>> Narrator: From Seattle, Washington it's the CUBE covering AWS Imagine non-profit. Brought to you by Amazon web services. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with the CUBE. We're on the waterfront in Seattle, it's an absolutely gorgeous couple of days here at the AWS Imagine Nonprofit Conference. We went to the AWS Imagine Education Conference, this is really all about nonprofits and we're hearing all kinds of interesting stories about how these people are using AWS to help conquer really big problems. We're going to shift gears a little bit from the two footed problems to the four footed problems and that's animals and everybody likes animals but nobody likes animal shelters and nobody likes the ultimate solution that many animal shelters used to use to take care of problems. But thank you to our next guest, that is not quite the case so much anymore. So we're really happy to have Angie Embree on. She is the CIO of Best Friends Animal Society, Angie great to see you. >> It's great to see you as well and thank you for having me. >> Oh absolutely! So before we got on I just heard this crazy, crazy statistic that when your organization started in 1984 approximately 17 million animals were killed in US shelters per year. That number is now down to 700 thousand, that is a giant, giant reduction. And yet you, with big audacious goals really are looking to get that to zero. So, that's a giant goal, give us a little bit of background on the organization and how you decided to go after a goal like that and some of the ways you are actually going to achieve it. >> Well, the organization started in 1984 and it started with a group of friends in Southern Utah who decided that, you know the killing in America's shelters just had to go. So really the Best Friends founders started the no-kill movement along with a gentleman in San Francisco by the name of Rich Avanzino. And as you said, they took you know the killing down from 17 million in 1984 to approximately 733 thousand now. The organization started as just the sanctuary, we have the largest no-kill companion animal sanctuary in the country where we hold about 17 hundred animals every day. And we also have, you know, knowing that we needed to help out the rest of the country we have built life saving centers in Houston, Texas. Or we're working on Houston, Texas but Los Angels, California, New York City, Salt Lake City, Atlanta, Georgia, it seems like I've left somebody out but, >> Probably, but that's okay. >> We have life saving centers all over the country. So it was really, you know, when they realized what was going on in America's shelters it was really the idea that we should not be killing animals for space. So, just recently in fact, I will say recently but in the last few years, Julie Castle our CEO put kind of, did our moon shot, put that stake in the ground and said we're going to take this country no-kill by the year 2025. >> Right. >> So it's super exciting. >> So it's really interesting because you guys are trying to execute your vision, and it's easy to execute your own vision, but it's a whole different thing when you're trying to execute your vision through this huge infrastructure of shelters that have been around forever. So, I wonder if you can explain kind of what's your relationship with shelters that you don't own. I guess, I think you said before we turned on the cameras there are affiliates, so how does that relationship work? How do you help them achieve your goal which is no-kill. >> Yeah, so we have over 27 hundred network partners around the country. And what we do is we help to educate them on, you know we understand their problems, we have creative programs to solve those problems. So we help to educate them on, you know, how they can implement these programs within their shelters. We provide them grant funding, we have an annual conference every year where they can come and learn. But they're really our partners and you know we know we can't do it alone. It's going to take us, it's going to take them and it's going to take everybody in every community to really step up and help solve the problem. >> Right, and what was the biggest thing that changed in terms of kind of attitude in terms of the way they operate the shelter because I think you said before that a lot of the killing was done to make room. >> Right, killing is done usually for space. >> So what do they do know? Clearly the space demands probably haven't changed so what are they doing alternatively where before they would put the animal down? >> Well alternatively we're doing transport programs. So there are areas in the country that actually have a demand for animals. So instead of killing the animals, we put them on some sort of transport vehicle and we take them to the areas that are in demand. We also do what's called a trap-neuter-return program. So one of the biggest problems across the country are community cats so those, a lot of people call them feral cats but they're community cats and usually have a caretaker. But what we do is we trap those cats, we take them into the shelter, we neuter them and vaccinate them and then return them to their home. That keeps them from making a lot of other little cats. >> Making babies (laughs) >> So yeah, cat's are one of the biggest problems in shelters today because of the community cats, they're feral cats and they're not adoptable. So if we can, we don't have to kill them. We can, you know, we can keep them from reproducing as I said and then we can put them back in their habitat where they live a long