From the Archives: Reshma Saujani: Fertility

Welcome to Sheep Pivots, the podcast where we talk with women who dared to pivot out of one career and into something new and explore how their personal lives impacted these decisions. I'm your host, Emily Tish Sussman. We originally planned to air my conversation with a good friend of mine who's a writer and an actor, but she's currently on the picket line advocating for fair wages for her

Hope You enjoy.

You may have heard of Reshmas and Johnny from her incredibly successful organization Girls Who Code, or her books Brave, Not Perfect and Pay Up.

Or maybe you heard her talk about.

Her Marshall Plan for Moms, or perhaps you even caught her commencement speech for Yale this year. I've known Reshma for over a decade, and her drive and passion for change never seems to waiver. She's a fierce advocate for women and girls and has never been one to shy away from the issue. She's an inspiration for me and for so many others, and her ambition has led to

Rashma Sa Johnny, I am a mom, the CEO of Marshal MP for Moms, and the founder of Girls Who Code.

You have had an incredibly successful career by any definition.

Were you always so ambitious?

Oh my god, Yes, I was always so ambitious, you know, as my parents' careers refugees. So I was like an Indian girl whose parents were like, you can be a doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer. So, you know, education was really stressed in our family. I also think we're a very young age. I just wanted to get out of my working class neighborhood, get out of you know, Schambre, Illinois, and really always had my sights on like making a difference in the world.

So yes, what did you think getting out looked like? Like? What did success look like?

Well, I would say I think success looked like we going to Yale Law School.

Returning to Yale for our keynote address, first, Meshie Johnny comes to share her journey and the wisdom collected along the way with the class of twenty twenty two. So without further ado, please join me in welcoming back to Yale.

This Ross Meshio Johnny, Ver.

It is an honor to be here. I want to thank you, know, like basically finding the most elite institution to accept you and validate you and getting there as fast as you could. I was going through my middle school yearbook and the reason why I was I was in a very serious fight when I was in eighth grade. I got beat up because I was a brown girl,

And so I was asking my dad do you remember her? Do you remember where she lives?

And so my dad had pulled out because you know, I was coming home all of the yearbooks. So I and it was like I kind of just relived that experience. So maybe it was part of being in a community that I didn't feel accepted, you know, maybe it was part of again just this I just always I just remember laying down on the grass looking at the clouds, just waiting for quote life to begin and for me to you know, I just never felt like I belonged

I think for a lot of people it drives them maybe inward, like not to be quite as successful as you had been. You know, you said you thought about success being going to Yell law school. Did you think about success beyond that, Like, did you envision what a life would look like?

Yeah?

Oh gosh see, I think so. You know, some of the greatest athletes in the world always had this moment where it should have happened for them.

They should have made that shot.

They should have gotten on that team, They should have been the first NBA draft pick, and they didn't. And some of the greatest athletes always carry that chip on the shoulder. So I excel from having the chip by my shoulder, you know what I mean.

So I always felt like, you.

Know, for college, I had to go to the University of Illinois because my parents couldn't afford University of Michigan, which is where I really wanted to go. You know, I never got into I finally got into Yell at law school after three times after trying, never won my congressional race or my public advocate race. So I have a lot of things right, and I wasn't gonna let motherhood be one of those things right where it was like I wanted to be a mom and I didn't

I think a lot of people don't.

Realize that, you know, as they're like reading my resume, But it's very true for me and I think for me that creates it's okay, I'm going to show you all right cool, like don't let me in like a drive one hundred percent, one hundred percent.

So you graduated Yale Law School and suddenly found yourself on Wall Street.

Yeah, New York City.

I had three hundred thousand dollars in student loan debt bush quote quote, I'm putting quotes. One.

We all thought and yeah, we're all going to the DOJ.

That didn't happen. So I guess it was Davis Polk, you know. And I'm now a corporate lawyer, you know, working in New York City. I was, I was naive. I knew I love my first martch when I was thirteen. I knew that I wanted to be a public servant. I always thought I would run for office, and I thought that maybe I would go back to Chicago and do that. But I found myself in and I loved

And it just didn't play out that way.

After her life in the fast lane, she finally decided it was time to run for office.

