About the Founder

Iraa Shri Mantri

Iraa is a student at The Shri Ram School, Moulsari, in Gurgaon, India, where she has studied cross-disciplinary subjects in the IBDP curriculum such as English Language and Literature, Biology, Psychology, Mathematics, Spanish, and Economics. Harboring a keen passion for the arts, she has pursued various academic and personal pursuits to further her interests, including completing the ‘Literature and the Future’ summer course offered by Yale Summer Session in June 2024 and the ‘Literature, Philosophy, and Culture’ course offered as part of Yale Young Global Scholars in June 2023. Iraa has also authored an independent research study titled ‘The Impact of Streaming Apps & Websites on The Evolution of The Music Industry And Discovery of Upcoming Artists’ as well as a mentored research paper titled ‘Harmonizing the Past: The Role of Music in Shaping Cultural and Political Narratives in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude’.

Iraa has been a prolific singer since the age of 4 and began performing formally when she turned 7. To perfect her craft she has been practicing for 12-15 hours a week in various forms such as Soprano, Western, Classical, and Pop genres of music. Adding to her instrumental prowess, she also plays the piano, ukulele, and guitar as well as studies music theory. To enhance her skills,

she attended two prestigious pre-collegiate courses in Music, namely: the Vocal Summit, Berklee College of Music (2022), and the Juilliard Pre-Collegiate Summer Program (2021). Bearing an inclination toward musical theatre, she has also performed at cultural hubs such as the Piano Man Jazz Club located in Delhi.

Dedicated to incorporating creative educational strategies to reveal the intersections between socio-economic realities and art forms such as music, dance, and language, she founded her social initiative, Pitch Perfect, in December 2022.

Furthermore, Iraa has shown her engagements with diplomacy, global politics, and public speaking by partaking in multiple inter-school Model United Nations Conferences since 9th grade and has won various accolades for her exemplary performance. Beginning in 2021, she received the “Outstanding Delegate Award,” at the inter-school Shri Colloquium. In the same year, she won the “Best Delegate Award,” for her performance at The Shri Ram School Moulsari MUN Simulation 2021. Showing a keen engagement with international economic policies she received the “Honorable Mention” at the 10th Annual Sanskriti School MUN 2022 and also received two “Special Mention” awards for her participation in the Khaitan MUN Global Thinkers Conclave 3.0 in 2021 and the Strawberry Fields High School MUN Conference in 2022 respectively.

Exemplifying diversity, she is also a dedicated sportsperson and serves as Head of Sports in her school Student Council, and is also an active member of the school girls’ basketball and football teams, having participated in several inter-school and state and national level basketball and football tournaments. In her free time, Iraa enjoys writing songs and thinking about the ways in which she can channel the power of art to spark social transformations.