Daira V., 21 – Funded
Meet Daira V. (she/her), a 1DF Scholarship winner who is pursuing Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech.
What is your dream?
My dream is to become a bridge between technology and equity, building software that widens opportunity instead of gatekeeping it.
I grew up moving across Peru—and, for years, I just wanted to fit in. That changed when I founded Incluye Pe, training Indigenous entrepreneurs to sell their craft online after the pandemic cut off their livelihoods, and again when I led a coral monitoring team in Hong Kong, using data to fight for something bigger than myself.
Now, studying Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech, I want to carry that same instinct into tech: building products and pipelines that reach the Global South as thoughtfully as they reach Silicon Valley.
My dream is to keep opening the doors that were opened for me—for the next girl from a small town; the next entrepreneur without a platform; the next student who doesn’t yet see herself in tech.
Please share how you feel about the win and what impact it will have on your career.
Winning this is confirmation that the work I care about—building tech that hands people access instead of gatekeeping it—is worth doubling down on. It’s fuel to keep proving that the people closest to a problem are the ones who should be designing the systems that solve it.
What advice do you have for others reaching for their dreams?
Don’t wait until you feel ready to start. I built my first AI product before I even felt like a real engineer. In the era of AI, the gap between having an idea and holding a working prototype is shorter than it has ever been. Use that and build tools that actually change people’s lives, and let the confidence catch up to you along the way!
What else would you like to share about you and your win?
I’m Daira V., a Computer Engineering student at Georgia Tech and a Rise Scholar (Rhodes Trust & Schmidt Futures). I recently won the 1,000 Dreams Fund Scholarship.
Most of the technology I build has one goal: use it to shorten the distance between people and the systems that were designed without them in mind, not widen it.
That’s the idea behind CreceAI, an AI-powered WhatsApp chatbot I developed to help Peruvian street vendors navigate business formalization and the maze of legal and financial paperwork that keeps informal entrepreneurs locked out of credit, insurance, and growth. We indexed over 100 legal and financial documents into a conversational system and interviewed 50-plus vendors directly, so the tool spoke their language instead of a lawyer’s. CreceAI went on to become a finalist for the Rhodes Trust’s Kevin Xu Innovation Prize.
Being chosen for this scholarship means a lot because it isn’t about lines of code, it’s about what that code is for. AI can just as easily widen inequality as close it: a product built without the right users in the room will always serve the people who already had access. That’s the standard I hold my work to, from CreceAI to my engineering internships.
I’ll use this prize to keep building technology that serves communities like the ones that raised me.
