Donald Trump outsourced a teen's computer skills to create campaign video for youth votes

Donald Trump might be focused on bringing industry back to the US, but ironically his own presidential campaign isn't averse to outsourcing work to other countries, as it hired a 15-year-old girl from Singapore to produce a presentation to gain support from youths.

Hrithie Menon is an enterprising secondary school student in Singapore with unusually advanced digital marketing, web, video, online and design skills. She has already developed 20 Android apps and is well-versed in using key media industry software like Adobe After Effects, VideoScribe and Prezi – all skills that she taught herself.

In order to save up the money to pay for dental braces, she currently freelances after school for Fiverr, an online marketplace for creative digital professional services – on which clients can contact her and ask her to create video presentations using Prezi for about US$100 (£80) a project.

One day in August 2015, she was contacted by the President-elect's campaign team, who asked her to create a Prezi presentation for youths. The project took her just two hours and was used by the campaign to convince young people across multiple university campuses and colleges in the US to vote for Trump.

"At that time, I didn't really know who he was, so I didn't (think) it was such a big deal," Menon told Singapore daily newspaper Today. "It didn't take me very long to do this presentation − it was actually one of my easiest tasks."

Donald Trump's youth campaign was outsourced to Singapore

Even though she was made to sign a non-disclosure agreement, she still didn't realise the impact of her work until she heard on the news recently that Trump had won the US presidential elections, as she doesn't follow US politics.

Her father Haridas Menon, 49, is the founder of the Singapore Internet Marketing Academy and he got Hrithie interested in digital products at age 9. He closely follows her freelance work and is always on hand to give advice when she receives a new client and needs help to understand the brief, and was most amused when the request from the Trump campaign came in.

"(I remember) my husband texting me to say, 'You'll never know who this new client is' ... It was so hilarious ... That was a big moment for us, to think that my daughter's freelance work could actually get her such a big gig," her mother Shenthil Ranie, an entertainment industry executive said.

"When I see her on this path and what she has achieved, it is mind-blowing for me, to think that she's so young."

Hrthie has now made $2,000 from working on projects for over 20 clients over the last two years, which have included creating a Prezi video on safety guidelines for the United States Polo Association, as well as working with numerous brands in Spain and Vietnam.

She is keen to study cybersecurity in college and is currently learning how to help businesses who use the WordPress improve their cybersecurity to keep their websites secure.