(upbeat music) >> Hello, everyone. Welcome to theCUBE's special presentation of International Women's Day. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. Jenni Troutman is here, Director of Products and Services, and Training and Certification at AWS, and Heather Ruden, Director of Education Programs, Training and Certification. Thanks for coming on theCUBE and for the International Women's Day special program. >> Thanks so much for having us. >> So, I'll just get it out of the way. I'm a big fan of what you guys do. I've been shouting at the top of my lungs, "It's free. Get cloud training and you'll have a six figure job." Pretty much. I'm over amplifying. But this is really a big opportunity in the industry, education and the skills gap, and the skill velocities that's changing. New roles are coming on around cloud native, cloud native operators, cybersecurity. There's so much excitement going on around the industry, and all these open positions, and they need new talent. So you can't get a degree for some of these things. So, nope, it doesn't matter what school you went to, everyone's kind of level. This is a really big deal. So, Heather, share with us your thoughts as well on this topic. Jenni, you too. Like, where are you guys at? 'Cause this is a big opportunity for women and anyone to level up in the industry. >> Absolutely. So I'll jump in and then I'll hand it over to Jenni. We're your dream team here. We can talk about both sides of this. So I run a set of programs here at AWS that are really intended to help build the next generation of cloud builders. And we do that with a variety of programs, whether it is targeting young learners from kind of 12 and up. We have AWS GetIT that is designed to get women ambassadors or women mentors in front of girls 12 to 14 and get them curious about a career in STEM. We also have a program that is all digital online. It's available in 11 languages. It's got hundreds of courses. That's called AWS Educate that is designed to do exactly what you just talked about, expose the opportunities and start building cloud skills for learners at age 13 and up. They can go online and register with an email and start learning. We want them to understand not only what the opportunity is for them, but the ways that they can help influence and bring more diversity and more inclusion and into the cloud technology space, and just keep building all those amazing builders that we need here for our customers and partners. And those are the programs that I manage, but Jenni also has an amazing program, a set of programs. And so I'll hand it over to her as you get into the professional side of this things. >> So Jenni, you're on the product side. You've got the keys to the kingdom on all the materials and shaping it. What's your view on this? 'Cause this is a huge opportunity and it's always changing. What's the latest and greatest? >> It is a massive opportunity and to give you a sense, there was a study in '21 where IT executives said that talent availability is the biggest challenge to emerging tech adoption. 64% of IT executives said that up from only 4% the year before. So the challenge is growing really fast, which for everyone that's ready to go out there and learn and try something new is a massive opportunity. And that's really why I'm here. We provide all kinds of learning experiences for people across different cloud technologies to be able to not only gain the knowledge around cloud, but also the confidence to be able to build in the cloud. And so we look across different learner levels, different roles, different opportunities, and we provide those experiences where people can actually get hands-on in a totally risk-free environment and practice building in the cloud so they can go and be ready to get their certifications, their AWS certifications, give them the credentials to be able to show an employer they can do it, and then go out and get these jobs. It's really exciting. And we go kind of end to end from the very beginning. What is cloud? I want to know what it is all the way through to I can prove that I can build in the cloud and I'm ready for a job. >> So Jenni, you nailed that confidence word. I think I want to double click on that. And Heather, you talked about you're the dream team. You guys, you're the go to market, you bring this to the marketplace. Jenni, you get the products. This is the key, but to me the the international women days angle is, is that what I hear over and over again is that, "It's too technical. I'm not qualified." It can be scary. We had a guest on who has two double E degrees in robotics and aerospace and she's hard charging. She almost lost her confidence twice she said in her career. But she was hard charging. It can get scary, but also the ability to level up fast is just as good. So if you can break through that confidence and keep the curiosity and be a builder, talk about that dynamic 'cause you guys are in the middle of it, you're in the industry, how do you handle that? 'Cause I think that's a big thing that comes up over and over again. And confidence is not just women, it's men too. But women can always, that comes up as a theme. >> It is. It is a big challenge. I mean, I've struggled with it personally and I mentor a lot of women and that is the number one challenge that is holding women back from really being able to advance is the confidence to step out there and show what they can do. And what I love about some of the products we've put out recently is we have AWS Skill Builder. You can go online, you can get all kinds of free core training and if you want to go deeper, you can go deeper. And there's a lot of different options on there. But what it does is not only gives you that based knowledge, but you can actually go in. We have something called AWS Labs. You can go in and you can actually practice on the AWS console with the services that people are using in their jobs every day without any risk of doing something that is going to blow up in your face. You're not going to suddenly get this big AWS bill. You're not going to break something that's out there running. You just go in. It's your own little environment that gets wiped when you're done and you can practice. And there's lots of different ways to learn as well. So if you go in there and you're watching a video and to your point you're like, "Oh my gosh, this is too technical. I can't understand it. I don't know what I'm going to go do." You can go another route. There's something called AWS Cloud Quest. It's a game. You go in and it's like you're gaming and it walks you through. You're actually in a virtual world. You're walking through and it's telling you, "Hey, go build this and if you need help, here's hints and here's tips." And it continues to build on itself. So you're learning and you're applying practical skills and it's at your own pace. You don't have to watch somebody else talking that is going at a pace that maybe accelerates beyond what you're ready. You can do it at