How I Taught Millions Of Women The Most Important Skill: Girls Who Code Founder: Reshma Saujani
嘉宾：Reshma
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I have to figure out how to teach every single girl to code. That’s how the world is going to be a better place.
Founder of CEO of Girls Who Code, best-selling author Reshma Saujani.
I was often bullied at school. Our house would get spray-painted "Go back to your own country." My mother just takes a look at me and she’s just crying. And I remember thinking, "I will never be silent." So I ran for Congress.
The New York Times finally acknowledged my race and they sent a reporter. We’re knocking on doors and young girls are having my poster up. She then decides to write a story about my shoes. I’m not buying into that bullshit. I wasn’t going to let failure break me.
When I started Girls Who Code, 0.4% of girls were interested in coding. And then we ended up with 10,000 Girls Who Code clubs. And then we exploded in India and the UK. Girls were interested in making the world a better place.
In building Girls Who Code, tell me about the other side.
At the same time I was trying to build Girls Who Code, I was trying to have a baby. I had more miscarriages than I can count. I think when you are a social entrepreneur and you’re building something, the work is never done and it’s always at the sacrifice of others. For me, I got that really wrong. Really wrong.
So what advice would you give to people who are probably veering towards another rock bottom in their lives?
I think...
Without further ado, I’m Stephen Bartlett, and this is The Diary of a CEO USA edition. I hope nobody is listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.
Reshma, as I was reading through your story, it reminded me of a quote that I read many years ago. I saved this quote in my bookmarks on Twitter and so I went and looked for it when I knew you were coming here today. It somewhat resonated with me in terms of your story.
The quote is: "My parents were tasked with the job of survival, and I was tasked with self-actualization. The immigrant generational gap is real. What a luxury it is to search for purpose, meaning, and fulfillment." I know you came here, or at least your parents came here, from Uganda. Take me back to your childhood and the context in which you were molded.
Well, my parents escaped the dictator Idi Amin in 1973. They changed their names from Mukund and Madhu to Mike and Mina because a recruiter told my dad that the only way he was going to get a job as an engineer, instead of working as a machinist in a factory, was to change his name.
I think about them often because I can't imagine, in my 20s, coming to a new country, leaving your entire family, not having a single person that you know, not knowing the language, and having to build a life for yourself. And they did it with a smile. They never really complained about it. Everything became about giving us the life that they had sacrificed so much to have.
When you have parents that come from that background, as you've written about, what they want for you as a child tends to be centered on you being able to survive in the world. You wrote that when parents have lots of resources, they care more about you following your passions, but when they're first-generation immigrants, they care about you getting into a career where your survival is guaranteed. What did they want for you at that age, and what did you want for yourself?
They wanted me to be a doctor, lawyer, or an engineer. They wanted me to have a career where I could be upwardly mobile. For them, it’s always about: "If we're making $40,000 a year, I want you to make $80,000." Much of it was about drawing within the lines and not calling attention to yourself.
I was a very different child. I led my first march when I was 13 years old. We grew up in this very white, working-class family in the Midwest, and I was often bullied at school. My mother was harassed for wearing a sari at the Kmart. Our house would get TP’d or spray-painted "Go back to your own country."
I remember this one day, some kids had literally spray-painted on the side of our house "Go back to your own country." I woke up that morning and my father was sitting there with a jar of Clorox, and he was just quietly cleaning the side of the house. I think he was humming a Bollywood tune.
I remember watching him and thinking, "I will never be like him. I will never be silent. I will never not fight." For him, I think that was the task you had to pay to be in this country. There were so many microaggressions or obvious racism that he faced in the workplace—opportunities he didn't get, the name-calling—he never talked about it. It never made him angry.
Part of that was about making sure that we had a different life. I have this story about the last day of eighth grade. There was this girl who had been harassing me the entire time at school, calling me names. Back then they would call somebody a "Haji" as a derogatory term for someone who was brown.
She called me this name and basically challenged me to a fight. Instead of saying no or ignoring her, I was like, "Alright, I'll meet you at the back of the schoolyard." I remember at the end of the day the bell rings and my best friend was like, "Just get on the bus." I said no.
I show up to that schoolyard and it is just full of kids. Everyone is screaming, and there’s spray paint and confetti. She just comes up to me and—bang! Her friend has a baseball bat. I basically get beaten up badly with a tennis racket and a baseball bat.
I came to and my friend dragged me home. I remember walking in and my mother just takes a look at me and she’s just crying. She’s looking at my father saying, "Why did you bring me to this country? Why did you bring me to this country?"
She said that?
