‘There Were a Lot of People

‘There were a lot of people who didn’t want to see me on TV’

Guts, gumption and good guides. That’s how Pakistani American broadcast journalist Hena Doba hit the big time

ABHIJIT MASIH

When she is not in the studio reading the news off the teleprompter she is in the boxing ring, punching above her weight, as she has always done in life. Going toe-to-toe against norms, stereotypes and biases, shattering many barriers, one step, one punch at a time.

Hena Doba is a successful and popular face on TV. Formerly with CBS News in New York, she currently is a host at Cheddar News, where she anchors multiple shows. As a versatile journalist with over 15 years of experience, she has been a tremendous inspiration for many South Asian and Muslim women who look up to her and aim to be like her.

For a woman of color to break into an unconventional domain and to be the first Pakistani American Muslim woman to be on television in the US was riddled with difficulties and compromises. The biggest among them, the pressure to change her name to be more acceptable on air. Thus, she chose Daniels over her family name Zulfiqar

PHOTO CREDIT : SHARMEEN CHAUDHARY

“I COULD NEVER TELL MY PARENTS I WANTED TO BE ON TV. LUCKILY RIGHT AFTER GRADUATION, I GOT A PRODUCER’S JOB IN WATERTOWN, NY. SO MY PARENTS COULDN’T EVEN SAY ANYTHING, BECAUSE THE DAY AFTER GRADUATION, I HAD A JOB.”

for her on-air identity. It is a compromise she had to painfully swallow for the sake of acceptability at that point of time, when there wasn’t anyone who looked like her in the newsroom. Doba recalls the vivid discussion about the name, “They told me immediately, I need to change my last name. What is Zulfiqar? No one can say it. So I chose Daniels, because in Pakistan it sounded like Daniyaal. So that’s the only way my parents kind of accepted it. I do think a lot has changed. I don’t think today, a news director would ever ask anybody to change their name.”

A year before she was born, her parents moved from Pakistan to Queens, NY, where the Zulfiqars raised their eldest daughter and her younger siblings.

“They moved here, in the lower income area of Queens, right before I was born,: Doba said. “My mom used to actually send me to Pakistan every summer because she knew it was so important for me to know my culture and to know the language. Even at home, I have three younger brothers and we always spoke Urdu. I really didn’t start speaking English, until I got to nursery school. So making sure that our culture was clearly within us was so important to my family.”

For a kid at that time, going to Pakistan while her American friends went to Disney World, was a bummer for young Doba. She struggled with adapting to the dual culture and found it hard to fit in and was left with resentment towards her parents. She admitted, “Now I kind of regret it. Whenever my dad was listening to Noor Jahan or something, and we entered my neighborhood, I would tell him to turn it down. He was also a cab driver when I was young, and he would drop us off at school. That’s how they were trying to make a living and make sure that their kids had the best life. I used to make him peel off the taxi sticker because I was so afraid of that stereotype. But now I regret doing that because I’m so proud of my culture. I’m so glad that they stuck with it. I hated it as a child but it’s one of the best experiences and it made me love our culture.”

The parents, true to their South Asian grain, wanted their first-born to become a doctor. Doba, however, graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English and psychology, and always had a veiled desire for journalism. She started writing for the school newspaper, just as a side hustle, but more importantly, because she really enjoyed it.

She recalled, “I could never tell my parents I wanted to be on TV. Luckily right after graduation, I got a producer’s job in Watertown, NY. So my

Hena Doba presents Cheddar’s News Wrap

parents couldn’t even say anything, because the day after graduation, I had a job. Luckily, their faith in me and my bet of not chasing medicine and just starting to produce at a TV station, a tiny TV station in upstate New York, worked out.”

From there Doba then moved down south to Savannah, Georgia, and later joined WFSB TV in Hartford, Connecticut, where she became the weekend anchor, making her one of the first Pakistani-origin anchors in the United States. The journey from being a behind-the-scene producer to an anchor of a show happened through sheer chance and during the worst tragedy experienced in the US: 9/11. “I just happened to be visiting my family in Queens when 9/11 happened,” she recalled. We didn’t have phones back then. So I picked up my camcorder and just hit the streets trying to make my way to 9/11. And I interviewed people on my way. And that’s when ironically, my job changed. I got in front of the camera.”

Being a Muslim in small town America in the aftermath of the horrific day was not easy and it wasn’t smooth sailing for Doba in her new position as an anchor on TV, making her an easy target.

“There were a lot of people who didn’t want to see me on TV,” Doba said. “Especially since it was such a small market and my news director started getting calls: ‘Why are you letting a terrorist on TV?’ ‘Why does she look like one of the terrorists?’”

For the young journalist starting out, this phase was extremely challenging in a small town where everyone wanted her pulled off the news. She realized that she was far away from New York City, her home, which provided her a secure bubble. But she found support in her news director, who didn’t succumb to the pressure and did not pull her off camera.

“He thought about it and luckily left me on camera. That’s how my career began. I wonder if he had given in to all those people, what direction my life would have taken,” the grateful news personality said.

The horror had just begun for Doba and her family. It was a time of growing anti Muslim sentiments not only across the country but also in the cosmopolitan city like New York, where her parents and three younger brothers lived. She reflects, “I was scared. I was sad. I was scared for my family. I’m first generation but both my parents have heavy accents. I was worried about them. All the cell phone towers were down so I couldn’t get in contact with my family. I have three brothers, and one

ADVICE TO THOSE WHO WANT TO BE A TELEVISION ANCHOR:

“When I started telling people that I wanted to be on air, people within my community told me I was too dark. I wasn’t pretty enough. I think even within our community there are certain stereotypes that people lean towards. Don’t listen to them. It doesn’t matter. Professionally, always try to get that internship. Get that mentor figure, anchor, reporter you like, whether it’s in your local station or on a national level. Start watching them more closely, reach out to them even. I think internships are very, very important and to know the news.”

“I DON’T THINK TODAY A NEWS DIRECTOR WOULD EVER ASK ANYBODY TO CHANGE THEIR NAME. TWENTY YEARS AGO, THEY DID NOT WANT ZULFIQAR. NOW MY OLD STATION IN CONNECTICUT JUST HIRED A REPORTER WITH A HIJAB. I THINK NOW, IT IS MORE OF AN INCLUSIVE ENVIRONMENT TO MAKE YOUR VOICES HEARD, COMPARED TO WHERE I WAS 20 YEARS AGO.”

who had a beard one was driving a white van at the time. So I was honestly it was very fearful for my family.” It was the first time in her life that she was exposed to that kind of hate. She knew of its existence deep down, but this was the first time it was out there and in the face.

Away from home and family at the TV station in Watertown, NY was even harder for the young anchor on the news desk. She felt the brunt of the anger since she was a face on the screen that resembled the culture of the terrorists.

She says, “A lot of that anger did come towards me because I unfortunately, in their opinion looked like a terrorist. It’s not that there weren’t brown people in town. I was just the wrong kind of brown, especially since the terrorist looked just like me and my family. My management team started getting emails about pulling me off the air. Why have a terrorist tell us the news? I had actually some of my colleagues ask why Muslims were so violent. I was called derogatory names, sometimes while I was doing live shots. Now 20 years later, the marginalization of Muslims from social, political and civic life continues.”

A lot has changed for Doba. She moved down south and worked as a reporter in Savannah, GA, then joined WFSB TV in Hartford, CT, before getting a national platform of CBS News. She now works as a correspondent and anchor at Cheddar News.

“I do think a lot has changed,” she admitted. “I don’t think today a news director would ever ask anybody to change their name. Twenty years ago, they did not want Zulfiqar. Now my old station in Connecticut just hired a reporter with a hijab. I think now, it is more of an inclusive environment to make your voices heard, compared to where I was 20 years ago.”

These two decades have seen her go from Zulfiqar to Daniels and now Doba. The last one, chosen not due to a compulsion to conform, but for love. She married Andrew Doba, the former chief spokesperson for the governor of Connecticut, in early 2016. She now spends her time at home doing diverse activities to relax: gardening and boxing. She says, “During the pandemic, I started gardening. Things you don’t do growing up in Queens. I work out twice a week and you’re not going to believe this I box. I work with a trainer and I box in a ring. I have gloves on, I’m punching. You’d be surprised how mentally satisfying it is to just be punching a trainer or a mannequin.”

