i gotta figure out how to teach every

single girl to code that's how the

world's gonna be a better place

founder of ceo of girls who code

best-selling author reshma

i was often bullied at school our house

would get spray painted go back to your

own country and my mother just takes a

look at me and she's just crying and i

remember thinking

i will never

be silent so i ran for congress the new

york times finally acknowledged my race

and they sent a reporter they were

knocking on doors we had young girls

having my poster up she then decides to

write a story about my shoes

i'm not buying into that [ __ ]

i wasn't gonna let failure break me when

i started girls with code point four

percent of girls were interested in

coding and then we ended up with ten 000

girls who code clubs and then we

exploded in india and in the uk and

girls were interested

in making the world a better place

in building girls who code tell me about

the other side you know at the same time

i was trying to build girls who code i

was trying to have a baby i had more

miscarriages than i can count

i think when you are a social

entrepreneur and you're building

something the work is never done and

it's always at the sacrifice of others

for me i got that really wrong

really wrong so what advice would you

give to people who are probably veering

towards another rock bottom in their

lives

i think

so without further ado

i'm stephen bartlett and this is the

diary of a ceo usa edition i hope

nobody's listening but if you are

then please keep this to yourself

[Music]

reshma

i am as i was reading through your story

it reminded me of a quote that i read

many years ago and i i saved this quote

in my bookmarks and twitter and so i

went and looked for this quote when i

knew you were coming here today and it

and it somewhat resonated with me in

terms of your story the quote is my

parents were tasked with the job of

survival and i was self-actualization

the immigrant generational gap is real

what a luxury it is to search for

purpose meaning and fulfillment

and i know you came at least your

parents came here from uganda

take me back take me back to your

childhood and the context in which

you were

molded yeah well my parents escaped the

dictator idiamine in 1973

they changed their names from

mukund and madhu to mina and mike

because i think a recruiter told my dad

that the only way he was going to get a

job as an engineer instead of he was

working as a machinist in a factory was

to change his name

i think about them often because i can't

imagine in my 20s

coming to a new country

leaving your entire family or having to

leave your entire family not having a

single person that you know not knowing

the language and having to build a life

for yourself

and they did it um

you know they did it with a smile

they never really complained about it

and then everything became about giving

us the life

that they had sacrificed so much to have

when you have parents that come from

that background um

as you've written about

what they want for you as a child tends

to be centered on

you being able to survive in the world

and you wrote that when parents have

might have been a quote you said when

parents have lots of resources they care

more about you following your passions

but when they're like first generation

immigrants they care about you also

getting into a career where your

survival is guaranteed yeah what did

they want for you at that age and what

did you want for yourself you know i

think they wanted me to be you know a

doctor a lawyer or an engineer

and they wanted me to have a career

where i could you know

be upwardly mobile right for them it's

always about like okay if we're making

40 000 a year i want you to make 80. you

know i want to do better than i'm doing

um but so much about steve was about

drawing in the lines

you know not calling attention to

yourself you know i i was a very

different child

you know i led my first march when i was

13 years old

and you know i think there was a moment

i talk about this sometimes you know we

grew up in this very white working class

family in the midwest

and i was often bullied at school

and my mother was you know harassed for

wearing a sari at the kmart you know our

house would get teepeed or spray painted

go back to your home country

i remember this one day

some kids literally spray painted on the

side of her house you know go back to

her own country

and i woke up that morning my father was

sitting you know with you know

a jar of clorox

and he was just quietly cleaning

the side of the house

i think he was like humming a bollywood

tune

and i remember

watching him and thinking

i will never be like him

i will never

be silent

i will never not fight

and for him you know i think that that

was the task that you had to pay to be

in this country and i and and i think

there's so many

microaggressions or just obvious racism

that he faced in the workplace you know

opportunities he didn't get the name

calling all of it he never talked about

it never made him angry

and i think part of that was about

making sure that we had a different life

you know i have the story that you know

i've told before but the last day of

eighth grade you know it's a big

celebration there's been this girl that

had been harassing me the entire time at

school you know calling me names you

know back then they would call somebody

a [ __ ] as a derogatory term for somebody

who was brown

and so she called me this name and she

said and you know she basically

challenged me to a fight and instead of

saying

no or ignoring her i was like all right

i'll meet you at the back of the

schoolyard

and i remember right at the end of the

day the bell rings my best friend food

was like just get on the bus just get on

the bus and i'm like no i don't know

what it was maybe it was the last day of

school

but i show up to that schoolyard and the

entire schoolyard is just full of kids

and everyone's screaming and there's

spray paint and confetti

and she just comes up to me and bank

and then her friend has you know a

baseball bat

and i basically get beaten up

badly

with a tennis racket and a baseball cap

and i came to my friend who god bless

her

drags me home

and i remember walking in and my mother

just takes a look at me and she's just

crying and she's looking at my father

why'd you bring me to this country why

did you bring me to this country she

said that she says that

and they don't call the police

they don't call the school

they're just crying

and i am like i have like a concussion

you know i and the next day is my eighth

grade graduation

and my sister reminded me she said you

woke up the next morning and you look at

mom and dad and you say i'm going to

graduation

and i have this beautiful

blue lace dress

and my sister called her friend over who

like did my makeup

and again we go to graduation my father

i think finds the parents the parents

just they laugh and say kids are kids

and again my mother cries why did you

bring me this country

but you know that was a

a shift

in myself because i think up until that

point i was trying to be white

you know i was mad that my parents made

me reshma instead of rachel you know i

was mad that i sometimes smelled like

indian food you know i was mad that i

couldn't go to church and know what they

were talking about that we believed you

know in krishna instead of jesus and at

that moment everything shifted

and i realized that i'm not white

i'm i'm never going to be accepted

um and so i better be proud of who i am

and i better fight for who i am and for

people like me if i removed that

experience

from your history what would i be

removing from your character oh my god

everything everything i

