(upbeat intro music) >> Hello everyone. Welcome to theCUBE's coverage of International Women's Day. I'm your host, John Furrier, here in Palo Alto, California. Got a special remote guest coming in. Teresa Carlson, President and Chief Commercial Officer at Flexport, theCUBE alumni, one of the first, let me go back to 2013, Teresa, former AWS. Great to see you. Thanks for coming on. >> Oh my gosh, almost 10 years. That is unbelievable. It's hard to believe so many years of theCUBE. I love it. >> It's been such a great honor to interview you and follow your career. You've had quite the impressive run, executive level woman in tech. You've done such an amazing job, not only in your career, but also helping other women. So I want to give you props to that before we get started. Thank you. >> Thank you, John. I, it's my, it's been my honor and privilege. >> Let's talk about Flexport. Tell us about your new role there and what it's all about. >> Well, I love it. I'm back working with another Amazonian, Dave Clark, who is our CEO of Flexport, and we are about 3,000 people strong globally in over 90 countries. We actually even have, we're represented in over 160 cities and with local governments and places around the world, which I think is super exciting. We have over 100 network partners and growing, and we are about empowering the global supply chain and trade and doing it in a very disruptive way with the use of platform technology that allows our customers to really have visibility and insight to what's going on. And it's a lot of fun. I'm learning new things, but there's a lot of technology in this as well, so I feel right at home. >> You quite have a knack from mastering growth, technology, and building out companies. So congratulations, and scaling them up too with the systems and processes. So I want to get into that. Let's get into your personal background. Then I want to get into the work you've done and are doing for empowering women in tech. What was your journey about, how did it all start? Like, I know you had a, you know, bumped into it, you went Microsoft, AWS. Take us through your career, how you got into tech, how it all happened. >> Well, I do like to give a shout out, John, to my roots and heritage, which was a speech and language pathologist. So I did start out in healthcare right out of, you know, university. I had an undergraduate and a master's degree. And I do tell everyone now, looking back at my career, I think it was super helpful for me because I learned a lot about human communication, and it has done me very well over the years to really try to understand what environments I'm in and what kind of individuals around the world culturally. So I'm really blessed that I had that opportunity to work in healthcare, and by the way, a shout out to all of our healthcare workers that has helped us get through almost three years of COVID and flu and neurovirus and everything else. So started out there and then kind of almost accidentally got into technology. My first small company I worked for was a company called Keyfile Corporation, which did workflow and document management out of Nashua, New Hampshire. And they were a Microsoft goal partner. And that is actually how I got into big tech world. We ran on exchange, for everybody who knows that term exchange, and we were a large small partner, but large in the world of exchange. And those were the days when you would, the late nineties, you would go and be in the same room with Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. And I really fell in love with Microsoft back then. I thought to myself, wow, if I could work for a big tech company, I got to hear Bill on stage about saving, he would talk about saving the world. And guess what my next step was? I actually got a job at Microsoft, took a pay cut and a job downgrade. I tell this story all the time. Took like three downgrades in my role. I had been a SVP and went to a manager, and it's one of the best moves I ever made. And I shared that because I really didn't know the world of big tech, and I had to start from the ground up and relearn it. I did that, I just really loved that job. I was at Microsoft from 2000 to 2010, where I eventually ran all of the U.S. federal government business, which was a multi-billion dollar business. And then I had the great privilege of meeting an amazing man, Andy Jassy, who I thought was just unbelievable in his insights and knowledge and openness to understanding new markets. And we talked about government and how government needed the same great technology as every startup. And that led to me going to work for Andy in 2010 and starting up our worldwide public sector business. And I pinch myself some days because we went from two people, no offices, to the time I left we had over 10,000 people, billions in revenue, and 172 countries and had done really amazing work. I think changing the way public sector and government globally really thought about their use of technology and Cloud computing in general. And that kind of has been my career. You know, I was there till 2020, 21 and then did a small stint at Splunk, a small stint back at Microsoft doing a couple projects for Microsoft with CEO, Satya Nadella, who is also an another amazing CEO and leader. And then Dave called me, and I'm at Flexport, so I couldn't be more honored, John. I've just had such an amazing career working with amazing individuals. >> Yeah, I got to say the Amazon One well-documented, certainly by theCUBE and our coverage. We watched you rise and scale that thing. And like I said at a time, this will when we look back as a historic run because of the build out. I mean as a zero to massive billions at a historic time where government was transforming, I would say Microsoft had a good run there with Fed, but it was already established stuff. Federal business was like, you know, blocking and tackling. The Amazon was pure build out. So I have to ask you, what was your big learnings? Because one, you're a Seattle big tech company kind of entrepreneurial in the sense of you got, here's some working capital seed finance and go build that thing, and you're in DC and you're a woman. What did you learn? >> I learned that you really have to have a lot of grit. You, my mom and dad, these are kind of more southern roots words, but stick with itness, you know. you can't give up and no's not in your vocabulary. I found no is just another way to get to yes. That you have to figure out what are all the questions people are going to ask you. I learned to be very patient, and I think one of the things John, for us was our secret sauce was we said to ourselves, if we're going to do something super transformative and truly disruptive, like Cloud computing, which the government really had not utilized, we had to be patient. We had to answer all their questions, and we could not judge in any way what they were thinking because if we couldn't answer all those questions and prove out the capabilities of Cloud computing, we were not going to accomplish our goals. And I do give so much credit to all my colleagues there from everybody like Steve Schmidt who was there, who's still there, who's the CISO, and Charlie Bell and Peter DeSantis and the entire team there that just really helped build that business out. Without them, you know, we would've just, it was a team effort. And I think that's the thing I loved about it was it was not just sales, it was product, it was development, it was data center operations, it was legal, finance. Everybody really worked as a team and we were on board that we had to make a lot of changes in the government relations team. We had to go into Capitol Hill. We had to talk to them about the changes that were required and really get them to understand why Cloud computing could be such a transformative game changer for the way government operates globally. >> Well, I think the whole world and the tech world can appreciate your work and thank you later because you broke down those walls asking those questions. So great stuff. Now I got to say, you're in kind of a similar role at Flexport. Again, transformative supply chain, not new. Computing wasn't new when before Cloud came. Supply chain, not a new concept, is undergoing radical change and transformation. Online, software supply chain, hardware supply chain, supply chain in general, shipping. This is a big part of our economy and how life is working. Similar kind of thing going on, build out, growth, scale. >> It is, it's very much like that, John, I would say, it's, it's kind of a, the model with freight forwarding and supply chain is fairly, it's not as, there's a lot of technology utilized in this global supply chain world, but it's not integrated. You don't have a common operating picture of what you're doing in your global supply chain. You don't have easy access to the information and visibility. And that's really, you know, I was at a conference last week in LA, and it was, the themes were so similar about transparency, access to data and information, being able to act quickly, drive change, know what was happening. I was like, wow, this sounds familiar. Data, AI, machine learning, visibility, common operating picture. So it is very much the same kind of themes that you heard even with government. I do believe it's an industry that is going through transformation and Flexport has been a group that's come in and said, look, we have this amazing idea, number one to give access to everyone. We want every small business to every large business to every government around the world to be able to trade their goods, think about supply chain logistics in a very different way with information they need and want at their fingertips. So that's kind of thing one, but to apply that technology in a way that's very usable across all systems from an integration perspective. So it's kind of exciting. I used to tell this story years ago, John, and I don't think Michael Dell would mind that I tell this story. One of our first customers when I was at Keyfile Corporation was we did workflow and document management, and Dell was one of our customers. And I remember going out to visit them, and they had runners and they would run around, you know, they would run around the floor and do their orders, right, to get all those computers out the door. And when I think of global trade, in my mind I still see runners, you know, running around and I think that's moved to a very digital, right, world that all this stuff, you don't need people doing this. You have machines doing this now, and you have access to the information, and you know, we still have issues resulting from COVID where we have either an under-abundance or an over-abundance of our supply chain. We still have clogs in our shipping, in the shipping yards around the world. So we, and the ports, so we need to also, we still have some clearing to do. And that's the reason technology is important and will continue to be very important in this world of global trade. >> Yeah, great, great impact for change. I got to ask you about Flexport's inclusion, diversity, and equity programs. What do you got going on there? That's been a big conversation in the industry around keeping a focus on not making one way more than the other, but clearly every company, if they don't have a strong program, will be at a disadvantage. That's well reported by McKinsey and other top consultants, diverse workforces, inclusive, equitable, all perform better. What's Flexport's strategy and how are you guys supporting that in the workplace? >> Well, let me just start by saying really at the core of who I am, since the day I've started understanding that as an individual and a female leader, that I could have an impact. That the words I used, the actions I took, the information that I pulled together and had knowledge of could be meaningful. And I think each and every one of us is responsible to do what we can to make our workplace and the world a more diverse and inclusive place to live and work. And I've always enjoyed kind of the thought that, that I could help empower women around the world in the tech industry. Now I'm hoping to do my little part, John, in that in the supply chain and global trade business. And I would tell you at Flexport we have some amazing women. I'm so excited to get to know all. I've not been there that long yet, but I'm getting to know we have some, we have a very diverse leadership team between men and women at Dave's level. I have some unbelievable women on my team directly that I'm getting to know more, and I'm so impressed with what they're doing. And this is a very, you know, while this industry is different than the world I live in day to day, it's also has a lot of common themes to it. So, you know, for us, we're trying to approach every day by saying, let's make sure both our interviewing cycles, the jobs we feel, how we recruit people, how we put people out there on the platforms, that we have diversity and inclusion and all of that every day. And I can tell you from the top, from Dave and all of our leaders, we just had an offsite and we had a big conversation about this is something. It's a drum beat that we have to think about and live by every day and really check ourselves on a regular basis. But I do think there's so much more room for women in the world to do great things. And one of the, one of the areas, as you know very well, we lost a lot of women during COVID, who just left the workforce again. So we kind of went back unfortunately. So we have to now move forward and make sure that we are giving women the opportunity to have great jobs, have the flexibility they need as they build a family, and have a workplace environment that is trusted for them to come into every day. >> There's now clear visibility, at least in today's world, not withstanding some of the setbacks from COVID, that a young girl can look out in a company and see a path from entry level to the boardroom. That's a big change. A lot than even going back 10, 15, 20 years ago. What's your advice to the folks out there that are paying it forward? You see a lot of executive leaderships have a seat at the table. The board still underrepresented by most numbers, but at least you have now kind of this solidarity at the top, but a lot of people doing a lot more now than I've seen at the next levels down. So now you have this leveled approach. Is that something that you're seeing more of? And credit compare and contrast that to 20 years ago when you were, you know, rising through the ranks? What's different? >> Well, one of the main things, and I honestly do not think about it too much, but there were really no women. There were none. When I showed up in the meetings, I literally, it was me or not me at the table, but at the seat behind the table. The women just weren't in the room, and there were so many more barriers that we had to push through, and that has changed a lot. I mean globally that has changed a lot in the U.S. You know, if you look at just our U.S. House of Representatives and our U.S. Senate, we now have the increasing number of women. Even at leadership levels, you're seeing that change. You have a lot more women on boards than we ever thought we would ever represent. While we are not there, more female CEOs that I get an opportunity to see and talk to. Women starting companies, they do not see the barriers. And I will share, John, globally in the U.S. one of the things that I still see that we have that many other countries don't have, which I'm very proud of, women in the U.S. have a spirit about them that they just don't see the barriers in the same way. They believe that they can accomplish anything. I have two sons, I don't have daughters. I have nieces, and I'm hoping someday to have granddaughters. But I know that a lot of my friends who have granddaughters today talk about the boldness, the fortitude, that they believe that there's nothing they can't accomplish. And I think that's what what we have to instill in every little girl out there, that they can accomplish anything they want to. The world is theirs, and we need to not just do that in the U.S., but around the world. And it was always the thing that struck me when I did all my travels at AWS and now with Flexport, I'm traveling again quite a bit, is just the differences you see in the cultures around the world. And I remember even in the Middle East, how I started seeing it change. You've heard me talk a lot on this program about the fact in both Saudi and Bahrain, over 60% of the tech workers were females and most of them held the the hardest jobs, the security, the architecture, the engineering. But many of them did not hold