I'm happy to welcome Reshma Sojohnny to the program today. Her name may sound familiar to you. In twenty ten, she ran for Congress in New York City.

In twenty twelve, I became an upstart in a New York City congressional race. I swore I was going to win. I had the endorsement from the New York Daily News, the Wall Street Journals snapped pictures of me on election day, and CNBC called it one of the hottest races in the country. I mean, luck with a lot of us, right, we were actively involved in politics, like Emily's List, the DNC, we were organizing already. So you know, I'm thirty three

When Reshma decided to run for office, it was twenty ten, right on the heels of the two thousand and eight election of President Barack Obama and the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the country as a whole felt uneasy with change.

I mean, I remember Geraldine Ferraro called my finance director and was like, she can't run. I mean, I had all these women who I admired, who were just like not happy about it. I mean, I remember I went up to Glorious Tetum and she's like, why are you doing that?

And that's where I read a book after that.

You know, women don't wait line, because it was I was constantly told it's not your turn, weight in line, it's not your turn.

And here I was again this brown girl, you know.

It's daughter of refugees, who supposed to represent everything that we were talking about doing in this country, and I was constantly silenced. But then we had this group of like young up and comers who were like, go, go go. I mean, John Legend did a concert for me, you know, Jack Dorsey hosted an event for me, And at that time, both of them were just kind of building in their career, and I think we all saw the same thing in

So we've alluded to it. You did not win the national not even closed crushed housed.

In twenty ten, she ran for cons in New York City but didn't win. In twenty thirteen, she ran in the Democratic primary for Public Advocate but lost in the crowded field that included Letitia James and Daniel Squadron.

Really bad.

I was broke, I was humiliated. I felt ashamed.

People felt sorry for me, and I'm one of those people I hate when people feel sorry for me. But on election day, the polls were right and I only got nineteen percent of the vote, and the same papers that said I was a rising political star now said I wasted one point three million dollars on six thousand, three hundred and twenty one votes.

Don't do the math. It was humiliating.

It was not even closed, it was and it was really sad because I really thought I was going to win.

You know, really, I really did, because this is what happens.

It's like you're on in the subway stop and people like I've thought it for you, and finally it feels like everyone, Wow, everyone's voting for me, like this is happening. And I just thought I could meet every hand and shake every voter, and I just didn't realize.

And We've got a lot of attention, a lot of press.

I'd raised more than enough money, but you just can't beat the machine, especially in New York City. It's really hard. But I also made a lot of mistakes. I was so not comfortable being a candidate. It was just the way I dressed, like the what I said, and I just wasn't. It wasn't the same. I wasn't the same person I am today, And so that was a very it was a really amazing experience because I learned so much.

I feel like, listening to you talk about it now, people will be surprised to find out the next thing you did was run for off is again.

Yes, because that's what happens, right when you're like because I you know, afterwards, I'm crushed, but I'm not crush crushed, like I'm like, okay, like I did that wrong. I did that wrong. I wouldn't have hired that person. I would have done this. I can do it again. Now I know how to win and run again. I lose again that they did in I run.

Again, I list again.

And let me tell you the first time I ran, I didn't cry on election day, and I would argue that in many ways, I got over it pretty quickly because I was ready for the next race. I had like like an ambitious type a woman. I was like, okay, I know what I did wrong, and now I know what to write.

And then on my second.

Race, I was like, oh gosh, they just don't want me. They just don't want to vote for me. Because I had run a perfect campaign. I had no regrets. I was me just like I am now. I you know, had understood, you know, I knew who to hire, who not to hire. I knew who was lying to me, who wasn't lying to me, and they just didn't vote for me. And that was just crushing because it was literally, since I was thirteen, all I've wanted to do is

Also, I had a lot of you know, I had a miscarriage right in the beginning of it. So there was just a lot.

There's a lot that happened in a lot of heart that I had put into it. And so I think it was just I think, yeah, I was devastating. It was really devastating. It's still very devastating in some ways. The second one was much harder, much harder. Maybe I got more votes. I got more votes, you know, I was again, had no regrets. It didn't one would argue in many ways it helped my career afterwards.

I didn't have a lot of enemies.

