When Anika Mistry first began building what would become DevMinds, she wasn’t thinking about venture capital, pilot studies, or scalable platforms. She was 14 years old, the world was shutting down, and the neurodiverse students she had spent years working with while volunteering at a learning center were suddenly cut off from the consistent support systems they relied on. What began as a deeply personal response to a moment of crisis has since evolved into an AI-powered social-emotional learning startup—one shaped by empathy, research, and a clear-eyed understanding of how technology can serve people.
Today, Mistry is a dual-degree student at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School and the Whiting School of Engineering, on track to graduate in May 2026 with an MBA and a BS in Computer Science and Cognitive Science. Alongside her academic journey, she is leading DevMinds toward real-world impact, piloting the platform with Maryland therapy centers and schools and earning recognition across the Johns Hopkins innovation ecosystem.
Impossible to ignore
The roots of DevMinds stretch back well before the pandemic. Through Mistry’s volunteer work with teens and young adults with neurodiversity, she saw how progress depended not just on therapy sessions, but on consistent, personalized reinforcement—practice that helped students translate skills into everyday life.
When COVID-19 hit, that support evaporated almost overnight. Learning centers closed. In-person therapy stopped. Families scrambled to recreate highly specialized care through video calls and improvised tools. Mistry remembers watching one mother attempt to run a therapy session over Zoom, while a therapist held flashcards up to a webcam. The effort was sincere, but the experience was neither adaptive nor engaging enough to meet the child’s needs.
At the same time, Mistry was conducting research at the University of California, Santa Cruz’s Assistive Technology Lab, where she was learning how to design technology specifically for users with disabilities. The work emphasized intentionality—focusing on accessibility, cognition, and real-world usability from the very beginning. Together, these experiences made the gap between what existed and what was possible simply impossible to ignore.
“What started as a small project at 14—created with no funding, no team, and no formal training—eventually became the blueprint for DevMinds,” Mistry says.
Why it matters, and why it won the Technology Advancement Award
DevMinds is an AI-powered social-emotional learning platform designed to help neurodiverse children practice core skills such as emotional recognition, communication, self-regulation, and empathetic responding. Using generative AI, the platform creates short, adaptive animations and interactive social scenarios that model behaviors in ways children actually enjoy and respond to.
The platform doesn’t just serve students. For caregivers, educators, and clinicians, DevMinds provides automated scoring, progress dashboards, and actionable insights that can complement Individualized Education Program goals and reduce workload in overstretched school and therapy environments.
The need is urgent. Therapy waitlists often stretch one to three years, leaving many children with autism, ADHD, anxiety, and other developmental differences without timely support. DevMinds was built to help bridge that gap by extending practice beyond the clinic and into daily life.
Early validation has been encouraging. DevMinds is currently conducting pilot studies with Maryland therapy centers and schools, and the product has been built in direct collaboration with behavioral specialists, educators, and parents to ensure clinical relevance and usability.
Mistry has secured over $40,000 in funding for DevMinds from the Baltimore Innovation Initiative, a new pilot program under TEDCO’s Maryland Innovation Initiative designed to fuel innovation and economic impact in the Baltimore region. She was one of only eight Technology Advancement Award recipients selected from universities across the Baltimore region, positioning DevMinds as a standout venture in Maryland’s innovation ecosystem. The funding will help the team expand pilots, strengthen research partnerships, and move toward broader implementation and formal usability testing.
Building a team with a mission
As DevMinds grew beyond a solo project, Mistry found a key collaborator in Anvii Mishra, now the startup’s lead developer. Mishra is also a student at Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering, but the two met at the Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Technology.
At the conference, they bonded over a shared passion for social impact and discovered they were both studying computer science and cognitive science. After Mistry walked Mishra through DevMinds’ mission, Mishra joined the team, translating the concept into a functional platform.
Their partnership reflects a broader theme in Mistry’s work: collaboration across disciplines, grounded in shared values and purpose.
Growing from strategy to scalability at Carey
Three years into her undergraduate studies, Mistry reached a crossroads. She had the technical foundation—AI, data, coding—but building DevMinds raised bigger questions. How do ideas scale? How do innovations reach the people who need them most? And how do you build something that is not only functional, but sustainable?
That search led her to Carey’s engineering and MBA dual-degree program. The fit was immediate. Carey offered a space where technology, business, and humanity intersect and where innovation is measured not just by novelty, but by impact.
Carey’s core values gave language to what Mistry had already been practicing instinctively. Relentless Advancement showed up in pushing DevMinds forward with limited resources. Boundless Curiosity fueled her exploration of how AI and psychology could work together. Unwavering Humanity grounded every product decision in the lived experiences of neurodiverse students and their families. Collaborative Leadership shaped how she built partnerships with clinicians, educators, engineers, and mentors.
“Carey helped me evolve from simply building technology to leading innovation with strategy, empathy, and scalability in mind,” she says.
Turning ideas into impact
Carey’s resources have played a critical role in DevMinds’ growth. Through Johns Hopkins’
Pava Marie LaPere Center for Entrepreneurship, Mistry participated in the Spark and Fuel accelerators, where DevMinds earned the Hustler Award. These programs helped her stress-test the business model, refine the go-to-market strategy, and clearly communicate impact to investors and partners.
Case competitions added another layer. Competing in the Venture Capital Investment Competition, Mistry’s team won the Carey Invitational and advanced to regionals in Boston, earning the Entrepreneurial Choice Award. The experience reshaped how she pitches DevMinds—sharpening the balance between storytelling, traction, and defensibility.
Making a difference in Baltimore
While DevMinds was built to serve families everywhere, Baltimore holds particular significance. Many local families face long waitlists, limited school-based support, and the high cost of private services. Too often, Baltimore-area parents are faced with choosing between financial strain and going without care.
By offering an accessible, affordable, and personalized platform, DevMinds aims to ease that burden. As pilots begin with local schools and learning centers, the goal is to support overextended educators, empower parents, and help more children across Baltimore feel confident, capable, and understood.
Looking ahead
Mistry is clear-eyed about the challenges ahead. The intersection of AI, healthcare, and education demands careful navigation—especially around data privacy, clinical validation, and ensuring technology enhances rather than replaces human care.
At the same time, the opportunity is profound. Emerging technologies make it possible to personalize learning at scale and extend the reach of therapists and educators beyond traditional settings. For Mistry, the future is not about replacing professionals, but amplifying their impact.
What continues to inspire her are the moments of direct impact: watching children engage with tools built for them, and seeing families gain support where none existed before. Those moments, she says, are what make every late night and iteration worth it.
From a pandemic-era project to a mission-driven startup, DevMinds reflects what can happen when empathy meets action—and when a student is willing to go the distance to build for what’s next®.