i am i think 100 of who i am from that

moment um

again i think a year later i led my

first march i started my first

organization called prism prejudice

reduction interested students movement i

got better at naming organizations the

older i got but that's when i became a

warrior

you know that's when i became

a fighter and so i'm so grateful

to have had

that trauma

because it's made me who i am but i will

be honest i don't think i have fully

processed it

um i don't i don't remember i don't like

relive that moment until other people

who were there like do you remember that

app like even my sister reminding me

that i woke up the next day being like

do you know that you said that you're

gonna go to graduation like i don't

remember that so i i still do think that

even though these experiences are

transformative

um

they are

they're painful

you know right now we're going through

in new york city this you know all of

this asian hate

and all these hate crimes that are

happening

against asian americans in new york city

and across the country

and as they've been happening i think

i've been thinking about this stuff

because i was like one day i was like oh

i can count the amount of times

literally and that's sad that you can

count the amount of times that something

has happened to you hateful or violent

um

but i think part of surviving is about

sometimes blocking out these moments or

rewriting what they meant to you

in the future

but in the past it was painful

but in the future it can be empowering

it can be inspiring because you can tell

the story and you can you can you know

it fundamentally changed me i don't

think i would have built the movements

that i'm building right now i don't i

don't have that i can feel

pain i know what it's like to be

um

not accepted to be ostracized to be

hated

and when you when you got into the

working world after university you went

to yale right yeah at three times after

i finally got in oh really oh i was

obsessed

you tried to get in three times yeah try

to get in three times

i again you know grew up in a

working-class community nobody went to

yale harvard

i joke that there's some like indian

auntie you know at the temple that

talked about some kid but i never met

them

everybody went to community school state

school i didn't even

know how i would apply i don't think i

ever applied to university

but i knew from a young age that i

wanted to do something

and i knew that i lived in a country

where credentials mattered especially as

a woman of color and that if you had

that yale or harvard degree

people were gonna

believe in you

or at least open some doors

and that was always my from the time i

was 13 years old going to yale law

school was always

the thing i was chasing

is so i had an argument with some a guy

on twitter one day he's actually a

friend of mine and i've always because i

dropped out of university went for one

lecture not for me left

and

he made the case to me which sounds very

similar to the case you've just made to

me which is as a sort of a an immigrant

getting that stamp from one of

universities is one way to kind of get

security around your future and because

i was kind of in the camp that most

university degrees are actually a huge

amount of debt which you become like

encumbered with and then you get very

little in terms of delivery versus the

amount of debt and time it takes to get

that degree and that there's other ways

but he made that point to me that for

immigrants

in fact getting a

that stamp or that certificate is

actually

um one way that they can secure their

future what was your stance on that yeah

i mean i think it's a credential i don't

know how much it matters now like now

when i hire people i want to know about

your grit your hustle like how you work

um your work ethic less about where i

don't even think i know we're half the

people who work for me go went to school

nor do i pay attention to it any of them

um but i think when i was growing up it

did matter but i will say

that

being in those kinds of institutions i

often would just sit in my chair and

watch

watched at how people with power

navigate

and i think that that then taught me a

lot and i would say it's on the boards

that i sit on today you know a lot of it

is just

watching how people operate and how

people navigate you know going to yale

law school i i i said it i never could

raise my hand

because all these kids had gone to these

fancy private schools and i don't know

what they were talking about and i felt

i felt like i didn't belong

and so

that's the bad part of it right because

you feel like

you kind of snuck in and you're not able

to fully step into your power and

articulate and be who you want to be

um

but i think it was a really

powerful experience for me

in grit because again i kept applying i

kept applying i kept applying i kept

applying and i finally transferred to

your law school and got in and got that

degree now do i think i would still be

the same person

if i didn't have a degree for meal in a

master's degree from harvard yeah

because at the end of the day like it

wasn't those things um that made me who

i am today

you leave with 300 000 in debt a lot of

debt that is ridiculous yeah i blame my

father

in our in the uk we don't get that much

debt we get

50k if you'll you know do badly but you

know that's that's probably the top end

but three hundred thousand dollars in

debt when you join the working world

that forces your hand a little bit when

you're in the working world right in

terms of the the jobs that you can take

because you need to pay that off totally

force my hand

yeah because i would have liked when i

graduated to go be a civil rights lawyer

but instead i get an offer from a fancy

law firm where i'm making

you know a couple thousand bucks a month

and i didn't do the math on the interest

payments you know or how long it would

actually take for me to pay off this

debt because that was just that was just

principle in that interest

and now you know basically 23 years

later i'm still paying it off

but i think that we're we're

that's why i think so many people who

actually want to make a difference

because they have student loan debt

aren't able to and then wait and wait

and wait and you see all these good

ideas kind of die on the vine because

now you're stuck working for the man

and you literally feel stuck

and you don't know how to get out how

did you feel oh i was miserable i mean

because that wasn't the plan you know

the plan when i graduated law school was

you know to run for office and and i

would just go take this law firm job and

after a couple years i would quit and go

do the thing

but then i got stuck because i there now

i was helping my parents with you know

some of their finances i was living this

very i had this apartment that i had to

pay rent for and i was then living a

life

that you know saddled me to that desk

and i was getting older

and then 10 years passed by

and i don't know about you but for me i

i i rise like a phoenix from the ashes

and what i mean by that like is i have

to be at my bottom

of like anxiety depression despair and

then i make a change

and i really did find myself you know at

age 33 like every night barely being

able to get out of bed you know and

having a large glass of wine and just

crying

because i was like is this my life i you

know they say in hinduism like

you have a dharma like what you're put

on this earth to do

and i feel so blessed that from the time

i was a little girl i knew what my

dharma was i remember just laying on the

grass looking at the clouds

and just imagining this life

of being a change maker

of making a difference in the world and

