BRAVE NOT PERFECT. Video Transcript

Transcription

1 A CONVERSATION WITH RESHMA SAUJANI, FOUNDER & CEO-GIRLS WHO CODE, AND PAUL DAUGHERTY, CHIEF TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION OFFICER, ACCENTURE Video Transcript Paul: This is really exciting to me. Happy that the rest of you can join in a conversation that I'm really excited to have with Reshma who really is a hero of...a friend, a hero of mine, and somebody who really inspires me. And for those of you don't know a lot about Reshma you'll see why as we talk more during this discussion. Reshma: I feel the same way about you, Paul. Paul: OK, we'll wrap up there, thank you! We're here at International Women's Day, all about getting to equal, equality equals innovation, a lot of themes we are talking about today so getting into your views on some of that as we go. I want to say a little bit about what you've done though and then we'll talk more about it as you go. So Reshma is the founder of Girls Who Code, an amazing organization, I have to look at the numbers to make sure that I get them right. 185,000 girls served through the all the programs. 13,000 alumni now, 20 of them who work at Accenture; we're getting more and more. And a fantastic organization that is really making a real impact on closing the gender gap which is what you started, so that's fantastic, real amazing impact. We're going to talk a bit more about that. Reshma also wrote a number of books; she wrote a book called, the first book was "Girls Who Code: Learn to Code and Change the World. Also, "Women Who Don't Wait in Line" and now, "Brave not Perfect" which is what we'll spend more time talking about today. So, first question, let's start with "Brave not Perfect" and we'll get into Girls who Code and some other things, and you know this started with a TED talk that you did. Four million views I think, probably more than that now four million when I checked a while ago, that got into this brave not perfect idea. Can you talk about the book a little bit; why you wrote it; what the real message is?

2 Reshma: Yes, so I do this TED talk and it just hits a nerve. And the thesis of the talk in many ways was that, you know, from a young age we raise our boys to like crawl to the top of the monkey bars and just like jump. And with our girls we're like, "Careful honey, don't swing too high. You know, "Oh Sweetie, your dress is dirty, let me go to the diaper bag and clean you up. Did you take that toy away from somebody? Give it back." So, we are constantly protecting and coddling our girls we're literally wrapping them up with bubble wrap. And then the older they get, they get addicted to perfection and they start giving up before they even try. So, studies will show that when women declare a major in college, if they get a B instead of an A in the introductory level course, they drop out. Whereas boys are like I got a B? That s amazing! [LAUGH] And so then perfectionism is like it s doing two things one, it s making us unhappy. Women are twice as likely to be depressed than men. And secondly, we're waiting to be perfect to lead and it's why you see this leadership gap in Silicon Valley, on Main Street, you know, on Wall Street, everywhere you look, right, we are not realizing our fullest potential. Paul: You talk about a new model for raising girls, to teach them to be brave not perfect, can you get a little bit into, you know, what you talk about in the book? Reshma: Like, throw out your parenting books, seriously, throw out your parenting books because in many ways what we've done is we thought we had to raise our girls be confident. So, if we put them into soccer and they didn't do well, we pulled them out and we put them into dance or swimming. And in helping them "quote" become confident, we killed their resilience. They didn't know what it's like to just be mediocre, to just get a B, to struggle with challenge.