She said that. They don’t call the police, they don’t call the school, they’re just crying. I have a concussion. The next day is my eighth-grade graduation. My sister reminded me that I woke up the next morning and I said to my parents, "I'm going to graduation."
I had this beautiful blue lace dress. My sister called her friend over who did my makeup. Again, we go to graduation. My father finds the parents and the parents just laugh and say "Kids are kids." And again my mother cries, "Why did you bring me to this country?"
But that was a shift in myself. Up until that point, I was trying to be white. I was mad that my parents named me Reshma instead of Rachel. I was mad that I sometimes smelled like Indian food. I was mad that I couldn't go to church and know what they were talking about because we believed in Krishna instead of Jesus.
At that moment, everything shifted. I realized that I'm not white. I'm never going to be accepted. And so I better be proud of who I am, and I better fight for who I am and for people like me.
If I removed that experience from your history, what would I be removing from your character?
Oh my God, everything. I am 100% who I am from that moment. A year later I led my first march. I started my first organization called PRISM (Prejudice Reduction Interested Students Movement). I got better at naming organizations the older I got, but that’s when I became a warrior. That’s when I became a fighter.
So I’m so grateful to have had that trauma because it’s made me who I am. But I will be honest, I don't think I have fully processed it. I don't remember or relive that moment until other people who were there remind me. Even my sister reminding me that I woke up the next day saying I'm going to graduation—I don't remember that.
Even though these experiences are transformative, they are painful. Right now in New York City, we're going through all of this Asian hate and these hate crimes. As they've been happening, I've been thinking about this stuff. I can count the amount of times, literally—and that’s sad that you can count the amount of times something hateful or violent has happened to you.
Part of surviving is sometimes blocking out these moments or rewriting what they meant to you in the future. In the past, it was painful, but in the future, it can be empowering and inspiring. It fundamentally changed me. I don't think I would have built the movements I'm building right now if I didn't have that. I can feel pain. I know what it’s like to be ostracized, to be hated.
When you got into the working world after university, you went to Yale, right?
Yeah, three times after I finally got in.
Oh really? You tried to get in three times?
I was obsessed. I grew up in a working-class community. Nobody went to Yale or Harvard. I joked that there’s some Indian auntie at the temple that talked about some kid, but I never met them. Everybody went to community school or state school.
But I knew from a young age that I wanted to do something. I knew that I lived in a country where credentials mattered, especially as a woman of color. If you had that Yale or Harvard degree, people were going to believe in you or at least open some doors. From the time I was 13 years old, going to Yale Law School was always the thing I was chasing.
I had an argument with a guy on Twitter once. I dropped out of university after one lecture. He made the case to me that for an immigrant, getting that stamp from one of those universities is one way to get security around your future. I was in the camp that most degrees are a huge amount of debt and provide very little delivery versus time. What’s your stance on that?
I think it’s a credential. I don't know how much it matters now. Now when I hire people, I want to know about your grit, your hustle, how you work. I don't even think I know where half the people who work for me went to school.
But when I was growing up, it did matter. Being in those kinds of institutions, I often would just sit in my chair and watch how people with power navigate. That then taught me a lot. A lot of it is just watching how people operate.
Going to Yale Law School, I never could raise my hand. All these kids had gone to these fancy private schools and I felt like I didn't belong. That’s the bad part of it, right? You feel like you've kind of snuck in and you're not able to fully step into your power and be who you want to be.
But I think it was a really powerful experience in grit because I kept applying. I finally transferred to Yale Law School and got in and got that degree. Do I think I would still be the same person if I didn't have a degree from Yale and a Master's from Harvard? Yeah, because at the end of the day, it wasn't those things that made me who I am today.
You leave with $300,000 in debt?
A lot of debt.
That is ridiculous.
I blame my father. In the UK, we don't get that much debt. $300,000 in debt when you join the working world forces your hand in terms of the jobs you can take, right?
Totally forces your hand. I would have liked when I graduated to go be a civil rights lawyer. But instead, I get an offer from a fancy law firm where I'm making a couple thousand bucks a month. I didn't do the math on the interest payments or how long it would actually take for me to pay off this debt. Now, basically 23 years later, I'm still paying it off.
That’s where I think so many people who actually want to make a difference, because they have student loan debt, aren't able to. They wait and wait and you see all these good ideas kind of die on the vine because now you're stuck working for the man. You literally feel stuck and you don't know how to get out.
How did you feel?
Oh, I was miserable. That wasn't the plan. The plan when I graduated law school was to run for office and I would just go take this law firm job and after a couple of years I would quit. But then I got stuck because I was helping my parents with some of their finances. I was living in this apartment that I had to pay rent for. I was living a life that saddled me to that desk.