leadership roles. And that is what we've got to change too. To your point, the middle, we want it to get bigger, but the top, we need to get bigger. We need to make sure women globally have opportunities to hold the most precious leadership roles and demonstrate their capabilities at the very top. But that's changed. And I would say the biggest difference is when we show up, we're actually evaluated properly for those kind of roles. We have a ways to go. But again, that part is really changing. >> Can you share, Teresa, first of all, that's great work you've done and I wan to give you props of that as well and all the work you do. I know you champion a lot of, you know, causes in in this area. One question that comes up a lot, I would love to get your opinion 'cause I think you can contribute heavily here is mentoring and sponsorship is huge, comes up all the time. What advice would you share to folks out there who were, I won't say apprehensive, but maybe nervous about how to do the networking and sponsorship and mentoring? It's not just mentoring, it's sponsorship too. What's your best practice? What advice would you give for the best way to handle that? >> Well yeah, and for the women out there, I would say on the mentorship side, I still see mentorship. Like, I don't think you can ever stop having mentorship. And I like to look at my mentors in different parts of my life because if you want to be a well-rounded person, you may have parts of your life every day that you think I'm doing a great job here and I definitely would like to do better there. Whether it's your spiritual life, your physical life, your work life, you know, your leisure life. But I mean there's, and there's parts of my leadership world that I still seek advice from as I try to do new things even in this world. And I tried some new things in between roles. I went out and asked the people that I respected the most. So I just would say for sure have different mentorships and don't be afraid to have that diversity. But if you have mentorships, the second important thing is show up with a real agenda and questions. Don't waste people's time. I'm very sensitive today. If you're, if you want a mentor, you show up and you use your time super effectively and be prepared for that. Sponsorship is a very different thing. And I don't believe we actually do that still in companies. We worked, thank goodness for my great HR team. When I was at AWS, we worked on a few sponsorship programs where for diversity in general, where we would nominate individuals in the company that we felt that weren't, that had a lot of opportunity for growth, but they just weren't getting a seat at the table. And we brought 'em to the table. And we actually kind of had a Chatham House rules where when they came into the meetings, they had a sponsor, not a mentor. They had a sponsor that was with them the full 18 months of this program. We would bring 'em into executive meetings. They would read docs, they could ask questions. We wanted them to be able to open up and ask crazy questions without, you know, feeling wow, I just couldn't answer this question in a normal environment or setting. And then we tried to make sure once they got through the program that we found jobs and support and other special projects that they could go do. But they still had that sponsor and that group of individuals that they'd gone through the program with, John, that they could keep going back to. And I remember sitting there and they asked me what I wanted to get out of the program, and I said two things. I want you to leave this program and say to yourself, I would've never had that experience if I hadn't gone through this program. I learned so much in 18 months. It would probably taken me five years to learn. And that it helped them in their career. The second thing I told them is I wanted them to go out and recruit individuals that look like them. I said, we need diversity, and unless you all feel that we are in an inclusive environment sponsoring all types of individuals to be part of this company, we're not going to get the job done. And they said, okay. And you know, but it was really one, it was very much about them. That we took a group of individuals that had high potential and a very diverse with diverse backgrounds, held 'em up, taught 'em things that gave them access. And two, selfishly I said, I want more of you in my business. Please help me. And I think those kind of things are helpful, and you have to be thoughtful about these kind of programs. And to me that's more sponsorship. I still have people reach out to me from years ago, you know, Microsoft saying, you were so good with me, can you give me a reference now? Can you talk to me about what I should be doing? And I try to, I'm not pray 100%, some things pray fall through the cracks, but I always try to make the time to talk to those individuals because for me, I am where I am today because I got some of the best advice from people like Don Byrne and Linda Zecker and Andy Jassy, who were very honest and upfront with me about my career. >> Awesome. Well, you got a passion for empowering women in tech, paying it forward, but you're quite accomplished and that's why we're so glad to have you on the program here. President and Chief Commercial Officer at Flexport. Obviously storied career and your other jobs, specifically Amazon I think, is historic in my mind. This next chapter looks like it's looking good right now. Final question for you, for the few minutes you have left. Tell us what you're up to at Flexport. What's your goals as President, Chief Commercial Officer? What are you trying to accomplish? Share a little bit, what's on your mind with your current job? >> Well, you kind of said it earlier. I think if I look at my own superpowers, I love customers, I love partners. I get my energy, John, from those interactions. So one is to come in and really help us build even a better world class enterprise global sales and marketing team. Really listen to our customers, think about how we interact with them, build the best executive programs we can, think about new ways that we can offer services to them and create new services. One of my favorite things about my career is I think if you're a business leader, it's your job to come back around and tell your product group and your services org what you're hearing from customers. That's how you can be so much more impactful, that you listen, you learn, and you deliver. So that's one big job. The second job for me, which I am so excited about, is that I have an amazing group called flexport.org under me. And flexport.org is doing amazing things around the world to help those in need. We just announced this new funding program for Tech for Refugees, which brings assistance to millions of people in Ukraine, Pakistan, the horn of Africa, and those who are affected by earthquakes. We just took supplies into Turkey and Syria, and Flexport, recently in fact, just did sent three air shipments to Turkey and Syria for these. And I think we did over a hundred trekking shipments to get earthquake relief. And as you can imagine, it was not easy to get into Syria. But you know, we're very active in the Ukraine, and we are, our goal for flexport.org, John, is to continue to work with our commercial customers and team up with them when they're trying to get supplies in to do that in a very cost effective, easy way, as quickly as we can. So that not-for-profit side of me that I'm so, I'm so happy. And you know, Ryan Peterson, who was our founder, this was his brainchild, and he's really taken this to the next level. So I'm honored to be able to pick that up and look for new ways to have impact around the world. And you know, I've always found that I think if you do things right with a company, you can have a beautiful combination of commercial-ity and giving. And I think Flexport does it in such an amazing and unique way. >> Well, the impact that they have with their system and their technology with logistics and shipping and supply chain is a channel for societal change. And I think that's a huge gift that you have that under your purview. So looking forward to finding out more about flexport.org. I can only imagine all the exciting things around sustainability, and we just had Mobile World Congress for Big Cube Broadcast, 5Gs right around the corner. I'm sure that's going to have a huge impact to your business. >> Well, for sure. And just on gas emissions, that's another thing that we are tracking gas, greenhouse gas emissions. And in fact we've already reduced more than 300,000 tons and supported over 600 organizations doing that. So that's a thing we're also trying to make sure that we're being climate aware and ensuring that we are doing the best job we can at that as well. And that was another thing I was honored to be able to do when we were at AWS, is to really cut out greenhouse gas emissions and really go global with our climate initiatives. >> Well Teresa, it's great to have you on. Security, data, 5G, sustainability, business transformation, AI all coming together to change the game. You're in another hot seat, hot roll, big wave. >> Well, John, it's an honor, and just thank you again for doing this and having women on and really representing us in a big way as we celebrate International Women's Day. >> I really appreciate it, it's super important. And these videos have impact, so we're going to do a lot more. And I appreciate your leadership to the industry and thank you so much for taking the time to contribute to our effort. Thank you, Teresa. >> Thank you. Thanks everybody. >> Teresa Carlson, the President and Chief Commercial Officer of Flexport. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. This is International Women's Day broadcast. Thanks for watching. (upbeat outro music)

(upbeat music) >> Hello, welcome to the Cube's coverage of International Women's Day 2023. I'm John Furrier, host of the CUBE series of profiles around leaders in the tech industry sharing their stories, advice, best practices, what they're doing in their jobs their vision of the future, and more importantly, passing it on and encouraging more and more networking and telling the stories that matter. Our next guest is a great executive leader talking about how to lead in challenging times. Krista Satterthwaite, who is Senior Vice President and GM of Mainstream Compute. Krista great to see you're Cube alumni. We've had you on before talking about compute power. And by the way, congratulations on your BPT and Black Professional Tech Network 2023 Black Tech Exec of the Year Award. >> Thank you very much. Appreciate it. And thanks for having me. >> I knew I liked you the first time we were doing interviews together. You were so smart and so on top of it. Thanks for coming on. >> No problem. >> All kidding aside, let's get into it. You know, one of the things that's coming out on these interviews is leadership is being showcased and there's a network effect happening in the industry and you're starting to see people look and hear stories that they may or may not have heard before or news stories are coming out. So, one of the things that's interesting is that also in the backdrop of post pandemic, there's been a turn in the industry a little bit, there's a little bit of headwind in certain areas, some tailwinds in cloud and other areas. Compute, your area is doing very well. It could be challenging. And as a leader, has the conversation changed? And where are you at right now in the network of folks you're working with? What's the mood? >> Yeah, so actually I, things are much better. Obviously we had a chip shortage last year. Things are much, much better. But I learned a lot when it came to going through challenging times and leadership. And I think when we talk to customers, a lot of 'em are in challenging situations. Sometimes it's budget, sometimes it's attracting and retaining talent and sometimes it's just demands because, it's really exciting that technology is behind everything. But that means the demands on IT are bigger than ever before. So what I find when it comes to challenging times is that there's really three qualities that are game changers when it comes to leading and challenging times. And the first one is positivity. People have to feel like there's a light at the end of the tunnel to make sure that, their attitudes stay up, that they stay working really really hard and they look to the leader for that. The second one is communication. And I read somewhere that communication is leadership. And we had a great example from our CEO Antonio Neri when the pandemic hit and everything shut down. He had an all employee meeting every week for a month and we have tens of thousands of employees. And then even after that month, we had 'em very regularly. But he wanted to make sure that everybody heard from, him his thoughts had all the updates, knew how their peers were doing, how we were helping customers. And I really learned a lot from that in terms of communicating and communicating more during tough times. And then I would say the third one is making sure that they are informed and they feel empowered. So I would say a leader who is able to do that really, really stands out in a challenging time. >> So how do you get yourself together? Obviously you the chip shortage everyone knows in the industry and for the folks not in the tech industry, it was an economic potential disaster, because you don't get the chips you need. You guys make servers and technology, chips power everything. If you miss a shipment, it could cause a lot of backlash. So Cisco had an earnings impact. It has impact to the business. When do you have that code red moment where it's like, okay, we have to kind of put the pause and go into emergency mode. And how do you handle that? >> Well, you know, it is funny 'cause when it, when we have challenges, I come to learn that people can look at challenges and hard work as a burden or a mission and they behave totally different. If they see it as a burden, then they're doing the bare minimum and they're pointing fingers and they're complaining and they're probably not getting a whole lot done. If they see it as a mission, then all of a sudden they're going above and beyond. They're working really hard, they're really partnering. And if it affects customers for HPE, obviously we, HPE is a very customer centric company, so everyone pays attention and tries to pitch in. But when it comes to a mission, I started thinking, what are the real ingredients for a mission? And I think it's important. I think it's, people feel like they can make an impact. And then I think the third one is that the goal is clear, even if the path isn't, 'cause you may have to pivot a lot if it's a challenge. And so when it came to the chip shortage, it was a mission. We wanted to make sure that we could ship to customers as quickly as possible. And it was a mission. Everybody pulled together. I learned how much our team could pull off and pull together through that challenge. >> And the consequences can be quantified in economics. So it's like the burn the boats example, you got to burn the boats, you're stuck. You got to figure out a solution. How does that change the demands on people? Because this is, okay, there's a mission it they're not, it's not normal. What are some of those new demands that arise during those times and how do you manage that? How do you be a leader? >> Yeah, so it's funny, I was reading this statement from James White who used to be the CEO of Jamba Juice. And he was talking about how he got that job. He said, "I think it was one thing I said that really convinced them that I was the right person." And what he said was something like, "I will get more out of people than nine out of 10 leaders on the planet." He said, "Because I will look at their strengths and their capabilities and I will play to their passions." and their capabilities and I will play their passions. and getting the most out people in difficult times, it is all about how much you can get out of people for their own sake and for the company's sake. >> That's great feedback. And to people watching who are early in their careers, leading is getting the best out of your team, attitude. Some of the things you mentioned. What advice would you give folks that are starting to get into the workforce, that are starting to get into that leadership track or might have a trajectory or even might have an innate ability that they know they have and they want to pursue that dream? >> Yeah so. >> What advice would you give them? >> Yeah, what I would say, I say this all the time that, for the first half of my career I was very job conscious, but I wasn't very career conscious. So I'd get in a role and I'd stay in that role for long periods of time and I'd do a good job, but I wasn't really very career conscious. And what I would say is, everybody says how important risk taking is. Well, risk taking can be a little bit of a scary word, right? Or term. And the way I see it is give it a shot and see what happens. You're interested in something, give it a shot and see what happens. It's kind of a less intimidating way of looking at risk because even though I was job conscious, and not career conscious, one thing I did when people asked me to take something on, hey Krista, would you like to take on more responsibility here? The answer was always yes, yes, yes, yes. So I said yes because I said, hey I'll give it a shot and see what happens. And that helped me tremendously because I felt like I am giving it a try. And the more you do that, the the better it is. >> It's great. >> And actually the the less scary it is because you do that, a few times and it goes well. It's like a muscle that builds. >> It's funny, a woman executive was on the program. I said, the word balance comes up a lot. And she stopped and said, "Let's just talk about balance for a second." And then she went contrarian and said, "It's about not being unbalanced. It's about being, taking a chance and being a little bit off balance to put yourself outside your comfort zone to try new things." And then she also came up and followed and said, "If you do that alone, you increase your risk. But if you do it with people, a team that you trust and you're authentic and you're vulnerable and you're communicating, that is the chemistry." And that was a really good point. What's your reaction? 