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i gotta figure out how to teach every single girl to code that's how the world's gonna be a better place
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founder of ceo of girls who code best-selling author reshma i was often bullied at school our house
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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
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remember thinking i will never be silent so i ran for congress the new
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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
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write a story about my shoes i'm not buying into that [ __ ]
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i wasn't gonna let failure break me when i started girls with code point four percent of girls were interested in
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coding and then we ended up with ten 000 girls who code clubs and then we exploded in india and in the uk and
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girls were interested in making the world a better place in building girls who code tell me about
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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
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miscarriages than i can count i think when you are a social entrepreneur and you're building something the work is never done and
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it's always at the sacrifice of others for me i got that really wrong
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really wrong so what advice would you give to people who are probably veering towards another rock bottom in their
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lives i think so without further ado i'm stephen bartlett and this is the
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diary of a ceo usa edition i hope nobody's listening but if you are
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then please keep this to yourself [Music]
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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
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in my bookmarks and twitter and so i went and looked for this quote when i knew you were coming here today and it
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and it somewhat resonated with me in terms of your story the quote is my parents were tasked with the job of
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survival and i was self-actualization the immigrant generational gap is real what a luxury it is to search for
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purpose meaning and fulfillment and i know you came at least your parents came here from uganda
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take me back take me back to your childhood and the context in which you were
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molded yeah well my parents escaped the dictator idiamine in 1973
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they changed their names from mukund and madhu to mina and mike
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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
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to change his name i think about them often because i can't imagine in my 20s
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coming to a new country leaving your entire family or having to leave your entire family not having a
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single person that you know not knowing the language and having to build a life
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for yourself and they did it um you know they did it with a smile
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they never really complained about it and then everything became about giving us the life
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that they had sacrificed so much to have when you have parents that come from
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that background um as you've written about what they want for you as a child tends
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to be centered on you being able to survive in the world and you wrote that when parents have
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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
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immigrants they care about you also getting into a career where your survival is guaranteed yeah what did
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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
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and they wanted me to have a career where i could you know
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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
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know i want to do better than i'm doing um but so much about steve was about drawing in the lines
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you know not calling attention to yourself you know i i was a very different child
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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
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grew up in this very white working class family in the midwest and i was often bullied at school
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and my mother was you know harassed for wearing a sari at the kmart you know our house would get teepeed or spray painted
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go back to your home country i remember this one day some kids literally spray painted on the
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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
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a jar of clorox and he was just quietly cleaning
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the side of the house i think he was like humming a bollywood tune and i remember
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watching him and thinking i will never be like him i will never
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be silent i will never not fight and for him you know i think that that
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was the task that you had to pay to be in this country and i and and i think there's so many
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microaggressions or just obvious racism that he faced in the workplace you know opportunities he didn't get the name
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calling all of it he never talked about it never made him angry and i think part of that was about
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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
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eighth grade you know it's a big celebration there's been this girl that had been harassing me the entire time at
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school you know calling me names you know back then they would call somebody a [ __ ] as a derogatory term for somebody
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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
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saying no or ignoring her i was like all right i'll meet you at the back of the schoolyard
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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
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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
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entire schoolyard is just full of kids and everyone's screaming and there's spray paint and confetti
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and she just comes up to me and bank and then her friend has you know a baseball bat
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and i basically get beaten up badly with a tennis racket and a baseball cap
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and i came to my friend who god bless her drags me home
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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
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why'd you bring me to this country why did you bring me to this country she said that she says that
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and they don't call the police they don't call the school they're just crying
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and i am like i have like a concussion you know i and the next day is my eighth grade graduation
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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
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graduation and i have this beautiful blue lace dress
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and my sister called her friend over who like did my makeup and again we go to graduation my father
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i think finds the parents the parents just they laugh and say kids are kids and again my mother cries why did you
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bring me this country but you know that was a a shift
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in myself because i think up until that point i was trying to be white you know i was mad that my parents made
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me reshma instead of rachel you know i was mad that i sometimes smelled like indian food you know i was mad that i
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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
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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
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and i better fight for who i am and for people like me if i removed that
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experience from your history what would i be removing from your character oh my god everything everything i
