The C.E.O. of Girls Who Code Wants You to Know That It’s OK to Fail. There’s an unofficial rule in the tech world: every C.E.O. must have a formative anecdote of failure. Reshma Saujani has an imposing résumé—she has delivered speeches at the White House and on Richard Branson’s private island; she knows Sheryl Sandberg’s personal phone number; her nonprofit, Girls Who Code, has given free computer-science instruction to forty thousand young women—and yet she often leads with her failure story.
Reshma Saujani, the founder of Girls Who Code, in March.
In 2010, Saujani ran for Congress, in New York’s Twelfth District, against a popular incumbent. “Every pollster told me, ‘You can’t possibly win this race,’ ” she said. “I ran anyway. I raised money from everyone from John Legend to Jack Dorsey.” Saujani, who is now forty-one, has a gap-toothed smile that she deploys to self-deprecating effect. “And then I lost. Humiliatingly. Not even close.”
But failure did not stop here from her next adventure. Here is a link to the full article:
