McGraw Prize Winner Reshma Saujani Is One of Time Magazine’s Women of the Year

McGraw Prize winners’ broader impact continues long after the awards ceremony. Since winning in 2018, Girls Who Code founder Reshma Saujani created Moms First, a nonprofit that advocates for paid leave and affordable, accessible childcare. In honor of her advocacy work, Saujani was recently named one of Time magazine’s 2026 Women of the Year.

Saujani, an activist, author, and podcast host, was recognized with the 2018 McGraw Prize for her role in tackling the gender gap in tech with Girls Who Code, the international nonprofit she founded in 2012.

Time honored Saujani for her latest area of focus: affordable childcare. After stepping down as CEO of Girls Who Code in 2021, Saujani went on to found Moms First (formerly Marshall Plan for Moms), a nonprofit that advocates for paid leave and affordable, accessible childcare.

Saujani is working to reframe how we think about childcare, paid leave, and caregiving—issues that are still often treated as personal decisions or optional workplace perks. In reality, they play a central role in shaping labor force participation, business outcomes, and long-term economic growth, according to Saujani.

“Childcare isn't a personal problem, it's an economic issue,” Saujani, the daughter of refugees, tells Time. “Workers can't work without childcare, and businesses don't work without workers.”

Saujani’s advocacy gained national attention after her TikTok post about the high cost of childcare went viral in 2024. She points to that moment as an inflection point in the affordable childcare movement. In January, Saujani stood alongside Governor Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani as they announced a $1.7 billion investment to deliver universal care for kids under 5—a significant step in the right direction.

“I believe that affordable childcare is the linchpin to women's progress,” she tells Time. “Once you make childcare affordable, you give women freedom and choice to move in and out of the workforce, in and out of the home, and that frees them.”

Learn more about Reshma Saujani.

Photo courtesy Governor Tom Wolf (CC-BY 2.0)