healthy life, happy life. >> Right, so you said you've joined the organization 5 years ago, 5 and 1/2 years ago and you're the CIO, first ever CIO. >> I am (laughs) >> What brought you here and then now that you're here with kind of a CIO hat, what are some of the new perspective that you can bring to the organization that didn't necessarily, that they had had before from kind of a technical perspective? >> Well, what brought me here was, I never expected to be here, if you would have told me I would be the CIO at Best Friends Animal Society you know 10 years ago I would have said you're kidding because I didn't really realize that there were professional positions in organizations like Best Friends. But I, you know, my journey begins the same as, began the same as a lot of peoples did. I was that little kid always bringing home animals and you know my mother hated it. You know it was always something showing up at our doorstep with me, you know. And I just loved animals all my life and as I went through college and got my degree and started my professional career, then I thought well I'm going to of course have animals because I can have as many as I want now, right! (laughs) So I started adopting, and I didn't even realize until I was in my 30s that they were killing in shelters and I learned that in Houston, Texas when I lived there. I was working for IBM at the time, and one day a lady came on the television and she said they were doing a new segment and she said we're a no-kill shelter and I thought oh my god if there are no-kill shelters then there are kill shelters, right? >> There must be the other. >> Yeah so, to make a long story short then I started not working in animal welfare but doing more to support the movement and donating. Adopting from shelters and fostering animals and then one day I had been to Best Friends as a visitor vacationing in this beautiful part of Utah. But I saw the CIO ... >> Position. >> position open and I said I'm going for it. >> Good for you. >> Yeah. >> Good for you, so now you're there so what are some of the things you've implemented from kind of a techy, you know kind of data perspective that they didn't have before? >> Well, they didn't have a lot. >> They probably didn't have a lot, besides email and the obvious things. >> Being the first CIO I don't know that I knew what I was walking into at the time because I got to Kanab, and Kanab Utah where the sanctuary is, is the headquarters. And Kanab is very infrastructure challenged. >> (laughs) Infrastructure challenged, I like that. >> There is one ISP in Kanab and there is no redundancy in networks so we really don't have, you know, you come from the city and you think, you take these things for granted and you find out oh my god, what am I going to do? And Kanab is you know the hub of our network, so if Kanab goes down, you know the whole organization is down so one of the first decisions I made was that we were going to the cloud. >> Right, right. >> Because we had to get Kanab out of that position and that was one of our, one of the first major decisions I made and we chose AWS as our partner to do that so that was very very exciting. We knew that they had infrastructure we couldn't dream of providing. >> Right, right. >> And, you know we could really make our whole network more robust, our applications would be available and we could really do some great things. >> You're not worried about the one ISP provider in Kanab because of an accident that knocks a phone pole down. >> Yeah, yeah. >> All right but then you're talking about some new things that you're working on and a new thing you talked about before we turned the cameras on community lifesaving dashboards, what is that all about? >> Okay, so a couple of years ago the community lifesaving dashboard is the culmination of two years of work. From all across the Best Friends organization not just the IT department, in fact it was the brainchild of our Chief Mission Officer Holly Sizemore. But it's really, in animal welfare there's never been a national picture of what the problem really is regarding killing animals in shelters. So we did this big. >> Because they're all regional right? They're all regional shelters, very local. >> They're all local community shelters, yes. And transparency isn't forced, so you know some states force transparency, they reinforce in the report numbers but a lot of states don't. >> At the state level. >> Yeah, a lot of states don't, so. You know when you're killing animals in shelters you really don't want people to know that. >> Yeah, yeah it's not something you want to advertise. >> Because the American public doesn't believe in it. So anyway we worked really hard to collect all this data from across the country and we put it all into this dashboard and it is now a tool where anybody in the public, it's on our website, can look at it and they can see that where we're at from a national level. They can see where they're at from a state level, they can drill down into their community and they can drill down to an individual shelter. >> Wow. >> And the idea behind the dashboard is to really, is to get communities behind helping their shelters. Because as I said earlier, it's going to take us all. >> Right. >> And not only Best Friends and our partners but the public plays a big part of this. >> Right, and so when did that roll out? Do you have any kind of feedback, how's it working? >> It's working wonderfully, we rolled it out at our conference in July. >> So recently, so it's a pretty new initiative. >> Yeah it's just