here i was 2008 the world is falling

apart and i'm sitting in the freaking

hedge fund as a lawyer like what

i'm so far away from that little girl

who's staring at the clouds and i didn't

know how to get out

from this life that i felt very stuck by

because i wasn't rich i didn't have all

this money in the bank account and i did

have also i think the expectations of my

immigrant parents because i was doing

what the good indian girl was supposed

to be doing i was a lawyer in a law firm

and nobody i knew

had the path that i wanted to take so i

didn't even know how to get there

and you know i didn't know who to ask i

didn't know who was going to give me the

playbook

and so i was lost

and

i

i remember i had a one of my best

friends deepa

happened to call me

at this moment and she just said

just quit

and there was nothing like profound but

there was something about i think

hearing those words at the right time

in my life that was like yeah i can just

quit like i can and i did and the second

call i made was to my father

and i remember him saying beta

yes quit

and then i was like whoa

like

because i had built him up

as the reason that i was not chasing my

dreams

and by getting that permission i

realized oh i was the one it was my fear

you know my fear of like making taking a

risk

that was actually standing in the way of

me actually doing what i was meant to do

um so then i didn't have any more

excuses

and i ran for congress

isn't it amazing that we

most of us especially i think kids of

first generation immigrants

end up trying to live out our parents

dreams and then the other thing is this

kind of miscalculation of risk i contin

i continue to hear about and that i kind

of faced in my own life that we believe

the risk is

not fulfilling

the external expectation whereas it's so

evidently clear from every person that

i've sat here with that the actual risk

if you just zoom out ends up being

not following

the dreams of that girl staring at the

stars that actually is the risk in fact

the courageous thing to do the most

risky thing to do is to stay in the law

firm because you're risking the most

important thing of all your happiness

yeah and if you can like refrain that

and understand that like i say this

sometimes to when i meet young people

and they're in jobs they go you're the

risk takers

i'm not i'm the coward

i couldn't take the risk you guys are

taking and i think if you just reframe

it which is clearly what your life has

proven to be it's proven that the

biggest risk was actually staying yeah

it can be a really liberating force and

off you go you run for congress which is

a

tremendous thing to do

yeah crazy thing to do i was 33 i was

the first

south asian american any american woman

to run for congress in the united states

i had no idea what i was doing like i

said like i didn't have i couldn't be

like hey dad you know you build me a

campaign strategy or

and i had to kind of figure it out on my

own and um

also like people i mean

i ran against this very powerful

uh very vindictive

um woman

who

you know was not was not someone who was

going to take lightly to this young

brown girl

running against her for her seat did she

criticize you smoothie oh my god still

but still yeah she hasn't really gotten

over it still but

in some ways though it was it's good

because i it wasn't an easy thing to do

meaning it wasn't it'd be much easier if

the seat was open or if the other person

was like this is great you know we have

competition in the race but

i really it was it was such a beautiful

experience because i was so damn naive

like i really thought that i could shake

every hand

meet every voter

um and i would win but it was the best

the best experience of my life because

it's how i learned how to be an

entrepreneur because you know when you

run a campaign it's like starting a

business and shutting it down in the

span of 10 months

you got to hire people

you know you got to raise money you got

to figure out what your message is what

your brand is it's exactly what taught

me that experience is what taught me to

build grocery code and martial land for

moms um and what gave me probably the

confidence to do it you had to walk into

rooms i mean i had to walk into rooms of

like you know 65 year old seniors who

couldn't even pronounce my name who had

asked me where religion was right

it was wild

and i never went on television before my

first tv interview was chris matthews

which was the largest news time show he

was so mean to me i didn't even know

where to look in the screen it was a

mess um

i didn't know how to dress

i had never given a like a speech in

front of people before i remember i

would like literally practice my speech

and memorize it and pace my little

apartment you know

and and so everything was just um

scary but in

amazing it was the best

best still probably the best 10 months

of my life

when you make that decision to run for

public office and that per person starts

criticizing you probably quite

personally probably quite based on

character that's the best way to i think

discredit a political opponent how does

that actually feel in in the moment

because especially reflecting on your

childhood yeah it was devastating

because i was um well you know first a

lot of you know incredible feminists

like geraldine ferraro were like

trying to get me as gloria stein and was

like why are you running like these are

women who i

admired

um because again i think when you

and i i thought

i would go to these you know campaign

events and people would say well young

people need to run

young women you should run for office

one day

and i naively thought well look i'm

running like aren't is there you know

isn't that am i doing what you we've

been talking about with the movement

needs but really what they meant is like

run but don't run against me

and don't run against one of us

and and also i think the second part of

my story was very inspirational being

the daughter of immigrants

you know

coming from working class background so

they really had to shift my narrative

and she did a really good because i came

from

wall street you know i wasn't running

wall street i was you know a lawyer a

junior lawyer at wall street but so that

narrative shift happened and because i

had never

known how to control my own narrative

i lost that battle

and i often found myself on the

defensive

and and people are mean

and i would make the mistake of reading

the comment section

and um

and

it was really really tough

really tough

and i never got the i never got to be

the person that i was you remember this

one time that we finally got the new

york times to do

you know a story on our race and i had

now

i was this brown girl i had raised more

money

than any democratic challenger i was

actually the only

democrat i was the first democrat

challenger many ways in the in the

history now it's very common you know

alexandria ocasio my friend right it's

back then it was like never done so i

was like this upstart you know that was

making waves in in many ways i think

helped open the path up for people like

alex to actually say yeah we got to

fight the establishment

but i remember the the last the last

week the race the new york times finally

acknowledged my race and they sent a

reporter and she followed me around the

whole day we're knocking on doors and

immigrant communities were walking into

like you know communities in queens

where you had young bangladeshi girls

having my poster up being like i want to

be like her one day

and how revolutionary it was especially

for the community to see someone who

looks like them

running for office

and i remember she then decides to write

a story about my shoes yeah [ __ ]