Ten years passed by. For me, I rise like a phoenix from the ashes. I have to be at my bottom of anxiety, depression, and despair before I make a change. I found myself at age 33 every night barely being able to get out of bed, having a large glass of wine and just crying.
Why?
Because I was like, "Is this my life?" They say in Hinduism you have a *dharma*—what you're put on this earth to do. From the time I was a little girl, I knew what my dharma was. I remember just laying on the grass looking at the clouds and imagining this life of being a changemaker.
Here I was in 2008, the world is falling apart, and I'm sitting in a hedge fund as a lawyer. I was so far away from that little girl. I didn't know how to get out from this life that I felt very stuck by because I wasn't rich. I didn't have all this money in the bank account. I also had the expectations of my immigrant parents.
I didn't know who to ask. One of my best friends, Deepa, happened to call me at this moment and she just said, "Just quit." There was nothing profound, but hearing those words at the right time in my life was like, "Yeah, I can just quit." And I did.
The second call I made was to my father. I remember him saying, "Beti, yes, quit." And then I was like, "Whoa." I had built him up as the reason that I was not chasing my dreams. By getting that permission, I realized I was the one. It was my fear of taking a risk that was standing in the way of me actually doing what I was meant to do. So then I didn't have any more excuses. And I ran for Congress.
Isn't it amazing that we end up trying to live out our parents' dreams? We believe the risk is not fulfilling the external expectation, whereas the actual risk is not following the dreams of that girl staring up at the stars. The courageous thing is to stay in the law firm because you're risking your happiness.
Off you go, you run for Congress.
Yeah, crazy thing to do. I was 33, the first South Asian American Indian woman to run for Congress in the United States. I had no idea what I was doing. I had to figure it out on my own. I ran against this very powerful, very vindictive woman who was not someone who was going to take lightly to this young brown girl running against her for her seat.
Did she criticize you?
Oh my God, still. She hasn't really gotten over it. But in some ways, it was good because it wasn't an easy thing to do. I was so damn naive. I really thought that I could shake every hand, meet every voter, and I would win.
But it was the best experience of my life because it’s how I learned to be an entrepreneur. When you run a campaign, it’s like starting a business and shutting it down in the span of 10 months. You’ve got to hire people, raise money, figure out what your message is, what your brand is. That experience is what taught me to build Girls Who Code.
You had to walk into rooms of 65-year-old seniors who couldn't even pronounce my name. I had never gone on television. My first TV interview was Chris Matthews, which was the largest news show. He was so mean to me. I didn't even know where to look in the screen. I didn't know how to dress. I had never given a speech in front of people before. Everything was scary but amazing.
When that person starts criticizing you personally, based on character—how does that actually feel in the moment?
It was devastating. A lot of incredible feminists like Geraldine Ferraro or Gloria Steinem were like, "Why are you running?" These were women who I admired. I thought, "Look, I'm running! Isn't this what you've been talking about that the movement needs?" But really what they meant was "Run, but don't run against me."
My story was very inspirational, being the daughter of immigrants from a working-class background. So they really had to shift my narrative. She did a really good job because I came from Wall Street as a junior lawyer. I didn't know how to control my own narrative, so I lost that battle. I often found myself on the defensive. People are mean.
We finally got the New York Times to do a story on our race. I was this upstart making waves. The New York Times finally acknowledged my race and they sent a reporter. She followed me around the whole day. We're knocking on doors in immigrant communities. You had young Bangladeshi girls having my poster up saying, "I want to be like her one day." How revolutionary it was for the community to see someone who looks like them running for office.
She then decides to write a story about my shoes. Not a word about my campaign, but about my shoes. It was such an example of what we do to young women of color when they run. We make it a caricature. We don't take them seriously.
I lose spectacularly. And I was shocked that I lost. I had not even written my concession speech. We had booked this hotel room in New York City that we could not afford. My campaign organizers had posted the entire room with all these notes: "I can't wait to be in Washington. This is the bill we're going to pass."
When you're running for office, you go to these subway stops and everyone says "I voted for you!" So I was like, "I got this in the bag." I'm sitting there, my father is sitting with me and we're watching the election returns come in. Five minutes in, it's done. My dad's like, "I'm going to bed." I wanted to cry so bad.
I was devastated. I had no contingency plan and I had literally picked a fight with some very powerful people. I remember this young woman, Rebecca, who was my body person, she’s just looking at me. And I was like, "I'm not going to cry because I know she's going to remember this moment for the rest of her life and I need to show strength."
So I stood up there at my victory party—well, concession party—everybody's crying. I'm standing there and I'm just like, "I'm going to do it again! Don't you worry!" Then I came back to my hotel room and I cried for like a month.
