Ananya Shah will always remember May 3, 2023. That’s when she visited the White House and took a photo with Vice President Kamala Harris.
“It was just stunning,” he said. “I felt very grateful and I felt very grateful for all the opportunities I had to get to this point in my life. It was really cool.”
The Centennial High senior was honored during the White House Forum on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders for her work with The Very Asian Foundation, which started the May Book Project. The goal is to get more Asian American books and literature into local libraries.
In addition to the forum, he also helped with a May Book Project event that included donating books to DC schools.
Shah was accompanied by her father, Chirag, who said it was “great to see her grow into this role and the confidence she had in the passion she had was really evident”.
Ananya grew up in the area until her family moved to the suburb of St. Louis of Clayton, Missouri.
“When I was there during my freshman and sophomore years, I got very involved in politics,” Ananya said. “After that, it morphed into activism, specifically South Asian activism.”
He was part of a student organization, Asian American Civic Scholars. That’s how he connected with the non-profit Very Asian Foundation.
He moved to Champaign his junior year of high school. He continues his work with the May Book Project.
Ananya, 18, graduates from Centennial on May 30. She will attend the University of Illinois in the fall and majored in bioengineering. He plans to pursue a master’s/doctorate. in bioengineering after earning his undergraduate degree.
“Ultimately, I want to be CEO of a stem cell company,” she said. “I want to tackle diseases and health complications for which we have yet to find a cure for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.”
Ananya has a 12-year-old brother, Ayaan. Her mother, Manisha, is an obstetrics and gynecology physician at OSF HealthCare. Charig is a UI law professor and CEO of RejuvStem Clinics.