I had people who kind of supported me afterwards, but it was a little bit like, oh, this might not happen for me in this lifetime.

So you mentioned that you had been pregnant and then lost that pregnancy on that race, was running for office lining up with you thinking about beginning of family, Yeah, because.

I mean I writ about this, I thought it was going to be like the you know, Rose the Rivet are pregnant on the campaign trail, and the vision of it was just so perfect, and so it just yeah, it was never again. I had also lined everything up that I thought the baby, if I had a baby, you know, in this moment, it would just be, you know again part of the story, not not getting in the way of it.

She'd always seen herself as a mom, but she was also socialized to believe that being a mom needed to be done in secret.

I always wanted to be a mom. I like lived with stuffed animals all surrounded around me. I was obsessed with my cabbage patch kid doll. I loved babies, always, always, always, always desperately wanted to.

Be a mom.

I got pregnant while I'm like, you know again, about to launch my campaign and I'm and get married.

Oh my god, and I'm like this is great.

I'm not like, oh shit, you know, this is not good, this is not good timing. I was not I was not worried about it. I was actually excited about it.

You know, being a candidate is physically very grueling, very grueling. Was it something that you took into consideration once you found out you were pregnant?

No, I was just like naive and you know, listen, you know, and then I, you know, miscarried within twelve or thirteen weeks, So the dream was very small, you know what I mean.

It didn't it didn't last long enough.

But I think that I yeah, no, I think I think I thought we could all handle it.

But also it's because like listen.

I think, I think I've learned so much about the way people's bodies have to be built in order to carry pregnancies and carrie, you know, whatever they're doing physically, Like my curguit, Amber is just physically like meant, her body is just so she can be you know, an ear nurse and be on her feet as she was when she carried Si all night long and with the baby. And she's good, right, I never could do that, even when I was pretty much on bed rest by the time I headshot.

You know, did it change your vision of yourself as the candidate? Did you think that you could still run? I mean, you clearly kept running, But did you mean after I miscarried? Yeah, did it change your vision of yourself in the role?

You know?

I think it did.

I think in many ways it started what became a bad habit of being able to compartmentalize pregnancy loss with what was happening in my life, and so it became the beginning of many miscarriages that happened alongside many professional moments.

The irony of the situation could not be more stark. Reshma did her TED talk titled Teach Girl's Bravery not Perfection. It's a powerful speech, but in contrast to her personal story, it's heartbreaking. The image of the girl boss Reshma had carefully constructed in her head slowly began to fracture.

No one talked about it, so I didn't really have anyone to talk to about it. No one said to me, hey, you probably shouldn't go make that speech after you just walked out of the die's office, and I didn't have a heartbeat, because I think there's so much.

Shame and silence around.

It's so amazing today that we even talk about getting days off to grieve once you have a miscarriage. That was not at all part of even the conversation or

And then I was like, okay, but I didn't.

You know, it took me a while to for it emotionally to break me in the way that it should have very early on. And you know, look I don't think I had someone. It's my fault because I never really I never really told anybody that I was. In my closest friends, I wasn't like I'm going through all this, it would just make it didn't.

Work out, and okay, what do we having for dinner? But you kept driving professionally, I mean even through this time. After you lost that public advocate race, you went on to build this incredible nonprofit, Girls Who Code.

Yeah yeah, I mean I lose the race, and I'm like, okay, then I'm going to show you. You're not going to lect me to be public advocate to teach you know, hundreds of thousands of millions of New York City pulic school kids to code. Then I'm going to make Girls who Could. At that time, we were really small, you know, we taught like a handful of girls. I'm going to make Girls who Code the largest nonprofit.

In the world, teaches millions of girls. And I put my head down and I didn't.

Girls who Code went on to serve over five hundred thousand girls, women and non binary students, creating one of the largest pipelines for future females and engineering. What many don't know is that before she hit the ground running with Girls Who Code, she had the opportunity to move into a senior position in the New York City Mayor's office. This was finally her opportunity to fulfill her lifetime goal of working in public service that she had dreamed of.

Yeah.

No, I didn't want to do that. I wanted to build, you know, I really was. I really wanted to build the organization. And I put my head down, you know, for years and just learned how to be a CEO, worked and having a baby, you know, and just just grinded every single day.

