>> Woman: From the heart of Silicon Valley, it's theCUBE; covering CloudNOW's Seventh Annual Top Women Entrepreneurs in Cloud Innovation Awards. (dramatic music) >> Hi, Lisa Martin with theCUBE on the ground at Facebook Headquarters. We're here for the Seventh Annual CloudNOW Top Women Entrepreneurs in Cloud Innovation event. Welcoming, one of the award-winners tonight, to the program, we've got Sce Pike, the founder and CEO of IOTAS. Sce, it's so great to have you here, and congratulations on your award. >> Thank you so much, Lisa. >> So IOTAS's cool software. >> Mm hmm. >> Tell us about that. This is for the Smart Apartments. These days we're so used to being able to talk to any device and have it control things. Smart cities are our big thing, smart everything. Tell us about IOTAS. What do you guys do when the impetus for the technology. >> Sure, I really believe that the future of smart home is actually something that is not just four walls and a roof, but actually something that is aware of you. So, aware of you and knows your preferences and settings, and actually knows everything about you and wants to actually be an ally to you, and actually can differentiate between you, and your family and friends, and potentially an intruder. And so, the only way you're going to get there is to actually work with early adopters of technology. This is when we start identifying the real estate industry with multi-family where all the early adopters were living, right, because only 30 percent of Millennials own homes. And so, we thought about this and said, "Okay, well, how are we going to actually get to those millennials?" And then a real estate developer actually approached us, saying, "Hey, I want technology differentiation for my building that I'm creating, 200 units in Portland Oregon," which is where I'm from, and said, "I want to have something different." And that's when I was like, "Oh, this is the opportunity to actually work with the real estate industry to put it into the fabric of the buildings." And that's when I got really excited when we can actually make a true smart home that has all the lights, all the outlets, all the locks, voice as you mentioned, and everything that is an experience versus just on, off. >> That's so interesting. I looked at your Web site and saw the journal and how it's talking about something that you mentioned, this awareness and learning the individuals and being able to have the intelligence to distinguish. >> Is it called stories on the website? >> Those are stories, those are the automations, so that you can have a good night story, good morning, welcome home; so everything just works for people who are moving into our apartments. They download the app within 30 seconds. They can see everything that they can control, but they can see also, all the pre-programmed automation as well. But the other notion of what we are creating is something called a living profile. And this is really relevant from a CloudNOW perspective, is that the living profile travels with you from place to place to place. So we are not only doing smart apartments but we're also working in student housing, military housing, senior living, and starting to go into single family home as well. So for us, the notion is that these smart homes, all your settings preferences, your routines, your habits, travel with you from place to place to place, eventually to hotels, to cars, working spaces, hotels, short term vacation rentals and such. >> Wow! That's phenomenal. So this is an interesting kind of collaboration between the real estate industry and some technologists. >> Exactly. Exactly. >> I love that you were approached by a real estate developer who said, "I want to have a differentiation for my business." >> Exactly. Was that sort of a surprise to you thinking, you understand tech, you have a really cool background in anthropology as well as electronic arts, but there must have been sort of an interesting opportunity going, "Well, there's a huge opportunity in the market here >> Yeah. >> that we can help tech really kick the doors wide open on real estate. >> Yes. Exactly. My previous company, Citizen, which I sold to Ernst and Young, is known for connected technology. So we were developing connected technologies in cars, in healthcare and fintech, and we were looking at smart homes for single family home. And so, for us, when that real estate developer approached us, looked at the market, saw that the market is huge. It's $500 billion to a trillion dollars, just for multi-family home alone, it's an absolutely a large market, and then realized that this was truly an opportunity to scale smart home and IoT devices in a meaningful way because you're not just selling one device, one home, not even one building, but you're selling entire portfolios of companies like Prudential or JP Morgan. All the funds that you hear about, they're all real estate funds, right? And they're changing hands 40% of the ... A 40% of the fund is changing hands every year. That means they are buying and selling, and as they're buying and selling, they're adding technology into these buildings. >> Wow! That's so interesting. So, I want to kind of pivot a little bit into your background. I mentioned anthropology degree and electronic arts. And you have, I was asking you before we went live, I love stories like that where there's a ... I hear it wasn't a STEM kit, but you have some really cool influences that your anthropology background has delivered to, not just your career but also the technology that you guys are delivering. Tell us a little bit about that. Sure. So, anthropology is a study in human behavior, right? There's physical anthropology and cultural anthropology. Physical anthropology is now considered almost like evolutionary psychology. And so that actually allowed me because I've always been curious about human; human nature, why people do things, and that actually led my career into this interesting path of user experience design. And electronic arts actually taught me how to code as well as design on the computer. And when I graduated from college in the late '90s and moved to Silicon Valley, everybody's like, "I need somebody who could code and design all these Internet sites." So I ended up actually designing the first GM e-commerce site, the first HP's e-commerce sites, and that actually was not a direct path. I never thought I'd be making websites or working in an Internet, but it was an interesting path to get there. So you're right, it doesn't have to be this straight and like you got to be in computer science. There's so many different avenues to think about how technology needs a different point of