A New Chapter: The Congressional App Challenge Executive Leadership Board

Over the past decade, the Congressional App Challenge has grown into one of the most impactful bipartisan STEM initiatives in the country, with more than 70,000 students participating nationwide. As those students have continued on to college, the workforce, and into leadership roles across the technology and policy landscape, the program has evolved alongside them. Today, we are proud to announce the launch of the Congressional App Challenge Executive Leadership Board, a new initiative composed of early-career professionals who are alumni of the program.
 

This board represents the next chapter of the Congressional App Challenge’s growth, formalizing a pathway for alumni to remain engaged and help shape the future of the program. Drawing on their firsthand experience as participants and their continued success beyond it, members of the Executive Leadership Board will play a key role in strengthening alumni engagement, supporting current students, and advising on how the program can continue to expand its impact. We are especially excited to introduce the inaugural class of the Executive Leadership Board, whose leadership and perspective will help define this effort from the ground up and set the tone for future alumni engagement across the program.

Meet the Executive Leadership Board

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Emma graduated from Western Kentucky University (WKU) with a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics in December of 2025. She conducted work in quantum computing and artificial intelligence for oncology applications under Curelytics with the WKU Innovation Campus. Emma is a rural Kentucky native and has always held a passion for STEM education and research. Emma’s history of computing, computational biology and mathematical research, and service to her rural community propels her in leading rural outreach and development efforts for the Congressional App Challenge (CAC). She is excited to shape the coming years of the CAC and looks forward to what’s next. 

Akansha is an Associate Software Engineer at Capital One, where she develops platforms that power the auto finance loan funding process, enabling funding agents to review and validate applicant data and facilitate loan disbursements to dealerships. Prior to Capital One, Akansha interned at Medtronic across multiple teams, where she contributed to software and systems engineering projects in the diabetes technology space, developing solutions for insulin pump software, and supported project management initiatives within the neuro division. This year marks Akansha’s first year on the Executive

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Leadership Board, where she is focused on expanding the organization’s long-term impact by building a stronger alumni community and leading initiatives such as workshops and hackathons that connect and support both current participants and alumni.

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Medha drives product, GTM, and strategy to enhance the shopping, dasher, and merchant experience across DoorDash’s New Verticals product catalog with machine learning on the platform team. Previously, Medha worked at Adobe on an in-house product strategy & management consulting team for C-suite leadership of their top enterprise clients to accomplish a true digital transformation of operational, marketing, and sales capabilities. At the Congressional App Challenge, Medha volunteered as the Chair of the Alumni Advisory Board from 2020 – 2025, leading initiatives such as a global top 20% tech podcast, first App Challenge Day, #HouseOfCode keynote events, and student ecosystem development. Medha now will continue to serve as Chair of the Executive Leadership Board. 

 

Samuel is Head of Strategic Finance at Workshop, where he leads financial planning, accounting, business operations, and data to drive growth and operational excellence. Since joining in 2023, he has helped scale the company by building core financial infrastructure and partnering cross-functionally across the organization. His background spans operations, finance, product, and engineering, with experience at both startups and larger organizations including Garmin and JPMorgan Chase.

 

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Trisha is an innovator, global advocate, and anti-hate activist. Trisha’s journey began in the 8th grade: at just 13, she invented ReThink, a technology that aims to proactively stop cyberbullying (which won her district’s Congressional App Challenge in 2015!). Since then, Trisha’s message to “ReThink hate” has been shared with digital citizens around the world. ReThink has been featured at Google, The White House Science Fair, on the TED stage, and more.  
 
Today, Trisha also leads ReThink’s non-profit spinout, ReThink Citizens, which is working 
to support a new generation of young digital changemakers in creating the digital world they deserve. ReThink Citizens has been funded by Young Futures, which is supported by Melinda French Gates’ Pivotal Ventures, and the Responsible Technology Youth Power Fund, which is supported by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Archewell Foundation. 
 

About the Congressional App Challenge

The CAC is an initiative of the U.S. House of Representatives, where Members of Congress host contests in their districts for middle school and high school students, encouraging them to learn to code and inspiring them to pursue careers in computer science. The non-profit Internet Education Foundation provides the CAC with supplemental staffing and support. In the nine years of the Congressional App Challenge, the program has yielded over 83,000 App Challengers across all 50 states. Thousands of functional apps have been created for Congress, and participant demographics surpass all industry diversity metrics.