Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Aditya Sathe. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Aditya, thanks for joining us today. Let’s start with education – we’d love to hear your thoughts about how we can better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career

I believe that the education system is designed to promote the creation of hardworking and self-sufficient people. However, I feel as though the education system lacks in promoting unique thinking perspectives of students. Oftentimes, students are asked to analyze speeches, books, and other historically famous media. While this does teach students how to derive meaning from texts, it suppresses the ability to effectively construct opinions and arguments in the greater context of these works. Students often have unorthodox views when it comes to the analysis of texts. I believe that the school system should reward students not on how close they are to the “correct” answers, but rather on how well they can back up their assertions.

Aditya, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Our nonprofit organization, TeensforTexas, aims to raise unbiased civic engagement within Texas youth in order to combat political indifference. A few years ago, I always considered politics to be a “grown-up topic,” and that a kid like me had no reason to try and learn about the concept. However, now that I will become a “grown-up” this year, I see more than ever that I should have engaged in the topic years ago. Moreover, I see that many other teenagers, who are also coming of voting age, have the same mindset of political indifference. That’s when I decided to start TeensforTexas (T4T). As I mentioned earlier, our organization aims to educate teenagers across the state of Texas through unbiased news and information. I saw that the biggest problem with modern politics was that people weren’t making their voting decisions off their own logic but rather someone else’s. With our educational videos and activities, we can enable teenagers/Texas youth to make political decisions of their own accord. Our organization aims to give people ample information to think for themselves, rather than piggybacking off the popular concept.

Any advice for managing a team?

Since my team consists primarily of high schoolers, it is easy for them to get bogged down under pressure. I find that the best way to improve team productivity and morale is by showing them that they have a strong support system. Sometimes, one of my team members isn’t able to entirely complete the task that I assigned them. This is usually due to all the school-work that they have to tend to. In order to get the task done and motivate that member, I will help them directly with the task and work with them to get it completed. I never try to make my assistance feel like a lesson for the team member but rather a fun experience of working together. This way, the team member will have greater respect for me and the organization, and more importantly, greater confidence in themselves. The best way to be a leader is to be a helper.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

From the moment our videos hit the internet, they were a viral sensation. Our first video got 500k views on Instagram alone within a week. After that, our videos kept skyrocketing in views and popularity, and our follower count grew to 3k in just two weeks of release. The reason for this lies within social media secrets that not everyone knows. There are multiple factors when it comes to virality on social media, but two of them are most crucial to success. Video production quality and account engagement—these aspects are more crucial than any other when it comes to blowing up on socials. Most people lack on the latter of the two. Many people don’t take the time to warm up their social media account to their specific niche before posting. Warming up an account to a specific niche is a crucial step, as it allows the algorithms to create account momentum. This momentum will carry on into the first posts of the account. I recommend that anyone aiming to grow their account on social media should warm up their accounts more.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: teens.fortexas
• Other: Tiktok: teensfortexas

Image Credits

Aditya Sathe, Rohan Pachananda, Ananth Muralidharan