view, right, from an art background or an anthropology background, and I think that's where there's an opportunity to bring in women or girls in a different way that still goes into STEM. So steam is a huge portion of what I support. >> Yes. And you talked about, it's just different points of view, it's thought diversity, even. >> Yes. >> Tell us a little bit about the culture that you're building at IOTAS and where, maybe even some of the softer skills >> Sure. >> are key to enabling you guys to do market expansion and accomplish some pretty big goals? >> Yeah. I mean, culturally, I love my team. I think one of the things that we always strive for, though, is the ability to always give back to the community as well. So we have like, events, as well as like, once a month, everyone has like, a give-back Wednesday, right? So they can go and volunteer and do other things that is outside of just their work life, right? And so that's just one of the things that we do and that allows them to just step away from their daily activity of being driven by just the startup mentality or the startup life and just go build something, and we do this a lot, Habitats for Humanities, right? We go build homes, real homes, and we always think we should offer these homes as smart home technology. But those are the things that I think really impact who we are. The other thought I had was I travel a lot. And I had this moment where I was getting on a plane. I was looking at the pilot, I was going, "Oh gosh! So much of my life is dependent on white men, and, unfortunately, like, my investors, my board members, all my executive staff, my husband, and I was thinking, "I need to change something. I'll keep the husband." (Lisa laughs) But we (chuckles) recently added a female board member who has a cybersecurity background. I'm recruiting for a female CFO and COO as well, and I'm trying to change up my executive staff, change up my investors, change up my board 'cause this is not something that you think about, coming from my generation which is a little bit older. You just need to do what you need to do to get it done, you don't think about yourself as a female entrepreneur. I thought of myself as an entrepreneur. I think of myself as a CEO. I don't have this like, "I'm a female entrepreneur." And so you sometimes forget to support other diversity in this environment, and that's kind of this moment of realization as I was getting on the plane, "I got to change something." Right? And so, our staff is more than 40% female. I'm trying to change that a little bit more. That's one of the key things that I think is a strength of having just representation. >> And maybe one of these days, you said your point: It won't matter, you will just be able to be a CEO, an entrepreneur. >> exactly. >> One more thing, since you're recruiting, where can people to go to find out more information about the opportunities? >> Sure, they can come to our site, reach out or contact at iotashome.com. That would be the best way to reach us. >> Excellent. Well, Sce, congratulations on the award. >> Thank you. >> And for what you're doing to help revolutionize the real estate tech industry. It's such interesting technology to make it aware and personal. Thanks for your time. >> Cool. >> Thank you so much, Lisa. We want to thank you for watching theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin, at Facebook Headquarters. Thanks for watching. (dramatic music)

>> Announcer: From the heart of Silicon Valley, it's theCUBE covering CloudNOW's 7th annual Top Women Entrepreneurs in Cloud Innovation Awards. (lively music) >> Hi, Lisa Martin with theCUBE on the ground at Facebook Headquarters. We're here with the CloudNOW Top Women Entrepreneurs in Cloud Innovation Awards, their seventh annual. We're here with one of the award winners, Katherine Kostereva, the founder and CEO of bpm'online. Katherine, it's great to have you here. >> It's honor to be here. Thank you very much, Lisa. >> Congratulations on the CloudNOW award, but also you are no stranger to awards. Even in 2018, you were named one of the Top 50 SaaS CEOs for 2018. Not just female CEOs, CEOs. That's a pretty big honor as well. >> Katherine: Thank you. >> So bpm'online I want folks to understand not just your career path, but also that you're pretty persistent and bold. Bpm'online is a very successful and well-known business in Europe. >> Katherine: Right. >> Founded in 2002 with five people. >> 16 years ago. >> 16 years ago. >> Bootstrapped. >> Bootstrapped by yourself, and here you are recently moved to the US and you're basically kind of start-up in the US. >> Exactly. >> Tell us a little bit about that story. What you grew as a female leader in Europe, and the impetus to say we can do more and bring the business to the United States. >> Absolutely, would love to tell you this story. So 16 years ago we built this company. Bootstrapped it, no investors, no friends and family money. Just from zero, from scratch, and have successfully grown the business until we started to hear from our customers who were large, global organizations using our software in Europe. We started to hear, "Hey guys, "why we don't know you in the United States? "Why our headquarters doesn't know your name?" And then we started to talk to Gartner and Forrester, and they said exactly the same. Your technology is so amazing, and, right now, we are included in five Gartner Magic Quadrants and five Forrester Waves. And technology is amazing, but why you are not here in the United States? So, eventually, I moved to the United States with some of my peers, and we started to build our office in Boston. It happened three years ago. So right now we feel ourselves like a start-up here in Boston. While back like several years ago in Europe, and right now actually in Europe, this is a strong, mature company with 500 people in the company, working in the company in six offices. >> And business process automation, CRM, well-known in Europe, tell us about why did you select Boston and not come out here to Silicon Valley when you decided to move out here? >> (laughs) That's a great question, and I have a very easy answer to this question. As we have so many customers, partners and actually team members in Europe, we just wanted to find something with a shortest time-zone like time difference, right. So the difference between Europe and Boston is five to seven hours while here's it's additional plus three hours. So my day usually starts with Europe, so, when I start working around 7 a.m. in the morning, I work work with Europe, then I work with the United States, and then in the evening I start working with APAC with Asia, with Australia because