your own pace, you can redo it, you can try it again until you feel confident that you know it and you're really ready to move on to the next thing. Personally, I find that hugely valuable. I go in and do these myself and I sit there and I have a lot of engineers on my team, very smart people. And I have my own imposter syndrome. I get nervous to go talk to them. Like, are they going to think I'm totally lost? And so I go in and I learn some of this myself by experiment. And then I feel like, okay, now I can go ask them some intelligent questions and they're not going to be like, "Oh gosh, my leader is totally unaware of what we're doing." And so I think that we all struggle with confidence. I think everybody does, but I see it especially in women as I mentor them. And that's what I encourage them to do is go and on your own time, practice a bit, get a little bit of experience and once you feel like you can throw a couple words out there that you know what they mean and suddenly other people look at you like, "Oh, she knows what she's talking about." And you can kind of get past that feeling. >> Well Jenni, you nailed it. Heather, she just mentioned she's in the job and she's going and she's still leveling up. That's the end when you're in, but it's also the barriers to entry are lowering. You guys are doing a good job of getting people in, but also growing fast too. So there's two dynamics at play here. How do people do this? What's the playbook? Because I think that's really key, easy to get in. And then once you're in, you can level up fast at your own pace to ride the wave. And then there's new stuff coming. I mean, every re:Invent there's 5,000 announcements. So it's like zillion new things and AI taught now. >> re:Invent is a perfect example of that ongoing imposter syndrome or confidence check for all of us. I think something that that Jenni said too is we really try and meet learners where they are and make sure that we have the support, whether it's accessibility requirements or we have the content that is built for the age that we're talking to, or we have a workforce development program called re/Start that is for people that have very little tech experience and really want to talk about a career in cloud, but they need a little bit more handholding. They need a combination of instructor-led and digital. But then we have AWS educators, I mentioned. If you want to be more self-directed, all of these tools are intended to work well together and to be complimentary and to take you on a journey as a learner. And the more skills you have, the more you increase your knowledge, the more you can take on more. But meeting folks where they are with a variety of programs, tools, languages, and accessibility really helps ensure that we can do that for learners throughout the world. >> That's awesome. Let's get into it. Let's get into the roadmaps of people and their personas. And you guys can share the programs that you have and where people could fit in. 'Cause this comes up a lot when I talk to folks. There's the young person who's I'm a gamer or whatever, I want to get a job. I'm in high school or an elementary or I want to tinker around or I'm in college or I'm learning, I'm an entry level kind of entry. Then you have the re-skilling. I'm going to change my careers, I'm kind of bored, I want to do something compelling. How do I get into the cloud game? And then the advanced re-skill is I want to get into cyber and AI and then there's other. Could you break down? Did I get that right or did I miss anything? And then what's available for those kind of lanes? So those persona lanes? >> Well, let's see, I could start with maybe the high schooler stuff and then we can bring Jenni in as well. I would say a great place to start for anyone is aws.amazon.com/training. That's going to give them the full suite of options that they could take on. If you're in high school, you can go onto AWS Educate. All you need is an email. And if you're 13 years and older, you can start exploring the types of jobs that are available in the cloud and you could start taking some introductory classes. You can do some of those labs in a safe environment that Jenni mentioned. That's a great place to start. If you are in an environment where you have an educator that is willing to go on this with you, this journey with you, we have this AWS GetIT program that is, again, educator-led. So it's an afterschool or it's an a program where we match mentors and students up with cloud professionals and they do some real-time experimentation. They build an app, they work on things together, and do a presentation at the end. The other thing I would say too is that if you are in a university, I would double check and see if the AWS Academy curriculum is already in your university. And if so, explore some of those classes there. We have instructor-led, educator-ready. course curriculum that we've designed that help people get to those certifications and get closer to those jobs and as well as hopefully then lead people right into skill builder and all the things that Jenni talked about to help them as they start out in a professional environment. >> So is the GetIT, is that an instructor-led that the person has to find someone for? Or is this available for them? >> It is through teachers. It's through educators. We are in, we've reached over 19,000 students. We're available in eight countries. There are ways for educators to lead this, but we want to make sure that we are helping the kids be successful and giving them an educator environment to do that. If they want to do it on their own, then they can absolutely go through AWS Educate or even and to explore where they want to get started. >> So what about someone who's educated in their middle of their career, might want to switch from being a biologist to a cloud cybersecurity guru or a cloud native operator? >> Yeah, so in that case, AWS re/Start is one of the great program for them to explore. We run that program with collaborating organizations in 160 cities in 80 countries throughout the world. That is a multi-week cohort-based program where we do take folks through a very clear path towards certification and job skilling that will help them get into those opportunities. Over 98% of the cohorts, the graduates of those cohorts get an interview and are hopefully on their path to getting a job. So that really has global reach. The partnership with collaborating organizations helps us ensure that we find communities that are often unreached by cloud skills training and we really work to keep a diverse focus on those cohorts and bring those folks into the cloud. >> Okay. Jenni, you've got the Skill Builder action here. What's going on on your side? Because you must have to manage all the change. I mean, AI is hot right now. I'm sure you're cranking away on curriculum and content for SageMaker, large language models, computer vision, cybersecurity. >> We do. There are a lot of options. >> How is your world? Tell us about