Twenty twelve started it, thirty thousand plus graduates in the program.

Is it true that you didn't know how to code when you started it? Now I'm like the weirdest person to start Girls Who Code.

Girls Who Code has proven time and time again that we're about more than just teaching girls and non binary students how to code. We are growing a movement of over four hundred and fifty thousand students served now and counting. Founder of CEO of Girls Who Code, Thank you, thank you, thank you for.

But through it all, Reshmus still continued to struggle with her fertility.

So yeah, I would I would go, I'd have a miscarriage and then that I'd be on stage with introducing Obama, Smile, Small, Spell. You know, I would have another risk caarriage and then I would be there. I was in Utah with six of our girls Smile, Spell, Spell, and so I don't think that the closest my even my team, you know, never really knew kind of the again, my private hell

And that no one ever said no, that's not right.

Did you when you were envisioning being successful and getting out and establishing yourself, was it part of the vision, Like.

How did you envision?

No?

No, I feel like I had built everything around motherhood, not getting my way of my ambition of the thing that I wanted to achieve, and I never really loved the identity.

Like I remember, you know you can appreciate this, like you know, girls of Code.

After become mom my team's like, great, you should be like one of those cool mode bloggers.

And I'm like, no fucking way, no, right. I wouldn't even put on a pair of mom jeans.

I was like, I am not, that's not my identity, because I think that there was a lot of like being a mom is not sexy, not cool, was not respected. Right, It's the way many people, like many people have always hid that piece of their identy, at least we've been taught that as young women, right to hide that piece of your identity. And so I think it was something I desperately wanted, but I also kind of wanted to hide.

So did your vision of yourself and your professional self and your professional ambition. Do you think that your vision of yourself and where you were growing changed once you did have your first son?

Yes, well, because then I realized, oh my god, like you know, because I was just I was just angry, and for most of that time, you know, it's like why is this happening to me, Angry that seemed like it was so much easier for other women, you know, Angry that like like this wasn't supposed to be my story, Angry that I never got to really enjoy pregnancy in the entire journey, and.

Just angry that I just I couldn't ever really share.

And there were times too that I would try to share it when a reporter was interviewing me about, like, you know whatever, writing a profile, and they'd never write.

About it, never write about your anger.

They'd never write about when they say, what's your biggest struggle that you've ever had? And I was like, well, it's been really hard having you know, a baby, and I've had a miscaracter too. Never write about that. They never probed about that. Now that's shifted, but I tried, you know, to kind of put it out there a little bit.

Still, despite the countless mommy blogs, influencers, and podcasts, the conversations around getting pregnant, miscarriages, and surrogacy are seen as uncomfortable to talk about.

It's like you rather tell somebody you have cancer than say that you had a miscarriage. People don't know how to react, especially back then, when someone tells you that and it's really it makes them feel really, really uncomfortable. And I think it goes back to the fact that we have this archetype that it's so easy to get to get pregnant and to keep a baby, and so it's almost like, way, oh, what's wrong.

With you that you couldn't do that?

So I think after I had Sean, I think I was able to look back and be like, oh, whoa, there was a lot and to start to unravel that with my therapist, you know, with family, with friends, you know, and say, you know, I was not dealing with my mental health issues. You know that I was facing from

After years of fertility treatments, IVF and more, she decided she wanted to try one last time.

At this time now I'm forty three. I'm forty three. I'm forty three, and it's my last shot, you know, to get those embryos right. And my doctor is amazing. And so I said to my husband, I was I was going to be done. And then we meet this couple and this woman says, essentially like my one regret is that I just didn't try one more time. And I basically, you know, come back and I, you know, say to my husband and my doctor, I want to try again. And they're like, you just can't because at

Had that been something you'd ever considered before?

No, Because superpower Raschma wanted to basically show everybody that I could do it, you know, myself more than anybody. But then I was like, okay, I will not try to put my body through this anymore and sacrifice my life. And I will and of course do my IVF cycle and at forty three I get these four beautiful, healthy embryos,

So your new book pay Up, Yeah, really gets to the heart of this. It's not we can't grind our way out of it.

