(bright upbeat music) >> Hey everyone. Welcome to theCUBE Special Program series: Women of the Cloud brought to you by AWS. I'm your host for the series, Lisa Martin. Very pleased to welcome Kesha Williams, senior principal at Slalom who joins me next. Kesha, great to have you. Thank you so much for your time today. >> Thank you for having me Lisa. >> Tell me a little bit about you and your role at Slalom. >> Hi everyone. I've been in tech for 26 years working across several industries like the airline industry, healthcare, hospitality and several government agencies. I really built a solid foundation in the Java software engineering space. A few years ago I added on AWS in the cloud and I really haven't looked back since. Throughout my career, I realized that I had a heart to teach and mentor, and that's what really brought me to Slalom. I currently serve as a program director in our AWS Cloud Residency program, which is a career accelerator for cloud engineers. >> 26 years. So you've had some great experiences and talk along that journey. You've grown your career as well. I love that you have that heart for teaching and mentoring. I think that's fantastic. Talk about, for the audience, some of the tactical recommendations that you have for those watching to be able to follow in your footsteps and grow their careers in tech. >> Well, tech is a very broad category. I always recommend that people really figure out what they enjoy doing to help narrow that focus into a specific domain in technology. For example, do you enjoy coding? Then you would look to be a software engineer. Do you enjoy telling people what to do? Then you may enjoy technical project management, and there are so many disciplines. I also recommend for people just getting started in tech to really consider the cloud. There is a huge demand for cloud engineers and people that are cloud-literate and not enough people to fill that demand. If you're looking to start a career in the cloud, I always recommend starting with learning the foundations, so going after your AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam. And once you understand the foundations, then start to build that hands on experience and build that portfolio so that you can speak to what you've developed in the past. And once you have that understanding, start to think about your specialty area. Do you want to specialize in machine learning or security or networking, and then continue to go after those more advanced certifications? >> That is brilliant advice that you really walked the audience through very strategically. I love how you think about it in that sense. I'd love to get into now you've grown your career over 26 years, as you said, some of the success stories that you've had in cloud. Can you share a few of those with us that you think really demonstrate the value of that foundation that you've built? >> Sure. I think a lot about success stories that really hit home and the first one that comes to mind is Georgia State University. That hits home because I'm from Georgia. It also hits home because my son attended Georgia State University. And Slalom joined Georgia State to really help them adopt this serverless approach and implement DevOps practices, and what that brings with serverless, you're able to really think less about the infrastructure management, and focus on building solutions and capabilities in Georgia State's example, really helping students achieve what they're trying to achieve. And I think that just the serverless model helps organizations move faster and deliver faster and innovate faster, and that's what we saw at Georgia State University. I'm happy when I think about that project because now Georgia State is ranked as the fourth most innovative university in the country, and I believe it's because we were able to help them shift and move some of their key applications to the cloud and really realize the benefits of what the cloud brings. >> And so, I love that. The fourth most innovative university in the country. That's a pretty impressive pedigree to be able to have there and you've shown the value of that. There's value across the organization, right? Across the staff, the educators, the students, the prospective students, and of course they have such great technology foundation with which they can use to learn and grow. You've got a second great example at Securian. I'd love to hear that success story and how you really helped that organization transform itself. >> Right. Securian, that case study really speaks to me because I'm all about teaching and mentoring, and empowering people to really realize the benefits of the cloud, and we were able to do that at Securian. We came in and really helped them define their cloud strategy, define that adoption strategy, define how they're going to migrate their applications to the cloud, and then we worked right alongside them to help them do that migration. But as a part of that, we talked about talent development and really help them up level their skills to be able to maintain what we've developed from an ongoing long-term perspective. >> The talent focus, the demand for talent, your focus on that is it can be such a flywheel for organizations in terms of innovation, evolution, that in upskilling is something that every organization I think regardless of industry should be focused on. Talk to me a little bit more about the heart that you have for helping organizations to attract that talent, to retain that talent by being able to be embracing of technology in emerging technologies in their organization, and how does that help them attract talent? >> Well, when you think about the mindset of engineers and the people in