yeah

not a word about my campaign but about

my shoes

and it was you know

again such an example of of what we do

to young women young people of color

when they run

you know we make it uh a caricature

we don't take them seriously and then

people don't take them seriously i lose

like spectacularly um

and i was shocked that i lost

uh i had not even written my concession

speech we had booked this hotel room in

new york city that we could not afford

and my campaign organizers had posted

the entire room with all these notes i

can't wait to be in washington this is

the bill we're going to pass this is the

change we're going to make

i had literally because what happens

when you're

when you're running for office you go to

these you know new york city subway

stops

and you hand out your campaign and

everyone was like i voted for you i

voted for you i voted for you so i was

like i got this and the bag you know

like it's gonna be you know

an upset

and then i'm sitting there my father's

you know kind of sitting with me and

we're watching the election returns come

in

and like you know five minutes in it's

done my dad's like i'm going to bed i'm

like thanks dad

um

and i wanted to cry

so bad

i was devastated

and you know i had no contingency plan

and i literally picked a fight

with some very powerful people

and i remember there's this young woman

who

every morning was like with me and you

know she was my she was like my you know

basically my body person as they call it

she's just looking at me

rebecca and i was like i'm not gonna cry

because i know she's gonna remember this

moment for the rest of her life

and i need to show strength

and so

i stood up there in my victory party

everybody's crying the entire place is

crying i'm standing there and i'm just

like you know gotta do it again don't

you worry and then i came back to my

hotel room and then i cried

and cried for like a month

and how did you pick yourself up from

there

and rise from the ashes once again to

found girls who code and sort of i guess

karen

carrying on with your life

uh drinking a lot of margaritas

no but seriously i think um

i've read a lot about competitive

athletes and

for a lot of them what makes them great

is they had

something that happened in their career

early on

they didn't get picked in the first

draft

you know they missed that one shot

and it puts kind of a chip on their

shoulder like i'm going to show you

and that's what this brace did for me

it was like i didn't get picked in the

first draft

but i knew what i was

what my potential was

and i was going to show you and i wasn't

gonna i wasn't gonna let failure break

me

take some time to get to that place

right

the dust has got to settle the tears

have got to be cried and then it took me

a month yeah but i also have a hack on

failure that has worked for me which is

i let myself ruminate about it you know

then talk to my boyfriend now my husband

a million why'd that happen what mistake

did i make you know my father sent me a

nice long email about the 10 things i

did wrong really um

brutal listen

indian parents you know what i mean

um

and then i was done and i said and i was

ready to move on and started thinking

about what i was going to build next the

campaign maybe that i would run for next

um so the first

i think

for me the first

that was my first really big failure

and i think sometimes the first one is

easier because i i kind of could tell

myself well i did make some mistakes if

i did that differently

if i you know hired that person if i

didn't say that then maybe i would have

won so my first campaign loss was was

easier than my second one

also understand the system the second

time around right so like the first time

you're actually learning the system

you're playing with and you you said it

yourself you didn't realize that people

would be doing these character

assassinations yeah and i was saying

with my first business i didn't

understand the system in which you build

a business in hiring and all these

things so yeah you can reflect on it and

say oh naivety right right

right but then what happens next

so for me next i

i said well i'm not going back to that

private sector job that i hated i'm

gonna have to deal with being broke

and

what are all and i loved

i loved meeting people on the campaign

trail i loved talking to them i loved

hearing about

their problems

and

i i'm still that 13 year old girl who

wants to make a difference in the world

still the the dharma warrior

and i was like okay what of all the

things i saw on the campaign trail what

moved me

and you know when i ran for office it

was in 2010 so it was when tech was

starting to boom twitter was just coming

up facebook instagram

and i would go into computer science

classrooms and robotics labs and i would

just see lines and lines and lines of

boys

trying to be the next steve jobs or mark

zuckerberg and because i wasn't a coder

or computer scientist

i was like where are the girls where are

the people of color

and i kept thinking about those

classrooms

and so then i spent the next year

basically on my lunch breaks and in my

evenings just learning everything about

why there weren't girls and women in

coding

and started kind of writing a business

plan

that became grocery code and started

plotting my next

run

so i basically ended up running for

public advocate of new york city which

is kind of like the second position to

mayor

and then launching girls who code at the

same time

that's a lot to have on one's plate

it was

would you recommend that

well the way it played out i would

recommend it because

i

it all ended up working out good for

girls who code because i lost the public

advocates race was about i'm gonna make

sure that every kid in new york city

learns how to code

i lose that race

this time i realized wow like politics

is just it's not like i like to say it's

not a performance sport it's not a

meritocracy it's not like the person

with the best ideas

wins and now i've

run you know one i've taught 20 girls to

code

uh and so now i'm like all right if

you're not going to elect me i'm still

going to teach every girl to code i'm

going to teach every girl in america to

code and then the world

and then i really have a chip on my

shoulder because now i didn't get picked

for the first draft i didn't get picked

for the second draft either

and you use those skills right so you've

learned a bunch of skills along the way

and this is one of the blessings of

failure you get to learn all of these

wonderful skills about the nature of the

world and people and fundraising and i'm

guessing in in many ways that was

failure had been a blessing because

without those two

draft misses

you wouldn't have all these amazing

skills you have now right totally i

think the biggest skill that i learned

in being in campaigning is how do you

tell a story

how do you inspire people

how do you

connect to people

and you know by my second campaign i

don't have the written out speech in my

pocket i don't have the suit on i got my

hoops and my red lipstick

and i i can i am communicating and i'm

there and i'm present

and i have nothing to prove

and you know i don't i fight back when

people do the character assassination

i'm not easily convinced when people say

that they're going to support me that

they're going to really support me like

i can see people now

and so i lose that race but you're right

i learn so much and i become

more comfortable in my skin in who i am

and girls who code really phenomenal

thing um i read that you've reached

over almost half a million girls with

right

is that half a million girls that have

learned to code

that is crazy that we've actually gone

through our coding programs and then

we've reached about a half a billion

through our work our books our videos

our campaigns

we've reached a lot of kids

tell me about this organization how does

it look how does it function is it how

is it distributed all over the world i i

read that there's 1 500 girls who code

clubs around the world

yeah well there's 10 there was 10 000 so

10 yeah a lot and in the uk there's 10

000. 10 000 girls record well so it

started like

basically the model was

when i started girls with code

point four percent of girls were

interested in coding

and girls were interested in making the

