Reshma Saujani
speaker
259 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard Apr 2025
Reshma Saujani’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
So I had this amazing CEO who's now our CEO, Dr. Tarika Barrett, and I'd always wanted her to run the organization. And so it's like middle of COVID. I know it's time. And one, I know if I tell anybody that I want to step down, including my husband, he's going to talk me out of it. So I don't tell anybody. I get on a train. I like basically say, Tariq, I need to meet with you.
And I'm like, I'm ready. And I think you're ready. And she said, all right, let's go. So one, I think it was so important for me to pick a successor, especially a woman of color, and give her the opportunity of like the fruits of my labor, right? Because building Girls Who Code almost killed me, Megan. You know, I was always on a plane. I was always just hustling.
But I had built something that I knew was sustainable because I had rebuilt it during the pandemic. I had money in the bank, right? So like oftentimes if you're a new person, CEO taking over an organization, you're terrified, like fundraising is hard. So I knew I could give her something that like had legs.
But it was such an interesting lesson because the day we were transitioning, my assistant said to me, okay, I'm going to get you a conference room and you're going to get so many emails, so many people are going to call you that we just, we got to block out three hours. So Tariq and I send the email, she's in one room, I'm in one room, press send, crickets. Oh, no. Crickets.
Tarika calls me a couple hours later. She's like, oh, my God. It's been so amazing, the amount of emails and the phone calls. She's like, how's it been for you? And I didn't want to tell her, right, that no one had called me. But it was such an important lesson on like, this is why people don't give up power, because when you don't have power— You're not important anymore, right?
So it's so easy to hold on to it because your identity is so caught up in it. But that to me was part of the work, right? From an ego perspective, being able to let it go, give somebody else that light, knowing that like it was going to actually diminish my power, right? My resources, my access. But that was the point. I mean, that is...
That's, that's really, yeah, I was going to say, I feel like you're like reading my diaries. Like that's really, it's really insightful because I don't think anyone's seen it that way, like said it that way for me. But, but that's right because, you know, here I was for so many years, like trying to get pregnant, having miscarriages because I had autoimmune issues. And I got into this really like
kind of scary habit where I would be at a doctor's office and they'd be like, you have no heartbeat. And I should have just gone home and gone to sleep and curled up with my husband. But I would just take a breath and I would just show up in a living room, in a stage and just perform. And oftentimes I was like performing in front of these children that I desperately wanted.
And I just got really good at that. But it was eating me up inside. And it wasn't until my second where I was again on this path of serial miscarriages. And I remember just one day it was like I was in California. I had to get on a plane and go to Utah to speak to like – I don't know, like a thousand girls and like the governor.
And like that morning, I get a call from the doctor and they're like, okay, your HCG levels are not going up. You're going to miscarry. And I just got on a plane and I was sitting there in front of these girls and my heart was just breaking. And I remember saying, this is it. I'm not doing it again. And I went to my team and I said, guys, and I'd never told them I was going through this.
I mean, they kind of knew because they would see these doctor's appointments on my schedule, but I never... Like just said, I need, and I said, I can't do this anymore. I need you to take over. I need you to run this organization. I just need, I need a month. I need a couple months just to just breathe. Mm-hmm. That takes so much courage to say it. It did. It did.
But it's right because I had to detach because I felt like I was letting the girls down. I mean, how ironic is that, right? In my quest to become a mother, you have this beautiful line that I quote all the time. The most important title I have is mom. And I so desperately wanted that title. Oh. Yeah. You know? I do. And I just, it was the irony of it all, you know, was a lot.
Yeah. Yeah. And it's funny. I don't know how to learn this lesson. I'm going to be honest. Like a couple weeks ago, you know, I had a breast exam and they thought they saw something and then I had to get a biopsy. And I had never gotten a biopsy before, so I didn't know what to expect. But they're like, you know what? It's just a pinch. You'll be fine. And I had a panel that night.
And I know now from DNCs and C-sections and, like, IUDs that it's not a pitch. So, like, I keep my schedule, right? I keep it all. I tell my husband, like, let me come with you. I'm like, no, no, no, no. I'm good. I got it. I'm fine. No. And it hurt, like— Hell, right? And I go and I do the panel and I'm sitting there and I'm like, what is wrong with you? Like, you know better than this.
What is wrong with you? And I think it's so hard to unlearn that. what this is really about. Because I think, one, it's personal, but two, like, the sense of, like, I'm strong, I'm resilient, I can take it, I got it, right? Because all these things have served me. It's why I've been able to do the things that I do. And then I think we live... in the society that encourages women to do that.
And the sense that like we don't break and we're not allowed to break.
Well, it's interesting. I'm seeing, you know, a lot of the women, I just went to Cecile Richards' funeral. So you're seeing a lot of these women who've given themselves to the movement. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that the body holds the score. Exactly. Exactly.
And especially for women of color, right, who are always like, oh, but you should go fight and you should go fight and you should go save us, that we can't continue to operate that way. And so I think we have to just – because one of the things I'm seeing – I don't have as many young girls or young women reaching out to me on LinkedIn being like, Mr. Johnny, I also want to start a nonprofit.
How do I do that? I think that they're looking at us and seeing how exhausted we are, how tired we are, how much you have to sacrifice and saying, yeah, no, thank you. Oh, wow. And if that happens, we're going to lose a generation of social entrepreneurs that we desperately need to continue these fights. Yeah. And so we got to show them a different way. We got to do it a different way.
And it's not one or the other. You know, one of the things I'm seeing in the motherhood movement is people think you have to pick being a girl boss or a tribe wife. that it's black or white, right? That either you're in the workforce and you can't focus on your kids and you don't get to see them or you're just at home.
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