Doba also has a lot to look forward to as well with reports of her being included in the cast of Real Housewives of New York City. She confirms the reports, “They have reached out to me. We’ve been talking but that’s all I can really say.”

“I DIDN’T THINK I’D BE, IN MY 40S ON TELEVISION. THAT WAS NEVER A THING. BUT I AM AND I’M AT A YOUNG NETWORK. ANYTHING MORE IS THE CHERRY ON TOP”

Hena Doba reporting from the New York Stock Exchange

From a rookie reporter to a celebrated news presenter and anchor, Doba has come a long way. Despite challenges, she feels things have always worked out for her.

“It took me years to get to the place where I’m confident enough in my talent and in my work,” she said. “I didn’t think I’d be, in my 40s on television. That was never a thing. But I am and I’m at a young network. Anything more is the cherry on top. Inshallah, everything is going to work out.”

ADVICE TO SOUTH ASIAN WOMEN, WHO FACE THE SAME ORDEAL, BECAUSE OF THE COLOR OF THEIR SKIN OR THEIR LAST NAME:

“For every person who’s sending that mean email or calling your news director saying they don’t want to look at somebody on TV that looks like me, there’s also a great support team. I’m going to bring up that news director who decided to keep me on TV, those other reporters that said this isn’t fair. So as much as I can talk about how negatively I was treated, I saw the goodness of people, too. I think you just keep going. That’s so easy to say twenty years later, not that I’ve been going through it every day. But now I feel, this is your problem, not mine. I was doing the best job I could if they didn’t want to talk to me, I found somebody who would and who wasn’t such a jerk about it.”

ON 75TH ANNIVERSARY OF PAKISTAN’S INDEPENDENCE:

“Growing up in America, my experience and memories of Pakistan was always heavily framed by family. Pakistan was this place where we went to visit family and eat delicious food while wearing beautiful traditional outfits. It was hard to separate from that and to see it as a nation with its own political and socioeconomic struggles especially at that age and being surrounded with such rich beauty, culture and traditions. It wasn’t until I was much older that I started paying attention to Pakistan as a whole and looking at the foundation and getting a better understanding of why my parents are such die-hard patriots. I’m blown away by the phenomenal progress Pakistan and India have made over the years from education to modernization but what’s important to remember though is the rigid dichotomy in which the population is living. The disparity between the rich and the poor is ever present and something that cannot be ignored. Which is why legends like Abdul Sattar Edhi had such an impact on the nation & forever shaped the lives of so many.”

‘FAILURE WAS SUCH A GIFT. EVERYTHING I’M DOING TODAY IS BECAUSE I LOST THAT RACE.’

Mom, lawyer, politician, writer and activist, Reshma Saujani describes her quest to fignt for people

SEEMA KUMAR

PHOTOGRAPHER: SHARMEEN CHAUDHARY MAKEUP: NIKO MARAGOS @NIKOMARAGOS STYLIST: RITIKA SHAMDASANI @SANISISTERS INSTAGRAM: @SANI WEBSITE: WWW. SANIDESIGNS.COM

PHOTOGRAPHER: SHARMEEN CHAUDHARY MAKEUP: NIKO MARAGOS @NIKOMARAGOS STYLIST: RITIKA SHAMDASANI @SANISISTERS INSTAGRAM: @SANI WEBSITE: WWW. SANIDESIGNS.COM

Reshma Saujani defines herself as an activist, a change-maker and a fighter. She says her activism began in middle school when she decided to stand up to bullying in the eighth grade. As a Gujarati girl growing up in a White working class Chicago neighborhood and trying to fit in, Saujani says she regularly endured teasing and heckling from classmates, including those daring her to a fight in the school yard. She ignored them, until one day, young Saujani decided she’d had enough.

Instead of boarding the school bus back home,

Saujani showed up at the school yard, ready for a fight, only to be beaten badly with a baseball bat and a tennis racket by two classmates.

A friend dragged the injured Saujani back home to her distraught mother who was terrified to send her back to school. But Saujani was undeterred.