3 And this has really hurt them when they get into the workforce and later in life. Carol Dweck has amazing line that, you know, if life were one long grade school, girls would rule the world. But it's not. And in the real world, it's bravery that matters. Paul: Some of the things that caught me when I read the book, you have these myths you talk about, and you have a, one of the myths is: perfection is excellence. Another is failure is not an option, you know, some of the myths you talk about that shape the experience we have as we raise our daughters. I was interested in another connection you made where you've also said coding teaches you failure, you make the connection to Girls Who Code in this. What connection do you see there between the work you've done at Girls Who Code and Brave not Perfect? Reshma: I mean, it's really, I think it's like in teaching girls to code is really where I saw this. And so, and I tell this story my TED talk which is like, you know, when girls come to us, most of them have never learned how to code before. But they're probably coming in with some assumptions about what it means to be a coder: you got to be super smart, you know, you got to be mathematically or scientifically inclined. And so, every teacher started telling me the same story which is that when girls were first learning how to code, they'd call the teacher over and they'd say I don't know what code to write. And the teacher would look at her screen and she'd see a blank text editor. So [COUGH] she didn't know any better, she thought, well this student just spent 20 minutes just staring at the screen. But when the teacher presses undo a few times, she saw that her student actually wrote code but then deleted it. So instead of saying hey I tried this, it's not working, can you show me? Nothing at all. So, it's this idea of perfection or bust.

4 Paul: There's a story that, I'll just tell it real quickly, when I attended the summer immersion program graduation for one of our programs in Chicago- the parents are there with the kids when they graduate from these summer immersion programs- a mother came over to me almost in tears just talking about the effect that the program had in her daughter. Her daughter was very shy, had an older brother who was a gamer, who kind of bullied her a bit about how, you know, she wasn't smart et cetera. And when her brother, older brother, saw that she could code, it transformed their relationship, gave her confidence, and just talk about the dynamics, the whole family dynamics have improved because the confidence the girl got. So that's just the, so that emotion. Reshma: Because you, it's about doing something that you think you can't do. Right and then being able to create, innovate and then taking that and say well there's other things I think that I can't do, let me try that again, let me try that like that again, let me try that like that again. Paul: Yeah, yeah, well, another question, getting into something that was in the news this week. Reshma: Yes. And some of you follow Reshma's blog earlier this week. Reshma: My Twitter fight. [APPLAUSE] Paul: Talk about brave not perfect, talk about brave, I think you're pretty perfect. Reshma: Very brave.

5 Paul: So, talk a little bit about that. One of the- where is it- in the blog you wrote, these omissions are not just an oversight- and this is the omission of Girls who Code from the 60 Minutes segment on closing the gender gap, which is kind of, you know, mind boggling. These omissions aren't just an oversight, they're negligent, they're sexist, they have consequences for efforts to close the gender gap in tech and they're part of a long history of erasing the contributions of women in technology. That's a pretty powerful statement and unpack that a little bit; talk about that. Reshma: You know, we know that the foundational folks that were in computer science were women. The world's first programmer was Ada Lovelace. Right, Katherine Johnson is pretty much the reason why we had a man on the moon. And these women were all erased from their contributions even when they were happening until recently and now we've started talking about them. And the impact on this is that most girls think that a programmer is like a dude in a hoodie sitting in a basement somewhere drinking a Red Bull, right, and they just don't think that there are any women as part of them. So, it matters what you see on television; it matters that the stories that we tell. Watch the segment; we're not in it; and [UNKNOWN] 's not in it; Black Girls Code's not in it like the list goes on and on. They use our words and our terms but do not cite us, so I'm baffled because I'm like this is 2019, how did this... how did can you think that that's OK? And so, I write a powerful medium post- it goes viral, women, men, everybody is mad. And so, I also am like, you know, because sometimes I'm like, "Am I crazy- maybe I'm crazy" and like I'm going to write this post and people are going to be like, "Yeah, no, that's totally normal to do that", but I was like oh no, I'm not crazy. Right? I am not crazy; this is wrong, and it s part of again a larger systematic problem that we re erasing our contributions out of history.

