> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.foundedbywomen.org/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Meet the 17-Year-Old Founder Helping Neurodivergent Job Seekers Screen Employers, Not the Other Way Around - URL: https://www.foundedbywomen.org/women-who-lead/meet-the-17-year-old-founder-helping-neurodivergent-job-seekers-screen-employers-not-the-other-way-around/ - Published: 2026-09-04T02:40:23.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-04T02:40:23.000Z - Author: Editorial team - Tags: Women Who Lead Navya Tuteja was still in high school when she noticed a gap that most job platforms overlook: a listing can tell you the salary, the location, the qualifications, but almost never what it will actually feel like to work there. For neurodivergent candidates, that missing context, things like how communication happens, how often priorities shift, or how predictable a schedule is, can determine whether a job works at all. So instead of building another tool for employers to screen candidates, Navya built [Raaha](http://raaha.ai/?ref=foundedbywomen.org), a free AI platform that flips the process: candidates screen workplaces. Users paste in a job description, take a short work-style quiz, and get a sense of fit along with interview questions and language for navigating accommodations. In its first month, Raaha crossed 1,000 users and drew coverage from Good Morning Washington and CBS6\. We spoke with Navya about the personal story behind the platform, what surprised her most about its early growth, and where she wants to take it next. > Know a founder (or are one) doing incredible work? **Founded by Women Awards** are open for entries. If you're building something bold, leading with purpose, or driving change in your industry, we'd love for you to enter. 👉 [foundedbywomen.org/awards](https://www.foundedbywomen.org/awards/) --- ## Q: Raaha flips the usual hiring screening process, instead of employers screening candidates, it helps candidates screen workplaces. What inspired you to build it this way? A lot of my work around disability started because of my mom, who is hard of hearing. When I was younger, I honestly didn’t completely understand what that meant. I would get frustrated when I had to repeat something or when she missed part of a conversation. As I got older, I realized how much extra work she was doing just to participate in spaces that weren’t really built for her. I think there’s a particular exhaustion that comes with having a disability other people can’t immediately see. Sometimes you spend so much time proving that you need support before you even get to the part where that support can actually help. That experience eventually led me to start Empower InvisAbilities, a nonprofit focused on invisible disabilities and neurodiversity, and write a children’s book about disability inclusion. Through that work, I kept coming back to the same problem: getting an opportunity and being in an environment where you can actually succeed are two very different things. That became really obvious to me with jobs. A posting might tell you the salary, location and qualifications, but not whether priorities change every few hours, whether instructions are usually written or verbal, how much task switching there is, or how predictable your schedule will be. For a neurodivergent person, those aren’t small details. They can completely change whether the job works We have spent years building technology that helps employers screen candidates. I wanted to flip that around and build something that helps the candidate screen the workplace. With Raaha, someone can paste in any job description, answer a short work-style quiz, and see how the role may fit the way they work. It also gives them questions they can ask in an interview and language for thinking through accommodations. The point isn’t for AI to decide what somebody is capable of. I actually really don’t want it doing that. I want people to have more information before they make the decision for themselves. ## Q: Raaha reached 1,000+ users in its first month and has already been featured by Good Morning Washington and CBS6\. What’s been the most surprising part of that early traction? Honestly, just seeing people actually care about it. I’m 17, and when I first built Raaha, I had no idea if people were actually going to use it or if it was even a solid idea. But seeing it get picked up by news outlets, seeing mayors and other people I had never even met post about it, and getting messages from people saying they understood the problem Raaha was trying to solve was kind of crazy, and also an amazing feeling. One user emailed me after he had been struggling with his job search. He had used Raaha while looking at roles and later told me he had landed a senior data analyst position. Of course he got that job because of his own work, not because of Raaha, but it was still really cool to know something I built had actually been useful to him during that process. A lot of the first users came pretty organically. At the beginning, I was literally just emailing people, reaching out to organizations, talking to anyone who might care about the idea, and then press coverage and people sharing Raaha started bringing in users I had never directly reached. Seeing it grow past 1,000 users so quickly made me realize that this was not just a problem I had noticed. Other people had been feeling the same gap too. I built Raaha for neurodivergent job seekers, but I also think the idea behind it is much broader. Most people want to know more than what a job pays or whether they meet the qualifications. They want to know what it is actually going to be like to work there. ## Q: What’s next for Raaha? Right now I’m mostly focused on distribution and focused on increasing adoption and getting Raaha in front of more people who could use it. I want to keep Raaha free and get it in front of as many people as possible who could actually use it. I’ve already started building partnerships and conversations with organizations that work directly with job seekers, and I’m hoping to expand that much more through universities, career centers, disability organizations, and neurodiversity programs. I want Raaha to be something people are introduced to while they are searching for jobs, not something they find only after they have already ended up in an environment that does not work for them. Long term, I would love for checking Raaha before applying to feel as normal as looking up a company before an interview. I don’t think choosing a workplace should feel like a leap of faith. There’s also a bigger idea behind it. If enough candidates start asking for this kind of transparency, employers have more reason to write job descriptions that actually tell people something. Eventually, I think the patterns Raaha sees could help show which companies are giving candidates meaningful information and which are mostly using the right buzzwords. Raaha means “path” in Hindi and Urdu, and the tagline is “Find your way.” That is pretty much the philosophy behind the whole thing. I don’t want to choose someone’s path for them. I want to give them better information to choose for themselves. > Are you a woman leader with an inspiring story? Founded by Women elevates the voices of women making an impact. > Breaking barriers or paving the way for others? We'd love to feature you. Get in touch! 👉 [hi@foundedbywomen.org](mailto:hi@foundedbywomen.org)