Whiz Kid of the week: Diya Aggarwal

Diya Aggarwal. Age 12

Schools: Seventh-grader at Hyde Middle School in Cupertino and Young Genius Bay Area Speech and Debate Academy in Saratoga.

Accomplishments:

• 2nd Place Winner at Harker Speech and Debate tournament in September, 2014 (Congress Debate)
• Finalist at Harker in December, 2014 (Congress Debate)
• Silver Medalist in BAUDL in December, 2015 (Congress Debate)
• Octofinalist at Harker Speech and Debate tournament in December, 2015 (LD Debate)
• 3rd Place Winner at Stanford Speech and Debate tournament in January 2016 (Congress Debate)
• Placed in numerous speech tournaments
• Attended 12 total Speech and Debate tournaments
• Been part of the Young Genius Team since September, 2014
• Alumni Ambassador for Technovation Challenge
• Participant on Technovation Challenge 2015
• Participant on Technovation Challenge 2016
• Honor Roll Student at Hyde Middle School

Key to Awesomeness:
Diya attends Hyde Middle School in Cupertino, and she has been part of the Young Genius Speech and Debate team since fall 2014. She has participated in 12 tournaments, over the course of just one season of debate in a variety of speech and debate formats. Her coach and the Young Genius Speech Program Director Taisia Dubinina states, “Since Diya has joined Young Genius, I have seen her grow into a skilled speaker and debater. Diya exhibits qualities such as patience, responsiveness, and hard work, which are the components of a true debater. However, this sort of growth does not just solely happens within the classroom, thus we should thank Diya’s mother for her undoubting support at each tournament.” Diya found her passion for debate when she first started classes at Young Genius, and she plans on continuing speech and debate through all of middle and high school. Apart from debate, Diya is also an Alumni Ambassador for the Technovation Challenge, which is a global competition, meant to foster an interest in technology for girls. She participated in 2015, and helps spread Technovation in different areas to encourage more girls to participate. She also created the Technovation Club at her school, which is currently hosting 5 new teams. She is a strong advocate of STEM, as she believes that it is extremely important to know the basics of using technology, since we live in the 21 century. She also goes to big companies like Google and LinkedIn to help lead coding workshops, and she organized a field trip to Yahoo for the entire Technovation Club at her school. She has done Q and A sessions as Yahoo and Microsoft as well.