we have our office in Australia as well. So we have our customers and people working in Australia, so this is my evening hours. >> Oh my goodness, so here you are being recognized tonight as a female entrepreneur. Tell us about your inspiration, and what has kept you persistent. Being a female in technology is challenging, and we all know that and, for many reasons. Hopefully one day it won't matter, gender, but it does. What are some of your recommendations for not only founding a company, and really kind of harnessing that persistence but also growing a culture that supports diversity. That understands and embraces change. >> This is a great question. Honestly, for me those are my customers, and that what I would recommend all women and female and male entrepreneurs to talk more to their customers because when you and your customers have the same vision about how to develop the company, how to develop the product, it inspires you. You just, you move on. You want to develop. You want to develop more, and just to give you an example both our customers and our team we believe that organization just can't have excellent customer relations without very holistic business processes beneath. So we believe that organization, if we're talking about mid-sized and large organization, they need to have holistic processes first, and then, based on this process, they going to have great customer relations. So this is kind of our vision and our mission, and that's what our customers share with us and that what has inspires me to move on and on and develop new products for our customers. >> Well, Katherine congratulations on the CloudNOW Award win. >> Thank you. >> Thanks so much for joining us on the program, and we hope you have a great night. >> Thank you so much for your time. Honor to be here. Thank you >> Our pleasure. We want to thank you for watching. I'm Lisa Martin for theCUBE at Facebook Headquarters. We'll see you next time. (lively, airy music)

>> Announcer: From the heart of Silicon Valley, it's theCUBE. Covering CloudNOW's seventh annual Top Women Entrepreneurs in Cloud Innovation Awards. (upbeat music) >> Hi, Lisa Martin with theCUBE, on the ground at Facebook Headquarters. We're here for the seventh annual CloudNOW Top Women Entrepreneurs in Cloud Innovation Awards. Welcoming one of the award winners and a CUBE alumni to the program, we have Tongtong Gong. You are co-founder and COO of Amberdata, Tongtong. Welcome back to theCUBE, and congrats on the award. >> Thank you, thanks for having me Lisa. >> Our pleasure. So, you've been on theCUBE before. We'll talk about Amberdata in a second. And I love the name, so I want you to tell us a little bit about that. Health and intelligence for blockchain, but one of the really interesting things about you is you are a technical female co-founder of a venture-funded company. A lot of words there, huge accomplishment. >> Tongtong: Thank you. >> Tell us about the inspiration. What was the opportunity? Was it your idea? Was it your co-founder's idea? How did this opportunity for the technology come to fruition? Then how did you, as a female, go and lead and get funding for this technology? >> Wow, how much time do I have? I can talk all day on this subject. So, it all started last 2017, summer. I was just very intrigued with blockchain technology and the potential of how blockchain can change our life and take our identity, assets, have full control, remove intermediaries. I had a full-time job at that time, leading engineering for a startup company, and I just don't have enough time in the day to learn about this new technology and what's the better way to do it, and then jump right in, start own company, and start from blockchain data. So, my background is in data analytics and computing, and when I start learning blockchain, I realized blockchain data, it's stored, it's immutable, but it's really hard to access. It's really hard to analyze. It's really hard to process without all the tools that we all know and comfortable with. So, me and my co-founder at that point were going back and forth with this new technology and the opportunities. I think it's his idea. Let's do something with the data that's stored on blockchain. Amberdata, the company's name, it's because Nick Szabo did a podcast with Tim Ferriss and Naval about blockchain is a fly trapped in amber. Upon layers and layers of amber solidified and the bubbles and the fly, you can still see it but it's immutable. You can't change it anymore. So, we're like, what brilliant name is that, right? >> Lisa: Absolutely. >> Amberdata. Without a tool, a platform like us, you can't possibly count all the bubbles in the amber. We help you extract the bubbles from the amber, the flies from the amber, and analyzing it. And that's what we do. >> Wow, that's a great analogy, a great name. Health and intelligence for blockchain. Blockchain is a very hot technology topic. Every company out there, whether they're a startup born in the cloud or legacy enterprise, wants to be doing something in blockchain. As a female co-founder, was that an advantage for you when you went in to venture capitalists looking to get funding? What do you think some of those advantages were? >> Honestly, I always consider being female is an attribute of me. It's not the definition of me. My gender doesn't define me. It doesn't constrain me. It's just who I am and I'm also engineer. I'm also incredibly curious all the time. I'm also bubbly. I'm also a wife. I'm also a daughter. So, there's just many attributes of me. When we start a company, we went into lots of friends and VCs and Meetups and we'd talk to anyone about our idea. Looking for advice, looking for validation. That's really what led us to get the funding. >> I love that. One day I hope we'll be to a place where gender doesn't define us but we know the numbers in females in technical roles. But it sounds like one of the things that you leveraged, maybe, were some of those softer skills. You're very personable. You had a great idea. You clearly have passion for it. Building your own groundswell with Meetups and a network seems like one of the key initiators of your success. >> Now you put it that way, I think so. I never thought about it that way. Yeah, 'cause in the beginning, you really try to define and refine the idea and the product. Are you solving a problem? What is the problem that you are solving? You really can't get answers unless you talk to lots of people and I think, perhaps, being a female, it really helps me just to talk to people all day long. >> It's good that you can do that. Genetically, I think we both have that in common. Tonight, as we wrap up here, you're presenting