DEENA SHAKIR: Thanks for tuning
in to this special edition
of Google Developers Live.
Today we're featuring Reshma
Saujani, from Girls Who Code,
in celebration of Computer
Science Education Week.
Hello and thanks for joining us.
My name is Deena
Shakir, and I work
with google.org, the social
impact arm of Google.
I'm thrilled today to
introduce and welcome
my friend, Reshma Saujani,
the founder of Girls Who
Code, a role model
and public figure,
who is here to talk about
her incredible vision
and work with this
organization, who
we are thrilled
to be supporting.
Welcome, Reshma, and thank
you so much for joining us.
RESHMA SAUJANI: I'm
so happy to be here.
DEENA SHAKIR: We're
thrilled to have you.
I'd like to start off with a
question about your own story,
and if you could tell us a
bit about your career, which
has traversed so
many different fields
and has landed you with this
incredible organization,
from law, to politics, to
finance, and now to Girls
Who Code.
Can you tell us a bit about
what ultimately landed you
on this incredible idea?
RESHMA SAUJANI:
Sure, so in 2010, I
was running for Congress.
And as you know, as someone who
has a long career in politics,
when you run for office, you
talk to a lot of parents,
you go to a lot of schools,
you meet a lot of kids.
And my district had some of the
wealthiest ZIP codes in America
and some of the poorest.
And I remember being
in these schools
and watching some girls who
barely had a teacher who
could help them use
a computer, and then
some places that had
more gadgets than kids
knew what to do with.
And as someone who's
passionate about policy,
it's clear where the
jobs are going to be.
They're in the computing and
technology-related fields,
almost 1.4 million jobs by 2020.
But less than 50%
of them are going
to be filled by women, even
though we are 50% of the labor
force, 50% of those grad-- we
literally own the internet.
But young girls are not
going into these fields.
And so I wanted to do
something about it.
And so I brought
20 girls together,
put them into a classroom
at a technology company,
convened a bunch of computer
scientists and academics
to develop a curriculum that
was very targeted at girls,
and I thought, let's
see what happens.
And it was a tremendous first
year because all of our girls
learned how to code-- because
that wasn't clear when we first
put them in that classroom
at AppNexus-- and two,
they fell in love
with computer science,
and they built things that
would change the world.
And we realized that we
were really on to something
and that we needed to get
the resources together
to really have more girls who
are learning computer science
education.
DEENA SHAKIR: That's
fantastic, so can you
tell us a bit about where
Girls Who Code is now
and how you went from
that group of 20 girls
to what is going to be a
nationwide, and potentially
international, movement.
RESHMA SAUJANI: Yeah, so
we started with 20 girls
in New York, and the following
year, we went from one program
to 8 programs, so we
taught about 152 girls
in New York, Detroit,
and then in California.
And this year, our goal
is to launch 16 programs,
have classes in Boston,
Seattle, New York, California,
and Miami, and to also,
through the support of Google,
to launch Girls Who Code clubs.
Because we realized
that, you know,
young girls are not
monolithic, right,
on one end of the
spectrum there girls
that know they're
passionate about technology,
they just don't
know where to go.
And that's really our
summer immersion program,
our eight week,
intensive summer camp,
where the girls learn the basics
of computer science education,
they get exposure to female
mentors and role models,
and they learn how to build
stuff that changes the world.
Our Girls Who Code
clubs are the place
to really-- your first
experience with computer
science, right.
So we have two hours
of coding a week,
resulting in 36 hours
of coding a year.
And we hope that these Girls Who
Code clubs will become funnels
into our summer camp,
our summer program.
DEENA SHAKIR: Great.
So in coming up with your
methodology and curriculum,
can you talk a bit about what
it is that differentiates Girls
Who Code and how the curriculum
is tailored in such a way as
to attract more
girls specifically?
RESHMA SAUJANI: So
we really convened
people who had
experience in one,
not only in computer science,
but in teaching girls.
And so we made sure that our
curriculum exposed young girls
to, like I said, female
mentors, but also got
them the fundamentals
and the basics.
Because oftentimes,
I think girls
think, computer science, it's
too hard, like I can't do this.
And they have to get really used
to failure in getting the code,
or getting algorithm wrong,
and then trying again, and then
trying again, and
then trying again.
And then they also
have to build things
that are about
changing the world.
When you ask most
high school girls what
they want to do with their life,
they want to change the world.
They want a career that's
going to help them do that.
That's why you see more young
girls going into medicine,
going into law, even going
into forensic science,
because they see the
clear relationship
between those
industries and change.
And so our curriculum
makes that connection
to them in a specific context.
So we have Twitter
come, and they
build something on their API.
We do projects with
Intel, with Google.