How do you pick yourself up from there and rise from the ashes once again to found Girls Who Code?
Drinking a lot of margaritas. No, but seriously, I’ve read a lot about competitive athletes. For a lot of them, what makes them great is they had something that happened in their career early on—they didn't get picked in the first draft, they missed that one shot. It puts a chip on their shoulder.
That’s what this race did for me. It was like I didn't get picked in the first draft, but I knew what my potential was. I was going to show you. I wasn't going to let failure break me. I let myself ruminate about it. I talked to my boyfriend, now my husband, a million times. "Why did that happen? What mistake did I make?"
My father sent me a nice long email about the ten things I did wrong. Savage. Listen, you need parents like that. And then I was done and I was ready to move on and started thinking about what I was going to build next.
So for me next, I said I'm not going back to that private sector job that I hated. I'm going to have to deal with being broke. I loved meeting people on the campaign trail. I loved talking to them, I loved hearing about their problems. I'm still that 13-year-old girl who wants to make a difference.
When I ran for office, it was in 2010, so it was when tech was starting to boom. Twitter was just coming up, Facebook, Instagram. I would go into computer science classrooms and robotics labs and I would just see lines and lines and lines of boys trying to be the next Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg.
Because I wasn't a coder or a computer scientist, I was like, "Where are the girls? Where are the people of color?" I kept thinking about those classrooms. So I spent the next year, basically on my lunch breaks and in my evenings, just learning everything about why there weren't girls and women in coding. I started writing a business plan that became Girls Who Code and started plotting my next run.
That’s a lot to have on one's plate. Would you recommend that?
Well, the way it played out I would recommend it, because it all ended up working out good for Girls Who Code. I ran for Public Advocate of New York City and launching Girls Who Code at the same time. The Public Advocate's race was about "I'm going to make sure that every kid in New York City learns how to code."
I lose that race. This time I realized politics is not a performance sport, it’s not a meritocracy. Now I've taught 20 girls to code, so I'm like, "Alright, if they're not going to elect me, I'm still going to teach every girl in America to code, and then the world." And then I really have a chip on my shoulder because now I didn't get picked for the first draft, I didn't get picked for the second draft either.
You use those skills, right? You get to learn all of these wonderful skills about the nature of the world and people and fundraising. Failure had been a blessing.
Totally. I think the biggest skill that I learned in campaigning is how do you tell a story? How do you inspire people? How do you connect to people? By my second campaign, I don't have the written-out speech in my pocket. I got my hoops and my red lipstick and I am communicating and I'm there and I'm present. I have nothing to prove.
I fight back when people do the character assassination. I'm not easily convinced when people say that they're going to support me. Like, I can see people now. So I lose that race, but I learn so much and I become more comfortable in my skin and who I am.
And Girls Who Code—really phenomenal thing. I read that you've reached almost half a million girls.
Yes, that we've actually gone through our coding programs, and then we've reached about half a billion through our work, our books, our videos, our campaigns. We've reached a lot of kids.
Tell me about this organization. How does it look, how does it function? I read that there's 10,000 Girls Who Code clubs around the world as well.
Yeah, 10,000. When I started Girls Who Code, 0.4% of girls were interested in coding. Culturally we had done such a good job of pushing girls and people of color out of technology. We had Barbie dolls that said "I hate math, let's go shopping instead." Every image on television, from *Weird Science* to *Revenge of the Nerds*, was just these really nerdy white dudes. It didn't feel very inclusive.
At Girls Who Code, what I wanted to do was meet girls where they were at and change the culture. I started thinking if girls went to technology companies like a Facebook or a Spotify and they walked in and they saw what was happening—they actually learned to code embedded in a classroom inside a tech company—then I can then inspire a generation of young women to want to be coders and technologists.
So we started kind of one tech company at a time and we would build these summer camps. In a handful of years, we're running kind of the largest summer camp in America. And then we started expanding that. As an organizer, I wasn't really building a nonprofit, I was building a movement.
The experience for them was transformative. You saw these girls just explode in terms of what they wanted to do, the sisterhood that they built. Every classroom was basically white, Asian, black, trans, non-binary. You were basically creating what the world should look like in terms of love and empathy and sisterhood.
I would say during the graduation, "I have one ask from you. I want you to go back to your community and I want you to go back to your school and I want you to start a club and I want you to find one girl that’s going to join." And so they met me on my challenge. One girl, then a hundred girls, and then we ended up with 10,000 Girls Who Code clubs across the country. Then we exploded in India and the UK. Same model.