“The next day, I woke up, it was my eighth-grade graduation. And I remember saying to my father,

I’m going. I’m going to graduation. And that was the beginning of standing up,” says Saujani. “That was the beginning of Reshma. And of not wanting to be

Rachel or Rebecca, or somebody else. And it was the beginning of my career as an activist.”

A daughter of political refugees who were expelled

Never letting go of her dream to study at Yale from Uganda by the dictator, Saujani and her family were among the thousands of refugees who received asylum in the United States because they were skilled engineers. “My father would sit me on his lap and read me books about change makers. And that’s why since I was a little girl, I wanted to give back to this country that had literally saved my parents life.”

A law graduate from the Yale School of Law, Saujani began her career as an attorney and has worked in top law firms in New York. In 2009, she entered into the political arena became the first IndianAmerican woman to run for Congress against long-term New York incumbent, Carolyn Maloney for the U.S. House of Representatives seat from New York’s 14th congressional district running on immigration and education. But Saujani is perhaps best known as the founder and CEO of Girls Who Code, a national nonprofit organization working to close the gender gap in technology and prepare young women for jobs in the future.

Saujani has spent more than a decade building movements to fight for women’s empowerment, and to close the gender gap in technology. Saujani says the red thread in her life has been her consistent focus on standing up for issues and her resiliency, never giving up, even in the face of repeated rejections.

“I applied to Yale three times before I got in,” she says. “As with typical Indian kids, my father said, you can be a doctor, a lawyer or an engineer. I picked law. And I was set on going to the best law school in the country: Yale. I graduated first in my class, but I didn’t get in. So I went to another college. I grinded. I got to the top 10% of my class and transferred to Yale.”

Saujani delivered the 2022 commencement speech at Yale.

“Almost 20 years later, they picked me, instead of me chasing them,” she says.

More recently, during the pandemic, Saujani created the Marshall Plan for Moms, an effort to systemically make the workplace more friendly to mothers.

In 2020, Saujani says she found myself managing two little kids and running her

“FOR SO LONG, WE’VE BEEN TELLING WOMEN TO DO IT ALL,” SAUJANI SAYS. WE HAVE TO STOP TRYING TO FIX THE WOMAN. WE NEED TO FIX THE STRUCTURE.

PUBLISHED BOOKS

PAY UP In this urgent and rousing call to arms, Reshma Saujani dismantles the myth of “having it all” and lifts the burden we place on individual women to be primary caregivers, and to work around a system built for and by men. The time has come, she argues, for innovative corporate leadership, government intervention, and sweeping culture shift; it’s time to pay up.

BRAVE NOT PERFECT Drawing on hundreds of interviews with girls and women from around the country, stories of women changing the world one brave act at a time, and her own personal journey, Saujani shares an array of powerful insights and practices to make bravery a lifelong habit and enable us to be the authors of our biggest, boldest, and most joyful life.

GIRLS WHO CODE Bursting with dynamic artwork, the New York Times Bestseller includes down-to-earth explanations of coding principles, and real-life stories of girls and women working at places like Pixar and NASA. This graphically animated book shows what a huge role computer science plays in our lives and how much fun it can be.

WOMEN WHO DON’T WAIT IN LINE The former New York City deputy public advocate and founder of the national nonprofit Girls Who Code argued that aversion to risk and failure is the final hurdle holding women back in the workplace. Saujani advocated a new model of female leadership based on sponsorship, where women encourage each other to compete, take risks, embrace failure, and lift each other up personally and professionally.

organization, and it nearly broke her.

“For so long, we’ve been telling women to do it all,” Saujani says. “I learned that having it all is just a euphemism for doing it all. And that we can’t just color code our calendar or get a mentor or sponsor our way… That’s not the path to equality. We have to stop trying to fix the woman. We need to fix the structure. For so long, we’ve designed workplaces that don’t work for women, and where we’ve had to hide our motherhood, choose between take your kids to a doctor and showing up at a networking lunch. We live in a country that doesn’t have paid leave, that doesn’t have affordable childcare, that doesn’t have the child tax credit.

“We need structural changes so that women don’t have to choose between a job and being a mom. So I’ve built my next movement to really fundamentally change workplaces, change corporate policy, change culture, so that we value motherhood.”