world a better place but when they

thought about a computer scientist they

thought about some guys sitting in the

basement somewhere drinking a red bull

and they were like yeah no thank you

and we just culturally had done such a

good job of pushing girls and people of

color out of technology you know we had

barbie dolls that said i hate math let's

go shopping instead every image that you

saw on television you know from weird

science to revenge of the nerds was just

again these like really nerdy

white dudes

and so it didn't feel very inclusive and

so girls who code you know are what i

wanted to do is one meet girls where

they were at

and two change the culture and so what i

mean by me girls where they're at i

started thinking well if girls went to

technology companies

like a facebook

or a spotify and they walked in and they

saw what was happening they actually

learned to code embedded in a classroom

inside a tech company

and that the project while they were

there was to build something about a

change that they wanted to make again

connecting it to what girls wanted to do

then i can then inspire a generation of

young women to want to be

coders and technologists

and so we started kind of one tech

company at a time and we would build

these summer camps and you know years

you know basically you know in a handful

of years we're running kind of the

largest

summer camp you know in america

and then we started expanding that

and then you know part of

you know as an organizer i wasn't really

a you know i wasn't building a nonprofit

i was building a movement

and what i would say to my students i

would say okay

and the experience for them was

transformative i mean it was just you

saw these girls just

explode in terms of like what they

wanted to do their the sisterhood that

they built and every classroom was

basically you know

white asian black trans non-binary just

and so many girls had never met you know

girls who were white and never met

someone who was black before never been

friends with somebody who was trans so

like you were basically creating

quite frankly what the world should look

like in terms of love and empathy and

sisterhood and so

i would say you know during the

graduation i want to ask from you

i want you to go back to your community

and i want to go back to your school and

i want you to start a club and i want

you to find one girl that's going to

join

and so they like met me on my challenge

and so then one girl and then 100 girls

and then we ended up with 10 000 girls

who code clubs across the country in

every single county town in paris and

then we exploded in india and in the uk

and

same model right where you had

basically girls going back to their

communities volunteers librarians

teachers people saying i want to start i

want to start this i want to build to

help you build this move but i want to

start this club

and so we just had this massive

explosion and then culturally

we started slowly slowly slowly changing

the narrative and making coding cool you

know last year we did a partnership with

dogecat you know where we basically

coated her nails literally in one day

steven a hundred thousand girls signed

on to the website to basically learn how

to code nails

and now ten years later you know you

turn on netflix and you watch any teen

drama which i love to watch

you know the the protagonist is always a

cool girl coder and so we've made coding

cool we've built the pipeline of talent

you talked about the hardships you

encountered on the campaign trail cat

character assassination yes the anxiety

of it dealing with failure

business is riddled with the same

inevitable hardships so tell me in in

building girls who code

tell me about the other side

which is the

the difficult parts

well i mean one i didn't know what i was

doing you know and and like i'd never

built a large-scale organization like

that and so

you know i i had one of the good things

was that i had a board that believed in

me always build your first board as

family and friends because everybody

then is um

wanting you to succeed

and so

they really protected me like i am

i'm intense

and and and if you're gonna come work

for me you know it's gonna be intense

and so intense

uh i you know i don't i don't i'm better

now

but

i'm gonna ask your employees yeah i'm

better now but

i got big vision and i want to get it

done

and i work and all the time

and i don't stop

and it's it's i'm always pushing

and i believe in many ways i'm an

evangelist

and i believe in so it is it is my

gospel grosser quote was my life my

gospel my religion

and so i think if you're going to come

work for me it's your religion too

i heard you're the passion filter

girls who code

i do have a passion filter yeah yeah but

you but then but then when you become a

thousand

people you know you you or you know 100

you know like you it's hard you're not

going to get everybody who's going to

have that same passion and that same

intensity do you struggle with that when

people don't

seem to

well when they don't behave in the way

that you would have behaved in that

situation or when they don't seem to

have the same passion and

you know

that you you have yeah i don't believe

in jobs

but for some people it's a job

um but i don't believe in i don't

believe in jobs um so when when so that

that i've you know what do they say you

have the triangle right you have you

have a people every organization has top

a people and then b and then c's and

then these but you need to have a couple

of cs maybe not d's right

and so and also like i was just telling

you about my father

that sent me the 10 page email or you

know about all the things i did wrong i

wasn't good at great job

thank you for doing that

because

i was an event this was church this was

religion

you know and so i got i got better at

these things

you know one of the things i was always

good at though was hiring people who

were smarter than me i've never had an

ego

about like i want to be the one

and so

i had really amazing people from the

beginning who as they say knew how to

speak reshma

did you get the

praise criticism balance wrong

i definitely got to praise criticism

i i definitely don't know

i still i i have to i get i'm better now

because i just send flowers

so it's like

um

you know what because i don't need it

and maybe i tell myself i don't need it

people don't say to me on a daily basis

good job

great work but you get it right because

you get it everywhere you go every time

they i mean you're on cnbc earlier on

right the way they introduce you is

you know it's this is what i'm just

thinking i'm answering this for myself

because i i was interrogating that from

my perspective no one ever says well

done to us in terms of our team right

really like in the same way there's no

but we get i get it if i open my dms on

instagram i get oh my god you you know

you do i do too but you know i'm gonna

tell you this

i stepped off a ceo a year ago because i

also never believe that anyone should do

anything for too long

and i had built the organization i had

the money in the bank

i had a vision i had an amazing

woman that i wanted to take

take the take the reins for me

and

the day we make the announcement

my my my chief of staff gloria is like

okay brush i'm going to block off

two to four

because you're going to get inundated

with so many messages

congratulating you thanking you

for your service

and i was like okay yes i'm ready for it

you know tree and i make the

announcement

nothing

and she emails me tarika emails me you

know at five being like oh my god you

must be over i'm so overwhelmed with all

the messages that i've gotten

congratulating me for being the new ceo

of grocery code you must also i didn't

want to make her feel back she's such a

wonderful person i was like yeah

nothing

and i realized at that moment because i

wasn't the head [ __ ] in charge anymore

right i wasn't the ceo anymore

and so i it was a wonderful the lesson a

little bit too about how much of that is

coming from

who you are

and how much of that is really this

i guess you don't know until you die

i had a few words to say about one of my

sponsors on this podcast one of the

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so this big organization girls who code

