Welcome! I’m Simi Shah, and every other week, I dive deep into the journey of a South Asian trailblazer. If you enjoy this issue, please encourage your friends to subscribe and follow us.
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Hot of the Pod 🎙️ Reshma Saujani: Founder of Girls Who Code
In this episode, I sit down with Reshma Saujani ofGirls Who Code.
Reshma is an international bestselling author, attorney, and activist.
After graduating from Yale Law, Reshma worked as a corporate attorney on Wall Street. Soon, she pivoted to politics. She founded South Asians for Kerry, during John Kerry’s 2004 presidential election run. She also served on the Hillary Clinton’s National Finance Board during her 2008 primary campaign. In 2010, Reshma herself became the first Indian-American woman to run for congress. Though her was bid was unsuccessful, her time on the campaign trail laid the groundwork for Girls Who Code. Reshma’s visits to K-12 schools made her increasingly aware of gender disparities in STEM classrooms. So in 2012, she founded the nonprofit in an effort to close the gender gap in tech. To date, they’ve served over 450,000 girls around the world.
Since retiring as CEO of the organization, Reshma has embarked on a new mission: the Marshall Plan for Moms — her vision to revitalize women in the workforce and to compensate them for their unpaid labor. Her book on the subject, Pay Up: The Future of Women and Work is due for release in March 2022.
Excerpts from the pod below:
You were the first Indian-American woman to run for Congress — an incredible feat. Unfortunately, you lost. Looking back, what would you have done differently?
I would have been myself more.
I didn't know what I was doing. No one could tell me how to run a political campaign. I didn't know a lot of wealthy donors. My parents didn't come from a long legacy of people in politics. I couldn't ask them, ‘Hey, how do I build a website? How do I build a campaign? Who should I hire? What does a campaign manager do?’ I had to figure out a lot of that stuff on my own. But I also think that because I was young, I really did have imposter syndrome. I used to obsess about my stump speech. I used to write it down, pace my apartment, and perfect every word because I wanted to sound smart. I wanted to sound like a Congress lady. And in doing so, I just never connected. I used to wear these J. Crew suits — I just saw a picture of myself from my first campaign and it was no makeup. Just flat and boxy. And I'm a girl who loves hoops and red lipstick. That's who I am.
When you're not trying to be you, it's hard to connect. And I see that, because with Girls Who Code, I was all me. I've been able to build movements and inspire people by being myself. And so, it's not shocking to me that the young woman who was trying to be perfect and try to look the part failed at getting the part.'
You founded Girls Who Code in 2012, but you didn't have any experience in tech. What compelled you to build this organization?
Girls Who Code started because I didn't understand why women were not in this field where you could make a lot of money. And I was the quintessential desi girl who had working class parents who told me to go be an engineer, lawyer, or doctor, because it gives you the paycheck. It gives you security. Our parents were always searching for financial security.
And so in 2012, coding was the industry that was booming — you made $120,000 as a software programmer, so I started Girls Who Code. Tech was the vehicle — but it wasn't the thing. The thing was the opportunity that it afforded you.
When I ran my first program, I invited my friends from the New York Immigration Coalition because I had been very active in helping DACA students. I asked them to come in and teach my students about DACA. And they asked my students, ‘If you could build anything to solve this issue, what would you build?’ In watching these young women think about the innovations, I thought, wow, maybe, I didn't get elected to Congress, but maybe I can create a generation of women who can be change-makers — who can solve DACA, climate, and sexual harassment, and all of these massive issues through technology. That's when the lightbulb went off.
I want to speak about your next chapter: the Marshall Plan for moms and your new book that's coming out in March of 2020 — Pay Up: The Future of Women and Work. Tell me what inspired you to tackle this issue.
I never would have thought that this would be the issue that I'd be working on. We actually just experienced the largest exodus of women from the workforce in the history of our nation. When COVID started, we were 51% of the labor force. And now, we’re back where we were in 1987.
I am so infuriated that there's no plan to solve that. When you talk to women about why they left, they didn’t leave because they wanted to — they were pushed out. Because we don't have affordable childcare; we don't have paid leave. We haven't gotten rid of the motherhood penalty; we still have gender inequality at home. There are so many structural issues that need to be fixed, both in government, in the private sector, and in culture. Moms in this country are often treated as martyrs — even though it is the most important job in the world. And 86% of women in the workforce that are age 40+ have children. So if we can't figure out how to make it work for moms, we will never achieve equality in the workforce. And so this is the movement that I'm building.
