Meet ten-year-old Puneite Ishita Katyal, the youngest Indian TEDx speaker

If you ever thought that you need a whole lot of life experience to be a TEDx speaker, well, think again. This Children’s Day, 10-year-old Ishita Katyal from Pune became the youngest Indian TEDx speaker with an impressive speech in New York, reports The Indian Express. She spoke for a full four minutes at the TEDx Youth 2015 conference held at the Brooklyn Museum, where other speakers included NASA engineer, filmmakers and entrepreneurs. Katyal broke age-old perceptions about how children can be achievers too and don’t have to wait to be adults before they do something noteworthy. [caption id=“attachment_2515026” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Ishita Katyal at the TEDx talk in Bhilwara. Screengrab from YouTube[/caption] A basic point in Katyal’s speech was that she, like all other children, has always been asked the question: what do you want to be when you grow up? The question may seem innocuous but Katyal recognised that it comes with the assumption that she can only achieve something if she is an adult; that she cannot be a noteworthy person right now because she is just a child. That wasn’t acceptable to her and Katyal decided she wants to be an achiever now, reports The Indian Express. This is not the first time Katyal has participated in a TEDx event. In February this year, she organised a TEDx talk at her school Vibgyor High in Balewadi. In July this year, she spoke at a TEDx event at Bhilwara on ‘Why You Don’t Have to Wait Till You Grow Up’. She recalled how at the young age of seven, she had attended a TEDx talk and though she couldn’t “quite understand what the talks were all about… stories and experiences they shared on stage sparked my curiosity.” She was impressed and came back home “with a head full of ideas, dreams and role models.” Katyal proves that what you need to be an effective TEDx speaker is not necessarily years of life experience, but wisdom beyond your years.