all around the world

doing incredibly well what would you

have done differently

i would so i think what i got really

wrong was the personal

you know at the same time i was trying

to build girls who code i was trying to

have a baby

and i had more miscarriages than i can

count

and

i got into this habit

at girls who code you know very again so

you know i launched girls who code i'm

launching my campaign i have my first

miscarriage and i think when you have

your first miscarriage you you think oh

is this a fluke

and then i had a series of them

but i would literally you know then i'm

heads down building girls who code and

again i think when you are a social

entrepreneur and you're building

something the work is never done and

it's always at the sacrifice of others

and you always are giving giving giving

giving

and i would get into i got into this

habit where

you know i'd have to go to the doctor's

office my husband and i for the

11 12 week check-in

and i'd have something planned in the

evening introducing president obama

speaking to a thousand girls doing a

fundraising dinner

and

the doctor at three o'clock would say

i'm sorry mr johnny you know

we don't hear a heartbeat

and

instead of saying

hey guys i can't show up

i'd say okay

i cry my husband be like rushmo go home

and i'd be like i gotta show up at this

thing

and i'd show up

and i would

did that

for seven years six years seven years

where it just and i would remember we

would stand there in front of the crowd

and be like something's wrong with me

the fact that i can do this

and i would be often times standing in

front of a

thousand little girls the little girl

that i desperately wanted

and

and so

it wasn't until

you know i think when it became too much

of the way that i was leading and living

and you know by the time after i had my

first and the second my second child the

same pattern started becoming i remember

this one time i got i was in san

francisco and i had to go fly to utah

and

same thing you know doctor calls and

says you know uh you know your levels

don't look good you're gonna miscarry

soon

um

and i got on that plane to utah and i

had to sit down with the governor of

utah and again another thousand girls

and then i just broke down and i

remember i assembled my team and i said

i i

i can't do this anymore

like i i i i

i'm taking

a couple months off for a month off i

need you to run this organization

this is what is happening in my life and

has been happening

you know every picture every ted talk

every every and when i look at me

standing with president obama or the ted

talk i think about the tragedy or the

baby that was quite frankly dying inside

of me and so for me i got that really

wrong

really wrong

and um

i don't want people and and part of what

i'm grateful for

is

people didn't know because you know i'm

also in the responsibility of a lot of

young women who work for me

and i don't want them to think that

that's the price that you have to pay

what advice would you give people to

avoid them hitting because you've hit a

rock bottom moment multiple times in

your life through like unsustainable

behavior right yeah that's how i see it

so what advice would you give to people

who

are probably veering towards another

rock bottom in their lives because

they're not listening to themselves i

guess

well i mean i think the thing is is that

i think

many of us live in this i don't like

up and then crash

right and that's what we think is the

way that you're supposed to live and i

think you need to live always

healthy meaning like you have to put

your personal mental health and your

personal health

first

and so don't wait for rock bottom to hit

you know see the signs early on and take

those breaks take that time off

you know take a nap whatever whatever it

is that you need to do don't live

in that same way anymore

but it's hard because again the entire

girl boss culture

the entire kind of lean in culture

the entire you know ceo culture is about

living that way it's almost like a badge

of honor hey i had you know no heartbeat

and i went gave speech

like that's almost like what we think

we're supposed to do

uh

to to lead that's strength

and i think we have to completely revise

what that means and what it means to be

a leader and it means you know empathy i

i too you know was leading girls who

during the pandemic

and had to lay off a bunch of people and

until that point i had never cried in

front of my team and i would just cry

and cry

and then i would get mad at myself for

about crying but then i think no no

that's exactly what you're supposed to

do

you're supposed to cry you're supposed

to show vulnerability you're supposed to

say hey guys i just got some incredibly

horrible news i i'm not coming to work

but that's often seen as a sign of

weakness and we have to make that a sign

of strength

i'm guessing your book brave not perfect

was written in this period of your life

oh yes right yeah because there's many

things you regret about that book yeah

because i think that book was also about

corporate feminism about fixing the

woman

and not fixing the structure and look i

acknowledge that in the book

that you know but what i what i used to

say is you know while we're fixing the

institutions let's figure out how we can

fix ourselves you know i.e you know

unlearning perfectionism and orientating

yourself towards bravery but i really

believe that stephen you know i really

bought into that

um that i that we could get to equality

you know that it was really about the

power pose you know and the color coding

of your calendar and the delegating more

and then not crying in the bathroom and

all the things that you were supposed to

do

to be a leader and i think that's what

women have been told and so we were

never looking at well what's wrong

with the structure why in for example

going back to my experience i was

telling you about fertility you know why

do we do performance reviews and not

wellness reviews

why are you not supposed to be sad at

work why are you not supposed to cry

you know where did we where did these

values

show up and how do we get them out

written on the back of your new book

which takes

a very different approach on many

narratives

rachelle simmons says

finally we have a book that aims to fix

the system not the women

and i think when i was reading about why

you wrote this book pay up the future of

women and work

i read that you wrote it from a place of

on one hand anger but also hope for

change yeah

why anger

well listen i mean i

i as a mom you know found myself

20 20 uh you know

started the year with girls who code

having a super bowl ad i was going to

teach more girls than i ever had before

i was having my second baby finally

you know via surrogate and so i was

really looking forward to once i was

born just spending that time with him

and just hugging him and kissing him and

staring at him because i had missed

carrying him in the womb

and then you know a few weeks later the

pandemic hit

and i found myself having to take care

of my newborn homeschool my six-year-old

and save my non-profit girls who crowd

from being shut down

because when pandemics hit the first

