>> 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)

want people to find their passion and purpose in life and achieve that because if you do what you love you know a lot of us do what we love some of us don't but if you do what you love you can be way more productive and happier right and then the end of day isn't that our goal okay bitchy it's okay to be cranky it's okay for anchor anger to fuel you it's okay to be aggressive and even if your male counterparts tell you otherwise or say wow that's unseemly I think it's just okay we don't have to be pure and perfect in order to be successful a plenty of mine she's the founder of Austen women magazine and she has this catchphrase that's fabulous because the female role models if you can't see it you can't be right so if I'm a 24 year old young lady just graduating I don't see anyone else who looks like I think it is really important that you know there's all those cliches around the fact that you know you've got to go through the windows sometimes or you know opportunities are masked and they really are and so just saying yes to everything and really being open to trying new things and learning new experiences will give you opportunity didn't even realize and now I've been in it long enough where someone I met a couple years ago who was just at a conference kind of dabbling took a course from girls in tech and is now in the career field and they're kind of introducing girls detecting other so it's amazing is what it it's no longer grassroots this is actually making

(upbeat music) >> From San Francisco, it's The Cube, covering Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference. Brought to you by Girls in Tech. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here, with The Cube. We're at Downtown San Francisco, Girls in Tech Catalyst. Great event. We've been coming for a couple of years. About 700 professionals, mainly women, a few men, and I think they brought in a busload of kids to get inspired, talking about their stories, and really, it's a series. It's a one-track conference, two days, about 20 minute talks and really good stuff. Really great content. Check it out online if you didn't register this year. Make sure you come next year, and we're excited to have our next guest, Cube alum, really from one of the hottest companies in tech right now, she's Wendy Pfeifer, the CIO of Nutanix. Wendy, great to see you again. >> Hey, nice to see you, Jeff. >> Absolutely, so we see you at Nutanix Next all the time, but we haven't seen you at Girls in Tech. >> Yeah. >> So how long have you been involved in Girls in Tech? >> So, I've been involved since the very first meet up, more than 10 years ago. Girls in Tech was very inspiring to me, and I was here at the Catalyst Conference last year, and I'm a member of the board of Girls in Tech as well, so I'm able to give back and provide some leadership at that level. >> So we just had Adriana on, and she was going through-- >> Yeah. >> Some of the numbers, I mean, the growth of this organization, second to Nutanix, is off the chart. >> Yeah. >> I mean, really amazing. >> It really is amazing, you know. In some ways our time has come. Adriana's had this big vision for a really long time. Really focused on educating women, helping them to understand the potential of careers in tech, and technology knowledge, and that's a global message, and a message that resonates at every age level, and in lots of different sectors of society, so it's juts a privilege to be able to partner with her and others on the board, to enable the vision, and Nutanix as well, you know, is donating, is present here at these conferences, and partnering at Catalyst and Amplify, and other parts of the organization. >> Right, because it's not only the right thing to do, it's also good business, which has been proven time and time again. >> Absolutely, and you know, it's kind of taken on this passion, mission, just excitement thing, but it is practical as well and you know, all the studies, I'm sure so many folks have talked with you about this. There's so many studies, there's so much research that says diversity brings better decision-making, better product development. >> Right. >> And better satisfaction in our work environments as well. >> Right. The other thing that struck me talking to Adriana, and I guess I just didn't know, kind of the breadth of types of activities that Girls in Tech's put on. So we've been to Catalyst before. We've been to-- the Pitch Night, Amplify-- >> Amplify, yeah. >> But I didn't know, she's running, you know, there's all kinds of different-- types of things. >> Absolutely. I think the underlying passion is for education. If you think about, particularly people in underserved communities, there is a real opportunity, you know coding, and learning to code, learning to interact with computers; that's a language that transcends geographic boundaries, ethnic boundaries, age, and religious boundaries, and it's something that, you know ever since my days at Yahoo, I really felt like technology could bring the world together, and