Culturally we've started slowly, slowly changing the narrative and making coding cool. Last year we did a partnership with Doja Cat where we basically coded her nails. In one day, 100,000 girls signed on to the website to learn how to code nails. Now 10 years later, you turn on Netflix and the protagonist is often a cool girl coder. We've made coding cool, we've built the pipeline of talent.
You talked about the hardships you encountered on the campaign trail. Business is riddled with the same inevitable hardships. In building Girls Who Code, tell me about the difficult parts.
Well, one, I didn't know what I was doing. I had never built a large-scale organization like that. One of the good things was that I had a board that believed in me. Always build your first board as family and friends because everybody then is wanting you to succeed.
They really protected me. I am intense. If you're going to come work for me, it’s going to be intense.
Define intense.
I’m better now, but I got big vision and I want to get it done. I work and think about it all the time and I don't stop. I am always pushing. I believe in many ways I'm an evangelist. Girls Who Code was my life, my gospel, my religion. And so I think if you're going to come work for me, it's your religion too.
I heard you're the "passion filter" of Girls Who Code. Do you struggle with that when people don't seem to behave in the way that you would have behaved or when they don't seem to have the same passion?
I don't believe in jobs. But for some people, it's a job. That’s where I’ve had to learn the triangle—you have A-people, B-people, C-people. Also, I wasn't good at "Great job! Thank you for doing that!" because this was church, this was religion. I got better at these things. One of the things I was always good at though was hiring people who were smarter than me. I never had an ego about "I want to be the one."
Did you get the praise-criticism balance wrong?
I definitely got the praise-criticism balance wrong. I have to... I'm better now because I just send flowers. Because I don't need it. People don't say to me on a daily basis, "Good job, great work."
But you get it everywhere you go, right? Every time they introduce you on CNBC... No one ever says "Well done" to us in terms of our team, but I get it if I open my DMs on Instagram.
I do too. But you know what's funny? I stepped off as CEO a year ago because I never believed that anyone should do anything for too long. I had a vision, I had an amazing woman that I wanted to take the reins from me. The day we make the announcement, my Chief of Staff is like, "Okay, Reshma, I'm going to block off 2 to 4 because you're going to get inundated with so many messages congratulating you, thanking you for your service."
We make the announcement. Nothing. And Tarika, the new CEO, emails me at 5:00 saying, "Oh my God, I am so overwhelmed with all the messages I've gotten." And I didn't want to make her feel bad, but I had nothing. I realized at that moment because I wasn't the head bitch in charge anymore. I wasn't the CEO anymore. It was a wonderful lesson about how much of that is coming from who you are and how much of that is really this title.
What would you have done differently?
I think what I got really wrong was the personal. At the same time I was trying to build Girls Who Code, I was trying to have a baby. I had more miscarriages than I can count. I got into this habit at Girls Who Code... so, I launch Girls Who Code, I'm launching my campaign, I have my first miscarriage. You think "Oh, is this a fluke?" And then I had a series of them.
Then I'm heads down building Girls Who Code. Again, I think when you are a social entrepreneur and you're building something, the work is never done and it’s always at the sacrifice of others. I got into a habit where I'd have to go to the doctor's office for the 11-12 week checkup. I'd have something planned in the evening—introducing President Obama, speaking to a thousand girls, doing a fundraising dinner.
The doctor at 3:00 would say, "I'm sorry, Ms. Saujani, we don't hear a heartbeat." And instead of saying, "Hey guys, I can't show up," I'd say, "Okay." I'd cry, my husband would be like, "Reshma, go home," and I'd be like, "I gotta show up at this thing." And I did that for seven years, six years, where I would stand there in front of the crowd and be like, "Something is wrong with me."
I would be often times standing in front of a thousand little girls—the little girl that I desperately wanted. It wasn't until when it became too much of the way that I was leading and living. By the time after I had my first and the second, my second child, the same pattern started becoming.
I remember this one time I was in San Francisco and I had to go fly to Utah. Doctor calls and says "Your levels don't look good, you're going to miscarriage soon." I got on that plane to Utah and I had to sit down with the Governor of Utah and another thousand girls, and then I just broke down. I remember I assembled my team and I said, "I can't do this anymore. I'm taking a month off. I need you to run this organization. This is what is happening in my life and has been happening."
Every picture, every TED Talk—when I look at me standing with President Obama or the TED Talk, I think about the tragedy or the baby that was quite frankly dying inside of me. For me, I got that really wrong. Really wrong. I don't want people to think that’s the price you have to pay.
What advice would you give to people to avoid them hitting... because you've hit a rock-bottom moment multiple times in your life through unsustainable behavior. What advice would you give to people who are probably veering towards another rock bottom because they're not listening to themselves?