'Cause you were talking about authentic conversations good communications with Antonio. How does someone get, feel, find that team and do you agree with it? And what was your, how would you react to that? >> Yes, I agree with that. And when it comes to being authentic, that's the magic and when someone isn't, if someone's not really being themselves, it's really funny because you can feel it, you can sense it. There's kind of a wall between you and them. And over time people won't be able to put their finger on it, but they'll feel a distance from you. But when you're authentic and you share who you are, what you find is you find things in common with other people. 'Cause you're sharing more of who you are and it's like, oh, I do that too. Oh, I'm interested in that too. And build the bonds between people and the authenticity. And that's what people crave. They want people to be authentic and people can tell when you're authentic and when you're not. >> Is managing and leading through a crisis a born talent or can you learn it? >> Oh, definitely learned. I think that we're born knowing nothing and I once read people are nurtured into greatness and I think that's true. So yeah, definitely learned. >> What are some examples that can come out of a tough time as folks may look at a crisis and be shy away from it? How do they lean into it? What advice would you give folks? How do you handle it? I mean, everyone's got different personality. Okay, they get to a position but stepping through that door. >> Yeah, well, I do this presentation called, "10 things I Wish I Knew Earlier in my Career." And one of those things is about the growth mindset and the growth mindset. There's a book called "Mindset" by Carol Dweck and the growth mindset is all about learning and not always having to know everything, but really the winning is in the learning. And so if you have a growth mindset it makes you feel better about everything because you can't lose. You're winning because you're learning. So when I've learned that, I started looking at things much differently. And when it comes to going through tough times, what I find is you're exercising muscles that you didn't even know you had, which makes you stronger when the crisis is over, obviously. And I also feel like you become a lot a much more creative when you're in challenging times. You're forced to do things that you hadn't had to do before. And it also bonds the team. It's almost like going through bootcamp together. When you go through a challenge together it bonds you for life. >> I mean, you could have bonding, could be trauma bonding or success bonding. People love to be on the success side because that's positive and that's really the key mindset. You're always winning if you have that attitude. And learnings is also positive. So it's not, it's never a failure unless you make it. >> That's right, exactly. As long as you learn from it. And that's the name of the game. So, learning is the goal. >> So I have to ask you, on your job now, you have a really big responsibility HPE compute and big division. What's the current mindset that you have right now in your career, where you're at? What are some of the things on your mind that you think about? We had other, other seniors leaders say, hey, you know I got the software as my brain and the hardware's my body. I like to keep software and hardware working together. What is your current state of your career and how you looking at it, what's next and what's going on in your mind right now? >> Yeah, so for me, I really want to make sure that for my team we're nurturing the next generation of leadership and that we're helping with career development and career growth. And people feel like they can grow their careers here. Luckily at HPE, we have a lot of people stay at HPE a long time, and even people who leave HPE a lot of times they come back because the culture's fantastic. So I just want to make sure I'm contributing to that culture and I'm bringing up the next generation of leaders. >> What's next for you? What are you looking at from a career personal standpoint? >> You know, it's funny, I, I love what I'm doing right now. I'm actually on a joint venture board with H3C, which is HPE Joint Venture Company. And so I'm really enjoying that and exploring more board service opportunities. >> You have a focus of good growth mindset, challenging through, managing through tough times. How do you stay focused on that North star? How do you keep the reinforcement of the mission? How do you nurture the team to greatness? >> Yeah, so I think it's a lot of clarity, providing a lot of clarity about what's important right now. And it goes back to some of the communication that I mentioned earlier, making sure that everybody knows where the North Star is, so everybody's focused on the same thing, because I feel like with the, I always felt like throughout my career I was set up for success if I had the right information, the right guidance and the right goals. And I try to make sure that I do that with my team. >> What are some of the things that you could share as we wrap up here for the folks watching, as the networks increase, as the stories start to unfold more and more on digital like we're doing here, what do you hope people walk away with? What's working, what needs work, and what is some things that people aren't talking about that should be discussed publicly? >> Do you mean from a career standpoint or? >> For career? For growing into tech and into leadership positions. >> Okay. >> Big migration tech is now a wide field. I mean, when I grew up, broke into the eighties, it was computer science, software engineering, and three degrees in engineering, right? >> I see huge swath of AI coming. So many technical careers. There's a lot more women. >> Yeah. And that's what's so exciting about being in a technical career, technical company, is that everything's always changing. There's always opportunity to learn something new. And frankly, you know, every company is in the business of technology right now, because they want to closer to their customers. Typically, they're using technology to do that. Everyone's digitally transforming. And so what I would say is that there's so much opportunity, keep your mind open, explore what interests you and keep learning because it's changing all the time. >> You know I was talking with Sue, former HP, she's on a lot of boards. The balance at the board level still needs a lot of work and the leaderships are getting better, but the board at the seats at the table needs work. Where do you see that transition for you in the future? Is that something on your mind? Maybe a board seat? You mentioned you're on a board with HPE, but maybe sitting on some other boards? Any, any? >> Yes, actually, actually, we actually have a program here at HPE called the Board Ready Now program that I'm a part of. And so HPE is very supportive of me exploring an independent board seat. And so they have some education and programming around that. And I know Sue well, she's awesome. And so yes, I'm looking into those opportunities right now. >> She advises do one no more than two. The day job. >> Yeah, I would only be doing one current job that I have. >> Well, kris, it was great to chat with you about these topics and leadership and challenging times. Great masterclass, great advice. As SVP and GM of mainstream compute for HPE, what's going on in your job these days? What's the most exciting thing happening? Share some of your work situations. >> Sure, so the most exciting thing happening right now is HPE Gen 11, which we just announced and started shipping, brings tremendous performance benefit, has an intuitive operating experience, a trusted security by design, and it's optimized to run workloads so much faster. So if anybody is interested, they should go check it out on hpe.com. >> And of course the CUBE will be at HPE Discover. We'll see you there. Any final wisdom you'd like to share as we wrap up the last minute here? >> Yeah, so I think the last thing I'll say is that when it comes to setting your sights, I think, expecting it, good things to happen usually happens when you believe you deserve it. So what happens is you believe you deserve it, then you expect it and you get it. And so sometimes that's about making sure you raise your thermostat to expect more. And I always talk about you don't have to raise it all up at once. You could do that incrementally and other people can set your thermostat too when they say, hey, you should be, you should get a level this high or that high, but raise your thermostat because what you expect is what you get. >> Krista, thank you so much for contributing to this program. We're going to do it quarterly. We're going to do getting more stories out there, so we'll have you back and if you know anyone with good stories, send them our way. And congratulations on your BPTN Tech Executive of the Year award for 2023. Congratulations, great prize there and great recognition for your hard work. >> Thank you so much, John, I appreciate it. >> Okay, this is the Cube's coverage of National Woodman's Day. I'm John Furrier, stories from the front lines, management ranks, developers, all there, global coverage of international events with theCUBE. Thanks for watching. (soft music)

(upbeat music) >> Hey everyone. Welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of Women in Data Science, WiDS 2022, coming to live from Stanford University. I'm Lisa Martin. My next guest is here. Nandi Leslie, Doctor Nandi Leslie, Senior Engineering Fellow at Raytheon Technologies. Nandi, it's great to have you on the program. >> Oh it's my pleasure, thank you. >> This is your first WiDS you were saying before we went live. >> That's right. >> What's your take so far? >> I'm absolutely loving it. I love the comradery and the community of women in data science. You know, what more can you say? It's amazing. >> It is. It's amazing what they built since 2015, that this is now reaching 100,000 people 200 online event. It's a hybrid event. Of course, here we are in person, and the online event going on, but it's always an inspiring, energy-filled experience in my experience of WiDS. >> I'm thoroughly impressed at what the organizers have been able to accomplish. And it's amazing, that you know, you've been involved from the beginning. >> Yeah, yeah. Talk to me, so you're Senior Engineering Fellow at Raytheon. Talk to me a little bit about your role there and what you're doing. >> Well, my role is really to think about our customer's most challenging problems, primarily at the intersection of data science, and you know, the intersectional fields of applied mathematics, machine learning, cybersecurity. And then we have a plethora of government clients and commercial clients. And so what their needs are beyond those sub-fields as well, I address. >> And your background is mathematics. >> Yes. >> Have you always been a math fan? >> I have, I actually have loved math for many, many years. My dad is a mathematician, and he introduced me to, you know mathematical research and the sciences at a very early age. And so, yeah, I went on, I studied in a math degree at Howard undergrad, and then I went on to do my PhD at Princeton in applied math. And later did a postdoc in the math department at University of Maryland. >> And how long have you been with Raytheon? >> I've been with Raytheon about six years. Yeah, and before Raytheon, I worked at a small to midsize defense company, defense contracting company in the DC area, systems planning and analysis. And then prior to that, I taught in a math department where I also did my postdoc, at University of Maryland College Park. >> You have a really interesting background. I was doing some reading on you, and you have worked with the Navy. You've worked with very interesting organizations. Talk to the audience a little bit about your diverse background. >> Awesome yeah, I've worked with the Navy on submarine force security, and submarine tracking, and localization, sensor performance. Also with the Army and the Army Research Laboratory during research at the intersection of machine learning and cyber security. Also looking at game theoretic and graph theoretic approaches to understand network resilience and robustness. I've also supported Department of Homeland Security, and other government agencies, other governments, NATO. Yeah, so I've really been excited by the diverse problems that our various customers have you know, brought to us. >> Well, you get such great experience when you are able to work in different industries and different fields. And that really just really probably helps you have such a much diverse kind of diversity of thought with what you're doing even now with Raytheon. >> Yeah, it definitely does help me build like a portfolio of topics that I can address. And then when new problems emerge, then I can pull from a toolbox of capabilities. And, you know, the solutions that have previously been developed to address those wide array of problems, but then also innovate new solutions based on those experiences. So I've been really blessed to have those experiences. >> Talk to me about one of the things I heard this morning in the session I was able to attend before we came to set was about mentors and sponsors. And, you know, I actually didn't know the difference between that until a few years ago. But it's so important. Talk to me about some of the mentors you've had along the way that really helped you find your voice in research and development. >> Definitely, I mean, beyond just the mentorship of my my family and my parents, I've had amazing opportunities to meet with wonderful people, who've helped me navigate my career. One in particular, I can think of as and I'll name a number of folks, but Dr. Carlos Castillo-Chavez was one of my earlier mentors. I was an undergrad at Howard University. He encouraged me to apply to his summer research program in mathematical and theoretical biology, which was then at Cornell. And, you know, he just really developed an enthusiasm with me for applied mathematics. And for how it can be, mathematics that is, can be applied to epidemiological and theoretical immunological problems. And then I had an amazing mentor in my PhD advisor, Dr. Simon Levin at Princeton, who just continued to inspire me, in how to leverage mathematical approaches and computational thinking for ecological conservation problems. And then since then, I've had amazing mentors, you know through just a variety of people that I've met, through customers, who've inspired me to write these papers that you mentioned in the beginning. >> Yeah, you've written 55 different publications so far. 55 and counting I'm sure, right? >> Well, I hope so. I hope to continue to contribute to the conversation and the community, you know, within research, and specifically research that is computationally driven. That really is applicable to problems