Powering The Future

Ayesha Khanna was a Wall Street software engineer until the work of a globehopping academic triggered her social consciousness. Today, the AI hotshot advises governments and top-level corporations on the use of technology to better lives.

- Germaine Cheong

Ayesha Khanna leaned in, but not quite in an assertive Sheryl Sandberg way. At a hackathon five years ago, a little girl was helping to build electronic parts for a robot, only to be shooed away by her own mother. “Oh, my daughter, that’s not her interest,” the mother said, although it was clear to Khanna that she was good at it.

“Then, she put her son in front of me instead,” recalls Khanna. So, it wasn’t so much of leaning in as it was a restrained urge to keep the little girl where she was.

“I always remember that incident. Girls are not encouraged enough; they need more nurturing in this field.” Which is why she started 21st Century (21C) Girls. The registered charity teaches school girls coding and will run a series of AI workshops for polytechnic students this year.

Says Khanna, who is also chief executive and founder of artificial intelligence (AI) consultancy firm Addo AI: “We are determined to give girls the skills that will give them the creative confidence to follow their passions.

“To have this confidence, they must have an intuitive understanding of technology, AI and data because every single industry, from law, to manufacturing, to genetics, will have these elements in it in the 21st century.”

POWER TO THE PEOPLE

As much as she is a sought-after speaker at AI forums around the globe now, Khanna in her youth was oblivious to the marvels of technology.

Born in Lahore, Pakistan, to a prominent civil servant and English literature professor, she remembers a household filled with conversations about political philosophy and governance. “Economic development and improving the lives of the middle class were always big topics in our house. But there was no mention of technology because no one in my family understood it,” she says.