Ruby Arun, is only 15 years old and a sophomore at William Fremd High School in Palatine, Illinois. Arun has a passion of empowering girls to be tomorrow’s leaders in STEM through her organization, Mission: MathMinds, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. It also started when Arun was young and competing in math competitions, and placed top five percent nationally seven times.
During her time doing math competitions she realized that their was rarely a team that was a majority of girls, including her own teams. Ruby Arun decided to share her passion with others in her community and worldwide during the height of the pandemic.
That’s when Ruby founded Mission:MathMinds in June of 2020, making a platform for girls to explore their STEM interests with a supporting community of like minded girls and role models. Ruby wanted to make sure that Mission:MathMinds gave support to underserved girls with time and resources.
Ruby Arun added that she is inspired to continue volunteering due to her local community encouraging her to empower more girls. She has also received messaged from parents that have shared how their daughters once hated math and now look forward to their next mentoring sessions, a result of the community that has been built over time.
The last way that Arun is empowering young girls is through a Global Book Drive where the palatine community collected and donated 15,000 books worth over $180,000 for children in underserved communities. The mentoring program has managed to serve over 6,000 total girls within Palatine from several other STEM awareness campaigns that they support as well.
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