resources to go are to women and girls

you know my whole leadership team were

both mostly working women and what we

were saying to each other on the zoom

chat was just just hold on

hold on because when september comes

and the school's open

everything will be fine

and i remember that when that september

came and i got that letter from our

department of education my son goes to

public school in new york city

they announced this thing called you

know hybrid learning where you got to

log on your kid at nine o'clock 10

o'clock and eleven o'clock

all the while maintaining your full-time

job

i thought two things came to my mind

the first one which was incredibly naive

like aren't they gonna ask me

because you know in the united states we

have these time and use surveys and so

we knew

in the early months of the pandemic

who was doing the homeschooling

it was women

and so we knew that if we made a policy

like closing down the schools

that it was in invariably going to force

millions of women to leave the workforce

because they couldn't supplement you

know their their paid labor they were

going to have to supplement their paid

labor for unpaid labor

and so the fact that someone that i

don't even know

could make a decision that could affect

my life on a dime

terrified me

and then the second thing was you

started seeing again over the course of

the pandemic 11 million women leave the

workforce

and i knew from building girls who code

because you know girls of code i was

trying to solve the gender gap in

technology but what people forget is

that we didn't always have a gender

reaction technology that in the 1980s we

were pretty much almost at parity and

then we pushed women out and so

similarly here you can't have women be

51 of the labor force and then become

you know in the 40s again percent of the

labor force and have all those women

leave in nine months and think that it's

an on and off switch

so i remember like where's the plan

like

is the president going to get on and

announce the plan that we're going to

have to make sure that

we don't devastate

decades of feminism and so there was no

plan

and that's what really inspired me to

start this moment i wrote an op-ed i

often stephen when i get angry write

and then just post things post articles

and um

i made the mistake or actually it was

the best thing that ever happened is i

read the comment section

and my op-ed was that we need a martial

plan for moms

and when i read the comment section

people on the left were like what about

the dads

and i was like even though again

men had not been pushed out of the labor

force because this was from a data

perspective

solely affecting women

and then people on the right well mother

has a choice

so you don't get to have affordable

child care or paid leave or any

structural support because you choose

you chose to be a mom

and it was the first time i was like wow

motherhood

is controversial

and i kind of had that same sense that i

had when i started girls who code like

this is a problem

that needs solving again especially for

women like

our mothers

you know my mom when she when i was a

kid

um

i was a latchkey kid from the time i was

seven

and my parents couldn't afford the fifty

dollars a week for child care

and so from the time my sister and i

were seven and ten she would pick me up

from middle school

and we would go home now remember i told

you that we lived in this neighborhood

that didn't really want any brown

families there so we wouldn't walk home

we would run home

and then we would open up the door and

close it and we would hide in the closet

because we were terrified

and i think about how my mother felt

every day at 3 45

knowing that her babies were running

home

because they couldn't afford

child care and the unconscionable

choices

that mothers mothers of color have to

make every single

day

because we don't make it possible for

them

to be mothers and have a job

and so that is when i was just like

all of this

girl boss

equality that expressed me into the

corner office it's just all about you

was like

that's a lie

and i've been selling this lie for the

past 10 years

and if we're really going to get to

equality we have to fix the systems

there's a really staggering stat in um

chapter 4 of your book that

says that women are now spending more

time on child care than they did in i

think it was 1980

which is pretty staggering because i i

thought we'd

one would think based on all the noise

that i've heard about equality and all

of these things that

women would be spending less time on

child care than 1980. yeah it's because

we're in this moment of intensive

parenting think about our my parents

didn't even know where i applied to

college they didn't know what i was

doing at homework it was just like go

raise yourself right

now you know we're taking our kids to

spanish hindi and you know

and you know chinese you're learning

three languages going to piano class you

know basketball club

we're constantly on top of our kids

because that is the societal expectation

that we have to intensively parent our

children at the expense of our own

mental health and we also have to be

completely on as workers again we're in

this hustle culture where you're

constantly driving driving driving you

know

at work and so if you're a working woman

you have these two huge expectations

that that you basically have to meet and

it's exhausting and it's why we have a

mental health crisis you know 51 of

mothers say that they're anxious and

depressed

you know the cdc released the studies

saying that the subgroup that is

suffering the most anxiety and

depression are you know working women

you're seeing this in the uk it's an

alcoholism adderall addiction it is on

the rise rising suicide rates of mothers

mothers don't break

but they're broken right now

and young people feel like they can

easily talk about their mental health

and how they're feeling and but it is

it's not again you don't

you don't hear mothers talk about that

we're not supposed to we're supposed to

be martyrs essentially or have it all

together

and so there's no outlet for us

you know i say in my book when when

working women make a list it's like

their kids you know their partner their

pet and then themselves

we are last on the list

we do no self-care and in our and

society

doesn't you know doesn't expect that we

we should be doing that it's seen as

being a bad mom or being selfish when we

spend time on ourselves

how is your mental health

i i would i would say that i am a

i would say that i am a six

right now i mean i'm exhausted i'm not

gonna lie i think i'm i think that i

think that

i think i have you know two little kids

now two and seven

um you know the pandemic has been

crushing

you know my seven-year-old

eats his clothes because he's anxious

you know my two-year-old you know can't

talk yet you know he's got asthma you

know he gets sick all the time because

now the mask has come out and now his

son doesn't you know his brother doesn't

have one so he's getting sick so so you

know our kids have really been

traumatized

because of the pandemic and now we're

traumatized

and so

i do think that like

and i think a lot of the