today in particular, there is so much disparity between women and men and their access to technology education and technology careers. >> Right. >> That this is, you know, more than just creating a level playing field. I think we're making our own playing field. We're not going to their playing field, anymore. We're creating our own at locations like this. >> Right, and clearly a bunch of founders are here today, who've-- >> Yeah. >> Started their own companies. But the other thing I think is interesting, is culture keeps coming up time and time again in all these conversations, and Adriana's built a culture starting, always from the top down, with the board. It's a phenomenal board of professional women-- >> Yes. >> That she's pulled together of this organization. >> Yeah, there are a couple of males on the board, too. I want to make sure I point out. >> Yep. >> Because we're a diverse board as well, but she has. She has brought together people who are leaders in the technology space, but also folks who are passionate about building a healthy nonprofit organization; one that's global, one that can scale, and so we also look at the fundamentals, and the business fundamentals as well, so we are expanding from 60 to 100 countries, and from 100,000 members to 200,000 members, I mean, who would think, right? >> Right, right, right. >> It's extraordinary. Even then, though, those 200,000 women are a drop in the bucket, compared to the 50% of the global population-- >> Right. >> Who are female. >> Right. And then you work at Nutanix. Super hot-- >> Yeah. >> I don't want to say startup anymore. You guys have IPO'd. >> Right, right. >> But, you know, but you're livin' it in terms of trying to get enough, good, qualified talent-- >> Yes. >> Just to feed the one engine that I Nutanix, so it's a real-- >> Yeah. >> Demand in the market place. >> Definitely, that's the case, you know, we sort of struggle with the thought, you know, are there just not enough women candidates in these fields, but what we learn at conferences like this is, that there are enough women candidates, but we don't necessarily recognize those women, and we don't know where to find them, and they may not find the sort of work that we represent to be attractive. And so we're sort of trying to change how we speak and think. Culture is a good word, but it's a revolution. It's a cultural revolution in terms of identifying talent where it sits. We spoke a lot in the last day and a half around blended careers, the bringing together of art and technology, or communication and technology, and the fact is that technology just underscores everything we do-- >> Right. >> Nowadays. >> Right. >> And so, you know, having people who can blend those things, is a real advantage, and women have this ability to take a multi-faceted approach to the work that we do and the way that we live our lives. We multi-task as a sport. >> Right, right. It's interesting, too, as the machines get better and as A.I. gets better, machine learning, the softer skills applied with the context become so much more important than necessarily just the super hard-core coding skills. >> You know, I have a story around that. So, we've just deployed, my IT department has deployed a machine-learning tool at Nutanix, to replace a lot of the interactions that happen on our help desk, and we found we just couldn't scale as the company was scaling, so we've been training A.I. from a company called Moveworks, and you know, we've been training it uniquely with our voice, and I think a little bit with my voice, and I just had one of our employees write back to me and say, "Not only is this thing", we call it Xbot, "Not only is Xbot solving my problems, but", he said, "she is pretty sassy, too." And I'm like, yay, he knows it's a she! >> Right, right. >> Right, and she's sassy too, so yeah, that unique voice-- >> Right. >> Is infusing even the machine-learning training that we're doing-- >> Right. >> And I think that makes for a more delightful experience-- >> Right. >> For all of us. >> It's funny, the voice thing, 'cause you know, Google had their very famous, the restaurant reservation call-in demo-- >> Yes! >> They got capped on a little bit-- >> Right. >> For, you know, was it real or not, but what made it so, so dramatic was the human-like elements in the conversation of the machine-- with ums, and ahs-- >> Absolutely. >> And uhs, and pauses, which we laugh about, 'cause we can shoot Cube interviews, everybody wants to cut those parts out, and we're like no, that's what makes people, people. >> Right, exactly, I agree with you. And at the same time, you know, there are, you know, things that are uniquely female stereotypes. We're more wordy. We have more things to say. >> Right. >> You know, we're more multi-dimensional. We can hold two thoughts at the same time, and so that's part of the richness of communication and our interaction too, but to the extent to which we can embed that in our technologies and our interactions, those are the extent to which they'll be more delightful-- >> Right. >> It's no