Reshma Saujani wants to be the next public advocate for the City of New York.
She’s got the background, experience, agenda and passion for the job along with a clear vision in mind with a focus on immigrants, women and the working poor. Hers is a tale like that of so many New Yorkers, of pioneering firsts and success over outstanding odds. She’s making it her mission to help the underserved, especially in communities of color, realize their full potential in a changing, technology-charged world. Her four-point plan includes fighting for women and families, education, safe affordable housing and job creation.
The plight of the city’s immigrant population is a cause near to Saujani’s heart. Her parents came to the United States in 1972 after being expelled from Uganda along, with others of Indian descent, during the rule of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.
The family settled in Chicago. Though her parents were both trained engineers, they could not get jobs in their field. Her father worked as a day laborer while her mother worked in cosmetic sales. Saujani, who was born in Illinois, would go on to study at Harvard and Yale Law School, where she earned her law degree.
She arrived in New York in 2002 with more than $200,000 in student loan debt hanging over her head. She got a job at a law firm and worked in the financial services industry. That was her day job. By night she was representing people on asylum cases and community organizing. She became actively involved in the political campaign of John Kerry, founding the group “South Asians for Kerry.”
She later served on the National Finance Board for Hillary Clinton during Clinton’s presidential run in 2008.
Two years later, Saujani would throw her own hat into the political ring with a run for Congress, the first Indian-American woman to do so. She lost decidedly to incumbent Carolyn Maloney, but experience taught her some valuable lessons about failure and risk, and it was during that effort that she would really get to know the plight of underserved communities. Her mission was born.
Saujani became Bill de Blasio’s deputy public advocate, and she started by developing a scholarship program for undocumented students.
“Without a Social Security number, these students don’t have access to crucial financial aid. I could not have gone to college without a lot of financial aid,” Saujani told the AmNews. “A lot of these kids are graduating at the top of their class [in high school] and are not able to go to college. They are working as waiters and waitresses when they should be our future engineers, doctors and lawyers.”
After the City Council cut the program, Saujani created the Dream Fellowship in partnership with the New York Immigration Coalition and the public advocate’s office, which sends kids to CUNY.
Next, she commissioned the first ever report of immigrant entrepreneurs, as there had never been a study that addressed their unique needs to help grow their business. The office surveyed more than 600 businesses throughout the boroughs and found that misinformation kept many of them from applying for services.
“One of my recommendations as the next public advocate is to have Single-Stop Centers for small businesses and community-based organizations. In this economy, we need to create an army of entrepreneurs in communities of color,” she said
Saujani created a model called the Minority and Urban Entrepreneurship Program, which was featured at different colleges. The one-day workshops introduced students to successful community entrepreneurs who acted as mentors to help them grow their ideas. President Barack Obama personally thanked her for the initiative and said that her model would be used in a larger effort across the country.
“This is an example of what’s possible in the public advocate’s office when we have the right person there,” she said.
After leaving her post as the deputy public advocate, she launched “Girls Who Code” to teach girls from underserved communities about computer programming. Not only are these girls learning and thriving, they are taking that knowledge back into their homes, churches and communities.
“We have an abysmal amount of Black, Latina and Asian engineers,” Saujani said. “We have over 300,000 jobs that are open in New York state in computing. The program targets teenage girls 13 to 17, teaching them things like how to build a website, a mobile app or a business plan.”
The project was supported by companies like Twitter, which, while having a large Black user base, has very few Black engineers. “Twitter wanted to change this and invest in building a pipeline so we get more people of color and women into the fold,” she said.
“Last summer we had 20 girls. This summer we’re teaching 160. We have all these amazing Black and Latina women who are really good at this. We just haven’t invested in these young women.”
One success story was that of a 16-year-old girl from Senegal who didn’t even know how to use a computer mouse. Eight weeks later, she built a website on how to teach computer science in 32 different languages. Girls Who Code works.
Saujani also launched a partner program with the United Federation of Teachers called “Teachers Who Code.”
“We have to train an army of teachers who can really teach this subject in the schools,” she said. “We’re doing a teacher training program this summer. This is where the jobs are. When our kids are graduating from public school in New York City, they have to be learning a skill set that they can use to actually go and get a job.
“The biggest income disparity in communities of color will be that we have a technology divide that we do not know how to tackle. We’re teaching Microsoft Word in high school when we should be teaching them coding. The way that things are moving so quickly, if we do not tackle this now, we’re going to have another generation of people of color who are left behind, and I’m not going to let that happen,” she said.
Saujani wants to address the shortcoming of the public advocate’s office by reinventing it. “I think that the office’s sole purpose should be to speak for the most vulnerable in our community. That’s the working poor, women, children and immigrants.
“You have a budget of less than $2 million with a staff of around 20 to represent 8 million people. The City Council is not going to increase the budget. You need a public advocate who is going to be innovative and creative. When you have the right public advocate, you have the opportunity to really organize resources from people who have them in our city and get them to the people who need them. That’s what the next public advocate has to do.
“The first big change is being a more proactive than reactive office. We shouldn’t be just making statements on issues. It’s not just about standing up at a rally and protesting and marching. It’s about doing that and building models. It’s about highlighting issues and playing a leadership role when other people are not leading. It’s about being really clear who you’re fighting for. In a public advocate, we need somebody in the city who is just, day and night, going to think about our most vulnerable communities and the issues affecting them: jobs, education, housing and empowering women.
“We need a public advocate who is just going to straight up stand for women, parental leave affordable day care, putting pressure on corporations to put day care centers in their buildings and increased tax credits for child care–fighting for the issues that will make it possible for a single mother to put food on the table and take care of her children, and we are not doing that right now,” she continued. “The working poor includes men. We have a lot of young men getting caught up in violence because no one is looking out for them. And immigrants, we’ve got to create opportunities for them.
“I have a clear mission, and when I’m the next public advocate, I’ll have clear results,” Saujani handedly concluded.