6 And the bigger thing that made me realize because this has been, I'm going to say this, and you heard it here, is that, you know, for a while we have been fighting to get into the boys' club. We have been fighting to justify why we should be in the boys' club but now they're trying to be president of our club. [LAUGH] Like the patriarchy can only go so far but this is crazy, right? This is like crazy. [APPLAUSE] And so like, anyway, so that is another thing that I'm just calling it out here that like we need to start watching out for because it's coming. And I saw it by this segment because, again, I have to feel like they know better. Paul: Maybe talk a little bit more about the reaction and what did what can we do to get ahead of that? Reshma: It was beautiful. Listen, talk about sisterhood. Every single woman from all of us organizations, we came together. We wrote op-eds together. We share information together because the point of this is, and this is the more important point, it's dangerous to say that there are not enough of us. It's dangerous to say we'll just teach them at 3rd grade and it will be OK. Because we know, I got 13,000 Girls Who Code alumni that are on college campuses right now majoring in computer science. And every day I get an from one of them at MIT, 4.0 at Stanford, Miss Saujani, I just applied to said company and I didn't get an interview. Can you help me? So, to say that these companies are not broken, that there isn't sexism and racism that we need to root out, is just false. So, we can't keep pretending that we can't find them or we're never solving this problem. And so, it's dangerous to talk about it this way, and we have done so much work at Girls Who Code, we ve done work together - we have another report coming out together which is again going to say, look, access alone is not enough.

7 It is not enough just to provide a computer science class. And, you know, we see this happening... Lucy is doing computer science class at college, right? Paul: Yeah, yeah, my daughter. Reshma: But, you know, talk to any woman that's going through a C.S. degree on college campuses and they'll tell you about their experience. It's broken, you know, it's broken, and it needs to be fixed and we have to talk about it. Paul: Yep, no, I agree, and I think uh, thanks for all you re doing on that, and I think the interest... Reshma: We're doing on that, we're doing on that. Paul: We're doing that. Let's kind of talk about why this is, why this is important to organizations, so our theme here is equality equals innovation. Diversity, inclusion is good, I view diversity included as an enabler, but equality is the outcome that we're trying to get to, in the way we create the culture. Part of the conviction we have around that is that that's how you get it, you know, it's the right thing to do, but that's how you get innovation is by through it an environment, a culture of equality that you build a company. So, its mind boggling that companies aren't picking up the girls you have. But the other connection to this is Girls Who Code was just named by Fast Company, the number one most innovative nonprofit in the world... [APPLAUSE] the number one most innovative nonprofit in the world. So, talk, maybe talk about that, and the bridge to, you know, equality, innovation and, why do you think you were you recognized that way and have that innovation.

8 Reshma: You just have to have diverse people and thinkers around the table to come up with the most diverse solutions. As I've been writing and talking about bravery I have realized that I sometimes worry that I was much braver at 20 than at 40...that the older I became, the more established I became, the more awards that I won, the harder it was- we had much more on the line. And it's the same thing as Girls Who Code, like, we're often like, oof, like can we do that now? And so, I push the organization and my team pushes the organization to make sure that we're still kind of scrappy Girls Who Code, right? I push myself to make sure... Paul: I can attest to just the fact you're scrappy based on [INAUDIBLE]. Reshma: And so, it's harder to take those risks and I think that, but at the same time when you don't do that, it's like you are literally like, you're not as happy. Paul: Yeah, it all comes back to bravery, and I think that's such a great word you chose. I'm going to read a paragraph that literally gave me the chills when I read it in your book, so I'll just read this for you what real quickly. So, listen to this: most of all bravery sets us free. It gives us the power to claim our voice and to leave behind what makes us unhappy and go for what sparks in our souls. It allows us to see that our gloriously messy, flawed, real selves are, in fact, the true definition of perfection. I think that's just amazing, just gives me the chance to read it again, [APPLAUSE] and you know, to connect to that, that's the call for bravery and how it empowers us, and you've been calling for a bravery revolution. What does that mean and how do we do that? Reshma; You know, I feel like we are seeing bravery on the biggest stage: six women running for president, powerful men taken down by "Me Too", but I want every day bravery.

