Not Everyone Can Afford a Job They Love
Why the founder of Girls Who Code stayed in a role she hated before leaving the private sector
Every so often, Reshma Saujani, the founder of Girls Who Code, will have a conversation with her 3-year-old son in which he’ll ask her why she has to go to work. Saujani loves her job and wants to ensure that her son has a good relationship to work. “Mommy’s helping girls,” she tells him.
Saujani wasn’t always helping girls. Having taken on around $300,000 of student-loan debt to attend Yale Law School, Saujani felt stuck in a private-sector role because it allowed her to make enough money to pay off part of her loans. Her job in finance made her miserable and depressed, but it also made it possible for her to help her family pay their mortgage. Her parents had come to the United States as
