Easy-to-use website expanded to include jobs and internships

Sahil Katukojula, a senior at Desert Vista High School in Ahwatukee, was frustrated, like many high schoolers planning their futures and how they are going to be able to afford the education and training they need to succeed — but he decided to do something about it.

“I built AZ Student Opportunity Hub, a free, no-login directory of 1,241-plus verified Arizona-only scholarships, internships, summer programs and teen jobs now used by over 22,000 students statewide and partnered with 17-plus Arizona institutions, including the Phoenix Public Library and the University of Arizona’s Office of Scholarships & Financial Aid,” he wrote about the first website he built using AI tools.

The website, azstudentopportunityhub.org, is active and free to use.

The future business major, who is likely attending the University of Arizona or Arizona State University, has also been using the skills he gained from an internship with Gifted Gabber, an educational counseling firm, to grow his website while learning social media marketing and taking business technology classes in school.

“It was my need, and the people around me’s need, to become more aware and actually start applying to these things, like more scholarships, school programs, internships, etc.,” Katukojula said. “That’s kind of where the passion started. I just wanted to make more students across Arizona aware of things going on around them, so they don’t actually miss out on opportunities. That’s the whole mission.”

Katukojula said that this is the first website he has built, and that he runs it alone, paying for the domain and hosting it himself.

He does not plan to charge for it or require visitors to use an email login for the website or to monetize it.

“It would be unfair for me to ask people to pay for something that should have been available to them in the first place,” Katukojula said. “That’s the gap I was also trying to fill.

“Honestly, when I found out how many other people were having the same problem as me, I was thinking, ‘Wait, but this is pretty simple. Shouldn’t this be something we already have? I’m not going to make people pay for something that already should have been there.'”

Katukojula started the Hub in early 2026, with 20 to 50 opportunities. Paradise Valley Community College soon came onboard to help promote his work, and later on the Phoenix Public Library.

“In the beginning, when I was doing all the research, planning out who we should outreach to, I was doing a lot of cold calls to a bunch of schools and organizations,” Katukojula said. “I would honestly say, at minimum, two hours a day for at least a month and a half. After we got our first school, they helped spread the word. After that, we got some sort of engagement with the platform, which obviously encouraged me, and it was a bit after that time that AI was able to verify that the opportunities I found actually do exist.”

Katukojula verifies all the listings on that website, which he runs solo.

He has expanded it to now include internships, school programs and summer jobs, in addition to the initial scholarship offerings.

“The hardest part was just getting the first couple thousand users,” Katukojula said. “This is essentially my passion project. That’s something that motivated me to show up every day and actually push past a bunch of people saying no, or push past a bunch of people saying ‘yes, we will help distribute,’ but they actually don’t.”

The site currently has 16 cities in Arizona with 1,367 opportunities in nine categories as of Oct. 9.

Verde Valley students can type in their towns and cities in the first search box to find local opportunities.

“Honestly, I just want to really thank my family, my parents,” Katukojula said. “Obviously, they helped push me through a lot of this, even when it was hard. And when I wanted to stop, they just kept me going. They gave me reason to keep going.”

For more information visit azstudentopportunityhub.org.