what people can take out of way from your side. >> Yeah. So a great way to think about it is if they're already out in the workforce or they're entering the workforce, but they are technical, have technical skills is what are the roles that are interesting in the technologies that are interesting. Because the way we put out our training and our certifications is aligned to paths. So if you're look interested in a specific role. If you're interested in architecting a cloud environment or in security as you mentioned, and you want to go deep in security, there are AWS certifications that give you that. If you achieve them, they're very difficult. But if you work to them and achieve them, they give you the credential that you can take to an employer and say, "Look, I can do this job." And they are in very high demand. In fact that's where if you look at some of the publications that have come out, they talk about, what are people making if they have different certifications? What are the most in-demand certifications that are out there? And those are what help people get jobs. And so you identify what is that role or that technology area I want to learn. And then you have multiple options for how you build those skills depending on how you want to learn. And again, that's really our focus, is on providing experiences based on how people learn and making it accessible to them. 'Cause not everybody wants to learn in the same way. And so there is AWS Skill Builder where people can go learn on their own that is really great particularly for people who maybe are already working and have to learn in the evenings, on the weekends. People who like to learn at their own pace, who just want to be hands-on, but are self-starters. And they can get those whole learning plans through there all the way aligned to the certification and then they can go get their certification. There's also classroom training. So a lot of people maybe want to do continuous learning through an online, but want to go really deep with an expert in the room and maybe have a more focused period of time if they can go for a couple days. And so they can do classroom training. We provide a lot of classroom training. We have partners all over the globe who provide classroom training. And so there's that and what we find to be the most powerful is when you couple the two. If you can really get deep, you have an expert, you can ask questions, but first before you go do that, you get some of that foundational that you've kind of learned on your own. And then after you go back and reinforce, you go back online, you try out things that maybe you learned in the classroom, but you didn't quite, you hadn't used it enough yet to quite know how to do it. Now you can go back and actually use it, experiment and play around. And so we really encourage that kind of, figure out what are some areas you're interested in, go learn it and then go get a job and continue to learn because then once you learn that first area, you start to build confidence in it. Suddenly other areas become interesting. 'Cause as you said, cloud is changing fast. And once you learn a space, first of all you have to keep going back to stay up on it as it changes. But you quickly find that there are other areas that are really interesting too. >> I've observed that the training side, it's just like cloud itself, it's very agile. You can get hands-on quickly, you don't need to take a class, and then get in weeks later. You're in it like it's real time. So you're immersed in gamification and all kinds of ways to funnel into the either advanced tracks and certification. So you guys do a great job and I want to give you props for that and a shout out. The question I have for you guys is can you scope the opportunity for these certifications and opportunities for women in particular? What are some of the top jobs pulling down? Scope out the opportunity because I think when people hear that they really fall out of their chair, they go, "Wow, I didn't know I could make $200,000 doing cybersecurity." Well, yeah or maybe more. I just made the number, I don't actually know, but like I know people do make that much in cyber, but there are huge financial opportunities with certifications and education. Can you scope that order of magnitude? Can you share any data? >> Yeah, so in the US they certainly are. Certifications on average aligned to six digit type jobs. And if you go out and do a search, there are research studies out there that are refreshed every year that say what are the top IT industry certifications and how much money do they make? And the reason I don't put a number out there is because it's constantly changing and in fact it keeps going up, >> It's going up, not going down. >> But I would encourage people to do that quick search. What are the top IT industry certifications. Again, based on the country you're in, it makes a difference. But if you're US, there's a lot of data out there for the US and then there is some for other countries as well around how much on average people make. >> Do you list like the higher level certifications, stack rank them in terms of order? Like say, I'm a type A personnel, I want to climb Mount Everest, I want to get the highest level certification. How do I know that? Is it like laddered up or is like how do you guys present that? >> Yeah, so we have different types of certifications. There is a foundational, which we call the cloud practitioner. That one is more about just showing that you know something about cloud. It's not aligned to a specific job role. But then we have what we call associate level certifications, which are aligned to roles. So there's the solutions architect, cloud developer, so developer operations. And so you can tell by the role and associate is kind of that next level. And then the roles often have a professional level, which is even more advanced. And basically that's saying you're kind of an Uber expert at that point. And then there are technology specialties, which are less about a specific role, although some would argue a security technology specialty might align very well to a security role, but they're more about showing the technology. And so typically, it goes foundational, advanced, professional, and then the specialties are more on the side. They're not aligned, but they're deep. They're deep within that area. >> So you can go dig and pick your deep dive and jump into where you're comfortable. Heather, talk about the commitment in terms of dollars. I know Amazon's flaunted some numbers like 30 million or something, people they want to have trained, hundreds of millions of dollars in investment. This is key, obviously, more people trained on cloud, more operators, more cloud usage, obviously. I see the business connection. What's the women relationship to the numbers? Or what the experience is? How do you guys see that? Obviously International Women's Day, get the confidence, got the curiosity. You're a builder, you're in. It's that easy. >> It