coincidence that Siri and Cortana and all of those A.I.s sort of have this female persona, and I don't know if you know this, the, you know, Cortana, who's the Microsoft, you know, A.I., you know, she's voiced by the same character that's Cortana in one of their video games-- >> Oh, really? >> And she's sort of this like, badass fighter gal, too, so check it out. >> Well, we know what happened to Bob, right? >> Right. >> I know, poor Bob. >> Which, ironically, was Melinda Gates's project. Which, I don't know if you knew-- that story. >> I did not know that. >> So yeah, Melinda Gates's introduction to Bill was as product manager for Bob, which, if you don't know that story, check it out. It's old history. >> Oh, that's-- fantastic! >> But it's very good. Alright, before I let you go, one last thing. >> Yes. >> So you spoke, and they've got these great posters all around the room with little highlights from people's-- >> Yes. >> Conversations and yours was, I described it off the wall, "It's okay to be bad." >> Yes. >> I'd love, for the people that missed it, what's the message there? It's an important message. >> Yeah. >> Especially for women. >> Yeah, I think as women, you know, we don't have a lot of role models and when I get up as a role model, I'm one of the few CIO's who's female and Silicon Valley. You know, we give these speeches, and they sort of make us like Mother Teresa, you know. First you hae your mission in mind, and you lean in, and you do all these awesome things. But the fact is, it is actually okay, to be yourself. It's okay to be bitchy. It's okay to be cranky. It's okay for anger to fuel you. It's okay to be aggressive, and even if your male counterparts tell you otherwise, or say, "Wow, that's "unseemly.", I think it's just okay. We don't have to be pure and perfect in order to be successful. I can be those things all at the same time. And I also say, it's also okay to be good, to be merciful, to be soft-spoken, to be wordy, to be studious; that combination of things. We're allowed to be our genuine selves, and we don't have to be perfect to be successful and I feel like I embody that-- in particular. >> Yes, you certainly do. You certainly do! >> What, I'm not perfect? >> Yes, I mean the Nutanix story is a phenomenal story. >> It is. We are fortunate, we've been there since the beginning-- >> Absolutely. >> Watching it grow, and so no-- >> Helping us to frame the story, so thanks to The Cube. I appreciate that. >> Well, and you're super successful, and the company's successful so the fact that are Wendy, you know, you are who you are. You're a big personality, and it comes through, and it's great, and it works, and you're successful, so, if they need someone to look up to, you're certainly a fantastic role model. >> Thank you so much. Well I appreciate that. It's funny, 'cause I have never tried to be a role model, and now, just by accident, I've survived long enough. Here I am. (both laughing) >> Well that's a whole different conversation-- >> Right, right. >> You just look around like, I am the oldest guy in the room. But that's a different thing. >> I know. You're actually the only guy, just sayin'. >> Alright, well Wendy thanks for takin' a few minutes, and I guess we'll see you next at Nutanix next, if not sooner. >> I look forward to it, thanks. >> Alright, thanks. She's Wendy, I'm Jeff, you're watching The Cube from women, or Girls in Tech Catalyst 2018. (upbeat music)

>> From San Francisco, it's theCUBE, covering Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference, brought to you by Girls in Tech. >> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here at theCUBE. We're in downtown San Francisco at the Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference, about 700 professionals. It's a really cool conference. It's a single track, two days. All the presentations are about 15, 20 minutes of people telling their stories, vast majority of women, a couple of men. I think they brought in some younger kids to get inspired. So we're excited to be here. Been coming for a couple years. And our next guest, many time CUBE alum, I just know her as Sandy Carter. She does have a title, VP of Enterprise Workloads at AWS, but I dunno, Sandy, how long have you been coming on the CUBE, how many years? >> Oh, wow, I don't know. >> Too many to count, and we don't want to admit to it. >> Yeah, it's true, but thank you guys for supporting events like this, Jeff, because I know that you guys have been supporting Women in Tech, and Girls in Tech for so long, and we really appreciate that very much. Thank you. >> And it's so important, and we love to do it, and we especially love when it's right in our backyard. It makes it really easy just to grab some crew and run up here. >> (laughing) That's right. >> So give us an update. You are chairman of the board now, and I think we've probably talked to probably three or four board members today. It's a really impressive group of people, and Adriana has done amazing things with this organization in the last 11 years. And you're sittin' watching it grow