So they can actually create
things using their API
to actually change the
world and to build products
that are going to
help them do that.
DEENA SHAKIR: It sounds
like they come up
with pretty amazing projects.
RESHMA SAUJANI:
Amazing projects.
I remember our first
year, we had a girl
who was five years old when
her father got diagnosed
with cancer, and so she wanted
to be a doctor, because she
wanted to save her dad's life.
And she didn't know how
computer science was connected
to medicine, until the last two
weeks of our program, where she
built an algorithm
to help detect
whether a cancer is
benign or malignant.
DEENA SHAKIR: Wow.
RESHMA SAUJANI: She
was 16 years old.
This year, I remember the
most awesome experience
was the girls had an opportunity
to meet Sheryl Sandberg.
And so we're all sitting
around this conference room,
and Sheryl walks past
the conference room.
It had these huge windows.
And the girls literally
start screaming
like she was Beyonce, right.
It was awesome, these
amazing little girls
geeks so excited to
see Sheryl Sandberg.
And then they get up
in twos and threes,
and they present to Sheryl
the Facebook apps that they
had built, and they were
fearless, like unabashed.
I don't know if I could
have done that at 16, right,
present to the CEO of Facebook
and to tell her why that they
should take the app that they
built and put it into market.
It was amazing.
It's so huge for them in
terms of confidence building.
So our girls have
built video games.
They built an app
called Let It Flow
to help find a public
bathroom, which
is again an important thing.
They built apps on bullying,
they built-- I mean,
anything that you
could think of,
but I think the common thread
is they built things that
were about making their
communities better, helping
their families, again, making
the world a better place.
That's where their interest
level is really at.
DEENA SHAKIR: So computer
science and technology
is no longer a separate field,
it's a way of doing everything.
Can you talk about why
it's important for us
to have diverse minds
helping to create products
that we use in
everyday circumstances?
RESHMA SAUJANI:
I just think it's
about having the best
and the brightest minds
helping us solve
everyday problems.
And to me it's just crazy,
when you think about the fact
that last year, 4,000 girls
took the AP computer science
exam, that's it.
Less than 7,500 women
graduated in computer science--
again defining
that broadly-- even
though 56% of our
labor force are women.
We just simply can't
out-innovate as a nation
unless we have half
of our labor force,
again, working to
solve these problems.
And we talked about this.
The United States is
also kind of behind when
it comes to other nations,
right-- the Middle East,
in some countries in the Middle
East, more female engineers,
India, more female engineers,
China, more female engineers.
Around the world, they are
inspiring their young girls
to stand up and raise
their hand and say I
want to become a
computer scientist,
I want to be a
software engineer,
I want to be a programmer.
We need to do the same
thing in this country
because our economy is changing.
We're moving away from
being a manufacturing-based
to a service-based economy.
We're going to have
to build things,
and every person, in order
to think about-- I mean,
I hate to say this, but
it's like I tell parents,
don't tell your kids to major
in East Asian studies any more.
I hope you didn't major
in East Asian studies.
DEENA SHAKIR: I didn't.
I almost did.
RESHMA SAUJANI: We
need to major in things
that you can actually
go out and get a job in.
And you can make $80,000
a year being a programmer.
That's a lot.
That's a lot of money for
families here in this country.
DEENA SHAKIR: Absolutely.
RESHMA SAUJANI: And
we see that happen
with our young girls,
many of them who
come from under-served
communities,
when they graduate
Girls Who Code,
they're able to build websites.
They're getting jobs to do that.
And so they're going to lift
their families out of poverty
and put them into upward
mobility, into the middle class
by learning this 21st century
skill set that is so critical.
DEENA SHAKIR: There's been a
narrative over the last two
decades, really, on girls and
STEM, sort of more broadly,
in science, technology and
medicine, and engineering.
Why is that you think
that, for computer science
specifically,
there's actually been
an attrition in the number
of women majoring in computer
science in the last
20 years, whereas many
of the other fields
are actually rising?
RESHMA SAUJANI: Right, I
mean Steve Jobs probably
had more women on
his original team
than any tech
entrepreneur has today.
So it's the one industry
where there's actually
been a decline.
I've been giving a lot of
thought to this, I mean,
I think it has a lot
to do with culture.
And 20 years ago, it
was the Barbie, right,
who said math is tough,
let's go shopping, right.
And just 2 years ago,
I bought a t-shirt
that says, basically,
algebra sucks, in Forever 21.
So culture has still
told young girls,
math and science
are not for you.
It's OK to say that
you're not good at it,
even though you really are.
We're sending the exact wrong
messages to our young girls,
and we need to flip
it, and we need
to use pop culture to actually
inspire our young girls to get
involved in technology.
And that's what we're
doing at Girls Who Code.
