also enjoys poetry, bracelet making and exploring philosophy, always seeking new ways to connect with others and inspire positive change.

Niyamat Kochhar, India 

Niyamat, 17, is a passionate advocate for gender equality and social justice from India. She founded Menstra, an initiative tackling menstrual health, sustainability, and period poverty, and HerCode, a Girl Up-funded project bridging the gender gap in STEM by equipping girls with coding skills. Committed to inclusive policies and safer spaces, she actively fights for LGBTQI+ rights and representation. Her work explores how gender intersects with technology, education, and economic opportunity, recognizing that equity requires dismantling barriers across multiple spheres. She has shared her vision on global platforms like the Girl Up Global Leadership Summit and WiSci Camp, pushing for systemic reform. Beyond advocacy, she enjoys cooking, practicing yoga, and reading fashion magazines, always seeking new ways to challenge patriarchal traditions and create a more inclusive future. 

Sara Parthiban, India  

Sara Parthiban is a teenage social justice activist from India. Being a tedX speaker and working on research projects, she is a public speaker focused on empowering women in rural parts of India. Her journey started when she founded a non profit to advocate for gender equality which gave her the opportunity to help a lot of young girls. As a teen advisor, sara hopes to help more young girls and raise their voices.