Atlantans have access to hundreds of apps that let them check the weather, keep up with friends, or simply order dinner. Kiran Ebrahim wondered why local abuse victims didn’t have an app to connect them with the help they needed.
So the eighteen-year-old graduate of The Lovett School helped create Inconspicuous, a start-up app she hopes will do just that. It introduces rape and domestic abuse victims to local shelters and advisers, and it also provides a forum in which people can share their stories.
Ebrahim developed the idea with other high school girls while enrolled in a entrepreneurial program at Georgia Tech two years ago. During class discussions, they realized they all knew people who had been victimized and needed help. “We thought creating this app could create change,” she says. She’s now working to find coders to bring the app to life.
This isn’t the first time Ebrahim has tried to bring about change. She spent a month last summer in Kenya, volunteering with Global Encounters. She worked long hours reopening a library and computer center at a boys primary school.
As the youngest daughter of Pakistani immigrants, Ebrahim draws inspiration from her parents. Although her mother never attended college, she now runs several convenience stores, while her dad is an IT director for Kaiser Permanente. “Even if people start from the bottom, they can succeed,” she says.
Ebrahim, who speaks five languages and has a longstanding interest in women’s issues, says her biggest honor this year was giving a TED-Ed talk in Spanish about the gender pay gap in Latin America. In the fall, she plans to attend the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business; she eventually hopes to become a social entrepreneur focused on solving global issues.
But she’s still a normal teenager, she insists. “A lot of my friends are into fashion. I play flag football. And I love Beyoncé, of course.”