9 Most of us some point this week been walking down the street, someone bumped into you and you said, "I'm sorry." And then you went to your desk and you're pissed off at yourself about it, right, and you let it sit there, sit, sit, sit. Probably a friend this week asked you to babysit their cat, you didn't have time, but didn't want to say no, so you said yes. Maybe like me, like I, after I had my son, Sean, I could not lose the baby weight. And I knew that the best time to go to the gym was at 7:30 but that's when my dog, Stanley, wanted to go out, and my baby was waking up. And it was the worst time for my family, but the best time for me. I didn't have the courage to do something for myself. And so, I'm calling for that kind of bravery, right, the bravery to do the things that you want to do for you. The bravery to not silence yourself, right, when something happens in your home or your workplace, the bravery to really find your truth and find your joy. And you know we live in New York City, we're all like drinking our green juice and, you know, not eating gluten, and like, you know, not eating our dairy, we're constantly obsessed with our bodies- we are, right? But we need to think about our minds. What are we doing to activate our minds and to work on ourselves? Our minds, beyond meditation, and I think brave not perfect is a practice. It is a practice that I lay out of things you can do to start rewiring yourself for bravery and unlearning imperfection. Paul: Can you talk a little bit more about that? You talk about bravery challenges and that's what's really impactful, and why the book is fantastic because it's ways to do it; it's not just saying go do it. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Reshma: So, the first thing is you cannot be brave if you're tired, you cannot be brave if you are tired. We need to sleep. We need to go for a walk.

10 We need to rest. We need to stop putting off those doctor's appointments that we put off- all of us put offbecause we think it's too selfish. Like, we have to take care of ourselves because that's the only way are we going to be brave. Second thing is like I have, you know, I think you need to practice imperfection. So, I want everybody in this room to send an with a typo in it, yes [LAUGH]. No emojis, no exclamation point, just say what you want to say, just say what you want to say. And here's the thing, nothing's going to happen, because we go very quickly from, I made a typo to I'm stupid, I'm dumb, I'm going to get fired, all in about 20 seconds, right. And it's not going to happen. And so, practice imperfection. The other thing, I feel like you'll appreciate this, is this idea of, like, doing something you suck at. Every man I know does something he sucks at: golf, tennis, basketball, fantasy football Paul: Dancing... Reshma: Dancing, you know, it's true! You're not good at it but you enjoy it, right. We don't have things like that. Most you all won't even go to a Soul Cycle class till you're in shape like the point of going to a fitness class is to get in shape, right? So, here's the thing, like, if you don't know how to do anything unless it is perfect how can you take risks in your career and in your life? You need to feel what it's like to feel mediocre. You know, there is something about, right, like if you have been kind of going through your life with a B plus, with a B or a C, you know, when you get into the workplace and someone offers you a chance to do something you don't know how to do, you're like, sure, I'll do it. And we see that happen all the time with our male colleagues, we see that happen all the time.

11 Paul: Yep, absolutely, so you kind of look at the whole trajectory here: Brave not Perfect, Girls Who Code, you started as a lawyer and an investment banker, you come a long way from, you know, investment banking where does it go next? Clearly, you have a following- the people- you're a role model to so many. The messages - the gender gap is something you're making a big impact on. Maybe, just, where do you see this all going? Reshma: Oh god, I don't know, I will say this: I'm living my best life, like this week was like, I'm living my best life. Because I'm telling my truth, and I'm fighting for my organization, I'm fighting for my girls, right. And I feel blessed that as an organization we got to the place where it actually matters what we think and what we say. Secondly is like I really believe in like, you know, there's so much, there's so much, these structures that have been built- racism, sexism, patriarchythey've gotten us here, right, they've gotten us to this place where we question every little thing that we do and we let that voice in our head get so loud. And we're in this moment too where I, as a woman, feel so powerful, don't you? I feel so powerful - like there is an opportunity for me to take my own power into my own hands. And so, this moment for us to really look within, and to think about how we can work on ourselves and change this, you know, change the way that we've been socialized, you know to take in our power back... I think is really amazing and to also, you know, so many of the women's books that have come before, it's like how to get a promotion... like don't read this book to get a promotion. Read this book because you want to find joy.

