Everything I've achieved has come from perseverance. I've never met another entrepreneur who had a painless path to success - everyone who tries to bring new ideas to the world is tested.
— Reshma Saujani
There's no better way of learning from your experiences than having an open and honest conversation with yourself about why you fell short.
My family was one of the few South Asian families in my community in Illinois. Growing up in the '80s, I remember going to the K-Mart with my mom, when she was wearing her sari, and she'd get made fun of. People would ask my mother, 'Were you born with that dot on your head?'
Never give up. People will always discount you, and you'll always get rejected. But set your sights high. Be boldly ambitious. Be relentless and never give up.
I had to learn how to not be a micro-manager. Maternity leave made me do that. I just couldn't anymore.
I have learned how to say no, and I have to check myself all the time. I'm not great at it still. Women get criticized a lot more for saying no than men do.
It's important to find people who believe in you. You also have to find people that you believe in.
I never take for granted how lucky I am to be an American and what a privilege it is to spend each day at a nonprofit dedicated to helping the next generation of girls achieve their dreams. My journey, as the daughter of refugees, shows what refugees and the children of refugees can create for all Americans.
Is the investment community critical to our economic success? Yes. Free markets, innovation, access to credit, venture capital, and strong labor rights - these have been the underpinnings of our economic vitality, from laying railways to broadband lines.
There has been little to no attention from policymakers to the economic inequalities young people face. Instead of job creation policies, our country's youth are faced with tuition hikes.
Girls Who Code doesn't exist solely to discover the next great female technology icon, although that would be great! In addition to coding, the girls at our program learn to pitch ideas and products, present themselves professionally, and interact with colleagues at every level of a company.
Computer science is not just for smart 'nerds' in hoodies coding in basements. Coding is extremely creative and is an integral part of almost every industry.
In 2010, I ran for Congress in a Democratic primary against someone who had been there for 18 years. 'The Daily News' endorsed me. I was in 'The New York Times' above the fold. CNBC called this one of the hottest races in the country. On election day, votes for me never went past 19%. I lost.
The culture of tech companies cannot change if women aren't in the room.
I think as automation gets even more and more prevalent, we're going to need to learn how to code. Everybody does.
I've been a female activist since the time I was 13 years old.
I don't feel like I've achieved what I wanted to achieve yet, even though every day I get an email from another girl who tells me the difference that Girls Who Code has made in her life. I'm not done yet.
I'm glad I didn't know how much patience entrepreneurship required. It took some time to turn that into a strength of mine, so that would've presented an obstacle when I was younger.
As women, we're presented this false choice that is either our children or our work. But I don't think I fully understood the paradox until I had a child. I bring my son to work and let other parents do the same. I am very intentional about the workplace that I create, and my son is a big part of that.
I refuse to see losing as a negative. Obama lost in '83 when he ran against Bobby Rush. Hillary lost in '08. Even Lincoln lost the first election. It's a useful learning experience.
You're never too young or too old to be a mentor.
When I'm in the best physical shape of my life, I'm in the best professional space. I can track the connection between the two.
Coding - everyone thinks it's a superpower. And so when you feel like, 'I've learned how to code,' and you say to your mom or the girl sitting next to you, 'I know how that app is built, I know the logic behind how that was created' - that's powerful.
We must stand up and fight for an America that welcomes young doers and dreamers instead of categorically denying entry to so many simply based on their religion or country of origin.
We're being told that America is a zero sum game - that the dreams of immigrants come at the expense of those native born and that the religious freedom of some threatens the security of others. But we know this is a lie.
I'm not pro-Wall Street or anti-Wall Street. I'm pro-New York City.
For too many of our young people, that once-promised American dream has given way to an American debt burden and a bleak job market.
For so long, women have been waiting to get recognized. The world doesn't work that way. We need to teach girls that it's OK to ask for what you want when it comes to your salary or whatever it is you want to enhance your career. No one is going to notice you no matter how amazing you are.
I've chosen opportunities where I might fail rather than live in the shadow of my own potential.
In college, I studied political science, policy, and law. My plan was to move to New York, pay off student debt in a year or two, and then run for office.
In the '80s, society created a caricature of what a hacker or a programmer looked like: a guy wearing a hoodie, drinking energy drinks, sitting in a basement somewhere coding. Today, programmers look like the men we see in the show 'Silicon Valley' on HBO. If you look at the message girls are getting, it's saying, 'This is not for you.'
As I've traveled the country, we visit tech incubators all the time where women are going into their second or third act in their career and learning how to be software programmers, or how to work at startup companies, and learning a completely different skill set. I think it's never too late.
I always say if you're not failing, you're not trying.
I'm a big proponent of mandatory computer science education. I think the first step is educating policymakers that technology is changing the way that we live and work, and it's happening so fast.
There's no more powerful lesson than knowing that your setbacks will one day help you succeed.
With my own son, my style of mothering has been to bring him everywhere. He's sitting on my lap during interviews. When I went to the White House to meet President Obama, he was there.
Every day, no matter how tired my father was, he'd put me in the car and drive me to Schaumburg Public Library, and he'd read to me from books about Dr. King, Mahatma Gandhi, Eleanor Roosevelt.
When I first ran for office in 2010, I was 32 years old. The average age in Congress was 69. I was a brown woman whose name was Reshma Saujani - a name most people couldn't pronounce. And there was never a South Asian woman who had ever run for United States Congress before.
For me, if I'm away from my son for more than 48 hours, I'm crabby.
I wanted to become a lawyer because I saw Kelly McGillis on 'The Accused.' 'Grey's Anatomy,' 'L.A. Law,' 'Ally McBeal' - all of these have inspired women to go into law. I think the opposite is happening in technology.
There is a seductive simplicity in Donald Trump's vision to build walls and ban refugees to protect American interests. But we must always remember that we create far greater opportunity for all Americans when we enable the creativity and entrepreneurial spirit of people globally to take root here.
I think that if we want to cure cancer, we have to teach girls to code. If we want to do something about climate change, we have to teach girls to code. If we want to solve homelessness in our city and our country, teach girls to code. They're change makers.
For over a decade, the top 1% of income earners have seen their pay skyrocket, riding a wave of lobbyist-sponsored financial de-regulation. For the remaining 99%, wages have stagnated, and employment has fallen off a cliff.
I was in my 30s when I quit my job and ran for Congress. So often, we're told it's OK to take these big career leaps when we're in our 20s, but we cast such an unfavorable light on those who take big risks later on in their careers or when they start families. There's enormous pressure to have it all figured out.
What happens to boys in tech is in many ways different than what happens to girls in tech. it's not that they're facing sexism per se: it's that they don't think it's cool. So I think we really have to change the way we present technology.
I was full of pride when President Obama talked about coding in his last State of the Union address. I was proud when Chicago recently made computer science mandatory as a requirement for graduation. To see this elevate to the level of a bigger conversation is progress.
My parents were engineers. In the 1970s, they came to the United States as refugees from Uganda. Seeing everything this country did for my family inspired me to want to give back through public service.
You still hear this perception that boys are good at math and girls are not, and it's not cool and it's not interesting. And I think we have to shift the culture. It's so deeply entrenched in who we are.
I was definitely one of those girls where my father would sit me at the dinner table and say, 'What's two plus two?' And I'd be like, 'Five!' He would shake his head. Math and science intimidated me.
I'm a feminist with a capital 'F' and have always had a passion for policy.
