Reshma Saujani

Some Lesser Known Facts About Reshma Saujani

• Does Reshma Saujani smoke?: Not Known

• Does Reshma Saujani drink alcohol?: Yes

• Her parents lived in Uganda (they both were engineers), prior to being expelled along with other persons of Indian descent in the early 1970s by Idi Amin (President of Uganda in 1971-1979). After that, they settled in Chicago.

• After settling in Chicago, her mom took a job as a cosmetics saleswoman and her dad took a job as a machinist in a factory.

• She is of Gujarati Indian descent.

• She lives in New York City with her husband ‘ Nihal’, their son ‘Shaan’, and their bulldog ‘Stanley’. 

• She got married to Nihal when she was 36. Nihal asked her to marry him twice before, but she agreed to the third proposal.

• Six years ago, she discovered that she had auto-immune issues that were leading to recurrent miscarriages, but they were blessed with a baby boy in 2015. 

• Prior to her becoming the Founder and CEO of Girls Who Code, she was focused on making her resume strong by taking her education from elite institutions.

• She wanted to be a lawyer since she was a child, she told in an interview that, “I decided that when I was 12 after I saw Kelly McGillis on The Accused in which McGillis prosecutes three men for criminal solicitation for cheering on a gang rape.”

• She spent years obsessing over her desire to go to Yale Law School; applying and getting rejected three times in a row.

• She worked at several law and finance firms including Davis Polk & Wardwell, Carret Asset Management, Blue Wave Partners Management, and Fortress Investment Group.

• She was the first Indian-American woman to run for Congress, and she lost miserably. She ran again and lost again.

• She served on the National Finance Board for Hillary Clinton during Clinton’s campaign for President in 2008. She was named Vice-Chair of the New York delegation at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver.

• She considers Hillary as her mentor and an inspiration. 

• She has also served as Deputy Public Advocate for New York City in 2013.

• While campaigning for New York City Public Advocate, she saw public-school computer rooms packed with boys, not girls. Despite having no tech experience, she ditched law and started a non-profit organization that works to educate, empower, and equips teenaged girls with the skills and resources to pursue opportunities in technology and engineering by teaching them to code. 

• She preaches the importance of teaching girls; bravery rather than perfection.

• A New York Times profile of Saujani features a lead image in which she’s breastfeeding Shaan (her son). 

• Since, she herself believes in the family-first theory, she encourages her staff to come into the office only after they’ve spent time with their children or hit the gym, or whatever it is that brings each individual employee his or her own sense of balance. She encourages staffers to leave the office at 5 PM every day. Girls Who Code offers a work-from-home option on Fridays.

• Her organization teaches computer science to girls from the sixth to twelfth grade in 25 states nationwide. Girls meet in groups of 10-30 for two hours every week to work on real-world projects like application and game development. Each girl is provided with her own desktop or laptop, as well as high-speed internet access. Classes are led by volunteer instructors at host sites provided by volunteer organizations. 

• Reshma’s TED talk, “Teach girls, bravery not perfection,” has more than three million views and has sparked a national conversation about how we’re raising our girls.

• She has authored few books, “Women Who Don’t Wait in Line”, ”Lead the Way” (both published in 2013) and “Girls Who Code: Learn to Code and Change the World,” (published in 2017). 

• In April 2018, ‘Girls Who Code’ reached over 90 thousand girls in all 50 states and several US territories.