Meet Reshma Saujani.
During her school visits while campaigning, she noticed a pattern that was hard to ignore: in most computer classrooms, there were barely any girls. The rooms were filled with boys tapping away on keyboards, while girls, equally capable, weren’t even in the picture. Reshma knew this wasn’t a lack of interest. It was a lack of encouragement. Tech simply wasn’t presented to girls as a space where they belonged.
For Reshma, this disparity felt personal. She had grown up watching her father, an engineer, use technology to build things, solve problems, and change lives. She understood the power of tech - not just as a career path, but as a tool for economic mobility, confidence, and creativity. And it bothered her that girls were shut out of it.
So in 2012, despite having no coding background herself, Reshma decided to do something about it. She launched Girls Who Code (GWC) with just 20 girls in a borrowed conference room in New York City. There were no fancy resources, no corporate partners, and no established curriculum. Just a conviction that girls deserved a seat in the tech world.
It wasn’t easy.
Schools didn’t take the program seriously. Many parents weren’t convinced that coding was a “real” career path for their daughters. And companies - while quick to praise the sentiment - hesitated to fund it. The early days were filled with skepticism, rejections, and the constant question of whether this vision would ever scale.
But Reshma persisted. She refined the program, built a curriculum from scratch, and recruited volunteer engineers to teach. Instead of focusing only on technical skills, she emphasized confidence, problem-solving, and community - elements that matter just as much as coding itself. She introduced real-world projects the girls could build, so they could see firsthand that they were not just learning, but creating.
Slowly, things began to change.
The girls were building apps, websites, and tech projects that actually worked. Many of them continued into computer science pathways. The results were unmistakable: Girls Who Code alumni were choosing computer science majors at 15 to 16 times the U.S. national average.
This shifted the perception. Companies began to realize that GWC wasn’t charity - it was a future talent pipeline. A way to address the gender gap not by talking about it, but by solving it.
As credibility grew, so did partnerships, school collaborations, and funding. What started in one borrowed room expanded across the country, and eventually, across the world. Today, Girls Who Code has reached 600,000+ girls, redefining who gets to call themselves a technologist.
All because Reshma acted. She didn’t wait for approval. She didn’t let early failures define her. She took what bothered her and turned it into a global movement - one confident girl, one line of code, and one bold step at a time.