a few weeks old. >> Okay. >> We rolled it out at our national conference and we were all a bit nervous about it, you know especially from a technology perspective. >> Right, right. >> We knew that being the first of it's kind ever in animal welfare that you know it was going to get a lot of publicity both inside and outside the movement. >> (laughs) How you want to say both pro and con. >> Yeah, and it's sitting on our website, well really pro and con. >> Right, right. >> But it's sitting on our website and we're like okay, we don't know what kind of traffic we're going to get, you know what are we going to do about this? So we spent a lot of time with Amazon prior to the launch, you know having them look at our environment and getting advice, discussing it with them. >> Not going to bring down that ISP in Utah. >> No, thank god! (laughs) >> (laughs) >> No it wasn't, thank god we were in the cloud. So Amazon really helped us prepare and then the day of the launch, we knew the time of the launch. So we actually had a war room set up, a virtual war room and we had Amazon employees participating in our war room. We watched the traffic and we did get huge spikes in traffic at all times through the day when certain things were happening. And I'm happy to say from a technology perspective it was a non-event because we did not crash we stayed up, we handled all the traffic, we scaled when we needed to, and we did it you know, virtually at the press of a button. >> Awesome. >> Or the flick of a switch, whatever you want to say. >> That's what you want right? >> Yeah, exactly. >> You just don't want anyone to know, I was like give a good ref, nobody's talking about you you probably did a good job. >> Yeah, exactly yeah. >> Good, so before I let you go so what are some of your initiatives now looking forward. You've got this great partner in AWS, you have basically as much horsepower as you need to get done what you need to get done. What are some of the things that you see, you know kind of next for your roadmap? >> Well, we have a lot. >> Don't give me the whole list (laughs) >> No I'm just going to hit on a few key points. I think, you know we used Amazon initially as our cloud infrastructure but I think the biggest thing we're looking at is platform as a service. There is so much capability out there with predictive analytics, machine learning, artificial intelligence, ARVR, you name it facial recognitions, so we're really investigating those technologies because we think they have you know they could have a huge impact on our movement and really help us achieve life saving. >> Right, right. >> And, I think that, you know we're starting we have our fledgling data science program. We're using the Amazon data lake technology, Athena, Glue, they were just telling me about data lake formation which I just a few minutes ago emailed my data guy and said start looking at data lake formation. >> Right, right. >> So, I mean we're really investing in the platform as a service. The other thing I see is that we're, animal welfare is sort of broken from a technology perspective and a data perspective. In that we have no interoperability and you know we don't have the data available. So lets say you want to adopt a 5-year old animal. Well, you go to a shelter you can't get 5 years of history on a 5 year old animal. So it's really starting to fix the foundation for the movement as a whole, not just Best Friends. So, making sure that you know the veterinary data is there, all the data from the pet ecosystem is there. So we're investigating with AWS they're actually coming to our sanctuary in a couple of months, we're going to do a workshop to figure out how we do this, how we really fix it so that we have interoperability between every shelter when an animal moves from shelter to rescue or whatever so that their data follows them wherever they go. So adopters are fully informed when adopting an animal. >> Because you're in a pretty interesting position, because you're not with any one particular shelter you kind of cross many many boundaries. So you're in a good position to be that aggregator of that data. >> Yeah, I don't know that we want to be the aggregator but we want to lead the movement towards doing that. Just getting the technology players, the shelter management systems, the other people who play a role in technology for animal welfare, getting them in a room and talking and figuring out this problem is huge. >> Right. >> And with a partner like Amazon we feel it can be solved. >> Right. Well Angie thank you for taking a few minutes and sharing your story, really really enjoyed hearing it. >> All right thank you so much. >> All right, she's Angie, I'm Jeff you're watching the CUBE we're at AWS Imagine in Seattle, thanks for watching we'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: From Seattle, Washington it's The Cube covering AWS Imagine. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with The Cube. We're here in downtown Seattle at the AWS Imagine Education Conference. It's the second year of the conference. It's really successful so much now they have another education conference, excuse me, Imagine Conference coming up for nonprofits, but this is the education one. About 800 people and we're excited to have, I think they had representatives from like 40 countries here. It's amazing, such a small conference with such great global representation. We've got our first guest, all the way from Valencia, Spain. He is Inaki Bilbao Estrada and the Vice Chancellor for Internationalization and Innovation at the CEU Universidad Cardenal Herrera. It's a mouthful, welcome. >> Thank you very much. >> So first off, impressions from the show, from the keynotes this morning. >> It was very impressive, the keynote by Andrew Co Intersession by Amazon. We were impressed, we were included in the keynote and we are very proud of having been included in the keynote for our Alexa skill. >> Great, so before we get into kind of what they talked about, let's back up a few steps in terms of what you are trying to accomplish as an institution. So give us a little bit of background on the college, how big it was, and kind of what was going on and what you wanted to really do differently. >> We are a Spanish University. We belong with CEU San Pablo Foundation which owns three universities in Spain, Barcelona, Madrid, and Valencia. We are a not for profit universities and in Valencia, in our case, we are very proud that we used to be a local university with only 300 international students eight years ago and right now we have reached 2500 international students which represents around 30-33% of the population of the university. We are right now 8000 undergraduate students and 3000 graduate students. >> So that's pretty amazing. So as you said, you were really kind of a regional university and you decided you wanted more international students. Why did you want more international students and then once you made that goal, what were some of the major objectives at the beginning of this process or problems that you had to overcome? >> It was a trend in higher education institutions but for us it was very important for two reasons, one the sustainability of the university, but also and I think the main reason is that we wanted to have our students to have a global experience. We wanted to become a global university based in Valencia, but we have right now more than 80 countries represented on campus. >> Wow, so what were some of the big hurdles that you saw that were going to get in the way of attracting more of these international students? >> So it was very important for us to adapt all our processes to our students. For this we have a very helpful firm partnered on campus. It was the IT department with Jose Roch in charge of this department and through technology we have been able to escalate and automate, get the automation of all of this process in order to reach bigger number of international students. So we have adapted all the processes to the needed of our international students, our new population of international students. >> Right, so you were highlighted today for a very specific thing, for a very specific device, which is Alexa, and voice as an interface and we saw some of the Alexa stuff last year, in terms of the kids asking it, you know, when is my test, is my homework due, these types of things, but you guys are actually taking it to the next level. Explain to the folks what you guys have done with Alexa. >> So we have used Alexa to introduce a virtual assistant for all our students national and international students and one other things that have been highlighted in the keynote is that is not only in English, but also in Spanish. Like this we are covering the two most speaked language on campus, English and Spanish. >> So it's bi, so you've got a bilingual Alexa in the room. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. So for us it was very important as explained before that technologies had been asked to cover all the population of students, not only part of them. >> Right and using English is kind of universal language, regardless of what their native tongue is. >> Yeah, yeah. >> So did you have to build all this from scratch? How much was Amazon helping you to do the English to Spanish translation, was it written in Spanish, how did some of those logistics work out? >> So we began six months ago with the project with the help of Amazon, they were very, very, very helpful for us. With Ana Cabez and Juan Manuel Gomez from the UK team of Amazon and they guided us how to develop the Alexa skills for the goals that we set with them, what we wanted to achieve with the virtual assistant for our students. >> And yeah, so the skills are the things that you actually write, so how many different skills did you write especially for your students? >> So we, what we are doing is to build only one, but we are integrating all the services in one only skill. So we are integrating services related with what my next assignment on Blackboard, which are my grades, how can I book a room in the library or another space of the university, locations of the different services or professors of the university. We are integrating a lot of services, but in one skill because we don't want the students to have to switch between skills. >> Jeff: Right, right. >> So we're aiming to have one virtual assistant for the students in only one skill. >> So that's interesting, I didn't even think about all the integration points that you have. But you've got integration points in all these other systems. The room booking services, the library services, Blackboard and the other educational services. >> The learning management system. >> So how many points of integration are there? >> A lot we are working right now, we are focusing around five, seven integration points, because also we are integrating it with our CRM in order to have personalized message to different segments of our students, depending of if they are due to get some documentation to the registrar office. We think that integration with CRM allows us to give personalized