Inspiration to Ones Dreams – the WhiteOwl Talk Series

Since July this year, 2020, Varun from Grade 10 has been creating and hosting the talk series ‘WhiteOwl’ on YouTube, where he has been interviewing a selection of guests. Ranging from scientists and engineers, to athletes and business people, the series features people who are all prominent within their field. So far Varun has produced 10 episodes in the series. In one of his latest episode Varun talks to Mr Keshavan, a former Olympian, who represented India six times in the winter Olympics.

The idea is to motivate High School students to pursue their dreams – Varun, Grade 10

Varun started the series to show and interest young people in the various career options available, and to help bring more perspective directly from people who have taken that career path. "When we are young, we are unclear about what we are passionate about, and even if we know – what path will lead us to make the most fulfilling career choice?”, says Varun whose talk series has gained a significant amount of young followers. The aim with WhiteOwl is to expose high school students to their passions and cutting edge research, and career paths that could lead them there. “For example, a person passionate about both biology and chemistry could take a career path in paleogenomics, like Mrs Edana Lord, whom I interviewed”, explains Varun. 

Guests on the show have included Vandita Pant, Chief Business Officer at BHP; Amit Gupta, Co-Founder at Yulu; Awais Ahmed, CEO at Pixell; and Prof Ramesh Balasubramaniam at University of California, Merced. Varun and the guests talk about the guiding principles for making life choices, sharing their stories and what obstacles they had to overcome. Each guest talks about the decisions they took to finally reach their destination; what failure means for them, and what affirmation they seek when the path is unusually lonely. “The guests share their stories and surprisingly every one was candid and gave thoughtful answers that can be guiding lights to high school students”, says Varun, who aims to have produced at least 100 interviews by the time he finishes school, covering a wide range of fields and professions. 
 
Varun likes the way that the Mr Keshavan, who represented India in six Winter Olympics without any support or funds in the dangerous sport of Luge, won a gold medal in the 2011 Asian Luge Cup at Nagano in Japan. “We talked about what motivates a person to pick a sport that is unconventional, lacks sponsorship, endorsements, and government support, and still manage to participate and win”, explains Varun, who chose to contact Mr Keshavan because he decided to get in to the sport of luge at the age of 16 – making it relatable to the younger audience. “Mr. Keshavan and I connected at a personal level, and his sincerity came through in his answers”, says Varun and invites everyone to watch the WhiteOwl episode on YouTube.