doesn't always feel that way, I'm sure to everybody, but we'd like to think that it is. Amazon and AWS do invest hundreds of millions of dollars in free training every year that is accessible to everyone out there. I think that sometimes the hardest obstacles to get overcome are getting started and we try and make it as easy as possible to get started with the tools that we've talked about already today. We run into plenty of cohorts of women as part of our re/Start program that are really grateful for the opportunity to see something, see a new way of thinking, see a new opportunity for them. We don't necessarily break out our funding by women versus men. We want to make sure that we are open and diverse for everybody to come in and get the training that they need to. But we definitely want to make sure that we are accessible and available to women and all genders outside of the US and inside the US. >> Well, I know the number's a lot lower than they should be and that's obviously why we're promoting this heavily. There's a lot more interest I see in tech. So digital transformation is gender neutral. I mean, it's like the world eats software and uses software, uses the cloud. So it has to get 50/50 in my opinion. So you guys do a great job. Now that we're done kind of promoting Amazon, which I wanted to do 'cause I think it's super important. Let's talk about you guys. What got you guys involved in tech? What was the inspiration and share some stories about your experiences and advice for folks watching? >> So I've always been in traditionally male dominated roles. I actually started in aviation and then moved to tech. And what I found was I got a mentor early on, a woman who was senior to me and who was kind of who I saw as the smartest person out there. She was incredibly smart, she was incredibly kind, and she was always lifting women up. And I kind of latched onto her and followed her around and she was such an amazing mentor. She brought me from throughout tech, from company to company, job to job, was always positioning me in front of other people as the go-to person. And I realized, "Wow, I want to be like her." And so that's been my focus as well in tech is you can be deeply technical in tech or you can be not deeply technical and be in tech and you can be successful both ways, but the way you're going to be most successful is if you find other people, build them up and help put them out in front. And so I personally love to mentor women and to put them in places where they can feel comfortable being out in front of people. And that's really been my career. I have tried to model her approach as much as I can. >> That's a really interesting observation. It's the pattern we've been seeing in all these interviews for the past two years of doing the International Women's Day is that networking, mentoring and sponsorship are one thing. So it's all one thing. It's not just mentoring. It's like people think, "Oh, just mentoring. What does that mean? Advice?" No, it's sponsorship, it's lifting people up, creating a keiretsu, creating networks. Really important. Heather, what's your experience? >> Yeah, I'm sort of the example of somebody who never thought they'd be in tech, but I happened to graduate from college in the Silicon Valley in the early nineties and next thing you know, it's more than a couple years later and I'm deeply in tech and I think it when we were having the conversation about confidence and willingness to learn and try that really spoke to me as well. I think I had to get out of my own way sometimes and just be willing to not be the smartest person in the room and just be willing to ask a lot of questions. And with every opportunity to ask questions, I think somebody, I ended up with good mentors, male and female, that saw the willingness to ask questions and the willingness to be humble in my approach to learning. And that really helped. I'm also very aware that nobody's journey is the same and I need to create an environment on my team and I need to be a role model within AWS and Amazon for allowing people to show up in the way that they're going to be most successful. And sometimes that will mean giving them learning opportunities. Sometimes that will be hooking them up with a mentor. Sometimes that will be giving them the freedom to do what they need for their family or their personal life. And modeling that behavior regardless of gender has always been how I choose to show up and what I ask my leaders to do. And the more we can do that, I've seen the team been able to grow and flourish in that way and support our entire team. >> I love that story. You also have a great leader, Maureen Lonergan, who I've met many conversations with, but also it starts at the top. Andy Jassy who can come across, he's kind of technical, he's dirty, he's a builder mentality. He has first principles and you're bringing up this first principles concept and whether that's passing it forward, what you've learned, having first principles helps in an organization. Can you guys talk about what that's like at your company? 'Cause everyone's different. And sometimes whether, and I sometimes I worry about what I say, but I also have my first principles. So talk about how principles matter in how you guys interface with others and letting people be their authentic self. >> Yeah, I'll jump in Jenni and then you can. The Amazon leadership principles are super important to how we interact with each other and it really does provide a set of guidelines for how we work with each other and how we work for our customers and with our partners. But most of all it gives us a common language and a common set of expectations. And I will be honest, they're not always easy. When you come from an environment that tends to be less open to feedback and less open to direct conversations than you find at Amazon, it could take a while to get used to that, but for me at least, it was extremely empowering to have those tools and those principles as guidance for how to operate and to gain the confidence in using them. I've also been able to participate in hundreds and hundreds of interviews in the time that I've been here as part of an interview team of bar raisers. I think that really helps us understand whether or not folks are going to be successful at AWS and at Amazon and helps them understand if they're going to be able to be successful. >> Bar raising is an Amazon term and it's gender neutral, right Jenni? >> It is gender neutral. >> Bar is a bar, it raises. >> That's right. And it's funny, we say that our culture here is peculiar. And when I started, I had been in consulting for several years, so I worked with a lot of different companies in tech and so I thought I'd seen everything and I came here and I went, "Hmm." I see what they mean by peculiar. It is very different environment. >> In the fullness of time, it'll all work out. >> That's right, that's right. Well and it's funny because when you first started, it's a lot to figure out to how to operate