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i am i think 100 of who i am from that moment um
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again i think a year later i led my first march i started my first organization called prism prejudice reduction interested students movement i
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got better at naming organizations the older i got but that's when i became a warrior
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you know that's when i became a fighter and so i'm so grateful to have had
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that trauma because it's made me who i am but i will be honest i don't think i have fully
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processed it um i don't i don't remember i don't like relive that moment until other people
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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
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gonna go to graduation like i don't remember that so i i still do think that even though these experiences are
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transformative um they are
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they're painful you know right now we're going through in new york city this you know all of this asian hate
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and all these hate crimes that are happening against asian americans in new york city and across the country
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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
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literally and that's sad that you can count the amount of times that something has happened to you hateful or violent
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um but i think part of surviving is about sometimes blocking out these moments or
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rewriting what they meant to you in the future but in the past it was painful
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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
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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
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pain i know what it's like to be um not accepted to be ostracized to be
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hated and when you when you got into the working world after university you went to yale right yeah at three times after
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i finally got in oh really oh i was obsessed you tried to get in three times yeah try
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to get in three times i again you know grew up in a working-class community nobody went to
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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
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them everybody went to community school state school i didn't even know how i would apply i don't think i
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ever applied to university but i knew from a young age that i wanted to do something
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and i knew that i lived in a country where credentials mattered especially as a woman of color and that if you had
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that yale or harvard degree people were gonna believe in you
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or at least open some doors and that was always my from the time i was 13 years old going to yale law
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school was always the thing i was chasing is so i had an argument with some a guy
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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
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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
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getting that stamp from one of universities is one way to kind of get security around your future and because
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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
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little in terms of delivery versus the amount of debt and time it takes to get that degree and that there's other ways
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but he made that point to me that for immigrants in fact getting a that stamp or that certificate is
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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
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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
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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
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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
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that being in those kinds of institutions i often would just sit in my chair and watch
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watched at how people with power navigate and i think that that then taught me a
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lot and i would say it's on the boards that i sit on today you know a lot of it is just
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watching how people operate and how people navigate you know going to yale law school i i i said it i never could
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raise my hand because all these kids had gone to these fancy private schools and i don't know
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what they were talking about and i felt i felt like i didn't belong and so
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that's the bad part of it right because you feel like you kind of snuck in and you're not able
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to fully step into your power and articulate and be who you want to be
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um but i think it was a really powerful experience for me
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in grit because again i kept applying i kept applying i kept applying i kept applying and i finally transferred to
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your law school and got in and got that degree now do i think i would still be the same person
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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
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wasn't those things um that made me who i am today you leave with 300 000 in debt a lot of
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debt that is ridiculous yeah i blame my father in our in the uk we don't get that much
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debt we get 50k if you'll you know do badly but you know that's that's probably the top end
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but three hundred thousand dollars in debt when you join the working world that forces your hand a little bit when
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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
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force my hand yeah because i would have liked when i graduated to go be a civil rights lawyer
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but instead i get an offer from a fancy law firm where i'm making you know a couple thousand bucks a month
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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
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debt because that was just that was just principle in that interest and now you know basically 23 years
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later i'm still paying it off but i think that we're we're that's why i think so many people who
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actually want to make a difference because they have student loan debt aren't able to and then wait and wait
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and wait and you see all these good ideas kind of die on the vine because now you're stuck working for the man
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and you literally feel stuck and you don't know how to get out how did you feel oh i was miserable i mean
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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
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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
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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
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pay rent for and i was then living a life that you know saddled me to that desk
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and i was getting older and then 10 years passed by and i don't know about you but for me i
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i i rise like a phoenix from the ashes and what i mean by that like is i have to be at my bottom
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of like anxiety depression despair and then i make a change
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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
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having a large glass of wine and just crying because i was like is this my life i you
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know they say in hinduism like you have a dharma like what you're put on this earth to do
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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
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grass looking at the clouds and just imagining this life of being a change maker
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of making a difference in the world and here i was 2008 the world is falling apart and i'm sitting in the freaking
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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
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know how to get out from this life that i felt very stuck by because i wasn't rich i didn't have all