12 You know, so many of us have things that we want to do, dreams that we had- whether to start a business or maybe to not have that second childand we just we didn't do them. Or we let someone talk ourselves out of it... and we let our ideas die on the vine, and then we see other people doing the very thing that we told ourselves we cannot do. And we are left with so much regret and envy, and it eats us up inside. So, if each of us go to that place, go to the place where you feel the most regret and envy, that's where you need to live...that's where you need to be, and I say this in my full truth. Look, I ran for office twice. I lost twice. I had this awesome opportunity to invite my friend, AOC, Alexandria Ocasio, to come and meet our girls. And it was so joyful to be there with her because even though it didn't work out for me - I did that 10 years ago and it didn't work out for me - at least I tried. And it was so joyful to be there with her because even though it didn't work out for me- I did that 10 years ago and it didn't work out for me. At least I tried. And had I never tried I wouldn't be able to sit there with her. I wouldn't be able to watch CNN, but I don't have any regrets because I least I tried. Paul: And again, back to the bravery point, it's...you just think about the potential that you unleash just by a different mindset and thinking, it's unbelievable, individually, collectively, you know, for organizations as well. Maybe for those in the room here, they're all going to read your book - they all have it, so they're all going to read it. Those watching as well, you know, if you're thinking about people at companies like Accenture, or other companies listening, you know...what's your advice to women? Reshma: Yeah. Paul: give to women, and then what's the advice for the rest of us? Reshma: I think my [LAUGH] obviously my advice to women is to live your life brave not perfect.

13 Try to exercise courage and bravery, you know, in your personal space and in your professional space. And push yourself to do it, really think about it, and go there. Like I fall on and off the bravery wagon but I'm reflective on my choices and my decisions and sometimes we don't like to go in because we don't like what we're going to see. Go in. And I think for the others, i.e.; the men in the room, you know my friend, Tarana Burke, made this point about, you know, after "Me Too" you realize how courageous...that courage was contagious. That one woman after one woman after one woman touch each other, but the question is: Can courage be contagious for men? One of the best things that happened last year was I went and spoke at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Now RIT had gone from 18 percent women in their C.S. department to like 30 percent in like 3 years alone. And I went spoke to the Women in Computing group and in this room are these three dudes in the back, and I'm like who are you. And they're like we're the men who support the Women in Computing group - they have formed a club. And their job was to support women and to be the ones to speak up when microaggressions are made because, you know what, I'm tired. I'm tired of fighting and I'm sure all of you are tired of fighting too. But so many of our wonderful, incredible men in our lives may be in a place where something is said that makes them feel uncomfortable too, and then they go home, and they complain to us about it but they don t say anything. And so maybe, I realized, you don t have the words, and so how do we in organizations actually make courage contagious for men too? And have you be part of this because I also believe that it s never been a better time to be a woman because I have never seen so many incredible men who are in solidarity with us, who want the same world that we want too.

14 We ve never had this before. Like, I love this man and I don't say this because we're just standing here right now, but I love Paul. And Paul is as genuine as - he chased me, because he saw what was happening with Lucy, right, in high school and said, "You know I care about this issue" and he made mountains move here at Accenture. And he supports my leadership all the time. And you know he is a sister, he is in sisterhood with me. I consider him part of my sisterhood [LAUGH] I do, I do, I consider him part of my sisterhood [LAUGH]. [APPLAUSE] It's true, it's true. And you're special but you're not so special, in that what I mean is that there are other "Paul Daugherty s at Accenture and in every single organization and I think that they got to get on board. You got to a look at him, and you got to a role model him, and get on board and ask yourself: what am I doing every day for gender equity - what am I doing every day to stand in solidarity with my sisters and to lift them up? Paul: That's amazing- well, so, we got to wrap up there, so for everybody in the room, everybody listening, support Girls Who Code. Buy "Brave not Perfect", go out and buy it now, and be brave not perfect- and big round of applause for Reshma. Reshma: Thank you, thank you guys [APPLAUSE] thank you.