in front of Sheryl Sandberg, who is probably one of the beacons that women have globally. Not just in technology, she's obviously written some incredibly inspiring books about a number of different life situations. You must be pretty excited to have the opportunity to not only be a co-founder but to be recognized by this award and have somebody as prestigious and inspirational as Sheryl in the audience. >> Absolutely. I have both her books, Lean In and Option B. I actually bough both books in Chinese version for my mom, as well. So, I have four copies. I'm a huge fan of Sheryl. I think she's very inspirational about leaning in and take a seat at the table. One of my friend, Jamie Moy, once said, "Girl, let's forget about taking a seat. Let's create a table. Let's create a seat for other people." >> "Girl, let's create a seat." I love that. Tongtong, thank you so much for stopping by. Congratulations again on the award. >> Thank you. >> And we look forward to having you back on theCUBE again, talking more about what you're doing with Amberdata. >> Thank you for having me. >> We want to thank you. You're watching theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin from Facebook headquarters. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> From the heart of Silicon Valley, it's the Cube Covering CloudNow 7th Annual Top Women Entrepreneurs in Cloud Innovation Awards. >> Lisa Martin on the ground with the Cube at Facebook Headquarters. We are here for the 7th Annual CloudNow Top Women Entrepreneurs in Cloud Innovation Awards. Welcoming to the Cube for the first time, one of tonight's winners, we have Charu Sharma, the Founder and CEO of Nextplay.ai. Charu, it's great to have you on the Cube. >> Thanks Lisa, I'm really excited to be talking to you. >> And congratulations on your award. Your pedigree, when I looked you up on LinkedIn, I thought wow, where do I even start, the things you've accomplished in such a short time period are pretty impressive. I want to share a few with our guests. You've built, in college, in your spare time, two award-winning start-up companies out of your dorm room before you got napped up by LinkedIn to grow their talent solutions revenue. You've won awards by Grace Hopper. We mention tonight you're here with CloudNow, one of the top women entrepreneurs in cloud innovation. Tell us about, I'd love to get your story of what inspired you to go off and found Nextplay.ai, the inspiration, also the chutzpah to say, "You know what I want to do this, "and I need to go get funding" which is really challenging for women in technical roles to do. Tell us about that. >> Yeah, so tonight I'll be giving a talk next to Sheryl Sandberg and that's nothing short of a miracle for me because I grew up in a family in India where women were not allowed to work, and so growing up it was important for me to have access to economic opportunities and that's how I came to the US for a scholarship, and I'm here today because a lot of mentors serendipitously came in my life and opened doors for me. So, to pay it forward, when I worked at LinkedIn before, I built a mentoring program for women at LinkedIn specifically cuz I think in the workplace especially women, minorities, and introverts suffer in finding a sponsor in helping open doors for you and mentors at your company can specially help you navigate the political landscape and help you grow your career at the company which helps the companies with retention as well. Exactly two years ago I started Nextplay.ai to be able to do this at scale, so today we work with companies from Coca Cola to Lyft to Splunk, and we not only connect their employees internally for mentorship, we also have robust analytics to show the ROI on retention. >> I was looking at some of your stats, I was telling you before we went live, I geek out on stats, that really show that your technology can make significant business impact for, you mention Coca Cola, Lyft, Splunk, etcetera but you obviously saw a gap a few years ago when you got into tech yourself saying not only do we know the numbers and the stats of women in technical roles as being quite low, but one of the things that you saw is one of the things we need to do to help increase those numbers is start internally and mentoring these women. To your point, of not just helping them establish confidence to stay but navigate that political landscape. I think that's a really unique opportunity, when you pitched this idea to these Cs, what was their response? >> Yeah, so mentorship is not an established product category, and on top of that, I inserted gender, race, accent, age, etcetera, and so frankly I got mixed opinions, but I chose to focus on the people who saw the big vision and who cared about the story and the impact something like this could have, so LinkedIn's executives, 500 Start-ups, TechCrunch's former CEO, who's a woman, they're some of the earliest investors who put their bets on us. Today we have shown success stories at every scale, so after six months of working with us employees are 25% more likely to recommend working at their company which actually when you do the math, it's huge. It saves millions of dollars for companies. There was a woman at a company who became the first woman at her company to get promoted while away on mat leave, that's huge. >> Wow, that is huge. >> A new product manager was able to, because of us, connect with somebody who they otherwise wouldn't know, and they were able to help identify a multi-million dollar market opportunity for the company, so there are definitely these case studies which is now creating a movement and now we have over 300 companies who want to work with us. They're on a waiting list. >> A waiting list? >> Mmhhm So we're definitely creating this momentum. >> And we talk about groundswell and momentum, especially at an event like tonight where there's over 300 attendees, 1o winners, one of them being yourself, and there was no advertising to buy tickets because the groundswell is growing so much. The trajectory that Nextplay.ai is on, in two years is pretty steep, you got some exciting things coming up in March, tell us about that. >> Yes, thank you, so when ai play and we sell to enterprise companies to do their mentoring and sponsorship programs internally for talent retention, that said, we started the company to help level the playing field so now that we're relatively stable and are a strong robust team with decent traction, this March we want to give a give back, so we're launching a social impact campaign where around the world we're going to help 100,000 women get mentored. So, if you want to host events at your company, if you want to get involved as a mentor or a mentee, please e-mail me at charu@nextplay.ai. >> And people can also go to the website to find out more information about that? >> Not about that campaign specifically yet, but they'll find my contact information, so it's nextplay.ai. >> And even at your Twitter handle which is probably in the lower third here. >> Yes >> Excellent, so congratulations on the award. The amount of work that you have done in such a short period of time is incredible. I can see it in your attitude and your smile and your energy, congratulations on getting to present to Sheryl Sandberg tonight and for seeing this opportunity in the market to help with that retention from within. What a great opportunity and thanks again. >> Thank you Lisa. >> We want to thank you for watching the Cube. I am Lisa Martin on the ground at Facebook headquarters, thanks for watching. (light electronic music)

