Virginia Teen Builds AI Platform to Help Neurodivergent Job Seekers
Seventeen-year-old Navya Tuteja has founded Raaha, a free AI platform that helps neurodivergent job seekers judge whether a role suits their work style before applying.
A 17-year-old high school senior in Virginia has developed an artificial intelligence platform aimed at making job searches easier for neurodivergent candidates. Navya Tuteja, a student at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, is the founder of Raaha, a free tool that helps users assess whether a job is likely to match their working style before they apply.
The platform has drawn more than 1,000 users and indexes over 20,000 job listings. It draws on information from those listings to help job seekers evaluate how a workplace might align with their needs and preferences.
Tuteja's motivation came partly from personal experience. Her mother is hard of hearing and has faced difficulties in the workplace, which shaped her understanding of how poorly job seekers can be served by conventional listings. She also observed that most advertisements spell out what employers expect from candidates but say little about what the day-to-day work or the workplace environment is actually like.
Her school's restrictions on generative AI tools also influenced the project. The institution blocks ChatGPT, Claude and similar services on its network, which meant Tuteja had to rely more on her own effort for assignments and exam preparation. She does not regard AI as inherently problematic and believes students should be taught to use it responsibly. She serves as president of her school's AI club.
Raaha is not her only initiative. Tuteja has also worked on Legible, a tool intended to make special-education documents easier for families to understand. Raaha remains free to use for now, and Tuteja plans to attend college. She has said she may consider working on the startup full-time if it continues to grow.