Shruthi Kumar

Shruthi Kumar is a recent graduate of Harvard University, holding a Bachelor of Arts degree in History of Science and in Economics with a minor in Human Evolutionary Biology. She is the founder of GoYogi, an international student-led non-profit working on a proactive and preventative approach to student mental health education bringing the benefits of mindfulness and meditation to over 7000 students across the world. In 2018, Shruthi was a finalist at the World Championships of Yoga Sports in Beijing, China. In college, she co-founded a peer-education group called Wellness Educators with Harvard University Health Services (HUHS). She also served on the Student Health Insurance Advisory Committee at HUHS. As a certified yoga instructor, Shruthi loved to spend her free time teaching yoga to students on campus.

In addition to her passion for the benefits of yoga and meditation for mental and physical wellbeing, she actively seeks justice in menstrual equity. At Harvard, she founded a taskforce to increase accessibility to free menstrual products on campus from 24% to nearly 100% through the installation of over 817 menstrual product dispensers. Shruthi is a social entrepreneur and is passionate about health equity and public health entrepreneurship.

She is also an internationally-recognized public speaker. She was awarded the opportunity to be the 2024 Le Baron Russell Briggs Commencement Speaker at Harvard University. Her other notable speeches include her original oratory on the power of introspection as a finalist at the 2019 National Speech and Debate Association. She also delivered a speech on the power of democracy as the 2020 Voice of Democracy Champion, a public speaking competition on American democracy sponsored by the Veterans of Foreign Wars. She is also a United Nations Academic Impact Millennium Fellow.

In college, Shruthi served as the President of Harvard South Asian Association. She recently took Tamil classes at Harvard and discovered a newfound passion for Tamil poetry. Shruthi, most of all, loves meeting new people and talking with students about career paths, academic interests, and all things life!