I think many of us live in this "up and then crash" mode. And that’s what we think is the way that you're supposed to live. I think you need to live always healthy, meaning you have to put your personal mental health and your personal health first. Don't wait for rock bottom to hit. See the signs early on and take those breaks, take that time off, take a nap—whatever it is that you need to do.
But it’s hard because again, the entire "Girlboss" culture, the entire "Lean In" culture, the entire CEO culture is about living that way. It’s almost like a badge of honor. "Hey, I had no heartbeat and I went and gave a speech." That’s almost what we think we're supposed to do to lead. That's strength.
I think we have to completely revise what that means and what it means to be a leader. It means empathy. I too was leading Girls Who Code during the pandemic and had to lay off a bunch of people. Until that point, I had never cried in front of my team. And I would just cry and cry. Then I would get mad at myself for crying, but then I'd be like, "No, no, no, that’s exactly what you're supposed to do."
You're supposed to cry, you're supposed to show vulnerability. You're supposed to say, "Hey guys, I just got some incredibly horrible news, I'm not coming to work." But that’s often seen as a sign of weakness, and we have to make that a sign of strength.
I'm guessing your book *Brave, Not Perfect* was written in this period of your life. There are many things you regret about that book because that book was also about corporate feminism—about fixing the woman and not fixing the structure.
Look, I acknowledge that in the book, but what I used to say is "While we're fixing the institutions, let's figure out how we can fix ourselves," i.e., unlearning perfectionism. But I really believed that, Stephen. I really bought into that, that we could get to equality, that it was really about the power pose and the color-coding of your calendar and the delegating more and not crying in the bathroom. I think that’s what women have been told.
We were never looking at what's wrong with the structure. Why, for example, going back to my experience with fertility, why do we do performance reviews and not wellness reviews? Why are you not supposed to be sad at work? Why are you not supposed to cry? Where did these values show up, and how do we get them out?
Written on the back of your new book, *Pay Up: The Future of Women and Work*, Rochelle Simmons says: "Finally we have a book that aims to fix the system, not the women." I read that you wrote it from a place of anger, but also hope for change. Why anger?
Well, listen, I as a mom found myself in 2020... started the year with Girls Who Code having a Super Bowl ad. I was going to teach more girls than I ever had before. I was having my second baby finally via surrogate. I was really looking forward to when he was born, just spending that time with him.
Then a few weeks later the pandemic hit. I found myself having to take care of my newborn, homeschool my six-year-old, and save my nonprofit Girls Who Code from being shut down. When pandemics hit, the first resources to go are to women and girls. My whole leadership team were mostly working women. What we were saying to each other on the Zoom chat was just "Hold on, hold on, because when September comes and the schools open, everything will be fine."
September came and I got that letter from our Department of Education. They announced this thing called "hybrid learning" where you got to log on your kid at 9:00, 10:00, and 11:00, all the while maintaining your full-time job. I thought "Aren't they going to ask me?" In the United States, we have these time-use surveys. We knew in the early months of the pandemic who was doing the homeschooling. It was women.
So we knew that if we made a policy like closing down the schools, it was inevitably going to force millions of women to leave the workforce because they couldn't supplement their paid labor for unpaid labor. The fact that someone I don't even know could make a decision that could affect my life on a dime terrified me.
You started seeing over the course of the pandemic 11 million women leave the workforce. I knew from building Girls Who Code we didn't always have a gender gap in technology. In the 1980s we were almost at parity, and then we pushed women out. Similarly here, you can't have women be 51% of the labor force and then become in the 40s again and think it’s an on-and-off switch.
So I was like, "Where's the plan? Is the President going to get on and announce the plan to make sure we don't devastate decades of feminism?" There was no plan. That’s what really inspired me to start this movement. I wrote an op-ed saying we need a Marshall Plan for Moms. When I read the comment section, people on the left were like, "Well, what about the dads?" Even though again, men had not been pushed out of the labor force.
And then people on the right were like, "Well, motherhood's a choice, so you don't get to have affordable childcare or paid leave because you chose to be a mom." It was the first time I was like, "Wow, motherhood is controversial." And I had that same sense I had when I started Girls Who Code: this is a problem that needs solving.
Especially for women like our mothers. My mom, when I was a kid, I was a latchkey kid from the time I was seven. My parents couldn't afford the $50 a week for childcare. So from the time my sister and I were 7 and 10, she would pick me up from middle school and we would go home.
We lived in this neighborhood that didn't really want any brown families there. So we wouldn't walk home, we would run home. And then we would open up the door and close it and we would hide in the closet because we were terrified. I think about how my mother felt every day at 3:45 knowing that her babies were running home because they couldn't afford childcare.
