Reshma Saujani had an ambitious goal to close the tech industry's gender gap when she founded Girls Who Code in 2012. But she knew she didn't want to run the show the whole time.

In 2021, Saujani stepped down from her role as CEO for the nonprofit, which provides education opportunities to support girls learning computer science skills, and became its board chair.

"I don't think anyone should ever stay anywhere for more than eight years," Saujani, 49, tells CNBC Make It.

That even goes for founders, she says: One big problem she sees is that many don't consider that being a successful founder means passing "the baton to somebody else," she says.

"To me, [success] was about passing on an organization to someone else when it was thriving, when it had money in the bank, and was almost too big to fail," Saujani says.

Saujani says she was careful to plan her exit strategy as CEO to help set her replacement up for success. "Oftentimes women inherit organizations when they've gone to s---," she says.

Research has shown women are often promoted into leadership roles when an organization is in crisis, which can lead to failure in the role — a phenomenon referred to as the "glass cliff."

Saujani admits that it's "hard to let go of your baby" and a successful business you've started: "I was just kind of waiting for the right time to do that."

How she identified her new CEO 'the minute I met her'

That time came once Saujani knew she "had the right person" in Tarika Barrett, who was hired as Girls Who Code's vice president of programs in 2016 before becoming chief operating officer in 2018.

"The minute I met her, I was like, you're the one," Saujani says.

Hiring smart, capable and ambitious team members is one of Saujani's biggest focuses as a leader: "I like to hire people that are smarter than me in the thing that I'm hiring them for," she says.

"I've seen far too many leaders that are intimidated by people who are better than them, and then they silence them and they don't support them," she says. "If I'm gonna hire a program officer, they know how to direct services better than I do. If I'm gonna hire a marketer, they know marketing better than I do. And if I'm gonna hire a development person, they're gonna be able to raise money better than I do."

"I'm letting them, quite frankly, lead," Saujani adds. "And we're operating as a team." 

The hardest and best decision

Saujani says once she found her new CEO in Barrett, she kept her decision to step down under wraps. "People don't often give up power, and people don't encourage other people to give up power," she says. "So when I made this decision, I didn't tell anybody — not my husband, not my board, not my friends, because I knew that people would talk me out of it."

"It was the hardest decision and one of the best decisions I ever made," she says.

Saujani says the transition was made better with Barrett taking over, and with the guidance of a coach, a team and their board of directors. "We didn't ever let any tension brew," Saujani says.

Since stepping down as CEO of Girls Who Code, Saujani launched a site called PaidLeave.ai, a generative AI chatbot where parents and caregivers can ask questions based on their circumstances, then access and apply for state paid family leave benefits. She recently partnered with Theraflu and A Better Balance, a nonprofit legal advocacy group for working families, on an initiative to help workers better understand their rights related to paid sick time.

Saujani adds that Barret has been supportive of her efforts to launch Moms First, which started as the Marshall Plan for Moms in response to the Covid-19 pandemic's impact on U.S. mothers. Today, Saujani is CEO of Moms First and works to support women's economic empowerment and legislative policies for moms.

"Honestly, there's so much beauty around our transition I'm so proud of," she says.

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