Most teenagers who find AI tools blocked on school Wi-Fi shrug and move on. But Navya Tuteja went on to build a company.
Tuteja, 17, studies at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Virginia. She is the founder of Raaha, a free AI platform that helps neurodivergent job seekers work out whether a role suits them before they apply.
The platform has drawn more than 1,000 users in a matter of weeks, along with coverage from local and national outlets.
Most job platforms tell you the salary, the location and the qualifications. They rarely tell you what a normal day looks like.
Tuteja noticed that gap and explained that job descriptions explain what employers want but almost never describe what the job will feel like day to day. For neurodivergent people, including those with ADHD, autism or dyslexia, that missing context matters a great deal.
Details such as whether priorities change every few hours, whether instructions are written or verbal, how much task switching is there, and how predictable the schedule is can decide whether a job is sustainable or quietly exhausting.
Her framing was simple. Getting the opportunity isn’t the hardest part; ending up in an environment not built for how you work is.
Tuteja grew up watching her mother, who is hard of hearing, navigate job accommodations, which she remembers as exhausting.
Because hearing loss is an invisible disability, her mother’s needs were often not taken seriously, and accommodations stayed inconsistent even after she was hired.
That experience pushed Tuteja into advocacy early. She founded the nonprofit Empower InvisAbilities to raise awareness about invisible disabilities. The organisation runs STEM workshops for neurodivergent people and works with schools to make education more inclusive.
Through that work she kept hearing the same story from students and early-career job seekers: they could land interviews but struggled to find workplaces that matched how they work best.
Raaha reverses the usual hiring dynamic. Instead of employers screening candidates, candidates screen workplaces.The process is straightforward:
The tagline of the platform ‘Find Your Way’, reflects a goal of providing information rather than making decisions for users.
The name is drawn from the Hindi orSanskrit word for ‘path’.
Tuteja spent about a year developing the platform before its June launch. She says she wrote the core algorithm herself, using AI mainly for mechanical work such as refining the site’s design, drafting emails and making sense of information when she is short on time.
The analysis behind the fit scores runs on AI, using a prompt Tuteja created with the help of neurodiversity specialists.
It is a good example of a young founder combining a general-purpose AI model with domain expertise, which is what makes the results specific rather than generic. The web version came first, and later an App Store version.
Tuteja says the Raaha’s feedback has been less about immediate job offers and more about better decisions. One user wrote that they would never have applied to a particular job, but the analysis and suggested scripts convinced them it was the right fit.
Another, who has ADHD and was searching for a computer science role, said the site really helped them figure out if it would suit their environment.
Growth has been quick. Reports from July and early August put usage at 150, then 250, then about 300 users. By the end of the first month, Raaha had crossed 1,000 users and 20,000 job listings.
Raaha is one item on a long list. Here are some other projects Tuteja is working on:
Tuteja’s school’s Wi-Fi blocks ChatGPT, Claude and similar tools.
Tuteja says this meant far less AI use during school hours, and that it pushed her to do exam-related learning and thinking on her own.
Her experience suggests that school AI bans and AI-driven innovation do not have to be opposites. She learned the material without shortcuts, then applied AI outside class to a problem she cared about. Whether schools should restrict AI is still debated, but her case shows the two approaches can coexist.
Raaha touches on a much larger issue. Neurodivergent adults face persistently high unemployment and underemployment, and the barrier is often the mismatch between people and workplaces rather than a lack of talent.
Tuteja’s long-term aim is ‘transparency in the labor market’, along with encouraging employers to write clearer, more honest job descriptions. If enough candidates ask what a role is really like, employers may have to answer.
Tuteja says the platform starts with neurodivergent users because they bear the greatest cost when information is missing, but it is open to anyone who wants a clearer picture of a job.
A restrictive school policy, a personal family story and a year of building added up to a tool that hundreds of real people are already using. Navya Tuteja’s story is about more than being young and clever. She spotted a specific, overlooked problem, built a focused solution and made it free.
For job seekers, Raaha offers something rare: a chance to ask “will this job work for me?” before spending hours on an application. For everyone else, it is a reminder that some of the most useful AI products may come from people who understand the problem first and the technology second.