The unconscionable choices that mothers, mothers of color, have to make every single day because we don't make it possible for them to be mothers and have a job. All of this "Girlboss" equality is just about you—that’s a lie. I've been selling this lie for the past 10 years. If we're really going to get to equality, we have to fix the systems.
There's a staggering stat in Chapter 4 of your book that says women are now spending more time on childcare than they did in 1980.
Yeah, it’s because we're in this moment of intensive parenting. My parents didn't even know where I applied to college. Now we're taking our kids to Spanish, Hindi, and Chinese, piano class, basketball class. We are constantly on top of our kids because that is a societal expectation. At the same time, we have to be completely "on" as workers in this hustle culture.
If you're a working woman, you have these two huge expectations that you have to meet and it’s exhausting. It’s why we have a mental health crisis. 51% of mothers say that they're anxious and depressed. Motherhood needs a refresh across the world.
How is your mental health?
I would say that I am a six right now. I'm exhausted, I'm not going to lie. I have two little kids, 2 and 7. The pandemic has been crushing. Our kids have really been traumatized because of the pandemic, and now we're traumatized. I think a lot of the women in my life—we just need a beat. I wish they would announce like a national vacation for like a month.
What advice would you give me to get to a 10?
I would say take a break. Do things for yourself. I got a Whoop. I'm obsessed about my sleep. I will go to bed at 8:00 PM or leave a dinner early because I know if I'm getting eight hours of sleep, I am my best version. I try to play tennis three times a week. I love it—I'm horrible at it, but I love it. I try to have fun. I went to a Justin Bieber concert last weekend.
I make more time for myself. For 10 years as I was building Girls Who Code, I would probably do two to three flights a week, taking the red-eye to be home for my babies. I don't do that anymore. I say no. I realize that this opportunity isn't going to go away.
I'm in the middle of a book tour, so I've definitely been orienting more towards "Old Reshma"—three, four talks a day, getting on planes, not sleeping as much. But I think my habits have been much more healthy than they've ever been. I'm also really practicing not wanting things.
Growing up as an immigrant, I needed credentials, I needed those degrees, I needed that validation. I was always chasing the next big thing. It’s funny as I sit here, there's nothing I want. There’s no title I want, no award I want, no recognition I want. When I start catching myself wanting things, I pull back.
I told you I applied to Yale Law School three times before I got in. I got a call last November from the President of Yale saying, "We would be honored if you'd be our commencement speaker." The commencement speakers are normally like Hillary, Barack, Steve Jobs.
I was like, "Me? The real one?" And of course my friends were like, "The real one?" My husband was like, "The real one?" Yes, the real one. It was so amazing, one, getting that because I had been chasing them for so long and finally they asked me. But two, it was exactly because I wasn't chasing it.
What is your prism now where you find yourself in your career when you're deciding what to say yes and no to?
Two things: one, impact; and two, I love people who are starting up. I know if I go on their podcast or let them interview me, it will help them. I like to be that person. Someone did that for me. And then I’ve been studying the *Bhagavad Gita*. It’s a book about spirituality and how do you stay really focused on what you're meant to do in this earth and not get distracted by all the shiny things.
The *Gita* says it doesn't make sense that humans want things, because all you're doing is inviting yourself for disappointment. If you don't want anything and you don't get it, it doesn't matter because you never wanted it. That has been a really big gift for me in staying focused. If my job right now is to fight for mothers, then everything I'm saying yes to is about furthering that.
In your book, you talk about four principles for bringing about that change: Empower, Educate, Revise, and Advocate. Tell me about "Empower."
Empower is really about creating tangible boundaries. In my house, my husband does the nights and I do the mornings. If I'm sitting around watching Netflix at 6:00, he'll be like, "Can you change a diaper? Can you warm up the bottle?" So at 6:00, I just bounce. I go for dinner by myself, I go out with my friends. I'm gone. I've created that boundary so that I don't get roped into doing more of that unpaid labor than I need to.
The second piece is about shifting employers. I am on a mission to get companies to start subsidizing childcare. In the US, childcare is like the largest expense for families. Right now less than 10% of companies subsidize childcare. We often think of childcare as your personal problem, but it is an economic issue. Companies pay for egg freezing and IVF; they should be paying when you have a child.
All of the programming we do around women's empowerment is about fixing women. It needs to be about fixing workplaces. Why don't companies offer childcare? Why don't companies mandate paid leave for men? Why are we still fighting flexibility and remote working?