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this money in the bank account and i did have also i think the expectations of my immigrant parents because i was doing
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what the good indian girl was supposed to be doing i was a lawyer in a law firm and nobody i knew
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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
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didn't know who was going to give me the playbook and so i was lost
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and i i remember i had a one of my best friends deepa
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happened to call me at this moment and she just said just quit
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and there was nothing like profound but there was something about i think hearing those words at the right time
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in my life that was like yeah i can just quit like i can and i did and the second
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call i made was to my father and i remember him saying beta yes quit
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and then i was like whoa like because i had built him up
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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
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you know my fear of like making taking a risk that was actually standing in the way of
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me actually doing what i was meant to do um so then i didn't have any more excuses
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and i ran for congress isn't it amazing that we
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most of us especially i think kids of first generation immigrants end up trying to live out our parents
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dreams and then the other thing is this kind of miscalculation of risk i contin i continue to hear about and that i kind
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of faced in my own life that we believe the risk is not fulfilling
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the external expectation whereas it's so evidently clear from every person that i've sat here with that the actual risk
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if you just zoom out ends up being not following the dreams of that girl staring at the
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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
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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
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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
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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
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biggest risk was actually staying yeah it can be a really liberating force and off you go you run for congress which is
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a tremendous thing to do yeah crazy thing to do i was 33 i was the first
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south asian american any american woman to run for congress in the united states i had no idea what i was doing like i
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said like i didn't have i couldn't be like hey dad you know you build me a campaign strategy or
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and i had to kind of figure it out on my own and um also like people i mean
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i ran against this very powerful uh very vindictive um woman
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who you know was not was not someone who was going to take lightly to this young
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brown girl running against her for her seat did she criticize you smoothie oh my god still
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but still yeah she hasn't really gotten over it still but in some ways though it was it's good
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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
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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
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like i really thought that i could shake every hand meet every voter
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um and i would win but it was the best the best experience of my life because
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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
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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
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your brand is it's exactly what taught me that experience is what taught me to build grocery code and martial land for
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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
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like you know 65 year old seniors who couldn't even pronounce my name who had asked me where religion was right
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it was wild and i never went on television before my first tv interview was chris matthews
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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
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mess um i didn't know how to dress i had never given a like a speech in
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front of people before i remember i would like literally practice my speech and memorize it and pace my little
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apartment you know and and so everything was just um scary but in
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amazing it was the best best still probably the best 10 months of my life
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when you make that decision to run for public office and that per person starts criticizing you probably quite
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personally probably quite based on character that's the best way to i think discredit a political opponent how does
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that actually feel in in the moment because especially reflecting on your childhood yeah it was devastating
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because i was um well you know first a lot of you know incredible feminists like geraldine ferraro were like
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trying to get me as gloria stein and was like why are you running like these are women who i admired
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um because again i think when you and i i thought i would go to these you know campaign
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events and people would say well young people need to run young women you should run for office one day
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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
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been talking about with the movement needs but really what they meant is like run but don't run against me
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and don't run against one of us and and also i think the second part of
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my story was very inspirational being the daughter of immigrants you know
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coming from working class background so they really had to shift my narrative and she did a really good because i came
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from wall street you know i wasn't running wall street i was you know a lawyer a
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junior lawyer at wall street but so that narrative shift happened and because i had never
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known how to control my own narrative i lost that battle and i often found myself on the
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defensive and and people are mean and i would make the mistake of reading
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the comment section and um and it was really really tough
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really tough and i never got the i never got to be the person that i was you remember this
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one time that we finally got the new york times to do you know a story on our race and i had
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now i was this brown girl i had raised more money than any democratic challenger i was actually the only
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democrat i was the first democrat challenger many ways in the in the history now it's very common you know
00:22:48
alexandria ocasio my friend right it's back then it was like never done so i was like this upstart you know that was
00:22:55
making waves in in many ways i think helped open the path up for people like alex to actually say yeah we got to
00:23:01
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
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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
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where you had young bangladeshi girls having my poster up being like i want to be like her one day
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and how revolutionary it was especially for the community to see someone who looks like them
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running for office and i remember she then decides to write a story about my shoes yeah [ __ ]
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yeah not a word about my campaign but about my shoes and it was you know
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again such an example of of what we do to young women young people of color