>> Hi, I'm Lisa Martin on the ground with The Cube at Google Headquarters for the sixth annual CloudNOW Top Women and Cloud Awards event. Very excited to be joined by one of the award winners tonight, Alice Steinglass the President of Code.org. Congrats on the award and welcome to The Cube >> Thank you. >> It's great to have you here but first of all tell us about Code.Org. It's a pretty big organization and so what's it all about? >> Yeah, so our goal is that every student should have the opportunity to learn Computer Science. And we're focused on equity and diversity. I was surprised to learn that most schools today don't teach Computer Science. And it's not that most kids don't take Computer Science, it's that even if they wanted to most K12 schools today, the kid can't even take a Computer Science class if they want to. And this unfairly affects students of color, students in poor schools, they even have less of that opportunity today. And so our goal is that every school should offer Computer Science and every child should have the opportunity to take it. >> That's outstanding. How long have you been involved in Code.org and what inspires you to donate so much of your time to this organization? >> Yeah, so I joined about a little bit over two years ago. I'd been working in the tech industry for about 15 years, so I'd seen first hand what the lack of opportunity looks like and I was volunteering in my free time, helping out in schools and I just really wanted to make that my full-time job. I also think as a woman in Computer Science I remember walking into my first Computer Science class and it's a lecture hall with 500 people and you just feel like you're sort of in the wrong place. And it can be intimidating and I think especially when you don't know all the words or all the buzz words, you can feel like, I don't know what that word means, I don't know what BBS is right? So therefore I don't belong in Computer Science and it turns out, you don't need to know what a BBS is to do Computer Science. It's basically Reddit and nobody needs to know Reddit to do Computer Science. >> But that's a really great point that there's a lot of intimidation from kids at young ages, "Do I belong here?" "I like it but..." Like you said, there are things like acronyms that can intimidate someone. But some of the stats I was reading that 25% of students in the US have an account but this isn't just in the United States, you guys are doing some great things globally to get kids involved. So tell us a little bit about the global expansion of Code.org. >> Yeah, so almost half of our students come from around the world. And I think that it's not just about America, it's about every student deserves this opportunity. It's actually cool, most of our translation work, almost all of it is done by volunteer translators and we have organizations around the world like, Programa Il futuro in Italy who has translated all of our content into Italian and is working with the Italian Government and making it part of the national curriculum in Italy. Working with partners in Mexico and all over the world, who are doing great work and right here at home. You don't have to go far away, we're partnered with the Oakland School District which is right here. And we're partnered with San Francisco and all sorts of schools right here in America don't have that opportunity and so that's what we're focused on fixing. Because I was talking about, it's challenging when you don't know it and giving the students an opportunity to learn that in High School gives them the confidence to go and do this if they want to in college. I was lucky, I had a high school Computer Science class and I had a teacher who believed in me. And it makes a huge difference. >> Absolutely. >> So we want to give all students that chance. >> That confidence that you mentioned really is key. If you can just help, you probably think one person, just feel a little bit better that if, "Hey I don't know what this acronym is, how many other people don't know?" and that can just really build upon that. Something that I think is really cool that I've just learned about is the Hour of Code. Tell us about that because this is the perfect week to be talking about it. >> Yeah, you are interviewing me during CS education week. And one way you can celebrate CS education week is the Hour of Code. The Hour of Code has become an international movement. We've had tens of millions of students participating all over the world. This week alone there are over a 100,000 different Hour of Code events that are organized. You can see a map of them all over the world. An Hour of Code is a way of letting a student try Computer Science because I can tell you till I'm blue in the face that it's fun, or that it's interesting or that you can do it. But we see a much bigger impact when students actually try it. Last year we had thousands of students, which we measured. Questions like, I like Computer Science or I want to study Computer Science before and after they tried an Hour of Code. And what we saw was that it really makes a huge difference to try it. But you know the group that it mattered the most to? High school girls. High school girls. >> Fantastic. >> Yeah. Because they had this impression that Computer Science wasn't for them. But then after trying it, they said, "Oh you know what? It's not about sitting around and coding the Fibonacci Series." You can do that with code but you can also make apps and you can design websites and you can create things that have this creativity aspect and they wanted to go on and take it. Most students who do the Hour of Code go beyond the Hour of Code. And our goal with the Hour of Code is not to do one hour of code. One hour of code is not Computer Science, you're not going