that we face, whether it's cyber security, or machine learning problems, or others in data science. >> What are some of the things, you're giving a a tech vision talk this afternoon. Talk to me a little bit about that, and maybe the top three takeaways you want the audience to leave with. >> Yeah, so my talk is entitled "Unsupervised Learning for Network Security, or Network Intrusion Detection" I believe. And essentially three key areas I want to convey are the following. That unsupervised learning, that is the mathematical and statistical approach, which tries to derive patterns from unlabeled data is a powerful one. And one can still innovate new algorithms in this area. Secondly, that network security, and specifically, anomaly detection, and anomaly-based methods can be really useful to discerning and ensuring, that there is information confidentiality, availability, and integrity in our data >> A CIA triad. >> There you go, you know. And so in addition to that, you know there is this wealth of data that's out there. It's coming at us quickly. You know, there are millions of packets to represent communications. And that data has, it's mixed, in terms of there's categorical or qualitative data, text data, along with numerical data. And it is streaming, right. And so we need methods that are efficient, and that are capable of being deployed real time, in order to detect these anomalies, which we hope are representative of malicious activities, and so that we can therefore alert on them and thwart them. >> It's so interesting that, you know, the amount of data that's being generated and collected is growing exponentially. There's also, you know, some concerning challenges, not just with respect to data that's reinforcing social biases, but also with cyber warfare. I mean, that's a huge challenge right now. We've seen from a cybersecurity perspective in the last couple of years during the pandemic, a massive explosion in anomalies, and in social engineering. And companies in every industry have to be super vigilant, and help the people understand how to interact with it, right. There's a human component. >> Oh, for sure. There's a huge human component. You know, there are these phishing attacks that are really a huge source of the vulnerability that corporations, governments, and universities face. And so to be able to close that gap and the understanding that each individual plays in the vulnerability of a network is key. And then also seeing the link between the network activities or the cyber realm, and physical systems, right. And so, you know, especially in cyber warfare as a remote cyber attack, unauthorized network activities can have real implications for physical systems. They can, you know, stop a vehicle from running properly in an autonomous vehicle. They can impact a SCADA system that's, you know there to provide HVAC for example. And much more grievous implications. And so, you know, definitely there's the human component. >> Yes, and humans being so vulnerable to those social engineering that goes on in those phishing attacks. And we've seen them get more and more personal, which is challenging. You talking about, you know, sensitive data, personally identifiable data, using that against someone in cyber warfare is a huge challenge. >> Oh yeah, certainly. And it's one that computational thinking and mathematics can be leveraged to better understand and to predict those patterns. And that's a very rich area for innovation. >> What would you say is the power of computational thinking in the industry? >> In industry at-large? >> At large. >> Yes, I think that it is such a benefit to, you know, a burgeoning scientist, if they want to get into industry. There's so many opportunities, because computational thinking is needed. We need to be more objective, and it provides that objectivity, and it's so needed right now. Especially with the emergence of data, and you know, across industries. So there are so many opportunities for data scientists, whether it's in aerospace and defense, like Raytheon or in the health industry. And we saw with the pandemic, the utility of mathematical modeling. There are just so many opportunities. >> Yeah, there's a lot of opportunities, and that's one of the themes I think, of WiDS, is just the opportunities, not just in data science, and for women. And there's obviously even high school girls that are here, which is so nice to see those young, fresh faces, but opportunities to build your own network and your own personal board of directors, your mentors, your sponsors. There's tremendous opportunity in data science, and it's really all encompassing, at least from my seat. >> Oh yeah, no I completely agree with that. >> What are some of the things that you've heard at this WiDS event that inspire you going, we're going in the right direction. If we think about International Women's Day tomorrow, "Breaking the Bias" is the theme, do you think we're on our way to breaking that bias? >> Definitely, you know, there was a panel today talking about the bias in data, and in a variety of fields, and how we are, you know discovering that bias, and creating solutions to address it. So there was that panel. There was another talk by a speaker from Pinterest, who had presented some solutions that her, and her team had derived to address bias there, in you know, image recognition and search. And so I think that we've realized this bias, and, you know, in AI ethics, not only in these topics that I've mentioned, but also in the implications for like getting a loan, so economic implications, as well. And so we're realizing those issues and bias now in AI, and we're addressing them. So I definitely am optimistic. I feel encouraged by the talks today at WiDS that you know, not only are we recognizing the issues, but we're creating solutions >> Right taking steps to remediate those, so that ultimately going forward. You know, we know it's not possible to have unbiased data. That's not humanly possible, or probably mathematically possible. But the steps that they're taking, they're going in the right direction. And a lot of it starts with awareness. >> Exactly. >> Of understanding there is bias in this data, regardless. All the people that are interacting with it, and touching it, and transforming it, and cleaning it, for example, that's all influencing the veracity of it. >> Oh, for sure. Exactly, you know, and I think that there are for sure solutions are being discussed here, papers written by some of the speakers here, that are driving the solutions to the mitigation of this bias and data problem. So I agree a hundred percent with you, that awareness is you know, half the battle, if not more. And then, you know, that drives creation of solutions >> And that's what we need the creation of solutions. Nandi, thank you so much for joining me today. It was a pleasure talking with you about what you're doing with Raytheon, what you've done and your path with mathematics, and what excites you about data science going forward. We appreciate your insights. >> Thank you so much. It was my pleasure. >> Good, for Nandi Leslie, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's coverage of Women in Data Science 2022. Stick around, I'll be right back with my next guest. (upbeat flowing music)

>> Live from Washington, D.C., it's theCUBE! Covering Inforum D.C. 2018. Brought to you by Infor. >> Well, welcome back to Washington, D.C., We are alive here at the Convention Center at Inforum 18, along with Dave Vellante, I'm John Walls. It's a pleasure now, welcome to theCUBE, Leigh Martin, who is the Senior Director of the Dynamic Science Labs at Infor, and good afternoon to you Leigh! >> Good afternoon, thank you for having me. >> Thanks for comin' on. >> Thank you for being here. Alright, well tell us about the Labs first off, obviously, data science is a big push at Infor. What do you do there, and then why is data science such a big deal? >> So Dynamic Science Labs is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, we have about 20 scientists with backgrounds in math and science areas, so typically PhDs in Statistics and Operations Research, and those types of areas. And, we've really been working over the last several years to build solutions for Infor customers that are Math and Science based. So, we work directly with customers, typically through proof of concept, so we'll work directly with customers, we'll bring in their data, and we will build a solution around it. We like to see them implement it, and make sure we understand that they're getting the value back that we expect them to have. Once we prove out that piece of it, then we look for ways to deliver it to the larger group of Infor customers, typically through one of the Cloud Suites, perhaps functionality, that's built into a Cloud Suite, or something like that. >> Well, give me an example, I mean it's so, as you think-- you're saying that you're using data that's math and science based, but, for application development or solution development if you will. How? >> So, I'll give you an example, so we have a solution called Inventory Intelligence for Healthcare, it's moving towards a more generalized name of Inventory Intelligence, because we're going to move it out of the healthcare space and into other industries, but this is a product that we built over the last couple of years. We worked with a couple of customers, we brought in their loss and data, so their loss in customers, we bring the data into an area where we can work on it, we have a scientist in our team, actually, she's one of the Senior Directors in the team, Dawn Rose, who led the effort to design and build this, design and build the algorithm underlying the product; and what it essentially does is, it allows hospitals to find the right level of inventory. Most hospitals are overstocked, so this gives them an opportunity to bring down their inventory levels, to a manageable place without increasing stockouts, so obviously, it's very important in healthcare, that you're not having a lot of stockouts. And so, we spent a lot of time working with these customers, really understanding what the data was like that they were giving to us, and then Dawn and her team built the algorithm that essentially says, here's what you've done historically, right? So it's based on historic data, at the item level, at the location level. What've you done historically, and how can we project out the levels you should have going forward, so that they're at the right level where you're saving money, but again, you're not increasing stockouts, so. So, it's a lot of time and effort to bring those pieces together and build that algorithm, and then test it out with the customers, try it out a couple of times, you make some tweaks based on their business process and exactly how it works. And then, like I said, we've now built that out into originally a stand-alone application, and in about a month, we're going to go live in Cloud Suite Financials, so it's going to be a piece of functionality inside of Cloud Suite Financials. >> So, John, if I may, >> Please. >> I'm going to digress for a moment here because the first data scientist that I ever interviewed was the famous Hilary Mason, who's of course now at Cloudera, but, and she told me at the time that the data scientist is a part mathematician, part scientist, part statistician, part data hacker, part developer, and part artist. >> Right. (laughs) >> So, you know it's an amazing field that Hal Varian, who is the Google Economist said, "It's going to be the hottest field, in the next 10 years." And this is sort of proven true, but Leigh, my question is, so you guys are practitioners of data science, and then you bring that into your product, and what we hear from a lot of data scientists, other than that sort of, you know, panoply of skill sets, is, they spend more time wrangling data, and the tooling isn't there for collaboration. How are you guys dealing with that? How has that changed inside of Infor? >> It is true. And we actually really focus on first making sure we understand the data and the context of the data, so it's really important if you want to solve a particular business problem that a customer has, to make sure you understand exactly what is the definition of each and every piece of data that's in all of those fields that they sent over to you, before you try to put 'em inside an algorithm and make them do something for you. So it is very true that we spend a lot of time cleaning and understanding data before we ever dive into the problem solving aspect of it. And to your point, there is a whole list of other things that we do after we get through that phase, but it's still something we spend a lot of time on today, and that has been the case for, a long time now. We, wherever we can, we apply new tools and new techniques, but actually just the simple act of going in there and saying, "What am I looking at, how does it relate?" Let me ask the customer to clarify this to make sure I understand exactly what it means. That part doesn't go away, because we're really focused on solving the customer solution and then making sure that we can apply that to other customers, so really knowing what the data is that we're working with is key. So I don't think that part has actually changed too much, there are certainly tools that you can look at. People talk a lot about visualization, so you can start thinking, "Okay, how can I use some visualization to help me understand the data better?" But, just that, that whole act of understanding data is key and core to what we do, because, we want to build the solution that really answers the answers the business problem. >> The other thing that we hear a lot from data scientists is that, they help you figure out what questions you actually have to ask. So, it sort of starts with the data, they analyze the data, maybe you visualize the data, as you just pointed out, and all these questions pop out. So what is the process that you guys use? You have the data, you've got the data scientist, you're looking at the data, you're probably asking all these questions. You get, of course, get questions from your customers as well. You're building models maybe to address those questions, training the models to get better and better and better, and then you infuse that into your software. So, maybe, is that the process? Is it a little more complicated than that? Maybe you could fill in the gaps. >> Yeah, so, I, my personal opinion, and I think many of my colleagues would agree with me on this is, starting with the business problem, for us, is really the key. There are ways to go about looking at the data and then pulling out the questions from the data, but generally, that is a long and involved process. Because, it takes a lot of time to really get that deep into the data. So when we work, we really start with, what's the business problem that the customer's trying to solve? And then, what's the data that needs to be available for us to be able to solve that? And then, build the algorithm around that. So for us, it's really starting with the business problem. >> Okay, so what are some of the big problems? We heard this morning, that there's a problem in that, there's more job openings than there are candidates, and productivity, business productivity is not being impacted. So there are two big chewy problems that data scientists could maybe attack, and you guys seem to be passionate about those, so. How does data science help solve those problems? >> So, I think that, at Infor, I'll start off by saying at Infor there's actually, I talked about the folks that are in our office in Cambridge, but there's quite a bit of data science going on outside of our team, and we are the data science team, but there are lots of places inside of Infor where this is happening. Either in products that contains some sort of algorithmic approach, the HCM team for sure, the talent science team which works on HCM, that's a team that's led by Jill Strange, and we work with them on certain projects in certain areas. They are very focused on solving some of those people-related problems. For us, we work a little bit more on the, some of the other areas we work on is sort of the manufacturing and distribution areas, we work with the healthcare side of things, >> So supply chain, healthcare? >> Exactly. So some of the other areas, because they are, like I said, there are some strong teams out there that do data science, it's just, it's also incorporated with other things, like the talent science team. So, there's lots of examples of it out there. In terms of how we go about building it, so we, like I was saying, we work on