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when they run you know we make it uh a caricature we don't take them seriously and then
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people don't take them seriously i lose like spectacularly um
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and i was shocked that i lost uh i had not even written my concession speech we had booked this hotel room in
00:24:03
new york city that we could not afford and my campaign organizers had posted the entire room with all these notes i
00:24:08
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
00:24:14
when you're when you're running for office you go to these you know new york city subway stops
00:24:20
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
00:24:26
like it's gonna be you know an upset and then i'm sitting there my father's
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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
00:24:38
done my dad's like i'm going to bed i'm like thanks dad um and i wanted to cry
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so bad i was devastated and you know i had no contingency plan
00:24:51
and i literally picked a fight with some very powerful people and i remember there's this young woman
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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
00:25:05
she's just looking at me rebecca and i was like i'm not gonna cry
00:25:10
because i know she's gonna remember this moment for the rest of her life and i need to show strength
00:25:15
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
00:25:21
like you know gotta do it again don't you worry and then i came back to my hotel room and then i cried
00:25:28
and cried for like a month and how did you pick yourself up from there
00:25:34
and rise from the ashes once again to found girls who code and sort of i guess
00:25:39
karen carrying on with your life uh drinking a lot of margaritas
00:25:45
no but seriously i think um i've read a lot about competitive
00:25:50
athletes and for a lot of them what makes them great
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is they had something that happened in their career early on they didn't get picked in the first
00:26:02
draft you know they missed that one shot and it puts kind of a chip on their
00:26:08
shoulder like i'm going to show you and that's what this brace did for me
00:26:13
it was like i didn't get picked in the first draft but i knew what i was
00:26:19
what my potential was and i was going to show you and i wasn't gonna i wasn't gonna let failure break
00:26:26
me take some time to get to that place right the dust has got to settle the tears
00:26:33
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
00:26:39
i let myself ruminate about it you know then talk to my boyfriend now my husband a million why'd that happen what mistake
00:26:45
did i make you know my father sent me a nice long email about the 10 things i did wrong really um
00:26:50
brutal listen indian parents you know what i mean um
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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
00:27:02
campaign maybe that i would run for next um so the first i think
00:27:08
for me the first that was my first really big failure
00:27:13
and i think sometimes the first one is easier because i i kind of could tell myself well i did make some mistakes if
00:27:20
i did that differently if i you know hired that person if i didn't say that then maybe i would have
00:27:27
won so my first campaign loss was was easier than my second one
00:27:34
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
00:27:40
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
00:27:46
understand the system in which you build a business in hiring and all these things so yeah you can reflect on it and
00:27:52
say oh naivety right right right but then what happens next
00:27:57
so for me next i i said well i'm not going back to that private sector job that i hated i'm
00:28:04
gonna have to deal with being broke and what are all and i loved
00:28:09
i loved meeting people on the campaign trail i loved talking to them i loved hearing about
00:28:15
their problems and i i'm still that 13 year old girl who wants to make a difference in the world
00:28:21
still the the dharma warrior and i was like okay what of all the things i saw on the campaign trail what
00:28:27
moved me and you know when i ran for office it was in 2010 so it was when tech was
00:28:33
starting to boom twitter was just coming up facebook instagram and i would go into computer science
00:28:39
classrooms and robotics labs and i would just see lines and lines and lines of boys
00:28:44
trying to be the next steve jobs or mark zuckerberg and because i wasn't a coder
00:28:50
or computer scientist i was like where are the girls where are the people of color
00:28:55
and i kept thinking about those classrooms and so then i spent the next year
00:29:00
basically on my lunch breaks and in my evenings just learning everything about why there weren't girls and women in
00:29:07
coding and started kind of writing a business plan that became grocery code and started
00:29:14
plotting my next run so i basically ended up running for public advocate of new york city which
00:29:20
is kind of like the second position to mayor and then launching girls who code at the
00:29:25
same time that's a lot to have on one's plate it was
00:29:31
would you recommend that
00:29:37
well the way it played out i would recommend it because i it all ended up working out good for
00:29:44
girls who code because i lost the public advocates race was about i'm gonna make
00:29:49
sure that every kid in new york city learns how to code i lose that race
00:29:55
this time i realized wow like politics is just it's not like i like to say it's
00:30:00
not a performance sport it's not a meritocracy it's not like the person with the best ideas
00:30:06
wins and now i've run you know one i've taught 20 girls to
00:30:12
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
00:30:18
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
00:30:23
for the first draft i didn't get picked for the second draft either and you use those skills right so you've
00:30:29
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
00:30:34
world and people and fundraising and i'm guessing in in many ways that was failure had been a blessing because
00:30:41
without those two draft misses you wouldn't have all these amazing
00:30:46
skills you have now right totally i think the biggest skill that i learned in being in campaigning is how do you
00:30:52
tell a story how do you inspire people how do you connect to people
00:30:59
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
00:31:05
hoops and my red lipstick and i i can i am communicating and i'm there and i'm present
00:31:12
and i have nothing to prove and you know i don't i fight back when
00:31:17
people do the character assassination i'm not easily convinced when people say that they're going to support me that
00:31:22
they're going to really support me like i can see people now and so i lose that race but you're right
00:31:28
i learn so much and i become more comfortable in my skin in who i am
00:31:35
and girls who code really phenomenal thing um i read that you've reached over almost half a million girls with
00:31:43
right is that half a million girls that have learned to code that is crazy that we've actually gone
00:31:49
through our coding programs and then we've reached about a half a billion through our work our books our videos our campaigns
00:31:55
we've reached a lot of kids tell me about this organization how does it look how does it function is it how
00:32:00
is it distributed all over the world i i read that there's 1 500 girls who code clubs around the world
00:32:06
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
00:32:14
started like basically the model was when i started girls with code
00:32:20
point four percent of girls were interested in coding and girls were interested in making the
00:32:25
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
00:32:31
and they were like yeah no thank you and we just culturally had done such a good job of pushing girls and people of
00:32:38
color out of technology you know we had barbie dolls that said i hate math let's go shopping instead every image that you
00:32:45
saw on television you know from weird science to revenge of the nerds was just again these like really nerdy
00:32:52
white dudes and so it didn't feel very inclusive and so girls who code you know are what i
00:32:58
wanted to do is one meet girls where they were at and two change the culture and so what i
00:33:04
mean by me girls where they're at i started thinking well if girls went to technology companies like a facebook
00:33:10
or a spotify and they walked in and they saw what was happening they actually learned to code embedded in a classroom
00:33:17
inside a tech company and that the project while they were there was to build something about a
00:33:23
change that they wanted to make again connecting it to what girls wanted to do then i can then inspire a generation of
00:33:30
young women to want to be coders and technologists and so we started kind of one tech
00:33:36
company at a time and we would build these summer camps and you know years you know basically you know in a handful
00:33:42
of years we're running kind of the largest summer camp you know in america
00:33:47
and then we started expanding that and then you know part of you know as an organizer i wasn't really
00:33:54
a you know i wasn't building a nonprofit i was building a movement and what i would say to my students i
00:33:59
would say okay and the experience for them was transformative i mean it was just you
00:34:05
saw these girls just explode in terms of like what they
00:34:11
wanted to do their the sisterhood that they built and every classroom was basically you know
00:34:17
white asian black trans non-binary just and so many girls had never met you know
00:34:22
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
00:34:28
quite frankly what the world should look like in terms of love and empathy and sisterhood and so
00:34:34
i would say you know during the graduation i want to ask from you i want you to go back to your community
00:34:40
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
00:34:46