in an environment where people do use a 16 leadership principles. I've worked at a lot of companies with three or four core values and nobody can state those. We could state all 16 leadership principles and we use them in our regular everyday dialogue. That is an awkward thing when you first come to have people saying, "Oh, I'm going to use bias for action in this situation and I'm going to go move fast. And they're actually used in everyday conversations. But after a couple years suddenly you realize, "Oh, I'm doing that." And maybe even sometimes at the dinner table I'm doing that, which can get to be a bit much. But it creates an environment where we can all be different. We can all think differently. We can all have different ways of doing things, but we have a common overall approach to what we're trying to achieve. And that's really, it gives us a good framework for that. >> Jenni, it's great insight. Heather, thank you so much for sharing your stories. We're going to do this not once a year. We're going to continue this Women in Tech program every quarter. We'll check in with you guys and find out what's new. And thank you for what you do. We appreciate that getting the word out and really is an opportunity for everyone with education and cloud and it's only going to get more opportunities at the edge in AI and so much more tech. Thank you for coming on the program. >> Thank you for having us. >> Thanks, John. >> Thank you. That's the International Women's Day segment here with leaders from AWS. I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching. (upbeat musiC)

(upbeat music) >> Hey everyone. Welcome to theCUBE's coverage of Women In Tech, International Women's Day 2022. I'm your host, Lisa Martin. I have two guests from AWS here with me. Carolina Pina joins us, the head of Enterprise Enablement for LATAM and Laura Alvarez Modernel is here as well, Public Sector Programs Manager at AWS. Ladies, it's great to have you on theCUBE. >> Nice to meet you. >> Thank you for having us. >> Carolina, let's start with you. Talk to me a little bit about your role, what it is that you're doing there. >> So my role in AWS is to actually create mechanisms of massive training to try to close the talent gap that we have in the region. And when I mentioned talent gap, I'm talking about obviously digital and cloud-computing skills. So that's, that's, in a nutshell what my role entails. >> Lisa: Got it. How long have you been in that role? Just curious. >> So I've been at AWS a little bit over, over two years. I was actually in the public sector team when I joined, leading the education vertical for Latin American Canada. And I recently joined the commercial sector now leading these massive training efforts for the region for LATAM. >> And Laura, you're in public sector. Talk to me a little bit about your role. >> Yes, I'm in public sector. I'm also based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. So yeah, I'm from Latin America, and I lead educational and community impact programs in the Southern cone of Latin America. I also lead diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and I'm part of the Women at Amazon global board. That's our affinity group to make sure we make efforts towards building a more equal world. And on a personal note I'm really passionate about the topic of gender equality because I truly think it affects us all as women and as Latins. So that's something that I'm always interested in collaborating with. >> Lisa: Excellent. Carolina back to you. If we think about from an enablement perspective how is AWS partnering with its customers and its partners to train and employ women particularly in technology? >> Oh, sure. Lisa, so it's not a surprise. We, like I mentioned, you know we have a big cloud skills, talent gap in the region. In fact, you know, 69% of companies have reported talent shortages and difficulty hiring. So, and this represents a 15 year high. So, many of these companies are actually, you know, our own commercial customers. So they approach us saying, you know, asking for for support training and developing their talent. So like I mentioned, in my role I create massive training efforts and initiatives. So we always take into consideration women, minorities, underrepresented community, and not just for the current talent, meaning like the people that are currently employed, but also to ensure that we are proactively implementing initiatives to develop a talent of younger you know, a younger generation and a talent. So we can, you know, to inspire them and, and ensure that they, that we're seeing them represented in companies like AWS, you know and our customers, and in our partners. And obviously we, when we sit down with customers to craft these massive trainings you know, leveraging their ecosystems and communities, we actually try to use all our AWS training and certification portfolio which includes, you know, in live in class with live in structures, in classroom trainings. We also have our AWS Skill Builder platform which is the platform that allows us to, you know to reach a broader audience because it has, you know over 500 free and on-demand classes. And we also have a lot of different other programs that touches in different audiences. You know, we have AWS re/Start for underrepresented, and underemployed minorities. We also have AWS Academy, which is the program that we have for higher education institutions. And we have AWS, you know, Educate which also touches, you know, cloud beginners. So in every single of these programs, we ensure that we are encompassing and really speaking to women and developing training and developing women. >> Lisa: That's a great focus there. Laura, talk to me about upskilling. I know AWS is very much about promoting from within. What are some of the things that it's doing to help women in Latin America develop those tech skills and upskill from where, maybe where they are now? >> Well, Lisa, I think that is super interesting because there's definitely a skills gap problem, right? We have all heard about. And what's funny is also that we have this huge opportunity in Latin America to train people and to help further develop the countries. And we have the companies that need the talent. So why is there still a gap, right? And I think that's because there's no magic solution to solving this problem. No, like epic Hollywood movie scene that it's going to show how we close the gap. And it takes stepping out of our comfort zone. And as Carolina mentioned, collaborating. So, we at AWS have a commitment to help 29 million people globally to grow their technical skills with free cloud-computing skills training by 2025. I know that sounds a lot through educational programs but we do have as Carolina mentioned, a Skill Builder you can go into the website for free, enter, choose your path, get trained. We have Academy that we implement with universities. Re/Start that is a program that's already available in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Costa