Ananya Singh

Ananya is, at present, the Youth Advisor to USAID Digital Youth Council. In her role, she plans and leads sessions digital harms. She is also the moderator for USAID-led Panel Discussion on “Voices of the Youth as partners of Digital Development” at Global Digital Development Forum 2023. She has previously served as one of the 12 global members of USAID’s 1st Digital Youth Council. In the said capacity, she was made one of the panelists for USAID’s Virtual Symposium on Protecting Children and the Youth from Digital Harms in February 2022 and USAID’s session on the Impact of Digital Harms on the Mental Health and Well-being of Children at the Global Digital Development Forum in May 2022. She was also the Closing Speaker for the Employability Week of USAID’s Higher Education Global Evidence Summit in 2022. Ananya was also the Master of Ceremonies for USAID, YP2LE, & Youth Excel’s International Youth Day online event in 2022 where she also moderated the intergenerational panel. She is also one of the Members of the USAID HELN Steering Group.

Ananya deeply cares about the digital safety of young children and youth, especially girls. In 2020, amidst the pandemic, she ran a massively popular campaign against TikTok, asking the social media giant to make its app more responsible in terms of content moderation. The campaign, which ran with the hashtags #TweakTikTok and #TikTokTheekKaro, was started in response to a viral TikTok video glorifying a man spitting acid onto the face of a woman. Ananya’s campaign garnered 158,000+ signatures in a month's time. She was awarded the very prestigious Diana Award in 2021 for her remarkable humanitarianism and exemplary social action.

Ananya was a NextGen@ICANN64, a 2-time NextGen Ambassador for ICANN68 and ICANN69, and a Fellow for ICANN76. She was also one of the youngest Fellows at the Asia-Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum (APrIGF) in Russia in 2019 where she was a Panelist for the 1st Plenary Session on the Development of and Issues surrounding Internet Governance and the Rapporteur & Presenter for Digital Economy. She later joined NetMission.Asia as an Ambassador, where she actively participated in the conception and execution of training agenda, drafted the Modules on Internet Governance Ecosystem & Internet Infrastructure, Access & Empowerment, Human Rights Online, Cybersecurity, Privacy & Safer Internet, Digital Economy and Emerging Technologies, Diversity and Multi-stakeholder Participation, and ICANN Policies, led the working groups on RIRs, IGF, and Human Rights Online, and moderated multiple episodes of "Chat With Edmon, CEO of DotAsia". She has also contributed a number of blogs for NetMission’s website. Further, she was also given the opportunity to present the progress report of NetMission Academy to the Board Members of DotAsia.

Apart from advocacy, Ananya also likes to engage in debates and write essays. Her essay, demanding greater intergenerational justice during entry-level hiring, was placed in the Global Top-25 Most Thought-Provoking Essays at the 51st St. Gallen Symposium in Switzerland and earned her the title of "Leader of Tomorrow". She was also one of the Top-100 students who were selected to participate in the 2022 Global Leadership Challenge organised by the University of Oxford and the University of St. Gallen. She was awarded the silver prize in the Queen's Commonwealth International Essay Competition organised by the Royal Commonwealth Society, London, UK, twice, in 2014 and 2016. She later went on to become a Judge for the same competition in 2019. She was also one of the Judges for the 2022 Generation Unlimited's imaGen Ventures Youth Challenge, supported by UNICEF, USAID, and PLAN International.