to learn that much right? >> Right. Getting your toe wet maybe? >> Yeah, get your toe wet. But the real goal is to help teacher teach years of Computer Science. To go from that to saying, "I can teach Computer Science." It's about the students and helping them take it and it's about the teachers and helping them teach it. Most of what we do at Code.org is helping teachers who never learned Computer Science when they went to school, learn Computer Science and learn how to teach it to their students. Because our teachers, they didn't learn Computer Science right? >> Right. >> And so we're asking them to teach the subject which is critically important in the 21st century. But it's a challenge. >> It is. Do you have any favorite stories of maybe a student or a teacher or both that tried this and their eyes were opened, "Wow, this is way more than I thought it was." >> So, there's a local teacher near Seattle, his name is Juan and he also was not a Computer Scientist. He had never taken Computer Science, I think he was teaching Political Science. I'm not sure, but I think that's what he was teaching. And he came to our workshops and he said, "Hey, I can do this. I can teach Computer Science." And we have one week workshops over the summer to help the teachers learn how to teach it. And curriculum and professional development that we provide for schools at no cost to the school to help them get started teaching Computer Science. And he took that leap and he did it. And he said, he went into one of his classes and he's in a district that is mostly under represented minorities and he looked at his class, and his class was all male and there were not very many of the under represented minorities in his class and he said, "Well, I've got to fix this." So he went out and he went to the choir class and he found this woman, our Sally and he said to her, "Hey why are you not in Computer Science right now?" and she said, "Oh, I don't know. I don't even like to sing." >> Oh my gosh, wow. >> So he just marched her right up. He got the form, he switched her over to Computer Science. He got her friend Daisy, he got a whole bunch of women in his class. And they loved it. And our Sally took that class and she kept going and she took Python. >> Wow. >> And she's applying to colleges right now and she wants to be a Computer Science major. >> That's amazing. Recruiting from choir. >> Right. And her parents never went to college. One of them never went to high school. And for her this is an opportunity to be part of all the things that we see in Silicon Valley. And I want to see her do it. >> Great story. Last question, the CloudNOW, and this is the Sixth Annual Top Women in Cloud Award. Congratulations on winning and how did you hear about this and what does it mean to you? >> I think it's a great award. I really love that CloudNOW is doing work to encourage equity and to encourage women in the tech space. I think that has a lot of synergy with the work we're doing at Code.org. Trying to encourage women and young women to be able to have this opportunity and be able to take these courses. And you know, it's okay if they don't want to go into the tech space. Most of them won't but if they have the opportunity to see these courses I hope some of them will be inspired and that when they are inspired they'll have that background, so they can. And for the other ones who go into all sorts of different fields, whether it be design or education or medicine, or marketing or who knows? Knowing how Computer Science works, I think is a critical set of skills for all people everywhere in this day and age. >> I agree. It'll be a great part of their foundation. Well, speaking of inspiration, you've been quite inspirational. Again congratulations Alice on the award and thank you for stopping by the Cube. >> Thanks. >> You've been watching the Cube a lot and we're on ground at Google for the six annual CloudNOW, Top Women in Cloud Awards. I'm Lisa Martin, thanks for joining. We'll be right back.

(click) >> I'm Lisa Martin with theCUBE on the ground at Google for the sixth annual CloudNOW Top Women in Cloud Award Event and we're very excited to be joined by one of the award winners, Neha Jain, Engineering Manager at LinkedIn. Welcome to theCUBE. >> Hi, thank you, Lisa. >> And, second of all, congratulations on the award. We'll talk about that in a second, but one of the things that I found very inspiring when I was doing some research about you is how you describe yourself on LinkedIn. A lot of us use LinkedIn, of course. I love that you said that you love to work on technology that empowers users and uplifts the society. What a beautiful statement. >> Thank you so much. >> Tell me a little bit more about what you mean about that. >> Growing up, I always wanted to be in a space where I was doing something for the community. A little bit about myself is I'm an only child and my father passed away when I was barely a year old. So my mom, who's also disabled, raised me literally single-handedly and we had a lot of help on the way. So the thing that always kept me going and inspired is if I could do it, then anyone can. And I have to make that happen, and that is an obligation or a responsibility that I have toward the world. That's basically what I did. Initially I wanted to become a doctor and help the patients get the best of their health but I couldn't deal with blood. >> That's kind of a key. That was a good decision. >> I was really interested in math as a child, so I was like, "Yeah, let's try this engineering thing. "It also sounds pretty fun." And then that's how I started in the engineering field. Initially I joined a company directly from college, but the work didn't inspire me as much. And then I found out about SlideShare. It was a company in the user-generated space, user-generated content space, and they had a female CEO and I was like, "Oh my God, this is just perfect, "and I have to get there." So I joined SlideShare, and six months later it got acquired by LinkedIn. Interesting turn of events. And then now at LinkedIn, we are in the process of creating economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. And that's a mission I can live for. That's something that inspires me every single day and gets me up in the morning, gets me to work, where we are trying to get the right talent matched with the right job, get the companies the right hire. That's very inspiring work to do. >> As an, and I would say, inspiring female in technology, what are some of the things that once you finished your education, you said your first job, you realized, "This isn't quite what I want." But you have the drive, it sounds like probably innately