Rica. So there are a lot of opportunities, but you also mentioned something else that I would like to dive a bit deeper that is Latin American women. And yesterday we had the opportunity to record a panel about intersectionality with three amazing Latin women. And what we have to learn from that is that these are two minorities that intersect, right. We're talking about females that are minority. Latinas are minority. And in tech, that is also something that is even bigger minority. So there are more difficulties there and we need to make sure that we are meeting that talent that is there that is in Latin America, that exists. We know for sure we have unicorns in Latin America that are even AWS customers like Mercado Libre, and we have to meet them with the opportunities. And that's why we created a program that came from identifying how this problem evolves in Latin America, that there is a lack of confidence in women also that they don't feel prepared or equipped. There is a cultural component why we don't choose tech careers. And we partner with universities, more than 12 universities in Latin America with the International American Development Bank as well to create tech skills that's a free five weeks program in order to get students and get female in Latin America, into the tech world. And we also have them with mentorship. So I think that is an opportunity to truly collaborate because we as AWS are not going to solve these by ourselves, right? We need everyone pitching in on that. >> Lisa: Right. It's absolutely a team effort. You mentioned something important in terms of helping women, and especially minorities get out of their comfort zone. Carolina, I'm curious when you're talking with women and getting them into the program and sharing with them all of the enablement programs that you have, how do you help them be confident to get out of that comfort zone? That's a hard thing to do. >> Yeah, no, for sure. For sure, Lisa, well, I, you know, a lot of times actually I use myself as an example because, you know, I studied engineering and industrial systems engineering many years ago. And you know, a lot of my career has been in in higher education and innovation and startups. And as I mentioned in the intro I've been at AWS for a little bit over two years. So I, my career has not been in cloud and I recently joined the cloud. So I actually had to go through our own trainings and get our own certifications. So I, that's, you know a lot of times I actually, I use my own example, so people understand that you don't have to come from tech, you don't have to come, you can actually be a non-tech person and, and also see the the benefits of the cloud. And you don't have to only, you know, learn cloud if you're in the IT department or in an IT team. So sometimes, I also emphasize that the cloud and the future is absolutely the cloud. In fact, the world economic foreign, you know teaches us that cloud-computing is that the technology that's going to be mostly adopted by 2025. So that's why we need to ensure that every single person, women and others are really knowledgeable in the cloud. So that's why, you know, technical and untechnical. But I, you know, I use myself as an example for them to say, you know, you can actually do it. And obviously also I collaborate with Laura and a lot of the women at Amazon Latin America Group to also you know, ensure that we're doing webinars and panels. So we show them ourselves as role model like, Laura is an incredible role model for our community. And so it's also to to show examples of what the possibilities are. And that's what we do. >> Lisa: I love that you're sharing >> And can I make a note there also? >> Please, yes. >> To add to that. I think it also requires the companies and the, and the private sector to get out of their comfort zone, right? Because we are not going to find solutions doing what we are already doing. We truly need to go and get near these persons with a new message. Their interest is there in these programs we have reached more than 3,000 women already in Latin America with tech skills. So it's not that women are not interested. It's like, how do we reach them with a message that resounds with them, right? Like how we can explain the power of technology to transform the world and to actually improve their communities. I think there's something there also that we need to think further of. >> It's so important. You know, we say often when we're talking about women in tech, that she needs to see what she can be or if she can't see it, she can't be it. So having those role models and those mentors and sponsors is absolutely critical for women to get, I call it getting comfortably uncomfortable out of that comfort zone and recognizing there's so many opportunities. Carolina, to your point, you know, these days every company is a tech company, a data company whether you're talking about a car dealer, a grocery market. So your point about, you know, and obviously the future being cloud there's so much opportunity that that opens up, for everybody really, but that's an important thing for people to recognize how they can be a part of that get out of their comfort zone and try something that they maybe hadn't considered before. >> Yes. And, actually, Lisa I would love to share an example. So we have a group, O Boticário, which is one of our customers one of the, the lead retails in Brazil. And they've been a customer of AWS since 2013 when they realized that, you know the urgency and the importance of embracing state of the art technology, to your point, like, you know this is a retail company that understands that needs to be, you know embrace digital transformation, especially because, you know they get very busy during mother's days and other holidays during the year. So they realized that they, instead of outsourcing their IT requirements to technology experts they decided to actually start developing and bringing the talent, you know within itself, within, you know, technology in-house. So they decided to start training within. And that's when we, obviously we partnered with them to also create a very comprehensive training and certification plan that started with, you know a lot of the infrastructure and security teams but then it was actually then implemented in the rest of the company. So going back to the point like everybody really needs to know. And what we also love about O Boticário is they they really care about the diversion and inclusion aspect of this equation. And we actually collaborated with them as well through this program called Desenvolve with the Brazilian government. And Desenvolve means developing Portuguese and they this program really ensures that we are also closing that gender and that race gap and ensuring that they're actually, you know, developing talent in cloud for Brazil. So we, you know, obviously have been very successful with them and we will continue to do even more things with them particular for this topic. >> Lisa: I've always