the the women in my life

i think would just need a beat

like i wish they would announce like a

national vacation for like a month

maybe that's the answer to the question

i was compelled to ask next but how

would you get yourself if you were to

give yourself advice if i just told you

what you told me i was the six what

advice would you give me to get to a ten

i would say uh

take a break

you know or do things for yourself and

listen i think i'm much better at that

so i got

one of the best things i got for myself

was a whoop

yeah

so i'm like obsessed about my sleep

and to the extent that i will go to bed

at 8 a.m or leave a dinner early

um because i know that if i'm getting

eight hours of sleep

i am my best version

i try to play tennis three times a week

i love tennis i'm horrible at it but i

love it

you know i

try to have fun i went to a justin

bieber concert last weekend you know i

do date night i got girls trips planned

uh i i i make more time for myself i

don't i don't get on but you know

basically for 10 years as i was building

girls who code i would probably do two

to three flights a week

and then trying to take the red eyes to

be home for my babies and i don't do

that anymore you know i say no

i realize that like

it's not that this opportunity is going

to go away

i didn't realize that before you know

what i mean i was like i gotta do this i

gotta show up here i gotta

but no it's like

maybe i won't get this chance again but

oh well

and it's really liberating

and so i think the only reason why i'm a

sixth question is i'm in the middle of a

book tour and so i've definitely been

orientating more towards old reshma of

like you know three four talks a day

getting on planes doing the thing not

sleeping as much eating too many

chocolate chip cookies like but i think

my my habits

and have been much more healthier than

they've ever been i'm also really

practicing um

not wanting things

i

i think growing up as an immigrant i

needed credentials

i needed val i needed those degrees i

needed that validation

i needed those accolades

and i was always chasing the next

big thing

and it's funny as i sit here there's

nothing i want

there's no title i want

there's no award i want there's no

recognition i want

and when i start

catching myself

wanting things

uh i pull back

you know i told you i was just i applied

to yale law school three times before i

got in

and i got a call last november from the

president of yale saying

um

we would be honored if you'd be our

commencement speaker

now steven like the commencement

speakers are normally like hillary brock

you know what i mean

and then of course my friends were like

the real one my husband's like the real

one i was like yes the real one

but it was so

amazing

one getting that because that i had been

chasing them for so long and finally

they

they asked me

but two it was um

exactly i wasn't chasing it

a few questions there

in terms of getting putting up those

boundaries and getting good at saying no

is there now like a i think as we age we

develop a prism in which our decisions

filter through

which allows us to decide whether this

is serving us or not like when you're

younger you just say yes to everything

so

some guy with

i don't know radio station no one's

listening to wants to interview you go

oh my god someone wants to interview yes

i will fly twice tell me where yeah

exactly yeah right but then as you

realize the importance of time and that

every decision you're saying yes you

comes at the expense of something else

is that what is your prism now where you

find yourself in your career

when you're deciding what to say yes or

no to so two things i think one impact

yeah and two i love

listen i love people who are starting up

and who i know that if i go on their

podcast

or if i

if i have them interview me

i will be the most famous guest that

they have and it will help them i want i

like to be that person and sometimes my

team will big rush you don't have time

to do something no no these are the ones

that are actually

the most important to me

um

and because someone did that for me and

that's how i'm sitting here with you

today

and then i think the other i again i

think going back i've been um

i've been studying the bhagavad-gita

uh which has again been

a gift i gave myself this year because

it's been something i've been wanting to

do for a long time

the gita is basically our kind of

religious book in hinduism but it's

really a you know it's really a it's

really a book about

spirituality and about how do you

stay really focused

um on what you're meant to do in this

earth and not get distracted by all the

shiny things

and and that's really important to me as

i kind of enter this final the stage of

my life

of i again staying very focused

on what i'm on this earth to do

and not getting distracted by all the

shiny things and one thing that kita

says is like it doesn't make sense that

human wants that humans want things

because all you're doing is inviting

yourself for disappointment

right if you didn't want anything

you don't get it

doesn't matter because you never wanted

it

and and so um you know that has been

a really big gift for me

in really staying focused because if i'm

put on this earth to be a warrior

and my job right now is to fight for

mothers to get them respected and

dignified and to change workplaces you

know so that they work for women and

that this is the once opportunity to

make that structural change then

everything i'm saying yes to is about

furthering

that

my service for the people

in your book you talk about that change

and you kind of list four sort of key

principles for bringing about that

change empower educate revise and advert

advocate

tell me about empower what did you mean

when you wrote that in in your book yeah

so look i mean empower's really about

like women are always told like you

should just meditate more or do yoga and

if you do that you'll feel really good

and so i didn't want to take those kind

of

dated you know again fix the woman stuff

but really what are some like

non-negotiables and so one of the things

i talk about in the book is this idea of

creating tangible boundaries

and so like in my house you know my

husband does the nights and i do the

mornings

and if i'm sitting around watching

netflix that's sick so big hey can you

change a diaper can you warm up with a

bottle

so at six o'clock i just bounce

i go for dinner by myself

you know i go out with my friends i walk

but i'm just my point is i'm gone

and so i've created that

boundary

um so that i don't get roped into doing

more of that unpaid labor

than i need to and so i think that the

the need to create boundaries for all of

us that's really critical

you know the second piece is really

about how are we shifting

employers

i am literally just like i was with

girls i am on a mission to get companies

to start subsidizing child care

you know in the united states and then

in the world you know in the u.s you

know child care is like the largest

expense for families most families pay

more for child care than they pay for

their mortgage

and right now less than 10 percent of

companies subsidize child care we often