for you that, "I want something else." You kind of knew what you were looking for. Or maybe you knew, "I know when I get there." >> Yeah, you could say that. It's something that, ah, what I was doing was interesting work, but in terms of impact, it wasn't very clear. So I'm sort of a person who's driven more by results, by metrics or something like that. There should be something tangible that's coming out of it, that I can measure. >> Right, yes, validating, right? >> So then I was like, at that time, internet was taking off, and it was all very -- People were all over the place and there were so many things getting shared. And then Facebook came around and then there was Arab Spring and so many other things that were happening. People were taking ownership of their own lives and their own values. I thought that something in the internet space would be an interesting place to be where you could make the change and empower people, empower your users. And I wasn't willing to move out of India at that point, so it was like, "Let's just join SlideShare." I'd been using SlideShare when I was in college doing researches and working for Google Summer of Code. So then I saw that they had a banner that they were hiring, and I'm like, "Okay, yeah, let's just interview for them." >> And here you are. Within the last couple of minutes here, I want to talk about the Top Women in Cloud Award that you're being honored with tonight. And also something that I thought was really, really honest that you wrote on LinkedIn was your experience with imposter syndrome, which I've had for many years and didn't even know what it was until I read about it. And I think that's so, it's such a strong message, knowing that you've had that, but also seeing how accomplished you are, what does this CloudNOW Top Women in Cloud Award mean to you? >> That's a very good question. That's something that I'd been asking myself as well when I first got nominated for it. So my friend, who is the co-founder of Haliburton School, Silmar, he nominated me for the award. I got the email and I was very excited that okay, this is really interesting. How could I become this person? And then I read the application form. There were five questions and I'm like, "I'm not good enough. "I'll not be selected. "I'll just spend a lot of time filling out "this application form, and it will all be futile." So I thought, "Let's just not do it." But then Silmar, he just didn't nominate me for the award, he pushed me to apply, to fill out the application. >> Because he knew how accomplished you were. >> And I am so grateful to him for that. He started a Google Doc where he copied all the questions, and he started listing all the things that I'd done. >> That's fantastic, Neha. >> He is the kind of mentor or the kind of friend, the kind of force that I guess if all the females and all the people had, the world would be a different place. So that's the kind of inspiration, the kind of support that you want from people. >> Absolutely. >> Then I was talking to my husband and my husband was like, he's a very logical person, he wouldn't give you direct prescriptions that, "Okay, no, you should do it, "you should do that," or this or that. He would ask you questions and then make you decide what you want to do, but in those questions will steer you in the direction. >> Right. >> Which is very clever of him. Very few people have the kind of smartness to do that where you don't even realize that you are being pushed into some of the things. >> It sounds like he helps you think through, and you realize, "I have accomplished a lot. "I am deserving of this award." And here you are, being honored tonight. >> Yeah, so it's like, maybe that's not what I thought. What I thought is that there are things, and I should probably apply for it and not wait, not give up because of the result. So that's something that I've also learned in my life. My mom always tells me, "Don't bind yourself to the result. "Just give your best shot. "That's all which is in your control, "so just do that." And that's basically also what my husband also ended up pointing out to me. So then I was like, "Okay, fine, I'll apply." And it was basically like just three days before the application deadline. So I filled out the application form, sent it out to the LinkedIn's comps team for review, my manager reviewed the entire work-related stuff, and I'm so grateful that they were able to do the review process in time so that I could apply right before the deadline. I don't know what the CloudNOW award will mean for me, and I hope that we are able to drive real change in the tech field and bring more women and more diversity and inclusion and belonging in the community. So today, Vint Cerf was the keynote speaker. And he was saying that when he joined the tech industry there were 50 percent women, and there were women who were programming. And if you've seen the movie Hidden Figures, >> Oh, yes. >> There were women who figured out how to program. >> A very long time ago. >> Yeah, a long time ago. And we've had people like Grace Hopper and all these other women leaders. And now just 20 years later, you would think the situation would get better, but it has actually gotten worse. >> Right. >> So why is it? The thing that falls on us as a responsibility is to figure out why would we change direction for the worse. And, people have gotten smarter, not lesser intelligent, right? So why would women not opt into computer science and give up? There is something that we aren't doing right. And I think a lot of companies have started asking the right question. Like in LinkedIn, we have the diversity, inclusion and belonging initiative. And we try to make these differences in real time. When I joined LinkedIn, when I moved to the United States, I couldn't recognize people because of the variety of facial structures. And I had a lot of difficulty. I had always grown up seeing Indian faces. And I could easy tell that you were Calcutta or you're from Bangalore. And I could tell it from their faces. But that wasn't something here. And I would always confuse people, and that bothered me a lot. But at LinkedIn, all the things that we had, all the initiatives that we had, the culture and the values, they help me feel belonged. And not a single day has passed where I don't feel that I am not the right person for this job. >> You're making a contribution. >> Yeah. >> Well, congratulations Neha on the award. >> Thank you. >> Thank you so much for stopping by, and I think you're quite inspirational. >> Thank you so much. >> And we want to thank you for watching. I'm Lisa Martin on the ground with theCUBE at Google. Thanks for watching.

