Reshma Saujani

My family was one of the few South Asian families in my community in Illinois. Growing up in the '80s, I remember going to the K-Mart with my mom, when she was wearing her sari, and she'd get made fun of. People would ask my mother, 'Were you born with that dot on your head?'

We need policymakers to keep an eye on gender and write policies that are explicitly designed to include underserved populations like girls in computer science courses.

I refuse to see losing as a negative. Obama lost in '83 when he ran against Bobby Rush. Hillary lost in '08. Even Lincoln lost the first election. It's a useful learning experience.

There's no better way of learning from your experiences than having an open and honest conversation with yourself about why you fell short.

In 2010, I ran for Congress in a Democratic primary against someone who had been there for 18 years. 'The Daily News' endorsed me. I was in 'The New York Times' above the fold. CNBC called this one of the hottest races in the country. On election day, votes for me never went past 19%. I lost.

I don't like to do small things. If I'm going to do something, I'm going to really make an impact.

Hillary Clinton was a hugely important mentor for me. I don't talk to her every day, but sometimes mentorship means being able to watch somebody's leadership from afar.

I'm glad I didn't know how much patience entrepreneurship required. It took some time to turn that into a strength of mine, so that would've presented an obstacle when I was younger.

For too many of our young people, that once-promised American dream has given way to an American debt burden and a bleak job market.

Part of the success of Girls Who Code is that I am a hustler. When people ask what my biggest strength is, it's that I'm shameless. I will ask people for help even when I don't know them.

I believe in the power of peer mentorship. When I learned how to ask for a raise, how to fire someone, how to deal with a board challenge - I didn't get that from mentors like Hillary Clinton. I got that from women who were my friends and who had already done the thing that I was doing.

Every day, no matter how tired my father was, he'd put me in the car and drive me to Schaumburg Public Library, and he'd read to me from books about Dr. King, Mahatma Gandhi, Eleanor Roosevelt.