message and notification to our students depending on the situations. >> Jeff: Right. >> So it's not a general notification for all of the students on campus. >> Right, that's awesome. Again, highlighted in the keynote really I think is the first kind of bilingual implementation of Alexa. So that's terrific. I want to shift gears a little bit about innovation and transformation. We go to a lot of tech shows, talk to a lot of big companies, everybody wants to digitally transform and innovate. Traditionally education hasn't been known as the most progressive industry in terms of transforming. You said right off the bat, that's your job is about transformation and innovation. Where's that coming from? Is that from the competitive world in which you live? Is that a top-down leadership directive? What's kind of pushing basically the investment in this innovation around your guys' school? >> So I believe that education can be disrupt in the next five, ten years. So what we think at the university is that we have to be closer to this disruption and in this sense we are working a lot to improve the students' experience of our students on campus because if not we think that it makes no sense to study on campus when you can go online. >> Jeff: Right. >> So that's why we're using technology to improve the students' experience on campus. So we are trying to avoid those things that have no value added for the students through technology and through the digital transformation. In order that we have more time for these value added interaction between the staff, academic and nonacademic staff, with the students. >> Right, and then how has the reception been with the staff, both the academic staff and the nonacademic staff because clearly the students are your customers, your primary customer, but they're a customer as well. So how have they embraced this and got behind it? >> So I seen all the institutions and you have a part of the institution that is not so in favor of these innovations, but the big number of professors and staff have seen the benefits of not to have to answer email Saturday night because the virtual assistant is 24 hours seven days a week. So they've seen the benefits of how technology can give them more time for these value added interaction with their students. For this in order to avoid only top-down decisions we have created digital ambassador programs which this program what we do is to share with our professors and with our nonacademic staff what we are planning and how they see the project. >> Jeff: Right, right. >> And we are integrating their opinions and their suggestions in the program. >> So you're six months into it you said since you launched it. >> Yeah. >> Okay, I'm just curious if you could share any stories, biggest surprises, things that you just didn't expect. I always like long and unintended consequences, you know, as you go through this process. >> So one of things is in Spain, Alexa was launched in November, last November so it's very new. >> Jeff: Very new. >> Very new in Spain. There's no voice assistant in the last nine months, it have exploded, but we didn't have before. So the students have been very impressed that the university were working at this level with the technology so new because it was even new for them, even if they are younger and they knew a lot about this technology. They were impressed that the university so quickly reacted to the introduction of the technology. The other point is through innovation, we are also using Alexa for the digital transformation of learning and teaching. We have launched an innovation program for quizzes for the students. And we have the huge amount of volunteers that they want to see how it works. >> Right, right, just curious too, to get your take on voice as an interface. You made an interesting comment before we turned the cameras on that email just doesn't work very well for today's kids. They don't use it. They're not used to using it. But voice still seems to really be lagging. I get an email from Google every couple of days saying, here ask your Google Assistant this or ask your Alexa this, you know, we still haven't learned it. From where you're sitting and seeing kind of this new way to interact and as you said get away from these emails in the middle of the night that ask, when's my paper due and I could ask the assistant. How do you see that evolving? Are you excited about it? Do you see voice as really the centerpieces of a lot of these new innovations or is it just one of many things that you're working on? >> So I think the difference is that usually higher education institutions would have use of email for communication with students with so massive amount of emails. I think what they feel with the voice assistants is that they have the freedom to choose what they want to know or not to know. So if they can ask voice, virtual assistant, as in one case, they have the freedom when they want the information. >> Jeff: Right. >> So I think its a big difference between emails, in an email you decide when you send the information to the students, with voice technologies, the student, it's the student who is asking when they want the information. >> Jeff: Right. >> So I think it's important for them. >> It's huge because they never ask for the email. >> No, they, and after they tell us that it wasn't important information that they didn't check the email. >> Right. >> They complain that they don't have the right information. >> Right, well Inaki, thank you for sharing your story and congratulations on this project. Sounds like you're just getting started, you've got a long ways to go. >> Thank you so much. >> All right, thank you. He's Inaki, I'm Jeff. You're watching the Cube, we're in downtown Seattle at AWS Imagine Education Conference. Thanks for watching. See you next time. 