1. Reshma Saujani was born on November 18,1975 and is an American lawyer, politician, civil servant, and the founder of the nonprofit organization "Girls Who Code", which aims to increase the number of women in computer science and close the gender employment difference in that field.
Reshma Saujani worked in city government as a deputy public advocate at the New York City Public Advocate's office.
In 2009, Saujani ran against Carolyn Maloney for the US House of Representatives seat from New York's 14th congressional district, becoming the first Indian American woman to run for Congress.
Reshma Saujani's parents lived in Uganda, prior to being expelled along with other persons of Indian descent in the early 1970s by Idi Amin.
Reshma Saujani attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she graduated in 1997 with majors in Political Science and Speech Communication.
Reshma Saujani attended the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where she received a Master of Public Policy in 1999, and Yale Law School, where she received her Juris Doctor in 2002.
Reshma Saujani was an associate general counsel at Blue Wave, an equity multi-strategy hedge fund; it was closed in the aftermath of the 2008 market collapse.
Immediately prior to running for Congress, Reshma Saujani was a deputy general counsel at Fortress Investment Group.
In 2012, Reshma Saujani founded Girls Who Code, a nonprofit organization which works to close the gender gap in technology.
In September 2015, Reshma Saujani was named to Fortune Magazine's 40 Under 40 list.
Reshma Saujani founded "South Asians for Kerry" during the 2004 presidential election.
Reshma Saujani served on the National Finance Board for Hillary Clinton during Clinton's campaign for president in 2008.
Reshma Saujani has been featured on NY1, MSNBC, FOX, and CNBC.
Reshma Saujani challenged incumbent Democratic Representative Carolyn Maloney for the New York's 14th congressional district in the 2010 House elections.
Reshma Saujani outraised Maloney by almost a 2-to-1 margin in the last quarter of 2009, when Maloney had ceased fundraising following the death of her husband, Clifton Maloney, who in September had died unexpectedly on a mountain-climbing expedition in the Himalayas.
Reshma Saujani's candidacy received the backing of prominent Upper East Side political fundraisers, including Cathy Lasry, Maureen White, and White's husband, financier Steven Rattner.
Reshma Saujani's campaign mailed a flyer to voters implicating Maloney as one of eight House members investigated for taking donations from special interests.
Reshma Saujani received 6,231 votes, despite her campaign's expenditure of $1.3 million, spending more than $213 for every vote she received.
Reshma Saujani's campaign was the first political campaign to use technology tools such as Square, Inc.
Reshma Saujani ran for the role of New York Public Advocate in 2013, coming third in the Democratic primary.
Reshma Saujani's campaign admitted to this, arguing they did it because they disagreed with the stated facts.
Reshma Saujani founded Girls Who Code in 2012 after visiting schools and becoming aware of the gender disparity in computing while campaigning for Congress.
Reshma Saujani was a speaker at the 2016 TED Conference, with her talk focusing on encouraging young girls to take risks and learn to program.
In February 2018, Reshma Saujani launched a companion podcast of the same name to her book Brave, Not Perfect.
Reshma Saujani is the author of Women Who Don't Wait in Line: Break the Mold, Lead the Way, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2013, and Girls Who Code: Learn to Code and Change the World, published by Viking in August 2017, and Brave, Not Perfect: Fear Less, Fail More, and Live Bolder in 2018.
Reshma Saujani is the author of the book Pay Up: The Future of Women and Work published in March of 2022.
Reshma Saujani is married to entrepreneur Nihal Mehta, who was a co-founder of ad tech startup LocalResponse and now is a co-founding partner of Eniac Ventures, a seed stage venture capital firm.