Author: Kaidi Ru
Kaidi Ru (second person from right) at the World Bank Group Innovate4Climate Conference, Sevilla, Spain. June 2025. Photo: Courtesy of Kaidi Ru
As a child, I often wandered into my grandparents' backyard to pick off corn smut, a fungal disease that affects corn growth. Many years later, I learned that the same "harmful" fungi - huitlacoche - are intentionally cultivated in Mexico as a delicacy.
If you're a young leader facing setbacks while trying to challenge the status quo, remember that what others consider a "flaw" could be your unique strength. When youthful energy and innovative ideas are respected and nurtured, they can transform into leadership, advocacy and meaningful change. This is what we aim to achieve as members of the UN Women 30 for 2030 Youth Leadership Network and through the UN Women AI School and EmPower Academy.
I work as an energy and urban infrastructure consultant, and I serve as the YOUNGO representative to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) Technology Executive Committee Activity Group on Water-Energy-Food Systems. My passion for food, particularly urban agri-food systems, led me to complete the European Institute of Innovation & Technology Food Innovator Fellowship, where I supported a start-up in producing the first open-sourced tomato variety for vertical farming.
"Everybody wants to be a truffle hunter and not the tomato grower," someone told me at an agri-tech conference. "Why go for the mundane when you can go after the money?"
Perhaps we can all relate to this in some way. Do you aspire to break into traditionally male-dominated sectors like venture capital and STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) entrepreneurship? High-value, high-paid roles like truffle hunting have historically excluded women. And do you share the same frustrations when everyday tasks, such as caregiving and domestic work (like tomatoes in meals) are often taken for granted, undervalued, and ignored in official statistical accounts?
For me, gender equality begins when we recognize that tomatoes are just as essential as truffles. Everyone should be able to have equal access to the resources, skills and tools to hunt truffles as well as to grow tomatoes, with equal reward for both. As a mentor for the World Bank Pacific Women in Power Program, delivered in partnership with the Global Women's Network for the Energy Transition, this is one goal we hope to achieve by empowering women as agents of change driving the energy transition across the Pacific.
Gender equality doesn't begin if more attention is still being paid to truffles and less to tomatoes. This is a common occurrence in our workplaces where more visible, reported, insured risks often overshadow chronic, repetitive, understudied risks. In my role as the Youth Foresight Navigator for Asia and the Pacific in the International Labour Organization Strategic Foresight Study on Occupational Safety and Health, I facilitate the inclusion of young people's voices and perspectives in global discussions on the future of work and workplace safety, helping transform collective input into actionable insights that support the global foresight journey.
1/900, 25, 7.9 million. For me, each of these numbers represents an instance that has culminated in a personal milestone last year:
- mentoring Indonesian social entrepreneur Roikhanatun Nafi'ah and her venture, Crustea, which won first place in the 2026 World Bank Group Youth Summit Pitch Competition, selected from 900+ applications across more than 90 countries
- recognized as one of 25 Future Energy Leaders by the World Energy Council
- sitting on the Global Advisory Council of ZNotes, an award-winning EdTech founded by Diana Award recipient Zubair Junjunia to end educational inequality for young people everywhere, impacting 7.9 million students, learners and teachers worldwide
Urban development professionals often say that a building alone is not a community. Just as a truffle alone is not a complete meal, and a single tomato plant does not represent a harvest. A community requires both. And it also needs the smutted corn: the unexpected, the discarded and the understudied, which someone recognizes as treasure. Gender equality is not just about determining who gets to hunt for truffles. It's about understanding that we all belong to the same garden and that everyone deserves a seat at the table. You are the change.