answering the business, the business question upfront, understanding the data, and then, really sitting with the customer and building that out, and, so the problems that come to us are often through customers who have particular things that they want to answer. So, a lot of it is driven by customer questions, and particular problems that they're facing. Some of it is driven by us. We have some ideas about things that we think, would be really useful to customers. Either way, it ends up being a customer collaboration with us, with the product team, that eventually we'll want to roll it out too, to make sure that we're answering the problem in the way that the product team really feels it can be rolled out to customers, and better used, and more easily used by them. >> I presume it's a non-linear process, it's not like, that somebody comes to you with a problem, and it's okay, we're going to go look at that. Okay now, we got an answer, I mean it's-- Are you more embedded into the development process than that? Can you just explain that? >> So, we do have, we have a development team in Prague that does work with us, and it's depending on whether we think we're going to actually build a more-- a product with aspects to it like a UI, versus just a back end solution. Depends on how we've decided we want to proceed with it. so, for example, I was talking about Inventory Intelligence for Healthcare, we also have Pricing Science for Distribution, both of those were built initially with UIs on them, and customers could buy those separately. Now that we're in the Cloud Suites, that those are both being incorporated into the Cloud Suite. So, we have, going back to where I was talking about our team in Prague, we sometimes build product, sort of a fully encased product, working with them, and sometimes we work very closely with the development teams from the various Cloud Suites. And the product management team is always there to help us, to figure out sort of the long term plan and how the different pieces fit together. >> You know, kind of big picture, you've got AI right, and then machine learning, pumping all kinds of data your way. So, in a historical time frame, this is all pretty new, this confluence right? And in terms of development, but, where do you see it like 10 years from now, 20 years from now? What potential is there, we've talked about human potential, unlocking human potential, we'll unlock it with that kind of technology, what are we looking at, do you think? >> You know, I think that's such a fascinating area, and area of discussion, and sort of thinking, forward thinking. I do believe in sort of this idea of augmented intelligence, and I think Charles was talking a little bit about, about that this morning, although not in those particular terms; but this idea that computers and machines and technology will actually help us do better, and be better, and being more productive. So this idea of doing sort of the rote everyday tasks, that we no longer have to spend time doing, that'll free us up to think about the bigger problems, and hopefully, and my best self wants to say we'll work on famine, and poverty, and all those problems in the world that, really need our brains to focus on, and work. And the other interesting part of it is, if you think about, sort of the concept of singularity, and are computers ever going to actually be able to think for themselves? That's sort of another interesting piece when you talk about what's going to happen down the line. Maybe it won't happen in 10 years, maybe it will never happen, but there's definitely a lot of people out there, who are well known in sort of tech and science who talk about that, and talk about the fears related to that. That's a whole other piece, but it's fascinating to think about 10 years, 20 years from now, where we are going to be on that spectrum? >> How do you guys think about bias in AI and data science, because, humans express bias, tribalism, that's inherent in human nature. If machines are sort of mimicking humans, how do you deal with that and adjudicate? >> Yeah, and it's definitely a concern, it's another, there's a lot of writings out there and articles out there right now about bias in machine learning and in AI, and it's definitely a concern. I actually read, so, just being aware of it, I think is the first step, right? Because, as scientists and developers develop these algorithms, going into it consciously knowing that this is something they have to protect against, I think is the first step, for sure. And then, I was just reading an article just recently about another company (laughs) who is building sort of a, a bias tracker, so, a way to actually monitor your algorithm and identify places where there is perhaps bias coming in. So, I do think we'll see, we'll start to see more of those things, it gets very complicated, because when you start talking about deep learning and networks and AI, it's very difficult to actually understand what's going on under the covers, right? It's really hard to get in and say this is the reason why, your AI told you this, that's very hard to do. So, it's not going to be an easy process but, I think that we're going to start to see that kind of technology come. >> Well, we heard this morning about some sort of systems that could help, my interpretation, automate, speed up, and minimize the hassle of performance reviews. >> Yes. (laughs) >> And that's the classic example of, an assertive woman is called abrasive or aggressive, an assertive man is called a great leader, so it's just a classic example of bias. I mentioned Hilary Mason, rock star data scientist happens to be a woman, you happen to be a woman. Your thoughts as a woman in tech, and maybe, can AI help resolve some of those biases? >> Yeah. Well, first of all I want to say, I'm very pleased to work in an organization where we have some very strong leaders, who happen to be women, so I mentioned Dawn Rose, who designed our IIH solution, I mentioned Jill Strange, who runs the talent science organization. Half of my team is women, so, particularly inside of sort of the science area inside of Infor, I've been very pleased with the way we've built out some of that skill set. And, I'm also an active member of WIN, so the Women's Infor Network is something I'm very involved with, so, I meet a lot of people across our organization, a lot of women across our organization who have, are just really strong technology supporters, really intelligent, sort of go-getter type of people, and it's great to see that inside of Infor. I think there's a lot of work to be done, for sure. And you can always find stories, from other, whether it's coming out of Silicon Valley, or other places where you hear some, really sort of arcane sounding things that are still happening in the industry, and so, some of those things it's, it's disappointing, certainly to hear that. But I think, Van Jones said something this morning about how, and I liked the way he said it, and I'm not going to be able say it exactly, but he said something along the lines of, "The ground is there, the formation is starting, to get us moving in the right direction." and I think, I'm hopeful for the future, that we're heading in that way, and I think, you know, again, he sort of said something like, "Once the ground swell starts going in that direction, people will really jump in, and will see the benefits of being more diverse." Whether it's across, having more women, or having more people of color, however things expand, and that's just going to make us all better, and more efficient, and more productive, and I think that's a great thing. >> Well, and I think there's a spectrum, right? And on one side of the spectrum, there's intolerable and unacceptable behavior, which is just, should be zero tolerance in my opinion, and the passion of ours in theCUBE. The other side of that spectrum is inclusion, and it's a challenge that we have as a small company, and I remember having a conversation, earlier this year with an individual. And we talk about quotas, and I don't think that's the answer. Her comment was, "No, that's not the answer, you have to endeavor to reach deeper beyond your existing network." Which is hard sometimes for us, 'cause you're so busy, you're running around, it's like okay it's the convenient thing to do. But you got to peel the onion on that network, and actually take the extra time and make it a priority. I mean, your thoughts on that? >> No, I think that's a good point, I mean, if I think about who my circle is, right? And the people that I know and I interact with. If I only reach out to the smallest group of people, I'm not getting really out beyond my initial circle. So I think that's a very good point, and I think that that's-- we have to find ways to be more interactive, and pull from different areas. And I think it's interesting, so coming back to data science for a minute, if you sort of think about the evolution of where we got to, how we got to today where, now we're really pulling people from science areas, and math areas, and technology areas, and data scientists are coming from lots of places, right? And you don't always have to have a PhD, right? You don't necessary have to come up through that system to be a good data scientist, and I think, to see more of that, and really people going beyond, beyond just sort of the traditional circles and the traditional paths to really find people that you wouldn't normally identify, to bring into that, that path, is going to help us, just in general, be more diverse in our approach. >> Well it certainly it seems like it's embedded in the company culture. I think the great reason for you to be so optimistic going forward, not only about your job, but about the way companies going into that doing your job. >> What would you advise, young people generally, who want to crack into the data science field, but specifically, women, who have clearly, are underrepresented in technology? >> Yeah, so, I think the, I think we're starting to see more and more women enter the field, again it's one of those, people know it, and so there's less of a-- because people are aware of it, there's more tendency to be more inclusive. But I definitely think, just go for it, right? I mean if it's something you're interested in, and you want to try it out, go to a coding camp, and take a science class, and there's so many online resources now, I mean there's, the massive online courses that you can take. So, even if you're hesitant about it, there are ways you can kind of be at home, and try it out, and see if that's the right thing for you. >> Just dip your toe in the water. >> Yes, exactly, exactly! Try it out and see, and then just decide if that's the right thing for you, but I think there's a lot of different ways to sort of check it out. Again, you can take a course, you can actually get a degree, there's a wide range of things that you can do to kind of experiment with it, and then find out if that's right for you. >> And if you're not happy with the hiring opportunities out there, just start a company, that's my advice. >> That's right. (laughing together) >> Agreed, I definitely agree! >> We thank you-- we appreciate the time, and great advice, too. >> Thank you so much. >> Leigh Martin joining us here at Inforum 18, we are live in Washington, D.C., you're watching the exclusive coverage, right here, on theCUBE. (bubbly music)

(logo snapping) >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with the Cube. We're in downtown San Francisco with International Women's Day. Stuff going on all around the world. Check social media. It's pretty exciting and definitely a movement. We decided to come down to the Accenture event. 400 people here at the hotel, Nikko. A lot of panels, a lot of great content, and we're excited to have our next quests. We have Paul Chapman. He's the CIO of Box. Paul, it's great to see you. And J.D. Sassaman, Senior Workshop Manager at Autodesk for the Pier 9 Tech Center. So J.D. jump in. I have to ask, J.D. What is the Pier 9 Tech Center? >> Yeah, it's a fantastic place, right here in downtown San Francisco. We have a wood shop, metal shop, robot arms, digital fabrication, rapid prototyping. It's literally a physical place to fabricate, prototype, iterate, and research within Autodesk. >> It's so cool. I don't think most people think of Autodesk as, you think as a software company, but not necessarily that you can touch, shave, >> Yeah. >> and drill, you know play with toys. >> Absolutely. It's where the rubber hits the road. You can design all day but if you can't make it, and we can't test what the customers are doing with the software to valid that we're making software that drives that thing getting build in the world, then we missing something. So there's where these centers, you know, they help Autodesk be authentically in touch with what our clients are doing. >> So part of today's topic was to put out this report, there's forty kind of factors that influence people, businesses, and culture, and diversity. And one of the big three buckets is about culture and leadership, be bold leadership. And it's pretty interesting in your panel, you talked about Box and being that kind of millennial-lead company. A lot of millennials compared to HP and some of the older companies. You had a quote. I wrote it down. You talked about a maniacal focus on culture fit. So Paul, I wonder if you can dive into a little bit about why that's important and how does it manifest itself in the day-to-day operations at Box? >> Something that we always done from the very beginning is, we've always been a people first company. And so what's really important is part of that is when you're hiring people into the company, they also have to fit the culture of the company. As we know, one of the hardest thing to hold on to when you're growing scale a company, is the culture. And so we not only hire for in sort of experience and capability, but also for the culture fit. And we maniacally do focus on that. Now, it can slow down our hiring process, but ultimately it's about preserving that culture. And the culture people first is very much about inclusion. It's very much about our employee resource groups. It's very much about the way we recruit, the way we hire, where we hire from as well. You know I think that millennials, you mentioned having driven millennial culture, millennials will actually interview the company for their values, for their views, for you know. Inclusion would be one of those things as well. So it's, >> Jeff: Right. >> actually even, I think it's going to become harder for companies to even recruit in the future if they don't have a, you know, diversity inclusion as, not as a side project, not as something that happens on the side, but as something that's baked into the company's cultures. >> Right. This is kind of ying and yang, right? 