known how customer focused AWS is every time we get to go to re:Invent or some of the events but it's so nice to hear these the educational programs that you're doing with customers to help them improve DEI to help them enable their own women in their organizations to learn skills. I didn't realize that. I think that's fantastic very much a symbiotic part of AWS. If we think about the theme for this year's International Women's Day, Breaking The Bias I want to get both of your opinions and Laura we'll start with you, what that means to you, and where do you think we are in Latin America with breaking the bias? >> Well, I think breaking the bias is the first step to truly being who we are every day and being able to bring that to our work as well. I think we are in a learning curve of that. The companies are changing culturally, as Carolina mentioned we have customers that are aware of the importance of having women. And as we say at AWS not only because there is a good business reason because there is, because there are studies that show that we can increase the country's CPD, but also because it's important and it's the right thing to do. So in terms of breaking the bias I think we are learning and we have a long way to go. I talked a bit earlier about intersectionality and that is something that is also important to highlight, right? Because we are talking about females but we are also talking about another minorities. We're talking about underrepresented communities, Indigenous People, Latins. So when these overlap, we face even bigger challenges to get where we want to get, right? And to get to decision making places because technology is transforming the ways we take decisions, we live, and we need someone like us taking those decisions. So I think it's important at first to be aware and to see that you can get there and eventually to start the conversation going and to build the conversation, not to just leave it but to make sure we hear people and their input and what they're going through. >> Lisa: Yes. We definitely need to hear them. Carolina, what's your take on breaking the bias and where do you from your experience, where do you think we are with it? >> Yeah, no, I'm as passionate as Laura on this topic. And that's why we, you know we're collaborating in the Women at Amazon Latin America Chapter, because we're both very, I think breaking the bias starts with us and ourselves. And we are very proactive within AWS and externally. And I feel it's also, I mean, Lisa, what we've been doing is not only, obviously gathering you know, the troops and really making sure that, that we have very aggressive goals internally, but also bringing you know, bringing our male counterparts, and other, you know, other members of the other communities, because the change, we're not going to make it alone. Like the change where it is not women only talking to women is going to make the change. We actually need to make sure the male and other groups are represented. And the dialogue that they're that we're very conscious about that. And I feel like we're seeing more and more that the topic is becoming more of a priority not only within AWS and Amazon but we also see it because now that I meet with when I meet with customers around the region they really want to see how we can collaborate in these diversion and inclusion initiatives. So I think we are breaking the bias because now this topic is more top of mind. And then we are being more proactively addressing it and and training people and educating people. And I feel we're really in a pivoted point where the change that we've really been wanting to we will see in the next you know, few years which is very exciting. >> Lisa: Excellent, and we'll see that with the help of women like you guys. Thank you so much for joining me today, talking about what you're doing, how you're helping organizations across AWS's ecosystem, customers, partners, and helping, of course, folks from within you, right. It's a holistic effort, but we are on our way to breaking that bias and again, I thank you both for your insights. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, Lisa, for the opportunity. >> My pleasure. For Carolina Pina and Laura Alvarez Modernel, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's coverage of Women in Tech, International Women's Day 2022. (upbeat music)

>> Live from Bahrain, it's theCUBE. Covering AWS Summit Bahrain. (upbeat music) Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Okay, welcome back everyone. We're here live in Bahrain for theCUBE's exclusive coverage here in the Middle East for AWS, Amazon Web Services', new region being announced and being deployed early 2019. I'm John Furrier your host. Our next guest is Faisal Hammad, Assistant Professor, Information Systems at the University of Bahrain. Welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you very much. Thank you for having me and welcome to Bahrain. >> It's been a great pleasure. Our team has been blown away. It's been a very surreal experience. We're really excited. We've learned a lot and we're super impressed with the people and the culture. >> Yeah thank you very much. >> It's just Silicone Valley vibe. It's got community. It's got money and it's got, now, an ecosystem that's going to be flourishing. It really looks, really good. >> Yes, yes. As I told you, we'll have the little desserts of Silicon Valley soon, inshallah. >> Now Silicon Valley, I wanted to bring this up because one of the big success stories of Silicon Valley is they let the innovation flow. They have soil and they feed it with money and things grow and the entrepreneurs are out there making things happen, but they have two universities. They've got Stanford and University of California, Berkeley, Of course you've got UCLA in Southern California so research is really important and also at the role of academia is really important. Not in the sense of just being too hard core but creating a ground for free thinking, entrepreneurship, and then as the kids come out of school, sometimes dropping out, they just want to start companies. >> Alright. >> This is big. How are you guys looking at this massive wave of innovation coming because it's got to be taking you by surprise. You got, ya know the old way, get the computer science, here's some IT, like oh my god here comes cloud. All these new languages, data science. >> So, it didn't take us by surprise, if you say. We have been expecting this change for quite sometime. The thing is with the leadership of the government of Bahrain, as well as the leadership of the University, they want to make sure that we are able to produce talents to the economy. And, Bahrain, the University of Bahrain was involved from early on steps in the cloud first initiatives, or cloud first policy. So, we were aware that we have to change the ways that we are operating in order for us to produce these, not produce them but to shape these talents for the students to compete not just locally but