We had, one of the things we
did with our gorls in Detroit
is they built-- they had their
robots dance to the Harlem
Shake, where the girls
actually did dance with them.
I mean, we're using
pop culture to get
girls excited about
computer science.
DEENA SHAKIR: Yeah.
How do you think your life
would have been different
if you had the chance to
participate in Girls Who
Code when you were
in high school?
RESHMA SAUJANI: So
much different, I mean,
I grew up with a-- both
parents of mine were engineers,
and I was terrified of math
and science growing up.
And it lasted
throughout my career,
throughout my career in
finance, throughout my career
in politics.
And even for me now it's--
so much of what I do,
when I was in politics, was
about building my website,
right, being able to
communicate on social media.
I wish that I could go in and
make a change to my website
by myself.
One of the things we've done
at Girls Who Code this year is
really mandate that
everybody on staff,
including me, has to
learn how to code.
We can't be an organization that
is promoting computer science
if all of our employees
don't also know how to code.
I mean, I really
believe that the future
is about mandatory CS education.
We need it.
DEENA SHAKIR:
Yeah, it definitely
is 21st century literacy,
and there is a big language
barrier, particularly in
tech, but increasingly
across all fields if you
can't speak the language.
RESHMA SAUJANI: Right, it's
like reading and writing.
DEENA SHAKIR: Exactly.
So we have an audience
of developers here.
How can developers
and parents and adults
who are interested in helping
to promote computer science
education for
girls help you out?
RESHMA SAUJANI: Yeah.
So through this
amazing partnership
that we have with Google,
we need more volunteers.
We have set out to
teach thousands of girls
how to code through our
Girls Who Code clubs.
And since we have a
dearth of computer science
teachers in our country, we
are reliant on volunteers,
and these volunteers
are developers.
And so anybody who
is watching this,
please sign up to
volunteer at a Girls
Who Code club, which we're
launching in New York, Detroit,
we have clubs in Boston,
and then here in California.
We had a hundred girls show up
at the San Diego Public Library
to learn how to code.
It's amazing what's happening,
and we can teach as many girls
as we have volunteer
teachers to teach.
DEENA SHAKIR: Excellent.
Now if you're successful
in your mission,
where do you see the ecosystem
at in 5 years, in 10 years?
RESHMA SAUJANI: Ah, so I think
that this is kind of a 2050
problem, and I have to
tell myself that everyday,
because many of our
successes are incremental,
and they feel like it's
slow, but it's really fast,
if that makes sense.
Again, I go back to telling
myself, in the '70s,
10% of women were
lawyers and doctors,
and now that number
is almost over 40%,
less than 40 years later.
That's where I
want to be, that's
where we want to be
as an organization.
So it's going to take
some time, and it's
going to take collaboration,
which we've also talked about.
There's so many
amazing organizations
that are in this space,
from Black Girls Code,
to Code.org, to
what GoldieBlox did
two weeks ago with their
Beastie Boy video that
inspired so many young girls.
My 10-year-old niece
is learning how
to code through Code Academy.
So we all are working
together to really solve
this tremendous,
tremendous problem, which
I think is, again, the most
important domestic issue
of our time.
DEENA SHAKIR: How can
parents specifically help
to encourage their
girls to get into CS?
RESHMA SAUJANI: Parents
are our biggest advocates.
I mean, studies show-- Girl
Scouts did a great study,
and it's girls in
STEM, and it showed
that most of the girls
that went into STEM,
it was because of a parent.
A parent had encouraged
them to go into STEM.
They had introduced them to
an engineer or a programmer.
They had opened up this
amazing world to them.
So parents are key to that.
Also, when we think about how
we get volunteers at our clubs,
it's having a parent who is
an advocate at a school who
can actually teach,
who can change
the minds of administrators,
making this an important issue.
Parents are voters.
We still don't have
enough elected officials
around the country who realize
how critical of an issue
this is.
And so we all need
to be basically
standing up, stepping up, and
saying that this is something
that we need to
push as a nation.
DEENA SHAKIR: Thank you so
much for joining us, Reshma,
and for your incredible efforts
in this organization, and all
the work that you do to get more
girls into computer science,
and helping to shape
the future of our world.
RESHMA SAUJANI:
Thank you, Deena,
and thank you for everything
that you and Google have
done to really support
our organization.
We wouldn't be able to
do this work without you.
DEENA SHAKIR: Thank
you for joining us.
We've been sitting down
with Reshma Saujani,
the founder of Girls Who Code.
For more information
on Girls Who Code,
check them out online,
girlswhocode.com.
Make sure to join in on the
fun at CSEdWeek.org, where
you can participate
in an Hour of Code
during Computer
Science Education Week.
