Reshma Saujani isn't afraid of a little rejection. The daughter of Indian transplants, she graduated from Yale Law School—only after applying there a total of three times. What finally worked: She persuaded the dean in person to let her in.
A one-time candidate for US Congress—she lost—Reshma insists that failure is something women should cozy up to. She even suggests throwing "failure parties."
"We don't talk about our struggles enough," Reshma says. "We learn so much more, I think, from our struggles when they hurt really bad. I think having those failures, throwing parties and having people stand up and share what went wrong in their life and how they got over it, is critical to women's leadership."
So take a look at what she's accomplishing now. Determined to do something about the low percentage of women in STEM—science, technology, engineering, and math—Reshma is targeting girls in high school with Girls Who Code, the nonprofit she launched in 2012, which aims to get girls hooked on computer coding while they're still young, through classes that take place after school and during summer sessions.
Reshma was inspired to start Girls Who Code after observing a troubling pattern while touring her congressional district during her campaign for the House in 2010. The Fourteenth District of New York encompasses the East Side of Manhattan, home to some of the wealthiest people in the country, as well as parts of Queens and the Bronx, where some of New York's poorest reside. She saw how inequality translated into a vast disparity in access to computers. And she was equally struck by the wide gender gap in technology.
Girls Who Code has reached more than 3,000 girls since its launch in the spring of 2012 and has set an ambitious goal of reaching one million students nationwide by 2020.
Reshma told us that her students are particularly keen to use their newfound skills to change the world: "In 2012 I put twenty young girls together in a conference room at a technology office and said, 'All right, let's see what happens when we teach them how to write a computer program.' The results were just tremendous. Not only did they learn how to code, but they were building things that were about making their communities a better place."
The Girls Who Code are mentored by women from leading technology firms, and companies like Google, eBay, and Twitter contribute funding. Girls Who Code recently announced a new partnership with Accenture, the global consultancy and technology service provider, whose employees volunteer to train the next generation of IT talent.
See what can happen when you embrace failure?
TAKEAWAY: Throw a failure party. Failure paves the road to success.
Excerpted
from Fast Forward: How Women Can Achieve Power and Purpose, by
co-authors Melanne Verveer and Kim Azzarelli, co-founders Seneca Women.
