Cupertino Student Named New York Times Podcast Winner

CUPERTINO, CA — Riyana Goel, a 13-year-old student at Kennedy Middle School in Cupertino, was named a winner in this year’s New York Times Student Podcast Contest.

Goel’s five-minute podcast about being diagnosed with alopecia areata — an autoimmune condition that results in hair loss — at the age of 4 was among the 12 winners out of over 1,500 entries from middle and high schools around the world. Goel’s podcast was featured at the top of the Times’ July 1 story announcing the winners.

Goel told Patch that she participated in the contest because she wanted to send a message that everyone is beautiful just the way they are, and that winning would provide her the platform to broadcast that message to a larger audience.

For people who struggle with self-image, Goel believes that “it was always other peoples’ lenses that are dirty.”

But, she added: “Obviously, sometimes it’s important for us to clean up our own lens because during my struggle, I realized that I was my biggest critic. Sometimes, it's my own lens that gets dirty. We should not let other people's image of us tarnish our lens.”

Goel said the podcast took her five months to produce, record and edit, and the script was the hardest part. Because this was her first experience making a podcast, Goel turned to YouTube tutorials.

“It was important for me to get out the message that there’s so much potential for us to create love and kindness for ourselves,” Goel said.