Meet Pranali Vora | Founder at Youth 4 Neuro
We had the good fortune of connecting with Pranali Vora and we’ve shared our conversation below.
Hi Pranali, what is the most important factor behind your success?
The most important factor behind the success of my 501(c)(3) nonprofit, Youth 4 Neuro is perserverance. Although we are just newly established (since June of 2023), we still have managed to expand our reach across 10 countries with our 20 chapters featuring 500+ high schoolers dedicated to spreading neuroscience knowledge through their direct communities. Building these chapters and ensuring that each one is fulfilling their responsibilities, however, is not an easy task. It is only with dedication from my executive board that I could finally make sure that the millions of new event ideas in my head were coming to fruition. As the board consists of mainly high schoolers, obviously, time is of the essence. So naturally, there were some periods where the pressures from home or school got to us. But other than that, we made sure to dedicate a set amount of time per week to ensure that our commitment shines through our projects and outreach.
Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
While Youth 4 Neuro originally started as an awareness/education initiative, we’ve learned from talking to students, peers, and current leaders in neuroscience that young people need more exposure and opportunities to get involved with neuroscience. We don’t have one person that inspires our work, but identifying the educational and professional barriers that make it difficult to engage with neuroscience, and seeing the people this issue affects has motivated our organization’s efforts.
This month we have taken upon a big project by partnering with Children’s Medical Center in Plano to provide 200 comfort items to pediatric patients during the holiday season. We are hoping that the support of our community and Y4N can allow children to experience a Christmas and New Year they enjoy. Furthermore, as an organization centered around medicine, over the last few months, we have been able to partner with many other organizations such as “Bioartelier”, “MedDreamers”, etc to successfully gain a wider audience and work towards expanding our organizations’ goals to building a big and connected network with neuroscience professionals from esteemed institutions such as UT Austin. “A significant challenge for our organization is the stage of education we are currently in. Our team is compromised mostly on 10th, 11th, and 12th graders who are working to balance their grades, extracurriculars, etc, as we get ready for college and beyond. As a team, we have found it difficult to arrange meetings and find time to collaborate and execute our plans for Y4N. As time goes on and we continue to stay regular with our work, I think as a group we have a high chance of succeeding and getting our message across.
We received our official non profit status and certificate letter in August of 2023, just 2 months after the official launch of our organization. We have also founded a podcast where we have received world wide recognition as we interviewed professionals in Neuroscience from presitigious institutions such as UPenn Medicine, Columbia University, University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M, Oxford, and Cambridge University.
Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I would like to thank all the professors who said yes to being interviewed in our podcast, which in turn, helped so many listeners (including myself) to learn about the “do’s and don’ts” of a career as flexible as neuroscience.
Website: https://youth4neuro.wixsite.com/youth-4-neuro
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/youth4neuro/
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