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>> From the Amazon Meeting Center in Downtown Seattle, it's the theCUBE. Covering, Imagine: A Better World, a global education conference, sponsored by Amazon Web Services. >> Hey welcome back everybody. Jeff Rick here with theCUBE. We're in Downtown Seattle Washington at the AWS Imagine Education Conference. First one they've ever done about 900 registrants. People from over 20 countries are here. Theresa Carlson gave the kickoff and it's a pretty exciting event. We've seen this movie before with Amazon. They get involved in a project, and it grows and grows and grows. So this is all about education. It's about education institutions. It's about students obviously, which are the core of education, and we're really excited to have our next guest. It was a big announcement that happened today. He's Marvin Martinez, the President of East Los Angeles College. Marvin great to see you. >> Thank you, pleasure to be here. >> So you're getting ready to go up on stage. it's a big announcement so tell about what it is. It's called the California Cloud... >> Computing. >> Computing Initiative. >> So this is what we've done. We've been developing for the last year a certificate where students can take a number of classes, which is basically a total of 15 units, and they're able to earn at the end of 15 units, a certificate in cloud computing. And the goal is to get them trained quickly to get them out to work quickly. Eventually we hope that the certificate evolves into a degree program, so then we're hoping that the students come back and they get their associate of our certificate and they're able to get even a better job, which is really the goal of this program is we want to get them started, want to get them excited, get them into an entry-level type of job, then they will know they like it. They're going to come back. They'll get that degree, you know do even better right. >> So let me, I just want to make sure I get this. This is a California Cloud Workforce Project. So it's really about the workforce and giving these kids the skills. So it's funny though Marvin where everybody says technology is taking away jobs. They forget yeah they take away some jobs, but there's new jobs created. >> All the time. >> All the time, there's a ton of openings especially in the engineering field and in the cloud, but so what are some of the cloud skills specifically that that kids are taking to get the certificate? >> Well you know the skills they're taking specifically so they could eventually work with some of the major industries in our area. Obviously from Amazon and other similar industries and similar businesses, and there's many of them. Los Angeles you know quickly is becoming the new Silicon Valley. So a lot of industries are moving. They call us all the time, they call me all the time, and say that you have trained students. We will hire them right now and we'll pay them a good salary. So no doubt it's a motivation for us because that's who we are as community colleges. We are here to serve students. We are here to get them trained, get them up there quickly and respond to the needs of industry, that area. >> So it's a really interesting planning that it's the community colleges that you guys have all come together. I think the number's 19 as part of this. So A, you know that you're doing it as a unified effort. So kids at a broad area can take advantage, and also you're also partnering with individual high schools. Each Community College is partners with an individual high school. So how does that work? How does that kind of come into fruition? >> Well you know, one thing that we want to do is that as we work with high schools, high schools today are also under pressure to ensure that their students are being trained well and that if they just get a high school diploma they can go and work somewhere. But also today high schools are getting smart. They're saying hey how do we work with a local college so that when students graduate, they graduate with a high school diploma and a degree from a college. So and why are they doing that because they know in order to be competitive, a young person needs to have these degrees. Today if you want to be competitive a high school diploma may not be enough. So we notice that motivation there. Secondly we're able to get students on a college campus, get them developed get them, they're mature, get them to take a college-level course and then they're able to go out and obviously and work once they complete this program. So the relationship is a natural one. It's one that high schools are seeking from us, which is great. That has not been the case all the time. Usually we've gone to them, but now they're coming to us and saying we need you help us out. >> The part I like about it too is the kids are smart. And they're like why am I taking philosophy? How am I going to use philosophy in my job, that or why am I taking this or why am I taking that? These are really concrete skills that A, they can go look in the newspaper today or I guess I don't know if they look in newspaper for jobs because couldn't find a newspaper if you threw it at them, but they could go seek the job listings at the Amazon sites and also they are working with this technology, they live in this