AUNUA Youth Ambassador Blog Series
From Robotics Fields to Financial Futures: Building a Career at the Intersection of Purpose and Data.
“I'm inspired by the potential of tech and finance to create change — and I'm just getting started.”
Most high school juniors are still figuring out what subject they enjoy most.
Poorvasri Sivakumar has already found the intersection of three: finance, technology, and data.
And she's using all three to think about global problems most adults haven't gotten to yet.
Finance. Technology. Data. For Poorvasri, they are not separate interests — they are different ways of solving problems.
Learning to build, test and rebuild
At The Sheffield Private School in Dubai, Poorvasri serves as Form Representative while also captaining her school's VEX V5 robotics team.
Leading a robotics team means working through the kind of hands-on problem-solving that competitions demand.
Build. Test. Fail. Rebuild. Repeat.
It is an approach that requires technical thinking, collaboration, patience and the willingness to learn from what does not work.
While still in high school, Poorvasri is deliberately building experience across technology, analytics, leadership, writing and finance.
Putting youth perspectives into print
The same curiosity she brings to robotics also appears in her writing.
As an Honorary Ambassador and Newspaper Writer for Inspire Youth Journal, Poorvasri has spent close to two years putting youth perspectives into print.
Writing gives her another way to examine ideas, communicate what she is learning, and contribute to conversations beyond the classroom.
Building a solution matters. Being able to explain why it matters is just as important.
Taking curiosity into AI and analytics
Poorvasri's growing curiosity for data and analytics led her to Accure Inc., where she completed a Summer Internship and earned an AI Internship Certificate.
It gave her the opportunity to move beyond classroom learning and begin exploring how artificial intelligence and data can be applied in real environments.
From her AI internship experience to engineering and applied science learning, Poorvasri is already exploring fields many students first encounter at university.
Looking beyond the school curriculum
Her learning has also taken her to the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, where she is part of the HUVTSP'25 programme.
Through the programme, she is engaging with engineering and applied sciences at a level most of her peers will not encounter until university.
For Poorvasri, opportunities like these are not simply additions to a CV.
They are ways to test her interests, understand how different disciplines connect and get closer to the problems she eventually wants to solve.
Purpose behind the ambition
What ties all of Poorvasri's interests together is not simply ambition.
It is a clear sense of direction.
She is not collecting titles for the sake of it.
She is deliberately building fluency across finance, technology and social impact — three fields she sees as connected rather than separate.
The goal is not simply to understand technology or finance. It is to understand what they can be used to change.
Starting before university
Poorvasri Sivakumar's story is still at its beginning.
And that is precisely what makes it worth watching.
She is already learning to lead teams, write for an audience, work with data, explore AI and think critically about the role finance and technology can play in solving wider problems.
She is not waiting for university to tell her what she can become.
She is already finding out for herself.
AUNUA Youth Ambassador
At AUNUA, we're proud to have Poorvasri Sivakumar as one of our Youth Ambassadors. Her story is proof that you don't need to wait until university — or even graduation — to start building solutions for a better world.
Sometimes it starts with a robotics team, a newsroom byline, and a genuine curiosity about how things work. Onwards and upwards!