Moonshot Speaker Series: Reshma Saujani
This year Team One kicked of our The Moonshot Speaker Series with Reshma Saujani, Founder of Girls Who Code.
Reshma spoke about her incredible journey – from running for Congress to the founding of her national non-profit aimed at ending the gender divide in technology. Her dreams have been big and unwavering from the beginning.
After being rejected from Yale Law School two times she knocked on the door of the Dean’s office and demanded she be let in. It worked.
In 2010, Saujani ran for Congress. While others encouraged her to start smaller or to wait until she was older, she refused. Despite losing the campaign, out of it came two of her biggest successes and accomplishments to date: her book Women Who Don’t Wait in Line, and the founding of Girls Who Code, a national non-profit organization working to close the gender gap in technology and preparing young women for jobs of the future.
Saujani expressed how she never would have founded Girls Who Code if she hadn’t lost the 2010 election.
In fact, it was the exact notion of risk and failure that fueled Reshma to start Girls Who Code. While the premise was born out of the knowledge and understanding of the disparity of women in tech jobs, the decision to actually do something about it came from not being afraid to fail.
In 2013, Saujani attempted another run for office, this time for New York City Public Advocate. At the time the media was all over story, asking what it would it mean for her to lose again so publicly. Saujani did end up losing, but it was no setback. After her second attempt and second loss in politics, Saujani went back to Girls Who Code and devoted “1000% of her time and energy.” The program has grown from an informal summer program for a handful of girls into a nationwide program supported by some of the world’s most elite and successful tech entrepreneurs (Google, AT&T, Microsoft, etc.).
Saujani’s story is a human one. Not of immediate success or luck, but of grit and determination—of the humility it takes to fall and get back up again—to be unrelenting in the pursuit of one’s dreams. As Saujani says, “too many times we just think about our ideas, and we let people convince us not to do it.” Fortunately, despite the naysayers, Saujani was not convinced otherwise in the pursuit of her dreams.
Founder and CEO of Girls Who Code visits Team One. (LtR Julie Michael, Team One President; Reshma Saujani, Founder and CEO of Girls Who Code; Mark Miller, Team One Chief Strategy Officer)
