Reshma Saujani

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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 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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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 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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Theoretically, I have no business starting an organization called Girls Who Code, because I don't code.”

“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?'”

“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.”

“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.”

“Too many times we just think about our ideas, and we let people convince us not to do it.”