SpeakSmart wins Rep. Linda Sánchez’s 2025 Congressional App Challenge in California’s 38th District

When asked what inspired the creation of SpeakSmart, the students said, “At school, we noticed that we struggled with trying to keep our friends and teachers interested and engaged with our presentations. The lack of being able to properly present a topic without messing up affected our confidence, participation, and ability to share ideas effectively with others. We also saw that our peers and teachers faced the same issue: being unable to present well to an audience. In addition, we weren’t able to find many free resources online that could help us practice our skills, specifically for public speaking and presentations. There were no dedicated apps that could give us feedback on our body language either, and many required payments were specifically geared toward interview preparation instead of general speaking preparation. Moreover, after researching different apps and platforms, we saw that hardly any provided free, real-time feedback on both speech and body language. So we decided that we wanted to create an app that would help people around the world improve their speaking, regardless of age, race, gender, or sexuality.

“Being afraid to speak can hold people back in many environments: academically, professionally, and personally. Our vision for SpeakSmart extends beyond improving presentation skills. We want to empower people to express themselves through confident and clear speaking, no matter what their background is. Whether the setting is a school presentation, a teacher preparing a lesson, or a professional giving a speech, SpeakSmart can help users grow through personalized feedback. We believe that having the chance to speak with confidence can open more opportunities to share ideas that inspire change, and we want to create that type of positive impact.”