There’s something quite radical about the younger generation. Gen Z is not waiting for permission, nor are they content with performative awareness. They are observant, systems-literate, and deeply conscious of inequality. They grew up online, but they are building offline impact. They ask difficult questions about access, equity, and accountability, and then, increasingly, they build solutions.
25-year-old Suha Suleman Lalani is symbolic of that shift.
At just 23, she co-founded PinkDetect alongside Solmaz Ebrahimi-Iranpour, now the company’s Co-Founder and CEO. Together, they built Pakistan’s first state-of-the-art breast health management app, an award-winning social enterprise working at the nexus of artificial intelligence, health equity, and grassroots trust. Today, she is pursuing a Master of Public Health at Harvard University on scholarship, having previously worked as a Generative AI Specialist at Microsoft in the Healthcare and Life Sciences sector. Yet the origin story of PinkDetect is far less corporate and far more personal.
It began in a university dorm room in Canada.
A Dorm Room, A Research Paper, and a Realization
PinkDetect was never meant to be a company. Lalani was studying Biomedical Sciences at Toronto Metropolitan University, immersed in cancer biology research, and preparing to step into a role she had worked years to secure. The project that would eventually become PinkDetect started as a side initiative, something she describes as “personal fulfillment.”
“In the very beginning, I didn’t think I was starting a company at all,” she says. “PinkDetect was supposed to be a one-off passion project.”
But as she dug deeper into global breast cancer data, particularly across developing countries like Pakistan, the research began to disturb her.
“I was seeing gaps. I was seeing how many people were slipping through the cracks, how late detection was still the norm in places where it didn’t have to be. That realization changes you. It’s hard to unsee a problem once you truly understand it.”
The early days were not marked by flashy launches or investor decks. They were marked by doubt.
“There were moments of imposter syndrome,” she admits. “The quiet kind of fear that sits in your chest at 2am when you’re staring at your laptop and thinking, What if this doesn’t work?”
What ultimately pushed her forward was not certainty, but responsibility.
“If I had the skills to build something that could help even a small number of people, then choosing not to try would be harder to live with than failing.”
That internal negotiation, repeated night after night, is what transformed a dorm-room project into a social enterprise.
Building Credibility at 23
Launching Pakistan’s first comprehensive breast health app at 23 meant navigating rooms where she was often the youngest person present, and frequently underestimated.
“There’s a particular kind of skepticism you face when you walk into rooms as a 23-year-old student talking about breast cancer awareness,” Lalani says. “I could almost sense the unspoken question sometimes: what could she possibly know about this?”
Rather than retreat, she leaned into preparation. She immersed herself in clinical research, spoke extensively with patients, organized focus groups, and mapped care pathways. She sought mentorship from medical professionals and grounded PinkDetect in evidence, not enthusiasm alone.
“Credibility doesn’t come from age or titles alone,” she explains. “It comes from depth of understanding and commitment.”
Interestingly, her age became part of the mission. PinkDetect aims to close the gap between awareness and action, particularly among younger women who often assume breast cancer is a distant concern.
“In some ways, being young also gave me an advantage. I represented the very gap we were trying to address.”
Carrying Karachi Into Global Rooms
Lalani grew up in Karachi for nineteen years, and she speaks about the city with both candor and affection.
“It’s chaotic, unpredictable, and often frustrating,” she says. “But it teaches you grit. It teaches you how to adapt.”
Moving between Karachi, Toronto, and Boston, and working with institutions like Microsoft and Harvard, expanded her worldview, but did not dilute her lens.
“Carrying Pakistan into those spaces is very intentional for me,” she says. “It shows up in the problems I choose to work on, the questions I ask, and the way I think about accessibility.”
Rather than feeling split between identities, she describes herself as expanded by them. Karachi, she says simply, “is something I stand on.”
Technology With a Pulse
PinkDetect’s model is deliberately dual: a data-driven breast health app offering personalized risk assessments, screening reminders, and connections to trusted providers, paired with year-round screening camps, Lady Health Worker training, and community workshops. For Lalani, technology and empathy were never opposing forces.
