Trisha Prabhu, Youth Advisor & Contributor

Trisha Prabhu is the 24-year-old inventor and Founder and CEO of ReThink™, a patented technology that stops cyberbullying before the damage is done. ReThink detects offensive content and encourages users to rethink sending it, stopping online hate proactively. Today, ReThink’s technology (named one of Google Play’s Most Innovative Apps), educational materials, and anti-cyberbullying advocacy have been shared with young digital citizens worldwide, everywhere from the Caribbean to Lebanon. ReThink’s non-profit arm, ReThink Citizens, has brought ReThink’s anti-hate and digital literacy educational content to tens of thousands historically underreached youth across the US–and is building a pipeline of young digital changemakers that are working to create the internet that they deserve.

For her work with ReThink, Trisha has been the recipient of many awards, among them, the Princess Diana International Anti-Bullying Award and Mozilla’s Rise25 Award. Trisha has also made waves as a contestant on ABC’s Shark Tank and as the winner of Harvard University’s President’s Innovation Challenge and The Elevate Prize. Most recently, her work was recognized by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Archewell Foundation.

Trisha is a TED speaker and has delivered 120+ talks in 30 cities about the power of “ReThinking.” She is the author of “ReThink the Internet,” the world’s first-ever “by-youth, for-youth” guide to the internet.

Trisha currently serves on the Council for Responsible Social Media, where she supports the Council’s work to advocate for an information environment that is safer for youth. She also serves on the Responsible Technology Youth Power Fund’s Steering Committee.

Trisha received her BA from Harvard College. She received a Master of Science and MPP at the University of Oxford as a US Rhodes Scholar. She is now a JD candidate at Yale Law School. In the future, she hopes to deliver systemic legislative change for our digital world.

As a social entrepreneur, Trisha has received worldwide acclaim in the business world. In 2016, President Obama and the U.S. State Department invited Trisha to the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, to showcase her work and share her story with other entrepreneurs. Not long after, ReThink was featured on ABC’s hit T.V. show, Shark Tank. In 2019, ReThink was the Grand Prize Winner of Harvard University’s President’s Innovation Challenge. In 2020, Trisha was named one of the inaugural winners of the prestigious Elevate Prize, as well as an Adrian Cheng Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Social Innovation and Change Initiative. In 2021, she was the youngest honoree named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Social Impact list.

Trisha has also been honored with awards and recognition for her ingenuity in inventing, building, and launching ReThink. For her research and scientific inquiry, Trisha was named a 2014 Google Science Fair Global Finalist. She was also awarded the 2016 MIT INSPIRE Aristotle Award, as well as the 2016 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Illinois High School Innovator Award. She also had the esteemed distinction of showcasing and sharing the ReThink technology at the 2016 White House Science Fair at the invitation of President Obama.

For her advocacy, public service, and her commitment to leading an anti-cyberbullying movement, Trisha was selected as a 2015 Global Teen Leader by the We Are Family Foundation, conferred the 2016 WebMD Health Hero of the Year Prodigy Award, and received the Anti-Bullying Champion Award by the International Princess Diana Awards, the Global Anti-Bullying Hero Award from Auburn University, and the Upstander Legacy Celebration Award from the Tyler Clementi Foundation. She is also a humble recipient of several other awards, including the Daily Points of Light Honor, awarded by the George H. W. Bush Foundation for extraordinary volunteering and service.

Trisha has also helped spark a rallying cry against online hate. To date, she has shared the ReThink message in over 100+ keynotes around the world in 3 languages, speaking on platforms that include TED, TEDx, The Aspen Ideas Festival, La Ciudad de Las Ideas, SAP, Girls Who Code, the Family Online Safety Institute, Universities, Schools, Conferences and more.

Outside of ReThink, Trisha is involved in a number of initiatives that are close to her heart. In 2017, she was elected Illinois’s Youth Governor – the state’s first female Youth Governor in 28 years. She’s also an ardent supporter of empowering women in the entrepreneurial community. Whether volunteering her time to teach young women how to code at Girls Who Code, or leading SoGal Boston, a chapter of the SoGal movement, which is committed to ending the diversity gap in entrepreneurship, Trisha is working to inspire and support a generation of fierce, fearless leaders tackling the world’s most important issues.

Trisha was selected as a Rhodes Scholar in 2022. Trisha is a Harvard Graduate and is currently pursuing her research into social sciences of the internet at Oxford University, UK as a Rhodes Scholar.