When I was 14, I certainly didn’t know yet that I wanted to be a doctor and I think my proudest innovations were finding ways to dub music onto a copy of Back to the Future on our VCR, or new imitations of a Magic Johnson no-look pass. Yet, recently, when I was scrolling through my wonderful Indian family forward fest of news items, more commonly known as WhatsApp, I noted that both my mother-in-law and my son had sent me something about a true innovator named Vinisha Umashankar, an inspiring 14 year old from Tiruvannamalai, a rural Tamil Nadu town in Southern India. Like many ninth graders, she loves to read, stay active, and make pancakes! But her innovation, the solar ironing cart, has garnered awards like the Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalaam IGNITE Award in 2019, given by the National Innovation Foundation in India, and the 2020 International Children’s Climate Prize. She’s also recently been shortlisted for the Prime Minister of India’s Rashtriya Bal Shakti Puraskaar, the highest civilian award in India for students under 18. Vinisha was able to join us for a conversation recently and I asked her about her first memories of translating her curiosity into discovery and innovation.