“When you’re building in healthcare, especially in an area as sensitive as breast health, you very quickly realize that technology alone is not the solution,” she says. “Behind every data point is a person navigating fear, uncertainty, stigma.”
She reframes the design question entirely.
“The question isn’t ‘What can we build?’ but ‘What does someone feel in this moment, and how can we support them better?’”
That shift affects everything – language, interface design, privacy considerations, and cultural nuance. It also shapes PinkDetect’s grassroots work.
The Moment That Recalibrated Everything
Awards and fellowships followed: recognition from the Western Union Foundation, the Roddenberry Foundation, Harvard Innovation Labs, USA Today, and more. Yet the moment Lalani returns to most often did not happen on a stage. It happened during a screening camp in Lyari.
A woman arrived hesitant to undergo a free clinical breast exam, fearful that doing so might compromise her morality, a belief shaped by stigma and misinformation.
“Instead of dismissing her concerns, our onsite doctors spent time with her in a one-on-one conversation,” Lalani recalls. “They created a space where she felt safe enough to make her own decision.”
She eventually agreed to the exam. A concerning change was identified, and she was referred for further evaluation. Early detection meant treatment options and financial support pathways that might not have been available later.
“That moment stayed with me,” Lalani says. “Impact often happens quietly. No stage, no awards…just a conversation, a decision and a life potentially changed.”
In Mithi, Where Silence Is Normalized
Another moment unfolded on the outskirts of Mithi, in villages like Bughiaar, where sand stretches for miles and healthcare facilities are hours away.
“We were sitting in a circle with women who had never had a conversation about breast health in their lives,” she recalls.
At first, there was hesitation. Eyes lowered. Nervous laughter. Years of social conditioning hovering in the air. After the session, one woman stayed behind. She had experienced discharge months earlier but had told no one.
“There was no panic in her voice,” Lalani says. “Just acceptance.”
That acceptance unsettled her. “That moment made me realize how closely access and awareness are tied together,” she says. “Sometimes it’s not fear that stops someone, it’s that silence has just become normal.”
Trust Is Built Through Presence
Central to PinkDetect’s work are Lady Health Care Workers – women embedded within communities who often serve as the first and only point of contact for healthcare.
“They operate at the intersection of healthcare and community in a way that no formal system truly can,” Lalani says.
Introducing digital tools into their workflow required sensitivity to workload and confidence levels. But what struck her most was their adaptability.
“It’s almost never about capability,” she explains. “It’s about whether someone believed in them enough to offer the right support. The moment you do that, the moment you build with their day-to-day realities in mind, they don’t just adjust…they take ownership.”
For Lalani, any meaningful redesign of Pakistan’s healthcare system would start there, by investing in and strengthening those who already hold community trust.
“Health systems are ultimately human systems,” she says. “Their effectiveness depends on whether people trust them enough to seek care early.”
Ten Years From Now
When Lalani imagines PinkDetect a decade from now, she speaks less about app metrics and more about cultural shifts.
“I hope breast health is no longer a hush-hush topic,” she says. “I hope young women grow up seeing awareness and self-examination as normal parts of caring for their bodies.”
More than improved detection rates, she hopes for agency. “I want women to feel that they have the right to ask questions, seek care, and make decisions about their health without needing permission.”
That aspiration, grounded in empathy but executed with technology, reflects the broader imprint of her generation. Gen Z’s power is not merely in visibility, but in its refusal to separate awareness from action.
In Lalani’s case, that refusal began in a dorm room. Today, it stretches across continents, institutions, and communities and into the lives of women who are slowly, courageously changing the way they see their own bodies. What started as one young woman deciding she couldn’t ignore what she had learned is now rippling outward, into conversations at kitchen tables, into mothers teaching daughters, into women choosing to check, ask and act.
And that’s how real change begins doesn’t it? Not loudly, not all at once, but in moments where someone decides her health is worth speaking up for.