If our American women are going to work to put food on the table and pay for the mortgage, then we better make sure that they get put into jobs that pay well and that pay their worth. That's why I'm such a huge advocate about computing jobs, because those are the jobs.
— Reshma Saujani
We need policymakers to keep an eye on gender and write policies that are explicitly designed to include underserved populations like girls in computer science courses.
I'm the daughter of refugees. The immigrant mentality is to work hard, be brave, and never give up in your pursuit of achieving the American dream.
While I've had so many different jobs - I've worked in law, I've worked in government, I've run for office - there's a common theme. The theme for my entire life has been about giving back.
Girls Who Code is all about providing role models. You can't be what you can't see.
Hillary Clinton was a hugely important mentor for me. I don't talk to her every day, but sometimes mentorship means being able to watch somebody's leadership from afar.
Some people worry about our federal deficit, but I, I worry about our bravery deficit. Our economy, our society - we're just losing out because we're not raising our girls to be brave. The bravery deficit is why women are underrepresented in STEM, in C-suites, in boardrooms, in Congress, and pretty much everywhere you look.
Part of the success of Girls Who Code is that I am a hustler. When people ask what my biggest strength is, it's that I'm shameless. I will ask people for help even when I don't know them.
I don't like to do small things. If I'm going to do something, I'm going to really make an impact.
I have seen girls tackle every single big problem from cancer to lead poisoning to climate change to homelessness to bullying in schools. There is literally no problem that we can't solve.
All that time I spent chasing Yale was time I could have been using to actually make a difference in the world. Bravery, not perfection, was the key that unlocked all the doors I've walked through since.
A movement only takes form from that first act. Exploring a curiosity, or a real passion, and being motivated by a desire to solve something - that's really the best way.
I want women to be comfortable with being imperfect. I immediately see how girls are afraid to try things that they won't be good in. And women stay with the things they're good at even if that's not what they're put on this earth to do.
I believe in the power of peer mentorship. When I learned how to ask for a raise, how to fire someone, how to deal with a board challenge - I didn't get that from mentors like Hillary Clinton. I got that from women who were my friends and who had already done the thing that I was doing.
For the American economy, for any economy to grow, to truly innovate, we cannot leave behind half our population. We have to socialize our girls to be comfortable with imperfection, and we've got to do it now. We cannot wait for them to learn how to be brave like I did when I was 33 years old.
Most girls are taught to avoid risk and failure. We're taught to smile pretty, play it safe, get all A's. Boys, on the other hand, are taught to play rough, swing high, crawl to the top of the monkey bars, and then just jump off headfirst.
Too many times we just think about our ideas, and we let people convince us not to do it.
In the workplace, we're taught to worry about what happens if we don't have full, complete knowledge of every detail. But if you create a culture and an environment that rewards people for taking risks, even if they don't succeed, you can start changing behavior.
I think for a certain demographic of American families that are not living below the poverty line, what is now becoming the working poor, I think they realize that their young daughters - and their sons, quite frankly - need to learn a skill set that is going to never go away, and I think that they see that in technology.
Being brave is what led to three rejections from Yale Law School before being accepted. It led to losing my 2010 race for U.S. Congress, and another failed bid for public office in 2013, this time for public advocate of New York City.
You really never know where your path will lead you, but working with technology was truly the best way I could make a difference.
When I was 33 years old, I ran for United States Congress in New York City. I lost miserably.
I give my e-mail out all the time - my team doesn't love that! People e-mail me or tweet at me or LinkedIn me. I've learned that oftentimes people just need five minutes. People just need to touch somebody real and have a connection for a moment.
Coding, it's an endless process of trial and error, of trying to get the right command in the right place, with sometimes just a semicolon making the difference between success and failure. Code breaks and then it falls apart, and it often takes many, many tries until that magical moment when what you're trying to build comes to life.
I think that feeling of being thrown into the deep end and doing something you never thought you would accomplish is really powerful.
Theoretically, I have no business starting an organization called Girls Who Code, because I don't code.