'Cause like you said, it probably slows down your hiring process. There's a lot of pressure to hire people knowing >> Paul: Yeah. >> you can get all the talent they want, but at the other time, you want retention. And you want people that are going to be around for awhile >> Paul: Yeah. >> when you do hire them, will be good contributors to the company >> Paul: That's right. >> for a long, long time. So, I image short-term lost, long-term gain when you stick to that. >> That's absolutely right. Who you work with and who work for is very, very important. And we have a very open social, collaborative culture. And I think generally what that does, and I worked in a number of organizations, is that it creates for a very motivated workforce and very productive workforce. >> J.D., I want to ask you kind about the growth of purpose-driven. You know, we've see it >> J.D.: Yep. >> again and again, I give a lot of credit to the younger kids coming up in terms of purpose being much higher on their rank of priorities of how they make their decisions. I wonder if you can talk, have you seen that in Autodesk in some of your new hires and is it changing the way you guys do things? >> Yeah, sure. And I think even more, more visibly for us, we have such a turn of residences who come and do work in research and prototyping at the shop. That we see a bigger volume there than I do in hiring, and what I really see is a similar. They want to know that we have a commitment to a culture of collaboration. That innovation isn't just a buzz word but is really going to be facilitated. By putting people in the place, with the machines, with the technical capabilities, but also with other people, who are going to think about their problem differently. And I think, you know we back that up with physical practices. We do a lot as a technical team that supports all those residences. By creating spaces to be curious and to learn, and irregardless how much technical expertise you have coming in, we want to learn from you and you want to learn from us. And when the team that's supporting that space really embodies that, people feel it. And they know that it's real. And they know this is a place that I come and ask questions I don't know answers to and not feel dumb about it. But go on the journey with you to find the answers. And that's really what we're facilitating, is people coming in with good questions. >> Right. _ And making a space where you could possibly find an answer you don't expect. And that comes from that culture. So we see that with the turn of people coming through the space, that they need to get it, and they need to know this is a place that they can really push the limits of where they've been before. >> And then how, have you seen the kind of top down push for that culture, in terms of supporting it, evolving it, you know, >> Paul: Yeah. >> over time, from the very top levels? >> J.D.: That's interesting. >> No, now I'll take a run if. Even just go to our company's values, and everybody, you know, has an employee badge. We have our company values in the back of every single badge. And one of our company values, there's a couple, actually we have 10 values in there. And I think they're all great values. One of them is make Mom proud. Okay, it's about, you know, before you make any decision, before you do anything, is this a decision that would make your Mom proud? The next one that is, I think, also goes to the culture of our company, is bring your blank self to work. And you can fill in blank with whatever you want to fill it in with. So these are values that have been thought through from the top of the company, that permeates all the way through the organization. And as you know, an organization, your values and your mission are very, very important to that culture. >> Jeff: Right. >> So we even just reworked our recruitment philosophy based upon hiring on diversity and inclusion as well. So these are things that are absolutely supported from the top down inside our organization. >> And how has that manifested? Do people quote the values in reference to company awards? Do people, how does it actually go from just the back of, you know, the back of your badge to implementation to everyday world? >> We have them in performance reviews. When people are, you know people sort of do their performance reviews in, and part of that is, how is this person upholding our values. And so, we've installed this, you know, deep understanding of the values of the company because that's what effectively holds us together from a culture stand point as well. >> Jeff: Right. >> Yeah, it's interesting I think with Pier 9 we've seen a real chicken and egg. Pier 9 was an experiment when it started five years ago. And I think what's happened is the experiment went well. And that leadership started to see this kind of experiment is bringing in a value that as a software company, we haven't been able to reach before, which is having people in the space innovating and collaborating building community in that way. So it's been interesting to see it trickle up. And I say it's been really been grass-root, and what I see is that now, you know, when they're recruiting at Autodesk, they bring the people to Pier 9 because it's an employee benefit. So, and we see how the videos that Pier 9 are getting made from the marketing department and has influenced how the videos are getting made when we talk about all throughout the company. So it's been very interesting, you know, they brought, they started the experiment that they thought would be valuable, and now the company is found out more and more what that value is. And now they're looking at it. I do we expand that with our network of technology centers? I do we reach more people? And what else does this feed back to the larger corporation? >> Right >> Yeah. >> If anything you just touched on it with your be the underscore person is, is even diversity within the regular, just the regular hires that maybe, just the regular white guy from 10 years ago, >> Paul: Yeah. >> before it would be fit in a box, right. We hired you, now fit in a box. We talked about, it's amazing to me the impact of clothing. >> Paul: Yeah. >> We talked about it in an earlier interview. You know, you're a great person. You do all this stuff. Now we hired you, we'll put you in a box. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> As oppose to now, there's kind of whole person concept, which is even diverse inside of the attributes >> Paul: That's it. >> that you're leveraging from the individual >> Paul: Yeah. >> employees to get more value. Seems to be just a really >> Paul: Yeah. >> significant trend that then is going to drive that innovation. To use that whole asset. >> Yeah, you know, I'll even add that, as I mentioned earlier, employee resource groups, right. Heavy support for creating employee resource groups. In fact, we just created a new one for, Belong, you know, this is for people that are maybe immigrants into the country that are now under fear and concern with the what's going on with certain immigration policies and laws and so on. >> Jeff: Right, right. >> And we have Box Women's Network, Box Women's Technology Network, we have Black Excellence Network, we have all these various different employee resource groups, but also what's happening is that these groups are also helping people to get connected with other people across the organization. And as companies grow and you have thousands of employees, how do you get connected with other people across your organization that are in a similar situation as yourself. And we're finding that it's helping build relations, helping to build connections. I think our cognitive thought, our problem-solving, and so on is actually significantly improved because of this. >> Alright, so we're getting the wrap sign. It's a busy day. I want to give you the last word before we cut off. If we sit down a year from now, at International Women's Day, what are you working on, what are your priorities, both as individually as well as, you know, from a company point of view for the next 12 months? J.D., I'll start with you. >> Yeah. I'm actually launching an organization right now called, The Workbench Alliance. It's a professional organization for women, gender non-binary folks, trans-women, super inclusive, working at the intersection of craft, technology, and design. It's a lot of what we facilitate at Pier 9, and I'm looking at how we build a professional network to promote, create visibility, and really more and more community around these sort of converging industries. Supporting each other and you know, kind of employee resource group, but outside the corporation, which I think it's going to benefit, certainly benefit Autodesk, but benefit everybody. >> Jeff: Right, right. >> You know, I'll go on one topic and that's machine learning. I think we that we're at a point, it's almost the tip of an iceberg, but we have over the last few years created more, and more, and more data. And now we're mining that data for intelligence. Machine learning is getting smarter, and smarter, and smarter. So not only are we looking at leveraging that ourselves at Box to add more value to the content that our customers store with us, but also I think it's an opportunity to do things around hiring on diversity. You know, I think there's a lot of learning we can do to weed out unconscious bias. How we screen, the screening process, the finding process, the recruitment process. So I'm a big believer of machine learning helping us in a lot of different ways. >> Alright. Well, J.D., Paul, thanks for taking a minute, >> Alright. >> from your day. I really enjoyed the conversation. >> Alright, thank you >> Great, thank you. >> I'm Jeff Frick, we're at the International Women's Day. The Accenture at downtown San Francisco. Thanks for watching. Catch you next time. (electronic beat theme music)

>> Narrator: Live from the Javits Center in New York City. It's the Cube, covering the Inforum 2017. Brought to you by Infor. >> We are wrapping up the Cube's day two coverage of conference here in New York City at Inforum. My name is Rebecca Knight, along with my cohost Dave Vellante. We're joined by Dan Barnhardt. He is the Infor Vice President of Communications. Thanks so much for joining us. >> Yes, thank you for having me. Thank you for being here two days in a row. >> It's been a lot of fun. We've had a great time. So yeah, congratulations, it's been a hugely successful conference, a lot of buzz. Recap it for us, what's been most exciting for you? >> Sure, this was our second year having a forum in New York, which is our home town. I think it was a more exciting conference than last year. We unveiled some incredible development updates, led by Coleman, our AI offering, which is an incredible announcement for us, as well as Networked CloudSuites, which takes the functionality from our GT Nexus commerce network, and bakes it into our CloudSuites, the mission critical industry CloudSuites, that we offer on the Amazon Web Services cloud. Those were really exciting developments, as well as some other announcements we made with regard to product. And then, in addition to product, we had a lot of customer momentum that we shared. Last year, we had customers like Whole Foods and Travis Perkins up here. We continued the momentum with big enterprise customers making big bets on Infor, led by Koch Industries who invested more than two billion dollars this year at Infor, and are now modernizing their human resources and their financial operations with Infor CloudSuites. Moving to the cloud HR for 130,000 employees at Koch Industries which is an incredible achievement for the product, and for cloud HR. And, that's very exciting, as well as other companies like FootLocker, which were recognized with the Innovation Award for our Progress Makers Award. They're using talent science, data science to power their employees, not to power their employees, but to drive their employees towards greater productivity and greater happiness, because they've got the right people in the right fit for FootLocker, that's very exciting. And, of course, Bank of America, our Customer of the Year, which uses our HR solutions for their workforce, which obviously is exceptionally large. >> Yes, there was a great ceremony this morning, with a lot of recognition. So, let's talk a little bit more about Coleman, this was the big product announcement, really the first product in AI for Infor. Tell us a little bit about the building blocks. >> For certain. We have a couple of AI offerings now, like predictive hotel pricing, predictive demand and assortment planning in retail, but we have been building towards Coleman and what we consider the age of networked intelligence for multiple years. Since we architected Infor CloudSuite to run mission critical ERP in the cloud, we developed the capability of having data, mission critical data that really runs a business, your manufacturing, finance, distribution core functions, in the cloud on AWS, which gives us hyper-scale compute power to crunch incredible data. So, that really became possible once we moved CloudSuite in 2014. And then in 2015, we acquired GT Nexus, which is a commerce network that unites, that brings in the 80 percent of enterprise data that lies outside the four walls, among suppliers, and logistics providers, and banks. That unified that into the CloudSuite and brought that data in, and we're able to crunch that using the compute power of AWS. And then last year at Inforum, we announced the acquisition of Predictix, which is a predictive solutions for retail. And when building those, Predictix was making such groundbreaking development in the area of machine learning that they spun off a separate group called Logicblox, just to focus on machine learning. And Inforum vested heavily, we didn't talk a lot about Logicblox, but that was going to deliver a lot of the capabilities along with Amazon's developments with Lex and Alexa to enable Coleman to come to reality. So we were able then to acquire Birst. Birst is a BI program that takes, and harmonizes, the data that comes across CloudSuite and GT Nexus in a digestible form that with the machine learning power from Logicblox can power Coleman. So now we have AI that's pervasive underneath the application, making decisions, recommending advice so that people can maximize their potential at work, not have to do more menial tasks like search and gather, which McKenzie has shown can take 20 percent of your work week just looking for the information and gathering the information to make decisions. Now, you can say Coleman get me this information, and Coleman is able to return that information to you instantly, and let you make decisions, which is very, very exciting breakthrough. >> So there's a lot there. When you and I talked prior to the show, I was kind of looking for okay, what's going to be new and different, and one of the things you said was we're really going to have a focus on innovation. So, in previous Inforums it's really been about, to me anyway, we do a lot of really hard work. We're hearing a lot about acquisitions, certainly AI and Coleman, how those acquisitions come together with your, you know, what Duncan Angove calls the layer cake, you know the wedding cake stack, the strategy stack, I call it. So do you feel like you've achieved those objectives of messaging that innovation, and what's the reaction then from the customer base? >> Without a doubt. I wouldn't characterize anything that we said last year as not innovative, we announced H&L Digital, our digital transformation arm which is doing some incredible custom projects, like for the Brooklyn Nets, essentially money balling the NBA. Look forward to seeing that in next season a little bit, and then more in the season to come. Some big projects with Travis Perkins and with some other customers, care dot com, that were mentioned. But this year we're unveiling Coleman, which takes a lot of pieces, as Duncan said sort of the wedding cake, and puts them together. This has been a development for years. And now we're able to unveil it, and we've chosen to name it Coleman in honor of Katherine Coleman Johnson, one of the ladies whose life was told in the movie Hidden Figures, and she was a pioneer African-American woman in Stem, which is an important cause for us. You know, Infor years ago when we were in New Orleans unveiled the Infor Education Alliance program so that we can invest in increasing Stem education among young people, all young people with a particular focus on minorities and women to increase the ranks of underrepresented communities in the technology industry. So this, Coleman, not only pays honor to Katherine Johnson the person, but also to her mission to increase the number of people that are choosing careers in Stem, which as we have shown is the future of work for human beings. >> So talk a little bit more about Infor's commitment to increasing number to increasing, not only Stem education, but as you said increasing the number of women and minorities who go into Stem careers. >> Certainly. We, you know Pam Murphy who is our chief operating officer, this has been an incredibly important cause to her as well as Charles Phillips our CEO. We launched the Women's Infor Network, WIN, several years ago and that's had some incredible results in helping to increase the number of women at Infor. Many years ago, I think it was Google that first released their diversity report, and it drew a lot of attention to how many women and how many minorities are in technology. And they got a lot of heat, because it was about 30, 35 percent of their workforce was female, and then as other companies started rolling out their diversity report, it was a consistent number between 30 to 35 percent, and what we identified from that was not that women are not getting the jobs, it's that there aren't as many women pursuing careers in this type of field. >> Rebecca: Pipeline. >> Yes. So in order to do that, we need to provide an environment that nurtures some of the specific needs that women have, and that we're promoting education. So we formed the WIN program to do that first task, and this year on International Women's Day in early March, we were able to show some of the results that came from that, particularly in senior positions, SVP, VP, and director level positions at Infor. Some have risen 60 percent the number of women in those roles since we launched the Women's