The third thing I talk about is how do you revise the culture? It’s so normal for women to hide their motherhood. When I became a mother my team was like, "Great, you should be a mom blogger!" I'm like, "No, anything but a mom." Moms are seen as people who no longer care about their career.
I think we have to start parenting out loud. You shouldn't be hiding your kids, you shouldn't be apologizing when your kids interrupt your Zoom call. You go on Instagram and you see pictures of mothers and their kids and they're all beautiful. That’s not what vacations look like. My vacation, everyone's fighting with each other and we're screaming. Tell the truth about what it looks like.
And finally, it’s really about advocating for change. The United States is one of the only nations that doesn't have paid leave. We don't have affordable childcare. We need to really make structural change that comes from the government. Working women have to learn how we fight for ourselves. We have so many movements that are about protecting our kids, but there isn't a movement of mothers fighting for moms.
If I had to measure success, what would the world look like?
That we have true equality. That little girls can be everything and anything, honestly. That they can be president or prime minister, that they can launch a company and get seed funding, that they can be a scientist, or they can be a stay-at-home mom. That they can be whoever and whatever that they want.
I think my hope for mothers is that they too don't see their biggest dreams die on the vine. That they don't live a life of regret and envy because they let things happen to them rather than change things. We respect and dignify women and girls. We're not there yet.
We've basically told women that the problem is you. All the books that women read—"Confidence Code," "I gotta learn how to do a power pose"—all of it is about women thinking that *you* are wrong. The amount of times that women come to me and say "I have imposter syndrome"—I'm like, "No, no, no, they didn't let you in. You're in there because you are the best."
What I am saying in many ways is really radical. It is women, it’s people of color, it’s poor people, anybody who has really had to through grit and perseverance found themselves in rooms that people don't look like them. We're still asking ourselves "Do I belong here? Should I be here?" and we're constantly being fed information that tells ourselves that we just have to change one more thing about ourselves.
It’s just simply not true. I used to be that girl at Yale Law School in my constitutional law class going like this. A few years ago I got asked to give a speech at Bill Gates' summit. The slot that they had given me was between Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. It was the only speech that anyone was giving to a summit of Fortune 100 CEOs.
They said to me, "This is a really hard speaking slot, Reshma, because Bill and Warren are sitting in the front row and it can be a little scary." And I remember as I was sitting there in the backstage, I remember thinking, "Man, I wish they gave me 12 minutes because I really had some more stuff to say."
And then I remember thinking, "How did I become this woman when I used to be that girl?" It’s because I've been in every single powerful room, I've met every CEO, every president, every prime minister. And when I meet them I'm like, "You? You're running what? Me and my girls, we can run circles around you."
I realized that it's never been about whether we're qualified, whether we're prepared, whether we're ready. We've really never really dissected all of the undeserved, unearned privilege that so many people have and that we have literally bought and been fed this propaganda that we're not good enough. The real resistance in this moment is saying no more. I'm not buying into that bullshit. I'm here, and I can lead too.
That’s a very powerful place to end. However, we do have a closing tradition where the previous guest writes a question for the next guest.
Oh my gosh, okay.
I don't get to see who it is, you don't get to find out who it is. "When was the last time a day flew by and what were you doing?"
I don't know if I've had a day, but I've definitely had a couple hours. The last time was I actually got to visit my son's school for the very first time in the pandemic. My son is a "little Gandhi"—he is the kindest little soul. Just being able to watch him, and him show me his things, and just seeing him interact—the joy and the confidence and the kindness. I could have sat there all day and it felt like a minute because I was so happy.
Does he understand your work?
He does. He gets mad at me sometimes: "Why are you always fighting for girls and moms? What about the boys?" He knows that Mama leads and speaks, and he knows that I'm helping people. He always says that he wants to be a "kindness engineer." Hopefully I can take credit for that a little bit because I think he sees that in the work that I do. He is an old soul.
Thank you. It’s really a tremendous thing and it's really inspiring that you've managed to get almost half a million girls into coding. Reading through your story was a real source of inspiration. Seeing the model of Girls Who Code and how you've managed to reach so many people is a blueprint for me. And your book is really fantastic.
It’s one of those books that leaves you with a real sense of mission and inspiration and really makes you take stock of your life and the future of the industry we all reside in. It’s also made me consider a lot of changes that I need to make in my own companies.
Because I, as a male CEO—and male CEOs are the dominant force at the top of organizations—can't understand a lot of these things because they haven't had the lived experience. Even when they say they understand, a lot of the time it’s either virtue signaling or something else. Having forces like you in the world is more necessary now than ever before. So thank you for being you and thank you for writing a book that I feel everybody needs to read.
Thank you.
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