Myra Saxena has done it all — competitive ballet dancing, entrepreneurship and coding — at the ripe age of 10 years old. And, across each discipline, she said her goal remains the same: to bring a sparkle to every kid’s life.

Saxena said she got her start in the inventing space earlier than many, when she was six-and-a-half years old.

“I watched my parents because they’re both coders,” Saxena said. “I got interested in coding, I did a course for coding, and then I got so interested that I wanted to learn more about it, so I created an app.”

But, just as Saxena was beginning to get her start in the computer science field, her grandfather passed away. This, Saxena said, inspired her to create an app related to the medical field — Healthy Littles.

In the years since, Saxena has worked to build up the app, relying on her parents’ expertise in the computer science industry and support from the head pre-drug diabetes doctor at Johns Hopkins University, Risa Wolfe.

“After I had developed my app, I wanted to add more, but researching by myself would not help as much,” Saxena said. “When I was [living] in Virginia, Johns Hopkins was the closest to us, so I reached out to them, and they started helping me with my app.”

Through her ambassadorship with Johns Hopkins, Saxena was able to develop her app using new, added features and research provided by the university. She also discovered Charm Camp City, an American Diabetes Association camp hosted in conjunction with Johns Hopkins and designed to provide a “safe and supportive” camp environment for children and teenagers living with diabetes, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine’s website.

Saxena said she still works to support Charm Camp City, through her nonprofit organization, Sparklez, which was created several years earlier when Saxena was six years old. Her vision for Sparklez began when Saxena’s mother had traveled to India and seen a school dedicated to providing blind girls with an education.

“I really wanted to support them, so I asked my mom, ‘Could I teach them ballet?’” Saxena said. “Because I’m a competitive ballet dancer now, that would be too hard, so then I thought of creating a business. In my free time, I would always make some beaded jewelry, so I thought that maybe I could start making jewelry and make it into a business.”

And start she did. Though Saxena said it began as a method to get profits while having fun using the creative side of her brain making jewelry, Sparklez has now become a platform for kids to support other kids, with the business’s profits going to diabetes research and underprivileged schools across the United States and India.

Saxena’s broad reach manifests itself in more ways than just geographically. She said her app, Healthy Littles, currently has over 100 users, and has been recognized at invention conventions all the way up to the national level.

“First, I went to my school’s invention convention,” Saxena said. “I showcased my app there. I made my board, and a lot of people loved it, and so I’m like, ‘I really want to build up on the app even more. Is there something else?’ … We went to the California Northern and Central Invention Convention, and that was an actual competition.”

Following the April region-wide convention, Saxena had her sights set on the biggest stage: the National Invention Convention.

Saxena applied, was accepted and was invited to the Michigan convention. There, she earned the opportunity to audition for Shark Tank, the entrepreneurship-focused reality television series, and is currently waiting for her results.

In the coming years, Saxena said she plans to return to continue iterating her app, widening its audience. Given the influx in Type I diabetes she recently observed, that specific niche is where Saxena plans to divert her focus.

“I’m doing more stem cell therapy research and [seeing] how Type I can affect kids more than Type II,” Saxenda said.

Saxena has an extreme latitude in her future choices. But even with these varied options, her breadth of work and her current achievements, Saxena’s mother, Sweta Sinha, said one of Saxena’s strengths is the way she threads all of her work together, finding meaning and purpose.

“She started to learn code, then she has just been building on it,” Sinha said. “That has given her a lot of power to her research and an understanding of how she wants to bring [coding] into research or invention conventions or science projects or her nonprofit.”

Saxena said one of the most important lessons she learned was that it is never too late to make an impact.

“I was six when I started [medicine work], and a lot of people told me, It’s so early, and you’re so little; how are you going to make an impact?’” Saxena said. “But one thing led to another, and it’s become even bigger than I thought it would be when I was six years old.”