Infor Network just a couple of years ago. And then we launched the Education Alliance Program. We partnered with institutions, like CUNY the City University of New York, the New York Urban League, and universities now across the globe, we've got them in India, in Thailand and China, in South Korea to help increase the number of people who are pursuing careers in Stem. We've also sponsored PBS series and Girls Who Code, we have a hack-athon going on here at Inforum with a bunch of young people who are building, sort of, add-on apps and widgets that go to company Infor. We're investing a lot in the growth of Stem education, and the next generation. >> And by the way, those numbers that you mentioned for Google and others at around 30, 34 percent, that's much better than the industry average. They're doing quote, unquote well and still far below the 50 percent which is what you would think, you know, based on population it would be. So mainly the average is around, or the actual number's around 17 percent in the technology business, and then the other thing I would add is Amazon, I believe, was pretty forthcoming about its compensation, you know. >> Salesforce really started it, Marc Benioff. >> And they got a lot of heat for it, but it's transparency is really the starting point, right? >> It was clear really early for companies like Salesforce, and Amazon, and Google, and Infor that this was not something that we needed to create talking points about, we were going to need to effect real change. And that was going to take investment and time, and thankfully with leadership like Charles Phillips, our CEO, and Marc Benioff were making investments to help make sure that the next generation of every human, but particularly women and minorities that are underrepresented right now in technology, have those skills that will be needed in the years to come. >> Right, you have to start with a benchmark and then know where you're moving from. >> Absolutely, just like if you're starting a project to transform your business, where do you want to go and what are the steps that are going to help you get there? >> Speaking of transforming your business, this is another big trend, is digital transformation. So now that we are at nearing the end of day two of this conference, what are you hearing from customers about this jaunting, sometimes painful process that they must endure, but really they must endure it in order to stay alive and to thrive? >> Without a doubt. A disruption is happening in every industry that we're seeing, and customers across all of the industries that Infor serves, like manufacturing, healthcare, retail, distribution, they are thinking about how do we survive in the new economy, when everything is digital, when every company needs to be a technology company. And we are working with our customers to help first modernize their systems. You can't be held back by old technology, you need to move to the cloud to get the flexibility and the agility that can adapt to changing business conditions and disruptions. No longer do you have years to adapt to things, they're happening overnight, you must have flexible solutions to do that. So, we have a lot of customers. We just had a panel with Travis Perkins, and with Pilot Flying J, who was on the Cube earlier, talking about how their, and Cook Industries our primary investor now, talking about how they're re-architecting their IT infrastructure to give them that agility so they can start thinking about what sort of projects could open up new streams of revenue. How could we, you know, do something else that we never thought of, but now we have the capability to do digitally that could be the future of our business? And it's really exciting to have all the CIOs, and SVPs of technology, VPs of technology, that are here at Inforum talking about what they're doing, and how they're imagining their business. It's really incredible to get a peek at what they're doing. >> You know, we were talking to Debbie earlier. One of the interesting things that I, my takeaway is on the digital transformation, is you know, we always say digital is data and then what we talked about was the ability to traverse industry value change, not just vertically but horizontally. Amazon buying Whole Foods is a perfect example, Amazon's a content company, Apple's getting into financial services. I wonder if you could comment on your thoughts on because you're so deep into micro-verticals, and what Debbie said was well I gave a consumer package good example to a process manufacturing company. And they were like what are you talking about, and she said look, let me connect the dots and the light bulbs went off. And they said wow, we could take that CPG example and apply it, so I wonder when we talk about digital transformation, if you see or can foresee your advantage in micro-verticals as translating across those verticals. >> Without a doubt. We talk about it as adjacent innovation. And Charles points back to an example, way back from the creation of the niche in glass, and how that led to additional businesses and industries like eyeglasses and fire preparedness, and we look at it that way for certain. We dive very deep into key industries, but when we look at them holistically across and we say oh, this is happening within the retail industry, we can identify key functionality that might change the industry of disruption, not disruption, distribution. Might disrupt the distribution industry, and we can apply the lessons learned by having that industry specialization into other industries and help them realize a potential that they weren't aware of before, because we uncovered it in one place. That's happening an awful lot with what we do with retail and assortment planning and healthcare. We run 70 percent of the large hospitals in the US, and we're learning a lot from retail and how we might help hospitals move more quickly. When you are managing life and death situations, if you are planning assortment or inventory for those key supplies within a hospital, and you can make even small adjustments that can have huge impact on patient care, so that's one of the benefits of our industry-first strategy, and the adjacent innovation that we cultivate there. >> I know we're not even finished with Inforum 2017, but we must look ahead to 2018. Talk a little bit about what your goals for next year's conference are. >> For sure. You're correct, we're not finished yet with Inforum. I know everyone here is really excited about Bruno Mars who's entertaining tonight, but we are looking forward to next year's conference as well, we're already talking about some of the innovative things that we'll announce, and the customer journeys that are beginning now, which we'd like to unveil there. We are going to be moving the conference from New York, we're going to move to Washington DC in late-September, September 24th to 27th in Washington DC, which we're very excited about to let our customers, they come back every year to learn more. We had seven thousand people attending this year, we want to give them a little bit of a variety, while still making sure that they can reach, you know, with one stop from Europe and from Asia, cause customers are traveling from all over the world, but we're very excited to see the growth that would be shared. This year, for instance, if you look at the sponsors, we had our primary SI partner Avaap was platinum partner last year. In addition to Avaap this year, we were joined by Accenture, and Deloitte, Capgemini, Grant Thorton, all of whom have built Infor practices over the last 12 months because there's so much momentum over our solutions that that is a revenue opportunity for them that they want to take advantage of. >> And the momentum is just going to keep on going next year in September. So I'll see you in September. >> Yeah, thank you very much. I appreciate you guys being here with us for the third year, second year in a row in New York. >> Indeed, thank you. I'm Rebecca Knight for Dave Vellante, we will have more from Inforum 2017 in a bit.

(upbeat synthesized music) >> Announcer: Live from the Javits Center in New York City, it's The Cube, covering Inforum 2017. Brought to you by Infor. >> Welcome back to The Cube's live coverage of Inforum, I'm your host Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, Dave Vellante. We're joined by Pam Murphy, she is the Infor COO, thanks so much for coming on the program-- >> Thank you for having us, thank you. >> So you're hosting for the third time, a special session devoted to WIN, the Women's Infor Network. Tell us a little bit about this session and who are the guests and what we can expect. >> Yes, absolutely, so as you said, it's our third year hosting it. It's a very popular session, it's the only non product session of the entire conference and open to everybody, men and women. We always have a fantastic lineup of speakers and this year is no different. So the way we work it is we do a combination of TED Talks and panel sessions so we've got Tan Lee, who's the founder of Emotiv brain augmentation technology. And then we've got Reshma Saujani who's the founder of Girls Who Code. She's done great stuff in terms of pioneering STEM and getting girls to code. So she's going to talk us through her work, if you will, in training so many girls to code and how she wants girls to adopt, and behaviors she wants them to exhibit in this industry. And then we've got what will be I'm sure a lively panel with Ambassador Susan Rice and Farah Pandith and we're going to be talking about the government's ability to manage the terrorism that we're seeing today and we're going to be talking counter terrorism, we're going to be talking about what lessons are we learning from what's going on in Europe and what is the role in technology in helping curb terrorism. So that's going to be an exciting and interesting session. And then we're going to have Dr. Jill Biden come in and hopefully lighten up the session and talk about resilience and leadership today, so very exciting, very much looking forward to it. It's 11 AM tomorrow morning in the Special Events Hall, and hopefully it will be good if not better than the last two years. >> Rebecca: And we're going to have many of those guests on our program >> Yes. >> after that too. So why, what is the purpose of it? It sounds like a great session and it's going to be enlightening and exciting to hear all those women talk, but what is your goal in gathering this group of women? >> I guess I should go back to the founding of WIN. So I started WIN probably over four or five years ago at this point and its purpose was to just galvanize and bring women together, allow forum in which they could mentor each other and where we could work on the advancement of women within the organization. It's something that as I traveled through the offices, people have been asking me a lot to create that forum, create that environment and so we've got hundreds of WIN chapters around the globe with thousands of women participating. So we have very regular sessions and we talk about topics that are relevant to women and also just about advancing their careers and given that at a forum we have so many thousands and thousands of not only our own Infor WIN members but also customers, we just thought it was a great opportunity to have one of our sessions at Inforum and invite inspiring female speakers to come and talk to us about their experiences, how they got to be where they are, the challenges that they met along the way. So what's interesting is that the only WIN or female aspect of the session is the fact that every speaker on stage is female. Outside of that, that's where the relevance ends in the sense that it really is talking to topics that is applicable to everyone. So that's why it is just a topic and an audience that appeals to everybody, men, female, old, and young. >> So these sessions are always interesting and inspiring. What kind of impact have they had? Can you share with us any results? >> Absolutely, so we have, first of all they're very inspirational for everybody attending and I've had customers, not only our own employees, but I've had customers reach out to me and say that they were inspired by a story and it caused them to take action and change in their life. And before they may have felt something but they heard from somebody else saying that how they overcame it and it caused them to honestly take change within their own lives and their own organizations. So for customers, partners, whoever's attending, it just, to hear from someone else, you often have the perception with these speakers that they have this fantastic upbringing, fantastic education, they're successful because it's a function of that. Well actually that's not often the case. People have had a hard upbringing or they've met a lot of challenges around the way and it's how they overcame those challenges and the resilience that they brought into the mix is what inspires people. So really that's what I would say people get out of it, and often spawning from that, we often end up as well tailoring programs or development techniques which we feel would be of benefit to folks beyond that. So one of our speakers last year prompted a big thought about diversity and how we should be dealing with ways in which we may be dismissive of certain topics or abrasive to people, so it's thought provoking and it inspires action, which is obviously what we want to get out of it. >> We funded a nonprofit initiative last year in partner with another journalism outfit, The GroundTruth, to study women in tech and we presented at the, we had The Cube at the Grace Hopper Conference and some of the things that came out of that, I wanted to comment, chief data officers actually have a disproportionately higher percentage of women, maybe it's 'cause it's such a thankless job and they're (laughing) wiling to take it on. And then we found cyber bullying had a very negative effect on the participation of women in tech which is about 17% of the women. And then of course the salary disparity, one of the areas that we found was most egregious was Cambridge, Mass, now this is supposed to be a progressive, relatively liberal area. >> Our hometown. >> And it was huge, our hometown, very high disparity of low participation of women in tech. Any thoughts on that data and what kind of progress you'd like to see us make as an industry? >> I'm hopeful of the fact that the next generation will look back on where technology is now from the perspective of the low representation of women and that whole diversity factor and look on it as being a non-issue. I'm hopeful in the sense that, I don't think it's going to be as pronounced as we have it now. I think we're doing a far better job of going out to colleges, to institutions, and enabling girls and providing girls with coding courses. So I'm hoping it's not going to be a longterm issue for us. From our perspective, to your point, we look at the various line of businesses and functions within our organization and we see where is the disparity arising and where do we need to focus? And so interestingly enough, if you look at G&A functions or if you look at marketing functions, it's 50/50, right, in terms of representation, but there's definitely certain functions where either the nature of what they're doing or if it's a high travel related function, meaning you're away for long periods of time, there are certainly the areas I think which don't have as equal distribution in terms of men, and for those really, we've been working on creating programs to ease those burdens that may be had, or else promote them positively where it literally is an unconscious bias, if you will. It's a long topic, for sure, that I could go on about for a long period of time but I just think it's constant, looking at unconscious biases, it's looking at ways in which we feel that there's fairness, if you will, into the equation. And a lot of the time I honestly feel that it's not conscious, if you will, and it therefore just needs to be looked at specifically at ways and means in which that could be addressed or tackled. >> So as a successful woman in technology, COO at a major technology company, what advice do you have for that young woman who wants to get into technology but is dispirited by the headlines and by what appears to be a very macho culture where there is vast salary discrepancies? >> Yeah, it's unfortunate that that has come out all too much more frequently and with volume in the last six months for the companies that we're aware of. But I would say, I personally haven't experienced that, and I'm personally of the view that, by the