Event
Sat., Jan. 25, 2025, 9:00-Noon
Haas Center for Public Service
562 Salvatierra Walk
Stanford, Calif., 94305
(MENLO PARK, CALIF.) – The Westly Foundation has announced eight finalists for the 2025 Westly Prize for Young California Social Innovators . Each will advance to compete for $145,000 in unrestricted funding – including three top awards of $40,000 each, on Saturday, January 25, 2025 at Stanford University’s Haas Center for Public Service.
SInce 2012, the Westly Prize honors talent, creativity, and the gifting humanitarian spirit of early-stage innovators combating persistent community and global challenges. The 2025 Westly Prize finalists and their corresponding innovations follow:
Christina Mireles & Amanda Moreno: Body Empowerment Project , a nonprofit addressing eating disorder prevention among underserved adolescents through a culturally competent, near-peer mentorship model.
Ashmita Kumar & Erica Corral: UC Berkeley undergraduate Ashmita Kumar, Co-Founder and CEO of Code Blue AI , is focused on reducing stroke damage through early detection and rapid response as a plugin for devices.
Reetam Ganguli: Bay Area based Reetam Ganguli founded Elythea to detect and intervene early in high-risk pregnancies, using machine learning language models and AI engagement to engage with patients 24/7 in a way that significantly reduces maternal mortality and complications.
Paul Kramer: Institute for Youth in Policy (YIP) is building America’s largest network of young innovators for cross-sector civic change. This national nonprofit supports youth in formulating informed, unbiased, balanced policy perspectives, regardless of party affiliation.
Maria Tiu, Charis Turner, Shaista Afzhal, & Amritpal Singh: Prime Time , a near-peer program started by UCSF medical students, empowers and equips pre-medical students from Central California to become excellent physicians, and to help fill a staggering physician shortage in the Central Valley.
Charlie McDonals & Apel Gil: RescueSight employs advanced autonomous drone technology and AI to deliver a comprehensive view of disaster areas, improving situational awareness for first responders. Their all-in-one dashboard transforms chaotic scenes into organized data.
Danielle Boyer: In 2019 , Ojibwe (Sault Tribe) teen Danielle Boyer created The STEAM Connection , a youth-led charity that has reached 800,000+ children – including tribal youth – with technical education that emphasizes language revitalization, robotics, ethical artificial intelligence systems, and augmented reality.
Rea Salva & Vishesh Mehta: Zor Energy addresses rural India’s electricity challenges with a battery sharing network, allowing farmers to rent multi-functional batteries whenever and wherever they need it — at a fraction of the cost of diesel, without the investment and reliability issues of solar.
