I gave a TEDx talk when I was still figuring out what I wanted my Instagram bio to say. That sentence still feels strange to type. I put "TEDx '22" on my profile because it's the kind of credential that makes people pause for half a second before deciding whether to take me seriously — and I've learned that half a second matters more than it should when you're the youngest person on almost every call you're on.
The Age Thing Never Fully Goes Away
I sit in sponsor meetings across from people who have twenty, thirty years on me. Some of them are lovely about it immediately. Some of them need a minute: you can watch it happen, the recalibration, the moment they stop talking to me like I'm someone's daughter sitting in on the meeting and start talking to me like I'm the person actually running the event. I used to find that frustrating. But I've come to realize it's not personal, it's just what happens when you don't look like what people expect "Head of" to look like. You get used to earning the room twice, once with the actual work, and once just by being taken at face value.
Exams Were a Real Deadline I Had to Work Around
This part doesn't make it into most "young founder" content, but it's true and I'm not going to pretend otherwise: for a chunk of this year, my actual calendar had sponsor follow-ups on the same week as exams. Nobody tells you that building something real doesn't wait for your life to be less complicated first. You just carry both. Some weeks that meant replying to a sponsor at 11pm after a study session or heading to a meeting right after my last exam. That's not a "grind-culture" flex, it's just what the timeline looked like, and I'd rather say that plainly than pretend I had some perfectly separated professional life. That busyness is what actually kept me going: I was able to apply the business I studied to my next sponsor meeting a day later.
Inheriting Something Doesn't Mean Coasting on It
People assume that because this started as my mum's event, my part is easier: the brand already exists, the relationships already exist, why wouldn't it be smooth? What that framing misses is that inheriting a decade of goodwill also means inheriting a decade of expectations. People remember what this event was in 2019. Pre-Covid. A lot has changed. My job isn't to maintain that memory, it's to build something that holds up against it while still being unmistakably mine. That's a harder brief than starting from nothing, not an easier one.
Why I Don't Downplay the Gen Z Thing
I could try to sound older in every room I'm in, use fancy words and maybe even wear less "Gen Z clothing". I've decided I won't be doing that. The fact that I'm building this as a 2026 Gen Z entrepreneur alongside my parents instead of pretending to be a slightly younger version of the generation before me is the actual value I bring! I'm not trying to run this the way it would've been run in 2016. I'm running it the way it should be run now, by someone who actually lives in 2026, on the platforms people are actually using, in the tone people actually respond to. That's not a compromise on credibility. That's the credibility.
The Honest Version
Most days it doesn't feel like a milestone or a talking point. It feels like a long list of things that need to get done, some of which I'm confident about and some of which I'm figuring out in real time, same as anyone doing something for the first time at any age. The TEDx talk, the "Gen Z Head of" title, the mother-daughter story — those are the parts people find interesting from the outside. From the inside, it's mostly just work I care about, done by someone who just happens to be only 18.