way, I never meant to end up in this industry, so I look back and think how on Earth did I actually get here, but I think you have to be willing to take risks and you have to be wiling to dismiss a lot of what you hear and look on the fact that there is a lot of very successful women, even within Infor. Since we started WIN, we have had a huge increase in the amount of SVPs and VPs within our organization. I think it's something like a 60% increase in terms of who we have. There is so much more women in very, very senior roles now than we've ever had before, so I'm hopeful that it is changing. I hope that some recent coverage and recent events have not, will not create a longterm impact, but I think people just need to look and see with the tech industry booming, with the way in which people are being compensated, that it's a good industry in which you can be very successful and do great things. >> Dave: And cloud helps. >> Yeah. >> It does. >> Yeah. >> There are far more women at application oriented shows than there are infrastructure oriented, 'cause hardware guys are hardware guys. I don't know why, like mechanics, other than Mona Lisa Vito, mostly hardware people. But let's shift gears a little bit and talk about the global alliances. You are running that initiative here. These are folks that we haven't typically seen at Inforum but they're coming out of the wood works, what's going on, what's driving that? >> Yeah first of all we have a fantastic base of existing partners who had great successes in implementing Infor applications for their customers and so but with the growth that we've been seeing, honestly, in our business, over the last number of years, we just need to have more and more delivery capacity to create more choice for our customers as to who they can go to to implement our software. And if you think about the move to the cloud and if you think about digitalization and the fact that every customer is becoming more consumed and obsessed with technology because it's changing their businesses so fundamentally, they do want the option and the choice of having the large global system integrators, digital integrators, that they can go to do massive transformation work and business process re-engineering and program management and change management. And so for us it was important to form good reliances with the Deloittes, the Accentures, the Caps, and the Grant Thorntons in order to provide that larger ecosystem of transformational services that we can offer to our customers. So it's great, they're all platinum sponsors here at Inforum this year and there's over a hundred very senior executives and managing directors from those four. And we're just very excited about the extent and pace to which they're building out Infor practices, so it's great. >> I have to ask you, so don't hate me for saying this, but those guys love to pig out on big complicated ERP implementations that take two and three years. Is that world just going away and it's moving toward more of a digital transformation and a whole new line of thinking and that's why there's a good fit with Infor or is it something else? >> I think they understand and know that the older days of a company spending $100 million on an ERP implementation are gone, that's really not acceptable anymore. It's absolutely not our strategy, as you know from being here at the conference, our strategy is around creating industry specific end to end suites which don't require modifications and which are purpose built for the cloud. And so that is very clear to them and they understand that and are embracing the concept because they realize that cloud is an enabler, it's just another deployment method, but fundamentally it's about helping the customers take advantage of that technology and transform their businesses and to do that, it requires a lot more than software. And so they're changing, our industry is changing. Steve talked to the point of the stage today that the cost of technology is becoming very low and that therefore the permeation of technology in everything we do is going to be so prevalent. So it's understood and for them, it's more about helping our customers get to that digital age and being able to transform their businesses to cope with the changing technology. >> Are you satisfied with the pace? >> Pace of? >> Of the change, of getting people to the cloud. Do you feel there is, is the momentum there? >> Well we've seen huge growth in our sector. We have completely tipped the balances. I would have said, obviously it's been coming, it's like Salesforce.com and companies who basically do certain applications in the cloud and for us, we're different because we have complete end to end suites in the cloud, mission critical applications. And so our business has grown enormously over the course of the last three years and I think now it's mainstream, if you will. And so we're very pleased and happy. We have a lot of customers who have made, obviously we have over 8,400 customers now already there. And the pace is increasing. And it's just a continuous effort for the customers who haven't gone already, helping them understand what they need to do to get there, and that's what we've been doing in spades for the last couple of years. >> Great, well Pam Murphy, thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you. >> We really appreciate it. >> Thank you. >> I'm Rebecca Knight, for Dave Vallente, we will have more from The Cube's coverage of Inforum 2017 just after this. 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>> Announcer: Live from the Javits Center in New York City, it's theCUBE. Covering Inforum 2017, brought to you by Infor. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Inforum 2017, I am your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, Dave Vellante. We are joined by Chip Coyle. He is Infor's CMO. Thanks so much for sitting down with theCUBE today. >> Thank you for having me. >> So we just kicked off the show, the general session, Charles Philips, a lot of other Infor executives up there on the main stage talking. Lay it out for us. How many people are here. What are sort of the big themes that you're trying to get across here. >> Yeah, well, first of all it's great for Infor to be having our conference here at the Javits Center. It's about 10 blocks from our home-- >> Rebecca: Your own back yard. >> In New York City, and so this year, we've got nearly 7,000 attendees over the course of the week. Many component programs as we do every year with our partner summit, with our various conferences for the different individual customer constituencies, and executive forum, and of course, a big customer appreciation event happening tomorrow night. >> You've also made some big announcements. I'm talking mostly about Coleman AI, and Burst. I want you, if you can unpack those for our viewers a little bit. >> Yeah, I would say the theme of the conference this year is the age of networked intelligence. And what does that mean? Well, we've had, for the last several years, a layered strategy in our business, starting at the foundation with very deep industry functional applications. Purpose built for the different industries. We've taken all of that technology and moved it to the cloud, so that you get the benefits of the efficiencies and the network capability of taking your applications to the cloud. We recently, a year ago, acquired GT Nexus, which expands our capability, in a broader sense, to a commerce network, and we're able to incorporate that into our traditional applications in different industries. And then, just a couple of months ago, we acquired a business intelligence software company, Burst, which brings some really great technology for business intelligence that we can layer on top of all of our applications in this network environment. And then finally, today, the big announcement was Coleman, as you said, and that was to take our new artificial intelligence platform and really create just profound new ways that the workers in the different industries and their different companies across the networked enterprise, can interact in a business setting, much like people do in a commercial setting today. >> Can you, Chip, talk about the evolution of the brand promise. So when we first met Infor, at AWS Reinvent, it was like who was Infor? Trying to educate people on who Infor is. And so I felt like last year was your sort of stamp of this is how Infor and why Infor is relevant, and now, there seems to be sort of an undertone of innovation. So can you talk about the evolution of the brand and what you see as the brand promise. >> Well, we are very consistent in our branding and positioning of Infor as really the first industry cloud company. We're the ones who have been, at an accelerated pace, bringing the most deep, industry-rich, functional applications to the cloud. And that has created a great layer now, for all of these future innovations that we have talked about today with the benefits of business intelligence enabled applications built right in, so that you can truly have all the information you need at the right time, for the right purpose to make immediate business decisions. And then the potential and capability of artificial intelligence on top of that. >> As the chief marketing officer, can you talk a little bit about how these innovations change how you do your job, and how they make your life easier, in terms of making the right decision at the right time, making the decision better, having the right data? >> Yeah, well some of the other announcements that we're making this week, actually are in my particular line of business, which is marketing, and one of those, for example, is we're broadening our Infor CRM suite, with a link to LinkedIn's Sales Navigator. So that brings a whole set of important data to, about customers, to enable better customer interactions, for our customers. So that's something that we look to be using in our business, along with Marketo, which is a new business partner, as the engine, or the marketing automation platform to fuel our marketing business. So that's how it's impacting me directly in what I do. >> So I wonder if you could help us sort of debunk some of the myths. So Oracle would say enterprise apps aren't moving to the cloud, and we are the company to move them to the cloud, and we're the only company that can move them to the cloud. You know, SAP, it's got it sort of some cloud going on, but most of the stuff remains on prem. We heard today 55% of your revenue comes from cloud. And we know you made a decision years ago to run on AWS. Help us understand, I mean these are core, hard core enterprise apps that are running in the cloud. So help us debunk some of those myths and add some color to that. >> The traditional processes of rolling out major applications and enterprise applications in an enterprise is completely changing. And it's also changing because of the capabilities of the cloud. And the approach that Infor takes, which is very easy to assemble and configure with our Ion technology and collaboration technology, such as Mingle, to put these applications in place in a much faster way for our customers than some of the traditional players in the ERP market have been accustomed to do. And they just don't have the current technology approach or foundation to be able to move quickly to the cloud, as we do at Infor. >> In talking about Infor, you talked a little bit about the brand evolution, how are you getting the word out? Infor is really a sleeping giant in the technology industry. How are you getting your name out there? >> Well one thing that we want to do with our brand is show, well first of all, introduce Infor to the world at large, that hasn't heard of us. And the way that we want to do that is by showing what kind of benefits we can give to customers in different industries. So we just recently launched our first-ever TV commercials. They have run on shows like Meet the Press, and some of the CNBC and MSNBC shows. That has, incidental, all of that was developed entirely, 100% in house, with Hook and Loop, our creative in-house creative agency. So we're very proud of that. We're looking to do more of that with TV. We also have a relationship with the Brooklyn Nets here in New York, where on the business side, we're enabling them with performance and team analytics with a whole slew of applications of that with biometric readings and imagery, when they're moving around on the court. That can then be used to help fine tune and make decisions on which personnel to use, which, what are the best players to be able to, say, shoot a free throw after one day of rest versus two days of rest. That level of analytics. So we are, in that partnership with the Nets, are also in a branding way, going to be on the Nets jersey starting this September with an Infor patch on the jersey. And we're announcing that also, this week. >> Awesome. This is definitely a New York theme here. We're here at the Javits Center, Brooklyn Nets, Hudson Yards, another huge project that you guys are intimately involved in. Not a lot of vendors are explicitly mentioned in that. Maybe talk about that a little bit. >> Well, Hudson Yards as a development is unique in that it is really a completely self-contained city in all respects. Where the concept is to be able to network the data and information of anybody within that city, with respect to where they live in the high-rises, where they shop in the retail stores or grocery stores, where they eat in the restaurants, and where they work with all of the businesses that are locating there, too. So that gives you so much potential to rethink how information can enable, just the way that you move about, even in the city. From keyless entry into facilities, to voice-activated tasks, like, can you please restock in my groceries in my refrigerator in my condo. So there's so many ways that that can be a broad showcase for the true smart city of the future. >> These are high-end clientele. This is very New York. I want to shift gears and talk about the eco system a little bit. There's a few names that I, maybe they were here before, but I hadn't seen them, at least prominently, certainly IBM, you mentioned Marketo, a great interesting partner, hot company, and some of the SIs are sort of coming out of the woodwork. >> Chip: Yes. >> Now when you think about your strategy for sort of micro verticals, the SIs, I always say, they love to eat at the trough. And if there's not a lot of customizations, they're not interested. However, you've attracted them, because you've now got a substantial enough estate. So talk about that evolution of the eco system. >> We're proud to have as our diamond sponsors this year, AVAAP, as well as Marketo. And AVAAP has been a longstanding partner for, implementation partner for us, in expanding areas. Their heritage is with Lawson in health care and they're doing a lot of implementations across our business in all geographies, in all industries. But what's new this year is we also have attracted some new, some of the big SIs, such as Deloitte and Accenture, Capgemini, Grant Thornton. So they have all come in as sponsors and we're really on the cusp of some big and bigger and better things with them in the different businesses. >> The other thing I wanted to ask you about is Infor has a unique way of attracting interesting speakers. I've done probably five or six thousand interviews in the last five or six years, and some of the most interesting have been at Inforum. Deborah Norville came on in New Orleans, last year Lara Logan, Naomi Tutu, Karina Hollekim, amazing three women interviews. >> Rebecca: This year Susan Rice. >> This year Susan Rice was here, so what's that all about? They're not techies, they're just interesting people. What are you trying to do there? >> Well, we have a program, the Women's Infor Network, WIN, that was created by Pam Murphy, our chief operating officer, and starting a few Inforums ago, we wanted to use Inforum as a platform to showcase innovative women in the world. And it's a little bit of a departure from our product and technology messages. And this year, we've got, as you mentioned, some great inspiring women, like Jill Biden, the former first, vice president-- >> Rebecca: Second lady. >> And also, Susan Rice, as you mentioned. So, it's going to be, it's always a very popular session. >> Yes, and we're looking forward to having those women on theCUBE, too, tomorrow. >> Chip: Absolutely. >> Chip, thanks so much for joining us, it's been a pleasure. >> Thank you for having me. >> I'm Rebecca Knight, for Dave Vellante. We'll have more from Inforum 2017 after this. (techno music)