Rallying girls to correct the gender gap prevalent in coding through Girls Who Code

MOVEMENTS TO EMPOWER YOUNG GIRLS AND MOMS

GIRLS WHO CODE

Girls Who Code has over 8,500 programs worldwide and still growing. The international nonprofit organization is working to close the gender gap in technology and change the image of what a computer programmer looks like and does. Girls Who Code inspires, educates, and equips young women with the computing skills to pursue 21st century opportunities.

MARSHALL PLAN FOR MOMS

Marshall Plan for Moms is a national movement to center women in our economic recovery and champion public and private sector policies that support all moms. Their goal is to create sweeping cultural change to value women’s unseen and unpaid work and rebuild the broken system to make it possible for women to work and have kids. Together they are galvanizing moms across the country to finish the fight for women’s equality once and for all.

Not one to hold back, Saujani has also spent considerable time building movements to fight women and girls economic development, and authored many books on the subject. And most recently, she has been advocating for moms and their mental health as well as their physical health in her recent bestselling book, “Pay Up,” and using her thought leadership and voice to incite action. We sat down with Reshma to talk to her about her past, present and future!

In high school, to counter prejudice, you started something called PRISM. What did it stand for and what did it lead to?

I was growing up in the suburbs of Chicago in the 1980s in a neighborhood that didn’t have a lot of brown people, Indian families. My mom had named me Reshma and my sister Keisha, typical Gujarati names. But I remember when my mom would take me to Kmart, I would see a rack of keychains, and I always

“WHEN I WENT TO MY HIGH SCHOOL, I DIDN’T FEEL LIKE I WAS PRETTY OR COULD HAVE FRIENDS OR FIT IN TO THIS COMMUNITY THAT WAS SO DIFFERENT THAN MINE. IT IS STILL SHOCKING FOR ME WATCHING “BRIDGERTON” AND SEEING THE SHARMA SISTERS, AND INDIAN WOMEN SEEN AS BEING BEAUTIFUL, LIKABLE, DESIRABLE”

Keeping in touch with her Gujarati culture, Reshma Saujani performing garba on weekends in a predominantly white neighborhood was searching for the keychain that would say Reshma. A lot of us growing up then wanted to be White, because we wanted to be accepted. We wanted to fit in. My mom would get harassed for wearing a sari at Kmart, our house would get spray-painted with words like “go back to your own country. We were always navigating being Indian. Until the eighth grade (incident). That was the beginning of standing up. And that was the beginning of Reshma. And not wanting to be Rachel or Rebecca, or somebody else. And it was the beginning of my career and my lifelong passion of being an activist.

What a turning point. How did you keep in touch with your Gujarati culture living in a predominantly White neighborhood?

And after that experience, I found a community of Indian girlfriends and Indian kids. And my parents were lucky to find other East African Gujarati families. So while I lived and went to school in a White working class neighborhood, I had this whole other life. We went to Garba on the weekends, we had our own parties. We found community. We went to the temple on weekends and ate Indian food. But our parents felt like they had to assimilate. My father changed his name to Mike and went to Toastmasters class every weekend to get rid of his accent. So there was still a sense that you had to be American. My sister and I and many other kids rebelled against that by building this Indian community.

When I went to my high school, I didn’t feel like I was pretty or could have friends or fit in to this community that was so different than mine. It is still shocking for me watching “Bridgerton” and seeing the Sharma sisters, and Indian women seen as being beautiful, likable, desirable. And it’s still like, whoa!

We’ve come a long way and it’s good to see more and more people who look like us on the big screen and in real life. What made you run for Congress?

My parents being refugees really instilled a sense of love for our country. Also, my grandfather and father, who were born in Uganda, were expelled. How could they expel a community that lived there? So I had this sense that a community has to participate in a system, or else your rights can be taken away in an instant. And there’s something about the political process, I always liked. I romanticized being a public servant. As they say in the Bhagavad Gita, I feel like I’m a warrior. And Bhagavan has put me on this earth, to fight for people, especially poor people, vulnerable people. So I always felt that the way that I could be a fighter, through public service. I graduated with $300,000 in student loan debt, still trying to be a good Indian girl, because politics is not at all what my parents wanted for me. I finally just found the courage to run for office.

