Georgina Songhurst

At sixteen, while most students were memorising speeches for their first Model UN conference, Georgina Songhurst was building the tool she wished existed. Her school club was struggling to compete, research was endless, resources unreliable, and the UN’s own library felt impenetrable. So she decided to fix it.

That impulse became Model Diplomat, an AI-powered platform that makes global affairs accessible to everyone. What started as a side project in her bedroom grew into a global community of more than 70,000 users and 142,000 followers, backed by collaborations with major MUN conferences and conversations with the United Nations itself. Along the way, Georgina found herself negotiating with diplomats to gain data access, learning how to code around firewalls, and fielding a $1.5 million offer for her company before finishing school.

Her journey hasn’t been one of shortcuts or polish. When the UN’s servers blocked her, she turned to Wikipedia and discovered how its rigorously moderated pages could train AI to deliver better, fairer answers. That decision defined her philosophy: technology shouldn’t replace human curiosity, but sharpen it.

Today, Georgina speaks not as a prodigy, but as proof that bold ideas can come from anywhere. Featured in Yahoo Finance and the youngest attendee at an a16z conference, she continues to evolve Model Diplomat, now testing it with diplomats and NGOs who see its potential to cut months of research into minutes.

Her story is about more than a startup. It’s about a young woman who saw barriers in global education and decided to dismantle them, one dataset, one debate, one bold idea at a time.

As a podcast guest, Georgina brings a rare blend of youthful perspective and real-world experience to conversations on AI, education, and diplomacy. Having built a global company before finishing school, she speaks with clarity and curiosity about innovation, equity, and what the next generation of leaders can teach the world about solving complex problems.