join and so they like met me on my challenge and so then one girl and then 100 girls
00:34:52
and then we ended up with 10 000 girls who code clubs across the country in
00:34:57
every single county town in paris and then we exploded in india and in the uk and
00:35:03
same model right where you had basically girls going back to their communities volunteers librarians
00:35:09
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
00:35:15
and so we just had this massive explosion and then culturally we started slowly slowly slowly changing
00:35:22
the narrative and making coding cool you know last year we did a partnership with
00:35:27
dogecat you know where we basically coated her nails literally in one day steven a hundred thousand girls signed
00:35:34
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
00:35:40
drama which i love to watch you know the the protagonist is always a cool girl coder and so we've made coding
00:35:47
cool we've built the pipeline of talent you talked about the hardships you
00:35:52
encountered on the campaign trail cat character assassination yes the anxiety of it dealing with failure
00:35:57
business is riddled with the same inevitable hardships so tell me in in building girls who code
00:36:04
tell me about the other side which is the the difficult parts
00:36:09
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
00:36:15
that and so you know i i had one of the good things was that i had a board that believed in
00:36:20
me always build your first board as family and friends because everybody then is um
00:36:27
wanting you to succeed and so they really protected me like i am
00:36:33
i'm intense and and and if you're gonna come work for me you know it's gonna be intense
00:36:39
and so intense uh i you know i don't i don't i'm better
00:36:44
now but i'm gonna ask your employees yeah i'm better now but
00:36:51
i got big vision and i want to get it done and i work and all the time
00:36:56
and i don't stop and it's it's i'm always pushing
00:37:02
and i believe in many ways i'm an evangelist and i believe in so it is it is my
00:37:07
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
00:37:14
i heard you're the passion filter girls who code i do have a passion filter yeah yeah but
00:37:20
you but then but then when you become a thousand people you know you you or you know 100
00:37:25
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
00:37:31
intensity do you struggle with that when people don't seem to well when they don't behave in the way
00:37:37
that you would have behaved in that situation or when they don't seem to have the same passion and you know
00:37:42
that you you have yeah i don't believe in jobs but for some people it's a job
00:37:48
um but i don't believe in i don't believe in jobs um so when when so that
00:37:53
that i've you know what do they say you have the triangle right you have you have a people every organization has top
00:37:59
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
00:38:04
and so and also like i was just telling you about my father that sent me the 10 page email or you
00:38:10
know about all the things i did wrong i wasn't good at great job
00:38:15
thank you for doing that because i was an event this was church this was religion
00:38:21
you know and so i got i got better at these things you know one of the things i was always
00:38:27
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
00:38:33
and so i had really amazing people from the beginning who as they say knew how to
00:38:40
speak reshma did you get the praise criticism balance wrong
00:38:47
i definitely got to praise criticism i i definitely don't know
00:38:52
i still i i have to i get i'm better now because i just send flowers
00:38:57
so it's like um you know what because i don't need it
00:39:02
and maybe i tell myself i don't need it people don't say to me on a daily basis good job
00:39:08
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
00:39:13
right the way they introduce you is you know it's this is what i'm just thinking i'm answering this for myself
00:39:18
because i i was interrogating that from my perspective no one ever says well done to us in terms of our team right
00:39:24
really like in the same way there's no but we get i get it if i open my dms on
00:39:29
instagram i get oh my god you you know you do i do too but you know i'm gonna tell you this
00:39:35
i stepped off a ceo a year ago because i also never believe that anyone should do anything for too long
00:39:41
and i had built the organization i had the money in the bank i had a vision i had an amazing
00:39:46
woman that i wanted to take take the take the reins for me and the day we make the announcement
00:39:54
my my my chief of staff gloria is like okay brush i'm going to block off two to four
00:39:59
because you're going to get inundated with so many messages congratulating you thanking you
00:40:05
for your service and i was like okay yes i'm ready for it you know tree and i make the
00:40:11
announcement nothing and she emails me tarika emails me you
00:40:17
know at five being like oh my god you must be over i'm so overwhelmed with all the messages that i've gotten
00:40:23
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
00:40:30
nothing and i realized at that moment because i wasn't the head [ __ ] in charge anymore
00:40:37
right i wasn't the ceo anymore and so i it was a wonderful the lesson a
00:40:43
little bit too about how much of that is coming from who you are
00:40:49
and how much of that is really this i guess you don't know until you die
00:40:56
i had a few words to say about one of my sponsors on this podcast one of the greatest tips i can give any small
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00:41:38
so this big organization girls who code all around the world doing incredibly well what would you
00:41:44
have done differently i would so i think what i got really
00:41:49
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
00:41:55
and i had more miscarriages than i can count and i got into this habit
00:42:02
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
00:42:08
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
00:42:14
but i would literally you know then i'm heads down building girls who code and again i think when you are a social
00:42:19
entrepreneur and you're building something the work is never done and it's always at the sacrifice of others
00:42:26
and you always are giving giving giving giving and i would get into i got into this habit where
00:42:32
you know i'd have to go to the doctor's office my husband and i for the 11 12 week check-in
00:42:38
and i'd have something planned in the evening introducing president obama speaking to a thousand girls doing a
00:42:45
fundraising dinner and the doctor at three o'clock would say i'm sorry mr johnny you know
00:42:52
we don't hear a heartbeat and instead of saying hey guys i can't show up
00:42:59
i'd say okay i cry my husband be like rushmo go home and i'd be like i gotta show up at this
00:43:05
thing and i'd show up and i would did that
00:43:10
for seven years six years seven years where it just and i would remember we
00:43:16
would stand there in front of the crowd and be like something's wrong with me the fact that i can do this
00:43:22
and i would be often times standing in front of a thousand little girls the little girl
00:43:27
that i desperately wanted and and so it wasn't until
00:43:34
you know i think when it became too much of the way that i was leading and living
00:43:41
and you know by the time after i had my first and the second my second child the same pattern started becoming i remember
00:43:48
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
00:43:53
says you know uh you know your levels don't look good you're gonna miscarry soon
00:43:59
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
00:44:06
and then i just broke down and i remember i assembled my team and i said i i
00:44:11
i can't do this anymore like i i i i i'm taking
00:44:17
a couple months off for a month off i need you to run this organization this is what is happening in my life and
00:44:23
has been happening you know every picture every ted talk every every and when i look at me
00:44:28
standing with president obama or the ted talk i think about the tragedy or the baby that was quite frankly dying inside
00:44:34
of me and so for me i got that really wrong
00:44:40
really wrong and um i don't want people and and part of what
00:44:45
i'm grateful for is people didn't know because you know i'm also in the responsibility of a lot of
00:44:52
young women who work for me and i don't want them to think that that's the price that you have to pay
00:44:59
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
00:45:07
behavior right yeah that's how i see it so what advice would you give to people who are probably veering towards another
00:45:14
rock bottom in their lives because they're not listening to themselves i guess well i mean i think the thing is is that
00:45:23
i think many of us live in this i don't like up and then crash
00:45:29
right and that's what we think is the way that you're supposed to live and i think you need to live always
00:45:36
healthy meaning like you have to put your personal mental health and your personal health
00:45:43
first and so don't wait for rock bottom to hit you know see the signs early on and take
00:45:49
those breaks take that time off you know take a nap whatever whatever it is that you need to do don't live
00:45:55
in that same way anymore but it's hard because again the entire girl boss culture
00:46:01
the entire kind of lean in culture the entire you know ceo culture is about
00:46:07
living that way it's almost like a badge of honor hey i had you know no heartbeat and i went gave speech
00:46:13
like that's almost like what we think we're supposed to do uh
00:46:18
to to lead that's strength and i think we have to completely revise
00:46:24
what that means and what it means to be a leader and it means you know empathy i
00:46:29
i too you know was leading girls who during the pandemic and had to lay off a bunch of people and
00:46:35
until that point i had never cried in front of my team and i would just cry and cry
00:46:41
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
00:46:46
you're supposed to cry you're supposed to show vulnerability you're supposed to say hey guys i just got some incredibly
00:46:53