>> Hi, I'm Lisa Martin with theCUBE, on the ground at Google for the sixth annual CloudNOW Top Women in Cloud Awards. And we're very excited to be joined by one of the winners this year, Caroline Wong, the Vice President of Security Strategy at Cobalt.io. Welcome to theCUBE, Caroline. >> Thank you for having me. >> It's great to have you here for many reasons, and we know that we're both dog lovers and they're not going to let us talk about dogs for the whole time, but I love that. So, you have previously been at eBay, Zinga, Symantec. Were you a STEM kid from grade school, and always interested in IT? Or is this something that you sort of zig-zagged career-wise, and made this career that you have now? >> So when I was 16 years old, my dad asked me what I wanted to study in college. And I told him Dance or Psychology. >> Wow, that's a different from >> It's different because I was like well, "What do I like? What do I enjoy doing?" And he said you're going to study Engineering, and you're going to do it at the best school that you could get into. And I studied Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at UC Berkeley. I really struggled with the curriculum, but I'm so glad that I do have a formal background in technology. I ended up in Cyber Security pretty randomly, to be honest. I did an IT project management internship at eBay, and when I graduated, I asked my manager if I could work for them full time. And they said there was a hiring freeze in IT, but they had an open position in Information Security. Which at the time, I didn't know what that even meant. The night before my interview, I looked up Information Security on Wikipedia and I memorized the definition. >> (laughter) You know, that just speaks to, and look what you're doing now. You didn't know, and there's probably many other people who are in the same situation, whether they're 16 and wanting to major in Dance or whatnot. I love that, that you were confident enough in yourself, probably in your education to, "let me try that out". When you were studying though, at UC Berkeley, you said there were some challenges there. This brings me back to my own days of studying Physics, which I wasn't good at. What were some of the things that surprised you? For the good? >> Sure, so I'll tell you a story about one of my Electrical Engineering lab courses. Of course, I make friends with the one other student in the class who's like, not quite sure what's going on. And we have teams of three, and so we have to find someone who really knows how to do it. So, what happens is, one of my colleagues fetches the materials for our lab assignment. My other colleague does the lab, and I write the report. And at the time, I'm a little bit embarrassed that I can't do all three. But after all, it is about team work and it turns out, what has helped me tremendously in my career has been my ability to write and to work well with others, and to communicate both verbally and in written form what's going on technically. >> That's outstanding. Just great advice again for others that it's not just about understanding engineering. There's other components that are really critical and will help you be successful. So in addition to the award that you're getting today from CloudNOW, you've been recognized as an Influencer by Women in IT Security, and as a One to Watch Women of Influence. You've also had a lot of publications. So I'm curious, what inspires you to be involved in the community and share your expertise? Not just your education in Engineering and what you're doing with cyber security, but also your path to success? >> Yeah, so for me, I'll contrast it with my sister. She's a Kaiser Pediatrician. And she's known for her whole life that she wanted to be a doctor, and she just went for it. And she was like, here's my target, and I'm just going to make it. I have always been very, sort of go with the flow, like what's right in front of me and what's an interesting problem to solve and how can I just put my whole self into it and apply what I know and try and learn something new. And I've approached my entire career that way. Not really knowing what was going to happen next, but sort of, looking around, trying to see, "Okay, "what does the industry need right now "and how can I apply my skills to try and add value?" >> I love that, that's great. My brother was the same way. Wanted to be a pilot from the time he was probably eight. And there's me, zig-zagging along. But I think that's also, it speaks to, if you have enough confidence in yourself and try things, you can be successful. So I love that. So tell us about your role at Cobalt.io and app security and what you're doing there. >> Yeah so, Cobalt, we provide application security services for cloud companies. Specifically, we provide on-demand manual penetration testing for web apps, mobile apps, and APIs. So we're really trying to help organizations to secure their applications. As a consumer of cloud applications, as a person who works for a company that works with so many different cloud companies, it's critical that security be in place. Because right now, it's not like, any organization, certainly no technology organization, works in a vacuum. Just like a car sources parts from many different organizations, every software, every cloud company sources from many different places. And at each step along that supply chain, you want to make sure that security has been built in. >> Outstanding. Tell me a little bit about your team there, and some of the key elements, to you, for managing a diverse team of folks at Cobalt. >> So we started four years ago. We actually have four Danish founders and so it's really interesting to be in Silicon Valley but have a little bit of a different culture. As a mom of a toddler and expecting in May, it was really important to me to find a job where I really liked the people, and I really respected them, where they liked and respected me, and where I felt I could make a big impact. And what's great about working with this team is, I feel like all of the people I work with actually have a life outside of work. I feel like, in Silicon Valley, so many people work for companies and it's like, that's all they do. And I respect that. If you're super passionate about something and you want to make your whole life about it, fantastic. But my colleagues are extremely brilliant and great at what they do, and then they do other stuff as well. >> It's refreshing to hear that because being in Silicon Valley can take so much time and effort but to be able to have a little bit of balance there, I think, you probably see an impact in productivity? >> Oh, definitely. I mean, people come into our office and they're like, wow people are happy, people seem well rested, people seem really focused and like they're hardworking, and they're excited about what they do, but they're not so stressed out. They're not burning out. People aren't needing to take emergency medical leave because of severe anxiety. So these are just things that I think really benefits the company and also our customers. >> Oh, definitely from a customer perspective. So, tell us a little bit about what winning this Top Women in Cloud Award means to you? >> So I'm just thrilled and totally surprised. For me to have an opportunity to share my story, and to also attend an event like this and be inspired by other women's stories, I mean, I think the mission of CloudNOW is so incredibly important. I don't think there's anything so special about any of the women that won awards tonight. And what I mean by that is, we're not extraordinary, we didn't necessarily overcome any crazy challenges or barriers. I want young women, and people of all types, to know that this is possible. And I think by sharing our stories and how different we are, and how we came from all sorts of different places, I think that can really be inspiring, for the next generation. And that's exactly what technology needs. We need a strong and diverse pipeline if we're going to continue innovating and continue creating. >> That's brilliant advice and I couldn't agree more. I think that some of the stories that we're going to hear from some of the fellow winners such as yourselves show that some really doing groundbreaking work, but others who just persevered, who had an interest in something and followed through with it. And learned along the way, made mistakes, had the opportunity to fail, learn from that, and continue going forward. I personally find that very inspiring. So, Caroline thank you so much for joining us on theCUBE and sharing your story. Best of luck with your new addition. >> Thank you. >> And your dogs, as well as congratulations, again, on the award. >> Thank you so much. >> We want to thank you for watching theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin on the ground at Google for the CloudNOW Top Women in Cloud Awards event. Bye for now. (techno music)