Taking center stage and giving voice to the various political and presidential campaigns that she has supported

POLITICAL CAREER

• Volunteered for the Clinton–Gore campaign in 1996 • Started a movement called South Asians for Kerry to support John Kerry’s presidential campaign in 2004 • Supported Hillary Clinton in her presidential campaign of 2008 • Taking on Carolyn B. Maloney, became the first Indian American to run for

Congress in 2010 • Entered the race for New York City deputy public advocate in 2013

You got beaten pretty badly, like in the middle school? What did you learn?

I had been involved in politics, I had been organizing, I had been active. But when I made the decision to be a congressional candidate, I ran against a very powerful person. I don’t know what I was thinking. I was naive. I thought I could shake every hand and meet every voter. I remember the first week. As we put up my website, we raised $50,000, from Indian aunties who were happy an Indian girl was running for office. But what was so wonderful about that experience was the naïveté of it, the scariness of it. I did so many things I never done before — got on a television, raised money, built a team. I was doing all these things for the very first time. I lost, I wasn’t even close, I was devastated. But you know, when I woke up the next morning, the first thing I thought to myself is, wow, I’m not broken. I go after the thing that I’ve wanted my whole life, and it doesn’t work out, and I’m not broken. And that was such a gift, that failure was such a gift. Everything I’m doing today is because I lost that race.

What doesn’t break you makes you stronger. A failure can redirect your life and bring you to your true calling. For you, it was Girls Who Code.

On the campaign trail, in 2010, I went into computer science classes and robotics classes and saw long lines of boys… There was not a girl in sight. I remember thinking, where are the girls? I knew that Silicon Valley was a boys’ club. But I didn’t know that club started in high school. That pissed me off because I knew that, these were the jobs of the future. You can make $120,000 as a software programmer. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, all these companies were exploding. And women and girls needed to be part of this innovation revolution. So it really started with me trying to understand what kind of intervention we need to make to change [the dearth of girls who code]. And now, 10 years later, we’ve taught over half-a-million girls to code. We’ve reached half-a-billion people across the world through our work. If you go to any computer science class, engineering class in the country, those are my students.

You advise young women to be comfortable with imperfection. What advice would you give South Asian girls?

One is, fail fast, fail hard, and fail often. If you want to be great, you have to make mistakes. Sometimes we are afraid to fail. In our community, we teach our girls to play it safe, to not draw outside the lines, not call attention to yourself. My mother still says that to me. Why did you write that article about [pro] choice? Why did you put yourself out there on this issue? Because it’s drawing attention, getting criticism, the opposite of being a good immigrant daughter. I think that we have to

“I STARTED MY NEXT MOVEMENT, THE MARSHALL PLAN FOR MOMS, DURING THE PANDEMIC. I FOUND MYSELF IN 2020 WITH TWO LITTLE KIDS RUNNING MY ORGANIZATION, AND IT NEARLY BROKE ME”

really instill bravery. I am so blessed that I get to wake up every day and and do the work that I do. I write. I change conversations. I get politicians, policy leaders, CEOs to make real change.

You’re an inspiration for young girls, but also for mothers. Tell us about the Marshall Plan for Moms?

Yeah, I started my next movement, the Marshall Plan for Moms, during the pandemic. I found myself in 2020 with two little kids running my organization, and it nearly broke me. When the pandemic started in 2020, about 51 percent of the labor force was female, we were flying our feminist flags high. And at the end of the pandemic, our labor market participation is backward, same as it was in 1988. And the reason why we lost women is because women in our country do two thirds of the caregiving work. So when schools were shut down, they had to homeschool their kids. They were doing the domestic work, being the caretaker all the while maintaining their full time jobs. Right now 50% daycare centers are shut down, schools are still desperate. And so this has forced women to either downshift their careers, or leave the workforce altogether. We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to fix this now.

Why is this a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to fix the problem of women leaving the workforce?

Because this is happening at the same time we have the great resignation. So 4 million Americans are leaving their jobs every month. And they’re leaving, not because they don’t want to work, but because they don’t want to work for you. And that hustle culture of work is over. We’re not going to commute two hours a day just to see our kids for 20 minutes. We want a job in which we can reconcile our motherhood and our professional job. And so I think that we have this opportunity in the workplace to finally make workplaces work for moms.