horrible news i i'm not coming to work but that's often seen as a sign of
00:46:58
weakness and we have to make that a sign of strength i'm guessing your book brave not perfect
00:47:04
was written in this period of your life oh yes right yeah because there's many things you regret about that book yeah
00:47:11
because i think that book was also about corporate feminism about fixing the woman and not fixing the structure and look i
00:47:18
acknowledge that in the book that you know but what i what i used to say is you know while we're fixing the
00:47:24
institutions let's figure out how we can fix ourselves you know i.e you know unlearning perfectionism and orientating
00:47:31
yourself towards bravery but i really believe that stephen you know i really bought into that
00:47:36
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
00:47:43
of your calendar and the delegating more and then not crying in the bathroom and all the things that you were supposed to
00:47:49
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
00:47:56
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
00:48:03
wellness reviews why are you not supposed to be sad at work why are you not supposed to cry
00:48:10
you know where did we where did these values show up and how do we get them out
00:48:20
written on the back of your new book which takes a very different approach on many narratives
00:48:26
rachelle simmons says finally we have a book that aims to fix the system not the women
00:48:32
and i think when i was reading about why you wrote this book pay up the future of women and work
00:48:38
i read that you wrote it from a place of on one hand anger but also hope for change yeah
00:48:45
why anger well listen i mean i i as a mom you know found myself
00:48:52
20 20 uh you know started the year with girls who code having a super bowl ad i was going to
00:48:58
teach more girls than i ever had before i was having my second baby finally you know via surrogate and so i was
00:49:05
really looking forward to once i was born just spending that time with him and just hugging him and kissing him and
00:49:11
staring at him because i had missed carrying him in the womb and then you know a few weeks later the pandemic hit
00:49:18
and i found myself having to take care of my newborn homeschool my six-year-old and save my non-profit girls who crowd
00:49:25
from being shut down because when pandemics hit the first resources to go are to women and girls
00:49:31
you know my whole leadership team were both mostly working women and what we were saying to each other on the zoom
00:49:36
chat was just just hold on hold on because when september comes and the school's open
00:49:42
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
00:49:49
public school in new york city they announced this thing called you know hybrid learning where you got to
00:49:54
log on your kid at nine o'clock 10 o'clock and eleven o'clock all the while maintaining your full-time
00:50:00
job i thought two things came to my mind the first one which was incredibly naive
00:50:06
like aren't they gonna ask me because you know in the united states we have these time and use surveys and so
00:50:11
we knew in the early months of the pandemic who was doing the homeschooling
00:50:18
it was women and so we knew that if we made a policy like closing down the schools
00:50:24
that it was in invariably going to force millions of women to leave the workforce
00:50:29
because they couldn't supplement you know their their paid labor they were going to have to supplement their paid
00:50:34
labor for unpaid labor and so the fact that someone that i don't even know
00:50:41
could make a decision that could affect my life on a dime terrified me
00:50:48
and then the second thing was you started seeing again over the course of the pandemic 11 million women leave the
00:50:53
workforce and i knew from building girls who code because you know girls of code i was trying to solve the gender gap in
00:50:59
technology but what people forget is that we didn't always have a gender reaction technology that in the 1980s we
00:51:04
were pretty much almost at parity and then we pushed women out and so
00:51:10
similarly here you can't have women be 51 of the labor force and then become
00:51:16
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
00:51:22
an on and off switch so i remember like where's the plan like
00:51:27
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
00:51:33
decades of feminism and so there was no plan and that's what really inspired me to
00:51:39
start this moment i wrote an op-ed i often stephen when i get angry write and then just post things post articles
00:51:46
and um i made the mistake or actually it was the best thing that ever happened is i read the comment section
00:51:53
and my op-ed was that we need a martial plan for moms and when i read the comment section
00:51:59
people on the left were like what about the dads and i was like even though again
00:52:04
men had not been pushed out of the labor force because this was from a data perspective solely affecting women
00:52:12
and then people on the right well mother has a choice so you don't get to have affordable
00:52:17
child care or paid leave or any structural support because you choose you chose to be a mom
00:52:23
and it was the first time i was like wow motherhood is controversial
00:52:29
and i kind of had that same sense that i had when i started girls who code like this is a problem
00:52:36
that needs solving again especially for women like
00:52:42
our mothers you know my mom when she when i was a
00:52:47
kid um i was a latchkey kid from the time i was seven and my parents couldn't afford the fifty
00:52:54
dollars a week for child care and so from the time my sister and i were seven and ten she would pick me up
00:52:59
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
00:53:05
families there so we wouldn't walk home we would run home and then we would open up the door and
00:53:10
close it and we would hide in the closet because we were terrified and i think about how my mother felt
00:53:16
every day at 3 45 knowing that her babies were running
00:53:21
home because they couldn't afford child care and the unconscionable
00:53:27
choices that mothers mothers of color have to make every single
00:53:33
day because we don't make it possible for them to be mothers and have a job
00:53:40
and so that is when i was just like all of this girl boss
00:53:46
equality that expressed me into the corner office it's just all about you was like that's a lie
00:53:51
and i've been selling this lie for the past 10 years and if we're really going to get to
00:53:57
equality we have to fix the systems there's a really staggering stat in um
00:54:03
chapter 4 of your book that says that women are now spending more time on child care than they did in i
00:54:09
think it was 1980 which is pretty staggering because i i thought we'd
00:54:14
one would think based on all the noise that i've heard about equality and all of these things that
00:54:19
women would be spending less time on child care than 1980. yeah it's because we're in this moment of intensive
00:54:25
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
00:54:31
raise yourself right now you know we're taking our kids to spanish hindi and you know
00:54:36
and you know chinese you're learning three languages going to piano class you know basketball club
00:54:42
we're constantly on top of our kids because that is the societal expectation
00:54:47
that we have to intensively parent our children at the expense of our own
00:54:52
mental health and we also have to be completely on as workers again we're in this hustle culture where you're
00:54:59
constantly driving driving driving you know at work and so if you're a working woman
00:55:06
you have these two huge expectations that that you basically have to meet and
00:55:13
it's exhausting and it's why we have a mental health crisis you know 51 of mothers say that they're anxious and
00:55:20
depressed you know the cdc released the studies saying that the subgroup that is suffering the most anxiety and
00:55:26
depression are you know working women you're seeing this in the uk it's an alcoholism adderall addiction it is on
00:55:33
the rise rising suicide rates of mothers mothers don't break
00:55:38
but they're broken right now and young people feel like they can easily talk about their mental health
00:55:44
and how they're feeling and but it is it's not again you don't you don't hear mothers talk about that
00:55:51
we're not supposed to we're supposed to be martyrs essentially or have it all together
00:55:57
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
00:56:03
their kids you know their partner their pet and then themselves we are last on the list
00:56:09
we do no self-care and in our and society doesn't you know doesn't expect that we
00:56:15
we should be doing that it's seen as being a bad mom or being selfish when we spend time on ourselves
00:56:21
how is your mental health i i would i would say that i am a
00:56:27
i would say that i am a six right now i mean i'm exhausted i'm not
00:56:32
gonna lie i think i'm i think that i think that i think i have you know two little kids
00:56:38
now two and seven um you know the pandemic has been crushing you know my seven-year-old
00:56:45
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
00:56:53
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
00:56:58
know our kids have really been traumatized because of the pandemic and now we're
00:57:04
traumatized and so i do think that like and i think a lot of the
00:57:10
the the women in my life i think would just need a beat like i wish they would announce like a
00:57:16
national vacation for like a month maybe that's the answer to the question i was compelled to ask next but how
00:57:21
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
00:57:26
advice would you give me to get to a ten i would say uh
00:57:32
take a break you know or do things for yourself and listen i think i'm much better at that
00:57:37
so i got one of the best things i got for myself was a whoop yeah
00:57:42
so i'm like obsessed about my sleep and to the extent that i will go to bed
00:57:48
at 8 a.m or leave a dinner early um because i know that if i'm getting
00:57:53
eight hours of sleep i am my best version i try to play tennis three times a week
00:57:59