tech, we always have this goal to be at the leading edge and keep our skills current and have an opportunity to experiment with the latest and greatest technologies. And there is a huge appetite for cloud engineering skills from an engineer perspective and just from a demand perspective in the industry. So when companies are utilizing these really leading edge technologies that have shifted how we build applications, how we support applications, it really attracts top talent. >> Absolutely, and that should be a focus of every organization. Speaking of talent, one of the things that is talked about tremendously in organizations is diversity. But talk to me about some of the things that you see from a diversity lens through your eyes and what are some of the challenges today? There's so much talk about it, but yet dot dot dot to be continued. >> Right, Right. I am super excited that there is a huge focus on diversity in tech. Like I mentioned before, I've been in tech for 26 years, and I remember when a lot of organizations didn't care about diversity. So I'm appreciative that now there's a huge focus. But with that, there's also a need and a desire to focus on what we call inclusion and equity. So we're seeing organizations hire diverse candidates, but when those people come in, they're not in an environment that's welcoming. They're not in an environment where they feel included. And so there can be a retention problem if there isn't a focus on also inclusion and equity, which I call the other side of diversity. >> Yeah, the other side of the coin there. That's a great point that inclusion and equity are so critical to that diversity piece. In fact, they're really kind of engines to help make it successful so that organizations can attract diverse talent, but also retain them, make them feel welcome. Talk to me about some of the commitments that Slalom has to really a DEI approach. >> Right. At Slalom, we work really hard to build a culture where employees can bring their a authentic selves to work and be authentic, and really enjoy equitable opportunities in a welcoming environment that celebrates authenticity. For example, our employees have access to a multitude of employee resource groups. Those types of groups, we call them ERGs, they really help with a sense of inclusion and a sense of belonging. When I think about the cloud residency, we do the same thing. We have a focus on diversity, so our leadership team is diverse, the residents in the program are diverse. So we have diversity from the bottom to the top. We also practice equity and inclusion in how we staff our residents on projects and how we make sure really I call it an even playing field for everyone, and really think about and understand some of the barriers that people face. And like I said, try to make it an even playing field. >> Wouldn't that be nice one day if there actually is an even playing field and we don't have to focus on this so much? That's kind of a nirvana, I think, for us to get to, but so much productivity comes when people are treated fairly. And to your point, I love that you said getting to be their authentic selves. I think that's what everybody wants in every walk of life, in every aspect of life. Let me being my authentic self and employer, I'm going to be far more productive as a result for you. I just think they're linked like this. >> I totally agree. Like you mentioned, it helps bring retention. And when people have that sense of belonging, that sense of inclusion and they know that the organization they work for really cares and values those those things. >> Speaking of authenticity, the organization needs to be authentic. That's a whole other conversation, Kesha, we could have I'm sure. But I want to ask you a final question. I can't believe you have 26 years experience in tech. Don't look at for one, but you have had- I appreciate that- >> such opportunities to grow and expand your career. You've left our audience with some fantastic strategic advice, tactical recommendations for how they can really climb that ladder. What do you see as next for the evolution in the cloud and where do you think your role is going to go? >> I definitely see this growing demand and need for machine learning. The use of how we're applying machine learning really in every area of life is just exploding. And I see just next this supercharged focus on truly democratizing machine learning and putting it in the hands of everyone: technical people, business people, non-technical people. And when I think about AWS and some of their newer services, it really seeks to do just that. And when I think about my role and in the Cloud Residency and how that role will evolve, it's just very important for me to lead the team to be intentional in building cloud engineers that can quickly jumpstart their machine learning journey to help fill that demand and better serve our clients. I also see my role really evolving into one that truly stays in line with the trends that we're seeing in the tech industry, and bringing those trends back and really preparing our cloud engineers to succeed. >> It's all about being intentional, intentional in DEI, intentional in cloud engineering, intentional in democratizing machine learning. Kesha, it's been such a pleasure to have you on the program, Women of Cloud. Thank you so much for sharing your insights and your advice with the audience. I know they appreciate it. >> Thank you for having me. >> My pleasure. For Kesha Williams, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching this special CUBE program series, Women of the Cloud brought to you by AWS. We thank you so much for watching and we'll see you soon. (bright upbeat music)