internationally. >> So you see this coming, okay that fair, but the way this here, there's multiple waves coming in, it's going to be a 20, 30 year generation of waves. So you got to get the surf boards, to use the metaphor from California. Sorry, I'm from California. >> (laughing) There's no waves in the desert, the water's 91 degrees. But, as a metaphor, this is what's happening. So how has that shaped some of the curriculum, some of the interactions? Certainly the economic development board, the EDB has been gung ho supporting entrepreneurial resources. But when you're going to come in, you're going to be feeding the young kids the nutrients, what are giving them? New languages, new IT, what's the plan? >> Let me just, try to focus the, focus the discussion on the University and what the University is doing. So, what we are doing here at the University now, we have that partnership, with AWS. And now University of Bahrain is an AWS accredited academy. So we now provide curriculum, that is aligned with AWS, so that when our students take these courses, they will be able to take the certification and then be certified upon graduating. So, in that sense, we're providing the talents, and trained talents, to start working immediately with limited, or lower, training needed. As well as, in terms of research. If you say, it used to take us a long time if you want to research something. If you want, for example, the data centers, let's say for example some expert in artificial intelligence, it would take us a long time and a lot of effort to do so. >> Yeah >> But with AWS, all you need to do is, just log into the console. >> Amazon is doing all the research for you. They've got all the tools. >> Yes >> Yes, so if a student is, or even a researcher, is interested in, let's say for example, artificial intelligence, instead of waiting for the instructor to be knowledgeable, waiting for an instructor to be knowledgeable about that part, they could just start plugging in and playing with it. And then with that experimentation, they could do a lot of great stuff. >> What about software, let's get back to software, and I want to get to the IT in just a second because I know information technology is in your wheelhouse. But software is driving a lot of the dev-ops and the cloud native IT disruption. >> Yes Amazon is now winning a lot of that business, that's the main Amazon Web Services. But they started with developers. That's where the software developers are, how is that developing in the University? Are people taking to software programing, what's the curriculum like? >> So, in terms, >> What's the story? >> Yeah, so, we don't, we're not going to just focus on creating a curriculum for cloud computing. Cloud computing now is embedded throughout the all the curricular that we have in the University. So, in any let's say, program, whether it's in IT or even Arts, as well as Business, there's a small component of cloud computing telling them what is cloud computing, and what can it provide for them. >> [John} So you're focusing on cloud first? >> Yes, cloud first. >> And then we have these courses designed specially for IT students, as I told you before we are partners with AWS, the AWS academy, so now we'll be able to provide a curriculum that's actually updated by AWS and all we have to do is just deliver this material. >> How long have the courses been out there? Have they been released yet? Have they been out there for a while? >> They just has been released, and we have almost 50 students now, taking these courses. >> [John} Well, you know, University of California, in Berkeley, where my daughter goes, the number one class is Intro to Computer Science and Intro to Data Science. It seems that the younger kids are wanting that intro to programing >> Yes and intro to data science. Is there any data thing going on with Amazon? They do a lot of big data, you got Red Shift, Aurora, you got I.O.T. >> So in our, >> SageMaker, is one of the most popular features of Amazon, is like, I think it's going to be the most popular but... >> So, in our department, for example, the Department of Information Systems, Instead of just having a bachelors in Information Systems, now we have smaller tracks within the program itself. So if the student is, let's say interested in cloud computing, then he can take the cloud computing track and take all these cloud computing components as part of the curriculum. If he or she is interested in, >> Yeah let's say big data, we have a big data track within our program. >> And the government is really behind you on this right? >> Yes, yes, The government is behind us in the way that they want students, not just to rely on having to secure a white collar job. They want them to create the jobs for others. They are trying to create this culture of entrepreneurship. So you start your own business, you don't have to wait for opportunities, you make your own opportunities. With the help of, I think Temp Keen, EDP, all of them are giving them the platform to just flourish, to just go into the world and then create opportunities not just for themselves, as I told you, but for others. >> So, final question I want to ask you. Okay, personal opinion, what do you think is going to happen after the Amazon region gets deployed. You're going to get these training classes, people are going to be coming into the marketplace, graduating. What's the impact? What's your vision? >> What's my, I don't know! >> Any guesses? If you had to kind of project and connect the dots. >> I think there's going to be a huge move towards, small business. Because it used to cost a lot, owning a business, or starting a start-up used to cost a lot. Now, it doesn't cost that much if they choose, let's say, for example cloud computing, or if the choose AWS in particular. It's just going to cost them the operational expenditures, there's no huge capital expense that they have to pay. So my projection is that we're going to see a lot of small businesses, small newer apps, and newer ways to go around businesses because of these opportunities offered by... >> Yeah, it lowers the bar to get a new innovation going. And it certainly cost less than provisioning servers. >> Exactly, so if a company wants to start up a business, if it's a small business, they don't have that much time to spend on servers, spend on many things. >> Faisal, thanks for coming on theCUBE, we really appreciate it. >> Thank you very much, thank you for having me. >> We're looking forward to following what's going on in the University when we come back. We'll certainly be back here, >> Thank you very much. in the future covering you guys. It's certainly a lot of action, Dubai right around the corner. This is a new hot area for innovation. For theCUBE, covering our first time here, we're excited. I'm, John Furrier. You can reach me on Twitter @furrier, or find me anywhere online, all my channels are open. Stay with us for exclusive coverage of AWS's new region here in Bahrain, be right back. (upbeat music)