i love tennis i'm horrible at it but i love it you know i
00:58:04
try to have fun i went to a justin bieber concert last weekend you know i do date night i got girls trips planned
00:58:11
uh i i i make more time for myself i don't i don't get on but you know
00:58:16
basically for 10 years as i was building girls who code i would probably do two to three flights a week
00:58:23
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
00:58:29
i realize that like it's not that this opportunity is going to go away
00:58:35
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
00:58:42
maybe i won't get this chance again but oh well and it's really liberating
00:58:48
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
00:58:54
orientating more towards old reshma of like you know three four talks a day getting on planes doing the thing not
00:59:01
sleeping as much eating too many chocolate chip cookies like but i think my my habits
00:59:09
and have been much more healthier than they've ever been i'm also really practicing um
00:59:16
not wanting things i i think growing up as an immigrant i
00:59:24
needed credentials i needed val i needed those degrees i needed that validation
00:59:29
i needed those accolades and i was always chasing the next
00:59:35
big thing and it's funny as i sit here there's nothing i want
00:59:42
there's no title i want there's no award i want there's no recognition i want
00:59:48
and when i start catching myself wanting things
00:59:54
uh i pull back you know i told you i was just i applied to yale law school three times before i got in
01:00:00
and i got a call last november from the president of yale saying um
01:00:06
we would be honored if you'd be our commencement speaker now steven like the commencement speakers are normally like hillary brock
01:00:12
you know what i mean
01:00:22
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
01:00:30
amazing one getting that because that i had been chasing them for so long and finally
01:00:36
they they asked me but two it was um
01:00:43
exactly i wasn't chasing it a few questions there in terms of getting putting up those
01:00:49
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
01:00:56
filter through which allows us to decide whether this is serving us or not like when you're
01:01:01
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
01:01:07
oh my god someone wants to interview yes i will fly twice tell me where yeah exactly yeah right but then as you
01:01:13
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
01:01:20
find yourself in your career when you're deciding what to say yes or no to so two things i think one impact
01:01:26
yeah and two i love listen i love people who are starting up
01:01:31
and who i know that if i go on their podcast or if i if i have them interview me
01:01:37
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
01:01:42
to do something no no these are the ones that are actually the most important to me
01:01:48
um and because someone did that for me and that's how i'm sitting here with you
01:01:54
today and then i think the other i again i think going back i've been um
01:01:59
i've been studying the bhagavad-gita uh which has again been a gift i gave myself this year because
01:02:05
it's been something i've been wanting to do for a long time the gita is basically our kind of
01:02:10
religious book in hinduism but it's really a you know it's really a it's really a book about
01:02:15
spirituality and about how do you stay really focused
01:02:21
um on what you're meant to do in this earth and not get distracted by all the shiny things
01:02:28
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
01:02:36
on what i'm on this earth to do and not getting distracted by all the shiny things and one thing that kita
01:02:41
says is like it doesn't make sense that human wants that humans want things because all you're doing is inviting
01:02:47
yourself for disappointment right if you didn't want anything
01:02:52
you don't get it doesn't matter because you never wanted it and and so um you know that has been
01:03:00
a really big gift for me in really staying focused because if i'm put on this earth to be a warrior
01:03:08
and my job right now is to fight for mothers to get them respected and
01:03:13
dignified and to change workplaces you know so that they work for women and that this is the once opportunity to
01:03:20
make that structural change then everything i'm saying yes to is about furthering
01:03:25
that my service for the people in your book you talk about that change
01:03:32
and you kind of list four sort of key principles for bringing about that change empower educate revise and advert
01:03:39
advocate tell me about empower what did you mean when you wrote that in in your book yeah
01:03:45
so look i mean empower's really about like women are always told like you should just meditate more or do yoga and
01:03:50
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
01:03:58
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
01:04:06
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
01:04:11
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
01:04:17
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
01:04:23
and so i've created that boundary um so that i don't get roped into doing
01:04:29
more of that unpaid labor than i need to and so i think that the the need to create boundaries for all of
01:04:36
us that's really critical you know the second piece is really about how are we shifting
01:04:41
employers i am literally just like i was with girls i am on a mission to get companies
01:04:47
to start subsidizing child care you know in the united states and then in the world you know in the u.s you
01:04:54
know child care is like the largest expense for families most families pay more for child care than they pay for
01:04:59
their mortgage and right now less than 10 percent of companies subsidize child care we often think of child care as your personal
01:05:05
problem but child care is an economic issue and so i am you know building this
01:05:10
national business coalition to get companies to start paying for people's child care they pay for people's egg
01:05:16
freezing and ivf they should be paying when you take care you know i mean when you have a child and so how are we
01:05:23
shifting again this idea of you know what employers should be doing you know
01:05:30
it's women's it was women's history month last last month and so many of the conversations we were having you know
01:05:35
probably you know again across across the country across the world is about you know you should get a mentor you should get a sponsor all of the
01:05:42
programming that we do around women's empowerment is about fixing women
01:05:47
it needs to be about fixing workplaces you know why don't companies offer child
01:05:54
care why don't companies mandate paid leave for men so that when you're again doing child
01:06:01
caring childbearing from the beginning you get the ratio right you get the equation right why are we still fighting
01:06:07
flexibility in remote working why are we still trying to demand that men and
01:06:12
women commute two hours and not see their children or their pets or their elderly parents
01:06:18
you know why are we resisting again you know what we've learned from the pandemic and forcing ourselves back to
01:06:24
the old normal and how do we push against this you know and again shift corporate
01:06:30
policies um the third thing i talk about in this book is about you know how do you revise the culture
01:06:36
you know again it's so normal for women for example you know to hide their motherhood i remember when i became a
01:06:43
mom and my team was like great like you should be a mom blogger i'm like no anything but a mom you know moms are seen as like you know
01:06:49
again you know when you become a mother you're seen as like you don't no longer care about your career it's like where you go to die
01:06:56
and i think we have to start shifting that and we have to start parenting out loud
01:07:01
you know you shouldn't be hiding your kids from your workplace you shouldn't be apologizing when your kids interrupt
01:07:07
your zoom call you shouldn't be waiting to the last possible second to say that you're pregnant because you're worried
01:07:12
that your employer is going to discriminate against you you know we have to really start parenting out loud
01:07:18
and being honest about about that you know you go on instagram and you see pictures of mothers and
01:07:23
their kids and they're all beautiful and they're wearing matching outfits that's not what vacations look like you know my vacation everyone's fighting with each
01:07:28
other and we're screaming tell the truth about what it looks like you know and
01:07:34
that's how we begin to shift i think the cultural image of motherhood
01:07:39
and we shift from being martyrs you know to being respected and to being valued
01:07:44
but like you know again i think i think motherhood needs a refresh um across the world and then and then
01:07:50
finally it's really about advocating for change you know we just went through you know in in the u.s
01:07:57
you know we just went through the president kind of proposing policies and nothing got changed we didn't get you
01:08:03
know united is one of the only nations that doesn't have paid leave you know we don't have affordable child care
01:08:08
in the uk you have a parental income we don't have those things you know and so we need to really make structural change
01:08:16
that comes from the government to really make laughter lasting change and we
01:08:21
you know as working women have to learn how we fight for ourselves you know we have so many movements that are about
01:08:27
protecting our kids you know mothers against drunk driving mothers who are marching against
01:08:33
you know gun reform mothers that are trying to protect the climate but there isn't a movement of mothers fighting for
01:08:40
moms you know i tell people all the time you can't change the lives of girls unless
01:08:46
you change the future of women quick one we bring in eight people a
01:08:51
month to watch these conversations live here in the studio when we're here in the uk and when we're in la if you want
01:08:57
to be one of those people all you've got to do is hit subscribe as you look forward at your your mission and your future
01:09:05