How do we make workplaces work for moms?

One, companies should pay for or provide childcare benefits. I released to The New York Times an exclusive [story] about announcing a national business childcare coalition that I’ve created with top companies like Patagonia and Synchrony Financial. It was supported by Meghan Markle, and Prince Harry and their foundation. It’s time for companies to start providing childcare benefits to parents; they have an obligation or responsibility to figure out how that works. Creating flexibility, remote working, mental health. We have a mental health crisis right now. 51% of mothers are anxious and depressed. So companies need to not just be doing performance reviews, but wellness audits. I

At the White House with the then First Lady Michelle Obama

Reshma Saujani keeping on top of and deftly managing her diverse roles, including that of a mother

have a lot of ideas in my book; it lays it out systematically how we should design the future of work.

Speaking of books, you’ve authored many books. What’s this book you you’ve just written?

My new book is “Pay Up.” It’s a manifesto, about, you know, women in the workplace, and how can we use this opportunity to redesign workplaces? So it finally works for women. So if you’re a woman and you want paid leave, you want childcare. And you wonder, how do I go about asking my employer for that? Read this book. If you’re an employer managing a team and struggling with attrition, and thinking about how to retain talent, read my book. My gift is the ability to look around corners, see issues, and talk about them in a way that people get it. The books are a vehicle for social change. Writing op eds are a vehicle for social change. And, my life is about building movements to get to equality for women and girls. And, books, articles, writing, helps me do that.

You have two sons. How you teach them gender equality?

I have two boys. And all I wanted was girls. But [the universe] gives you exactly what you deserve. I have really learned and become a stronger feminist and activist by raising sons. So much of this is about how are we raising our boys to be equal partners at work and at home. Both my parents were working and my father was an active caretaker, and that’s the role model that I have. And that’s what I want, my sons to see. I have a wonderful husband who is my biggest ally, supporter, and cheerleader You can’t do all this work unless in your home life you have people around you who are really all mobilizing to make it possible.

You need that support system in the workplace and in the community — in South Asian sisterhood?

We just have to be very intentional about it. And I think we have to recognize we have power. You know, South Asian women actually have power in our country. We’re in Hollywood, in government, we’re activist leaders, writers, media, journalists. I agree we have a void. I think it’s the community in an organized fashion that’s missing. And somebody needs to build it.

PHOTOGRAPHER: SHARMEEN CHAUDHARY MAKEUP: @NIKOMARAGOS NIKO MAKE UP STYLIST: RITIKA SHAMDASANI @SANISISTERS INSTAGRAM: @SANI WEBSITE: WWW.SANIDESIGNS.COM

W H I L E Y O U D O T H E T H I N K I N G , W E B R I N G T H O U G H T S I N T O R E A L I T Y .

A M O V E M E N T , A T R E N D , O R A M A G A Z I N E S H O O T ; W E ’ V E G O T Y O U R B A C K . T H E V I S I O N R O O M I S K E E N O N M A K I N G Y O U R D R E A M S C O M E T R U E .

O U R J O B I S T O T R A N S F O R M Y O U R I D E A S I N T O M A S T E R P I E C E S T H R O U G H T H E L E N S O F O U R C A M E R A S . A N D I T D O E S N ’ T S T O P T H E R E . W E T A K E Y O U R I D E A A N D C R E A T E B R A N D C A M P A I G N S T H A T H A V E T H E V I E W E R S I N A W E . W E H O N E I N T O Y O U R B R A N D A N D C R E A T E C ON T E N T T H A T I S A U T H E N T I C A L L Y Y O U . W E P L A C E T H E B E S T T E A M B E H I N D O N T H E P R O J E C T S T O G I V E Y O U R B R A N D A V O I C E T H A T R E S O N A T E S W I T H Y O U R A U D I E N C E O N T H E R I G H T F R E Q U E N C I E S .

L O O K I N G T O D O A P H O T O S H O O T T H A T E X C E E D S Y O U R I M A G I N A T I O N ? T H E V I S I O N R O O M I S Y O U R B E S T B E T .