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.