Eshan Patil’s Youth Civics Think Tank Hosts Former UN Assistant Secretary-General Lakshmi Puri on Diplomacy, Women's Rights, and the Next Generation

 

 

ORANGE, Calif. — Cerritos High School senior Eshan Patil and Fairmont Preparatory Academy junior Saivi Sodhi took on an unusual assignment on September 23: leading a fireside conversation with a former Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations.

The discussion with Lakshmi Puri was one of the central portions of an evening organized by the Youth Civics Think Tank, or YCTT, bringing students and established public leaders into the same conversation about diplomacy, women's rights, public service, and the role of young people in civic life.

Puri previously served as UN Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Executive Director of UN Women. In that role, she was part of the organization's senior leadership and worked extensively on gender equality and women's empowerment.

 

The event, however, was not structured simply as a career retrospective.

Patil and Sodhi, both members of YCTT's youth leadership team, asked Puri about the lessons behind her diplomatic career, her advocacy for women, the responsibilities carried by public leaders, and the advice she would offer students interested in entering similar fields.

"Youth leadership should be more than volunteering at someone else's event," said Patil, the founder of YCTT. "Young people should be able to build the event, shape the agenda, ask the questions, and create the space for dialogue themselves."

Aparna Hande was also a primary organizer of the evening, helping coordinate the event alongside YCTT's youth team.

The fireside chat sat within a broader evening celebrating Puri's novel, Swallowing the Sun, and connecting its themes to questions of leadership and society.

 

Puri spent a major portion of the program discussing the novel's origins, its poetry, its relationship to real experiences, and its exploration of family, history, gender, and social change.

"What made Swallowing the Sun such a strong fit for this event was that the book opens the door to much larger conversations about gender, history, identity, family, and social change," Patil said. "It gave us a way to connect literature with the kinds of civic questions we want young people thinking about."

The program began with an extended networking period before YCTT welcomed attendees and introduced the organization and its work.

 

Dr. K. J. Srinivasa, the inaugural Consul General of India in Los Angeles, attended the entire event and delivered remarks. La Palma Mayor Nitesh Patel, who advises YCTT, honored Puri during the program, while Artesia Councilmember Zeel Ahir was also among the civic leaders in attendance.

The evening later included recognition of seven U.S.-based authors, broadening the program's focus on literature and storytelling. YCTT team members Omkar Siddeswaran and Aditya Komaragiri also participated in the program alongside Patil and Sodhi.

 

For YCTT, the gathering was also an opportunity to demonstrate what student-led civic programming can look like when young people are given more than symbolic roles.

Patil founded the organization around concerns that students are frequently discussed as stakeholders without being given meaningful opportunities to shape the conversation themselves.

"A major part of our work is making civic institutions feel genuinely accessible to students who might not normally see themselves represented in these spaces," he said. "Representation matters, but access matters just as much, and young people need real opportunities to participate and speak their minds."

The result on September 23 was a program in which high school students were not positioned only as the audience for accomplished leaders.

They were helping ask the questions.