Reshma Saujani

“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.”

“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 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.”

“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'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.”

“You really never know where your path will lead you, but working with technology was truly the best way I could make a difference.”

“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.”

“I always say if you're not failing, you're not trying.”

“I think as automation gets even more and more prevalent, we're going to need to learn how to code. Everybody does.”

“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.'”

“I've chosen opportunities where I might fail rather than live in the shadow of my own potential.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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 don't like to do small things. If I'm going to do something, I'm going to really make an impact.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”