>> Narrator: From theCube studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is theCube Conversation. >> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCube. We're still on our Palo Alto studios, we're still getting through COVID and we're still doing all of our remotes, all of our interviews via remote and I'm really excited to have a guest we had around a long time ago. I looked it up is 2016, April 2016. She's Coco Brown, the founder and CEO of the Athena Alliance. Coco, it's great to see you. >> It's great to see you as well. We actually formally started in April of 2016. >> I know, I saw, I noticed that on LinkedIn. So we were at the Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference in Phoenix, I remembers was a really cool conference, met a ton of people, a lot of them have turned out that are on your board. So yeah, and you formally on LinkedIn, it says you started in May. So that was right at the very, very beginning. >> Yeah, that's right. >> So for people that aren't familiar with the at the Athena Alliance give them the quick overview. >> Okay. Well, it's a little different that it was four years ago. So Athena first and foremost is a digital platform. So you literally log in to Athena. And we're a combination of community access to opportunity and learning. And so you can kind of envision it a little bit like a walled garden around the LinkedIn, meets Khan Academy for senior executives, meets Hollywood agency for women trying to get into the boardroom and senior level roles in the c-suite as advisors, et cetera. And then the way that we operate is you can have a self-service experience of Athena, you can have a concierge experience with Athena with real humans in the loop making key connections for you and you can add accelerators where we build brand packages and BIOS and give you executive coaching. So... >> Wow. >> Kind of a... >> You've built out your services portfolio over the last several years. But still the focus >> yes, we have. is boards, right? Still the focus is getting women on public boards, or is that no longer still the focus? >> No, that's a big piece of it for sure. I mean, one of the things that we discovered, that was the very first mission of Athena, was to bring more women into the boardroom. And as we were doing that we discovered that once you get into a senior realm of leadership in general, there's more things that you want to do than just get into the boardroom. Some of it may be wanting to be an investor or an LP in a fund or become a CEO, or certainly join outside boards but also be relevant to your own inside board. And so we started to look at Athena as a more holistic experience for senior leaders who are attempting to make sure that they are the best they can be in this very senior realm of overarching stewardship of business. >> Awesome. and have you seen, so obviously your your focus shifted 'cause you needed to add more services based on the demand from the customers. But have you seen the receptiveness to women board members change over the last four years? How have you seen kind of the marketplace change? >> Yeah, it's changed a lot, I would say. First of all I think laws like the California law and Goldman Sachs coming out saying they won't take companies public unless they have diverse board data. The statements by big entities that people are paying attention to made the boardroom dynamics a conversation around the dinner table in general. So it became more of a common conversation and common interest as opposed to just the interest of a few people who are trying to get in there. And so that's created a lot of momentum as well as sort of thoughtfulness from leaders and from employees and from larger stakeholders to say the diversity at the top business has to mimic the demographics of society as a whole. And that's become a little bit more accepted as opposed to grudgingly sort of taken in. >> Right. So one of the big problems always it's like the VC problem, right? Is the whole matchmaking problem. How do you, how do qualified people find qualified opportunities? And I wonder if you can speak a little bit as to how that process has evolved, how are you really helping because there's always people that are looking for quality candidates, and there's great quality candidates out there that just don't know where to go. How are you helping bridge kind of that kind of basic matchmaking function? >> Yeah. I mean, there's a couple of different ways to go about it. One is certainly to understand and have real connections into the parts of the leadership ecosystem that influences or makes the decision as to who sits around that table. So that would be communities of CEOs, it's communities of existing board directors, it's venture capital firms, its private equity firms, and as you get really entrenched in those organizations and those ecosystems, you become part of that ecosystem and you become what they turn to to say, "Hey, do you know somebody?" Because it still is a "who do yo know" approach at the senior most levels. So that's one way. The other mechanism is really for individuals who are looking for board seats who want to be on boards to actually be thinking about how they proactively navigate their way to the kinds of boards that they would fit to. I like in a very much to the way our children go after the schools that they might want to when it's time for university. You'll figure out who your safeties, your matches, your reaches are, and figure out how you're going to take six degrees of separation and turn them into one through connections. So those are that's another way to go about it. >> You know, it's interesting, I talked to Beth Stewart from True Star, they also help place women on boards. And one of the issues is just the turnover. And I asked that just straight up, are there formal mechanisms to make sure that people who've been doing business from way before there were things like email and the internet eventually get swapped out. And she said, that's actually a big part of the problem is there isn't really a formal way to keep things fresh and to kind of rotate the incumbents out to enable somebody who's new and maybe has a different point of view to come in. So I'm curious when someone is targeting their A-list and B-list and C-lists, how do they factor in kind of the age of the board composition of the existing board, to really look for where there's these opportunities where a spot opens up, 'cause if there's not a spot open up clearly, there's really not much opportunity there. >> Yeah, I mean, you have to look at the whole ecosystem, right? I mean, there's anything from let's say series A, venture backed private companies all the way up to the mega cap companies, right? And there's this continuum. And it's not, there's not one universal answer to what you're talking about. So for example, if you're talking about smaller private companies, you're competing against, not somebody giving up their seat, but whether or not the company feels real motivation to fill that particular independent director seat. So the biggest competition is often that that seat goes unfilled. When you're talking about public companies, the biggest competition is really the fact that as my friend Adam Epstein of the small cap Institute will tell you, that 80% of public companies are actually small cap companies. And they don't have the same kinds of pressures that large