Yeah, we can't grind our way out of it. And the fact that, like, we don't have to hide from our death. I mean, I wanted so desperately to be a mother, and then when I was a mother, I let culture take that away from me. I let workplaces take that away from me. I let the government basically say you've got no support for doing that.

I want to pause here because I think it's important to highlight this pivot. I think it's a moment that many of us have been slowly realizing that we just can't have it all, And even for someone like Reshma, who's such a fierce advocate for women, it took years for her to fully understand this, and despite the gut wrenching loss of each pregnancy, she still felt it necessary to push further and harder in her career until she broke.

And I think the whole point is where it's being given a false choice and that we all think it's just like I thought it was my personal problem that I had to basically fix and solve and I didn't need any support or help from anybody. I was wrong here. I think so many moms think, well, it's my problem. If I'm not able to balance my job and my

What do I do?

I don't have confidence? What should I do? And it's like, no, no, no, there's nothing wrong with you. There's something wrong with the system, with the structure. And so it's kind of wild because we need to have a radically different We need to have a radically different conversation than we are having, you know, in workplaces in government, which is all about the fact of why do we make it so damn hard for working women and parents?

We really haven't reconciled those two personalities that you were saying, the two archetypes.

Of the working woman and the mom. We don't know how to do it.

And one of the mentors that I know that you have among the people that you mentioned is Secretary Hillary Clinton, who in many ways ended up embodying or taking on the anger that a lot of women who didn't feel like they had choices, they projected it on to her. Yeap, what are some of the conversations you have with her around the changing.

The culture that you've written about in Pay Up?

Yeah, I mean, I think in many ways it's like they she struggled with that, and I think she the way she led as a mother and a leader is still the example for us. She never tried. She never hid Chelsea. She really not, you know what I mean, if you really think about it, she never hit Chelsea, and she never hid being a mom. If you look at her Twitter profile or her Instagram profile, the first

Like so many other women, Reshma was crushed by the pandemic. After her long struggle with infertility, she finally had the baby through surrogacy, and then COVID hit like a ton of bricks.

The tame pandemic has created a significant shift in the workforce. We've talked about it a lot, the great resignation, differing childcare needs, work from home flexibility. Wow. A new survey reported here first by NBC News this morning, is showing the specific impact on women and the fact that working women are experiencing a burnout epidemics.

I mean, COVID crushed me like COVID crushed me. I you know, started the pandemic with girls credits, you know, Super Bowl ad. I was having my newborn baby, you know, and then COVID came around and now here I am locked in the house my partner. I'm doing all the dishes and the laundry. I'm taking care of a newborn. I'm homeschooling, you know, a seven year old. I'm running the largest women and girls nonprofit in the world, and that's almost on the brink of potentially being shut down.

This has really been your mission. You have for so long, said young women and girls. You should be brave, you should lean in, you should work harder. You wrote a best selling book about this. Brave not perfect, of course, your ted talk. We've all watched it. But now you're saying pandemic major rethink this.

Yeah, I mean, for the past decade, I told girls to barnstorm the corner office, lean in, real hard, girl, boss your way to the top.

And I was wrong.

It was so easy for many of us to fall into this big lie, and even easier to feel guilt when things didn't pan out as we were promised. Rushma saw the problem and the guilt being play based on women individually, and she now argues that the problem is systemic. Her work now centers around this fight for culture change

I live life, and I don't feel I used to feel guilty about living life.

You know what I'm talking about it.

I know you're shaking your eyes, yes, yes, yes, And it's like and it's funny because I used to always look at my husband, who is equally ambitious, equally successful, and he never did, and a lot of men don't, but we do as women, and so I don't want to live like that anymore.

I'm not living like that anymore, Reshma. Unfortunately were out of time. I could stay here literally all day and talk to you. This has been inspiring, informative, fun, maybe even dare I say thank you so much for joining us all.

Thank you.

Reshma is still working on advocating for mothers through her organization, The Marshall Plan for Moms and with her book Pay Up. The Marshall Plan for Moms advocates for women's unpaid labor in the home and aims to transform our workplaces, government, and our culture to enable moms to thrive. Thank you for listening to this episode of she Pivots, where I talk with women about how their experiences and significant personal