Finance industry Saujani worked at the law firm
Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, where she defended
securities fraud cases, and on a
pro bono basis handled asylum cases. In 2005, she joined the investment firm Carret Asset Management. In 2012, Saujani founded
Girls Who Code, a nonprofit organization which works to close the gender gap in technology. In 2015, she collected a salary of $224,913 from the organization, according to
Internal Revenue Service filings. In September 2015, Reshma Saujani was named to
Fortune Magazine's 40 Under 40 list.
Politics Saujani was on the National Finance Board for
Hillary Clinton during
Clinton's campaign for
president in 2008. Following the primaries, she was named vice-chair of the New York delegation at the
2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver. In September 2011, she was named one of
City & State's "40 under 40" for being a young influential member of New York City politics.
2010 House election Saujani challenged incumbent Democratic Representative
Carolyn Maloney for the
New York's 14th congressional district in the
2010 House elections. Saujani's previous work for and link to
Wall Street firms was seen as a liability to her credibility and acceptance by Democratic primary voters. Saujani won the support of
Jack Dorsey, co-founder and chairman of
Twitter;
Randi Zuckerberg, director of market development for
Facebook and sister of Facebook co-founder
Mark Zuckerberg; Alexis Maybank, co-founder of
Gilt Groupe; and
Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook. 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. 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. A poll commissioned in the spring of 2010 by the Maloney campaign showed Saujani trailing Maloney by more than 68 points. The same poll found Maloney to hold a favorable rating of 86%. Saujani's campaign mailed a flyer to voters implicating Maloney as one of eight House members investigated for taking donations from special interests. Maloney won the primary by receiving 81% of the vote to Saujani's 19%, winning the
Manhattan,
Queens, and
Roosevelt Island portions of the district across the board by decisive margins. Saujani received 6,231 votes, despite her campaign's expenditure of $1.3 million, spending more than $213 for every vote she received. Saujani's campaign was the first political campaign to use technology tools such as
Square, Inc. 2013 Public Advocate election Saujani ran for the role of
New York Public Advocate in
2013, coming third in the Democratic primary. Her
campaign manager in 2013 was
Michael Blake, who later served as a
New York State Assemblyman, and then ran for the Public Advocate seat himself in 2018. In January 2013, Saujani's
Wikipedia page was heavily edited to remove traces of Saujani working for Wall Street firms such as
hedge funds. Her campaign admitted to this, arguing they did it because they disagreed with the stated facts.
Girls Who Code Saujani founded
Girls Who Code in 2012 after visiting schools and becoming aware of the
gender disparity in computing while campaigning for Congress. Saujani was a speaker at the 2016
TED Conference, with her talk focusing on encouraging young girls to take risks and learn to program.
Other activities She was elected to a six-year term on the
Harvard Board of Overseers, in 2019. In January 2021, she placed advertisements in
The New York Times and
The Washington Post calling on the
Biden administration to support the passage of a "Marshall Plan for Moms" in the form of a
resolution introduced by Representative
Grace Meng and pass a series of financial relief executive actions benefiting mothers and women in the workforce. ==Books==