technology, so it's not something foreign or something new. It's something they experience every day. So it's got to be a pretty easy sell I would imagine. >> It's an easy sell. Young people today are different than the way that we grew up. I grew up at a time where there were no cell phones, there was no bottled water. It was a whole different time. Young people today as you're seeing grow up with these technologies. It's part of the who they are. They more than just embraced it. So they welcome to use it in any way they can. So when we propose programs like these, guess what happens? They enroll en masse and that's because they understand it. They identify with it. Will they be willing to enroll in a Shakespeare class? They might but not as much as a class like this one. So no doubt the population today has changed, so part of my job is to introduce programs on the campus that I know will generate that kind of enrollment and interest. So we know that a program like this will do that and we just need to recognize the fact that the world has changed. Let me just add that we don't do that world's education institutions. As institutions we're some of the most conservative institutions in the history of this country. So for us to change it takes quite a lot. So what's forcing us to change, what was forcing us to change is that enrollment is down and not just in many of our colleges in LA but throughout the country. Enrollment is-- >> In Community colleges generally or colleges in general? Community colleges. >> Community colleges throughout the nation enrollment is down. And enrollment is down for a number of reasons. There's more jobs out there, so students are looking to go out and work, but also enrollment is down because of the curriculum and the courses that we have are just not interesting to them. So I think a program like this will help the campus. A program like this will get more students to come and take advantage of an incredible education that they can get at our campuses. >> I was just curious kind of what were the drivers of enrollment before that have kind of fallen away? Was it a particular type of skill set? Was it just that they don't want it generic anymore? They got to go get a job? I'm just curious if there was something that you had before that was appealing that you have now that's just not appealing anymore? >> Good questions. So the last time our economy was in bad shape when the employment was down. That was back around 2008-2009. Well guess what happened in our campuses? Enrollment was up. So when the economy is in bad shape people come back to school. When the economy is in great shape like it is today where there is a lot of jobs, enrollment is down. So we don't see the economy going down at all in a number of years. >> Anytime soon. >> So we have to develop programs that we think will be of interest to students first. Secondly we have to respond to the needs of the new economy. The new economy is now being dominated by these new technologies. We know about it, young people know about it. So when we develop a program like this and we know that it will generate interest. It will generate enrollment. And in many ways that's what drives the funding for a college. We're funded on the basis of how many people we enroll. So if we don't enroll a lot people, we have less money, so no doubt there's a motivation for us, a motivation for the entire system, to really partner with Amazon. And figure out a way for us to really get students train and to get them, hopefully get them a good job. >> So you segued perfectly. My last question was going to be kind of the role of Amazon in AWS, in terms of being a partner. I mean they obviously you know are thinking about things. Theresa's fantastic. She just talked about being from an education family, but at the same time you know they have their own reasons to do it. They need workers right? They need people to fill these jobs to fulfill Amazon's own growth beyond their ecosystem, their partners and customers etcetera. So what does it mean for you as an educator and part of this consortium of community colleges to have somebody like AWS come in and really help you codevelop and drive these types of new programs? >> Well it means everything. Number one we know that Amazon is a major employer. We know that the jobs that they have available are good-paying jobs. They have a career path and so we know it's a good direction for young people to take. So part of my job as an educator is many ways it's like a parent. You want to take care of your family, you want to take care of the kids and put them in the right path so they have the most success possible. Amazon offers that kind of path. So for us to partner with someone like Amazon is great. Secondly, students know who Amazon is. I don't have to sell them. They know who they are, and they know what Amazon can do and they know that it's a great career path for them. So now that I think it could be a great partnership for us but also it's an opportunity for Amazon to even continue further developing that workforce in Los Angeles in California. >> Alright Marvin, well thank you so much for spending a few minutes and I wish you nothing but the best with this California Cloud Workforce Project. Make sure I get it right? >> It's right. Thank you so much, I appreciate it. >> Thank you, alright he's Marvin, I'm Jeff. You're watching theCUBE. We're in Seattle at the Amazon Imagine Education event. First time ever, keep watching. It's going to grow and grow and grow. Thanks for watching. (electronic music)