and uh what you hope to achieve in the next chapter of your life what is
01:09:12
that tangibly if i had to measure success if i was to say that your your you know all the things you write about
01:09:18
the change you write about in this book if i was to measure and say it was successful what what what would the
01:09:24
world look like that we have true equality you know that that little girls can be
01:09:30
everything and anything honestly you know that they can be president or
01:09:35
prime minister that they can launch a company you know and get seed funding that they can be a scientist that they
01:09:42
can literally or they can be a stay-at-home mom that they can be whoever and whatever
01:09:48
that they want and i think my hope for mothers is that they too don't see their their their
01:09:53
biggest dreams die on the vine that they don't live a life of regret and envy and should have been would have
01:09:59
been because they let every they let things happen to them rather than change things uh that we
01:10:05
live in a world where we we respect and we dignify women and girls we're not there yet
01:10:11
you know we're so we're so far from being there in many ways and and i think part of it
01:10:17
again is because of the things that we've sold women that we've we've basically told women that
01:10:22
the problem is you think about all the books that women read confidence code i gotta learn how to do a power pose i gotta i gotta lean
01:10:29
in all of it is about women thinking that you're wrong the amount of times that women come to
01:10:35
me and say i have imposter syndrome i'm like no no no they didn't let you in you're in there because you are the best
01:10:42
but now you're made to feel like you snuck through the back door and so it it what you know what i am
01:10:48
saying in many ways is really radical and it's you know very deeply seated in
01:10:54
us and it's not just it's women it's people of color it's poor people anybody who is
01:10:59
not you know who who has really you know had to had to through grit perseverance you
01:11:05
know found themselves in rooms that people don't look like them we're still asking ourselves do i belong
01:11:11
here should i be here and we're constantly being fed information book podcasts movies that
01:11:18
tell ourselves that we just have to change one more thing about ourselves that we have to fix one more thing
01:11:24
and you know it's just simply not true i i always say that i feel so lucky
01:11:30
that you know through the work that i've done i've been able to be in almost every single
01:11:36
powerful room i've probably met every single powerful person in the world
01:11:42
and you know i used to be that girl at yale law school in my constitutional law class going like this
01:11:48
and you know a few years ago i got asked to give a speech at bill gates summit
01:11:53
and the slot that they had given me was between bill gates and warren buffett
01:11:59
and it was the only speech that anyone was giving it was a summon a fortune 100 ceo so you can imagine who was in the
01:12:05
room and i remember them saying you know this is a really hard speaking slot rashma because most people are really
01:12:11
intimidated because bill and warren are sitting in the front row and it can be a little
01:12:16
scary and i remember as i was sitting there in the backstage they had given me 10
01:12:23
minutes of speech i remember thinking man i wish they gave me 12 because i really had some more stuff to
01:12:29
say and then i remember thinking how did i become [Music] how did i become this woman
01:12:36
when i used to be that girl and i remember thinking yeah it's
01:12:41
because i've been in every single powerful room i've met every single ceo every president every prime minister and
01:12:46
when i meet them i'm like you you're running what
01:12:52
me and my girls we can run circles around you and i realize that it's never been about
01:12:58
whether we're qualified whether we're prepared whether we're ready that we've really never really
01:13:05
dissected all of the undeserved unearned privilege that so many people have
01:13:12
and that we have literally bought and been fed you know
01:13:17
basically this propaganda that we're not good enough that we're not smart enough that we don't belong
01:13:24
and the real resistance in this moment is saying no more i'm not reading those books i'm not taking those
01:13:31
courses i'm not taking that class i'm not buying into that [ __ ]
01:13:38
i'm here and i can lead to
01:13:44
that's a very powerful place to end however we do have a closing tradition okay
01:13:51
where the previous guest writes the question for the next guest oh my gosh okay and i don't get to see
01:13:57
you don't get to find out who it is and i don't get to read it to open this book amazing jack is the only person that gets to read it when was the last time a
01:14:04
day flew by and what were you doing you know one of those days
01:14:11
i don't know if i've had a day but i've definitely had a couple hours and i think the last time was i actually
01:14:17
got to visit my son's school for the very first time in the pandemic
01:14:22
and my son is a little gandhi he is like the kindest little soul and just being able to watch him
01:14:29
and him show me his things and just seeing him interact and the joy and like the confidence and the kindness
01:14:36
and i could have sat there all day and it felt like again a minute because i think i was so happy
01:14:43
does he understand your work he does he doesn't i mean he he does
01:14:48
understand or he's mad at me sometimes why are you always fighting for girls and moms what about the boys
01:14:54
but uh you know it's funny i i brought i would bring him everywhere you know from
01:15:00
being on the daily show or giving a commencement speech and so he's seen mama
01:15:06
lead and and speak and he knows that i'm helping people and i think it's in many
01:15:13
ways it i think it has he always said that he wants to be a kindness engineer that he wants to you know
01:15:19
be an engineer to to help people and maybe get hopefully i'm going to take credit for that a little bit
01:15:24
because i think he sees that uh you know in the work that i do but
01:15:30
but yeah he's he is um he's an old soul thank you um i have to say you know
01:15:38
it's it's really it's really a tremendous thing and it's really inspiring the thought that you've
01:15:43
managed to get almost half a million girls into coding it really really inspires me in a
01:15:50
deep level because i've been thinking about work that i want to do in my life and so reading through your story was a real
01:15:55
source of inspiration specifically around i've been thinking a lot about because i'm an investor on the show called dragons den in the uk um been
01:16:02
thinking a lot about how young kids from disadvantaged backgrounds don't know how to invest
01:16:07
their money don't know about taxes and all those kinds of things and seeing the model of girls who code and how you've managed to
01:16:14
reach so many people on a topic that is liberating if people can understand it in the same way that
01:16:20
understanding money is liberating if you can truly understand it has been is a blueprint for me and that's why i was so excited to meet you
01:16:26
and your your book is really fantastic thank you one of those books that leaves you with a real sense of mission and
01:16:32
inspiration and really makes you take stock of your life and and the future of the industry we we all reside in in the
01:16:38
working world it's also made me consider a lot of changes that i need to make in my own companies even this conversation we've had today because i as a male ceo
01:16:47
and male ceos are the dominant force at the top of organizations they are the the most um
01:16:53
abundant uh creature in organizations especially the fortune 500 white male ceos
01:16:59
in particular can't understand a lot of these things because they haven't had the lived experience and even when they say they
01:17:05
understand all the time it's either virtue signaling to protect the bottom line or something else and having forces
01:17:10
like you in the world that are that are able to articulate this systemic challenge in such an
01:17:16
articulate way is more necessary now than ever before so thank you for being you and thank you for writing a book
01:17:21
that i feel everybody needs to read pay up the future of women and work thank you
01:17:27
quick one as we all know energy independence and living a little greener has never been more important for a
01:17:33
better future it's a journey i've been on over the last couple of years that i've shared with you sporadically ever
01:17:38
since i sold my range rover sport and bought an electric bicycle and there's a lot of people out there that listen to
01:17:44
this podcast that are looking to make that sustainable switch in the things that run their daily life
01:17:49
whether it's their home their car their vehicles whatever it might be so when a good friend of mine at a company called
01:17:54
my energy called jordan told me she was interested in sponsoring this podcast i
01:17:59
jumped at the opportunity so for those of you that don't know my energy are a uk renewable energy brand whose mission
01:18:06
is to increase the usage of green energy helping people like you and i to save time and money when it comes to making
01:18:12
sustainable switches in our lives so if this resonates with you and you're the type of person that's been looking or thinking about going on your own
01:18:18
sustainability journey i highly recommend checking them out at myenergy.com
01:18:24
quick one as the seasons have begun to change so has my diet and um right now i'm just gonna be completely
01:18:30
honest with you i'm starting to think a lot about slimming down a little bit because over
01:18:35
the last couple of probably the last four or five months my diet has been pretty bad and so one of the things i'm doing now to reduce my calorie intake
01:18:42
and trying to get back to being nutritionally complete and all i eat is i'm having the
01:18:47
heel protein shake thank you hill for making a product that i actually like the salted caramel is my favorite i've got the banana one here which is the one
01:18:53
my girlfriend likes but for me salted caramel is the one
01:18:59
[Music]
01:19:20
you