caps do to have turnover. But yeah, it takes a big piece of the challenge is really boards having the disposition collectively to see the board as a competitive advantage for the business as a very necessary and productive piece of the business and when they see that then they take more proactive measures to make sure they have a evolving and strong board that does turnover as it needs to. >> Right. So I'm curious when you're talking to the high power women, right, who are in operational roles probably most of the time, how do you help coach them, how should they be thinking, what do they have to do different when they want to kind of add board seats to their portfolio? Very different kind of a role than an operational role, very different kind of concerns and day to day tasks. So, and clearly, you've added a whole bunch of extra things to your portfolio. So how do you help people, what do you tell women who say, "Okay, I've been successful, "I'm like successful executive, "but now I want to do this other thing, "I want to take this next step in my career"? What usually the gaps and what are the things that they need to do to prepare for that? >> Well, I'm going to circle in then land a little bit. Autodesk was actually a really great partner to us back when you and I first met. They had a couple of women at the top of the organization that were part of Athena, specifically because they wanted to join boards. They are on boards now, Lisa Campbell, Amy Bunszel, Debbie Clifford. And what they told us is they were experiencing everything that we were offering in terms of developing them, helping them to position themselves, understand themselves, navigate their way, was that they simply became better leaders as a result of focusing on themselves as that next level up, irrespective of the fact that it took them two to three years to land that seat. They became stronger in their executive role in general and better able to communicate and engage with their own boards. So I think, now I'm landing, the thing that I would say about that is don't wait until you're thinking oh, I want to join a board, to do the work to get yourself into that ecosystem, into that atmosphere and into that mindset, because the sooner you do that as an executive, the better you will be in that atmosphere, the more prepared you will be. And you also have to recognize that it will take time. >> Right. And the how has COVID impacted it, I mean, on one hand, meeting somebody for coffee and having a face to face is a really important part of getting to know someone and a big part of I'm sure, what was the recruitment process, and do you know someone, yeah, let's go meet for a cup of coffee or dinner or whatever. Can't do that anymore, but we can all meet this way, we can all get on virtually and so in some ways, it's probably an enabler, which before you could grab an hour or you didn't have to fly cross-country or somebody didn't have to fly cross-country. So I'm kind of curious in this new reality, which is going to continue for some time. How has that impacted kind of people's ability to discover and get to know and build trust for these very very senior positions. >> HBR just came out with a really great article about the virtual board meeting. I don't know if you saw it but I can send you a link. I think that what I'm learning from board directors in general and leaders in general is that yes, there's things that make it difficult to engage remotely, but there's also a lot of benefit to being able to get comfortable with the virtual world. So it's certainly, particularly with COVID, with racial equity issues, with the uncertain economy, boards are having to meet more often and they're having, some are having weekly stand ups and those are facilitated by getting more and more comfortable with being virtual. And I think they're realizing that you don't have to press flesh, as they say, to actually build intimacy and real connection. And that's been a hold up, but I think as the top leadership gets to understand that and feel that for themselves, it becomes easier for them to adopt it throughout the organization that the virtual world is one we can really embrace, not just for a period of time. >> It's funny we had John Chambers on early on in this whole process, really talking about leadership and leading through transition. And he used the example, I think had been that day or maybe a couple days off from our interview where they had a board meeting, I think they were talking about some hamburger restaurant, and so they just delivered hamburgers to everybody's office and they had the board meeting. But that's really progressive for a board to actually be doing weekly stand ups. That really shows a pretty transformative way to manage the business and kind of what we think is the stodgy old traditional get together now and then, fly and then get some minutes and fly out, that's super progressive. >> Yeah. I mean, I was on three different board meetings this week with a company I'm on the board of in Minnesota. And we haven't seen each other in person in, I guess since January. (woman laughs) >> So final tips for women that want to make this this move, who, they've got some breathing space, they're not homeschooling the kids all day while they're trying to get their job done and trying to save their own business, but have some cycles and the capabilities. What do you tell them, where should they begin, how should they start thinking about, kind of taking on this additional responsibility and really professional growth in their life? >> Well, I mean, I think something very important for all of us to think about with regard to board service and in general as we get into a very senior level point in our careers at a managing and impact portfolio. People get into a senior point and they don't just want to be an executive for one company, they want to have a variety of ways that they're delivering impact, whether it's as an investor or as a board member or as other things as well as being an operator. And I think the misnomer is that people believe that you have to add them up and they, one plus one plus one equals three, and it's just not true. The truth is that when you add a board seat, when you add that other thing that you're doing it makes you better as a leader in general. Every board meeting I have with [Indistinct] gives me more than I bring back to Athena as an example. And so I think we tend to think of not being able to take on one more thing and I say that we all have a little more space than we think we have to take on the things we want to do. >> Right? That's a good message to me. It is often said if you want to get something done, give it to the busiest person in the room. It's more likely to get it done 'cause you got to be efficient and you just have that kind of get it done attitude. >> That's right. >> All right, Coco. Well, thank you for sharing your thoughts. >> Congratulations, so I guess it's your four year anniversary, five year anniversary [Indistinct] about right? >> Yes, four. >> That's terrific. And we look forward to continuing to watch the growth and hopefully checking in face to face at some point in the not too distant future. >> I would like that. >> All right. Thanks a lot Coco. >> Great talking to you. >> Already. >> She's Coco, I'm Jeff. You're watching theCube. Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time. (upbeat music)