internationally, the number of events, the types of events. Give us your perspective. >> Yeah, so I think Girls in Tech is an amazing organization. That's why I decided to join the board and then to take on the chairman of the board position. And the reason I think it's so powerful is that it's really focused on young women, millennial women who are looking to become business owners, leaders, entrepreneurs and who want to apply technology to make themselves more competitive. You know, I know Adriana came up with this in 2007, but even today, the mission and the values are still really relevant. These are the top things that women need to know about today, and this is really about filling up the pipeline, sharing experiences. The conference today, I don't know if you got to hear any of the sessions, but they're really not about, you know, let me do technical skills. It's really about how do you break through the next level, how do you grow your business, how do you scale. And so it's really those type of topics that we can share experiences as experienced businesswomen with others so that they can learn and grow from that. >> Right, and just really simple stuff, like raise your hand, take the new assignment, take a risk. >> You got it, the crooked path. >> The crooked path, that was the one I was looking for. And do something that you don't necessarily have experience in, whether it's finance or accounting or HR or product management, sales. You know, take a risk, and chances are you're going to get paid off for it, and I think those simple lessons are so, so important. And then, of course, which comes up time and time again is just to have role models, senior role models who've been successful, who have an interesting story, they have a crooked path, it wasn't easy it wasn't even defined, but here they are as successful so that the younger women can look up to them. >> Yeah, absolutely, and I think that it's, you know the big message today, I think, for women was have the confidence. Basically that sums up what you just said, right? Be confident, and even if you don't feel confident, show confidence. >> Right, right. >> Which I think is so important.. >> Fake it 'til you make it, right >> That's right. You got it, you got it. >> 'Cause everybody else is, you just don't know it. >> That's right. >> You think they know what they're doing. They're doing the same thing. >> That's right. Well, it's interesting, one of the stats today said that men will apply for a job if they have 60% of the qualifications. Women will only apply if they have between 90 or 95%. So I think being able to know that you're confident and that you're going to make it, that you're going to do things and going ahead and taking that risk is really important. >> So the other big shift that we've seen in this conference is really the corporate sponsorship. So AWS is here obviously. You're here. You're on the board. But the amount of logos, the size of the companies on the logos has really grown a lot since I think we were first at this one in Phoenix in 2016. >> Phoenix, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. >> So not only, again, is that the right thing to do, but it's also really good business to get involved, and you great ROI for being involved in these types of organizations. >> That's right. You know, innovation is really about having diversity of thought, and so having women, having different colleges, having different sexual orientation, just diversity really helps you to innovate. >> Right. >> 93% of CEOs said that innovation is their number one competitive advantage. So we're seeing a lot of companies now pick up on that and know that they've got to come and they've got to be attractive, not only as a company that people would want to work at, an employer, but also just as a company that you might want to do business with. So today, I love the story of GoDaddy. She was saying GoDaddy was targeting small businesses. Well, most of those are run by women, but they weren't doing the right targeting. So I think it's a phenomenal change that we're seeing with companies like this doing the support. AWS, Amazon Web Services is proud to be one of the major sponsors. We had Charlie, one of our SVPs on stage today, chatting about lessons he've learned, but we've also don't things like understanding how women are buying, and we're doing focus groups, and we're doing different things like that to really help us gain insight. >> Right, so final question, from the board point of view as you look forward in the expansion opportunities, they seem almost unlimited between the countries, the participants and the variation in types of events that you guys are undertaking. It's really quite a bit to bite off. >> Well, you know, we have kind of a two prong mission. One is for entrepreneurs, and so you're seeing us really emphasize classes and things like our Amplify event where we have women come and pitch ideas that really grow that side of the business. In fact, I was just in Cuba last week, on behalf of Girls in Tech, talking to female entrepreneurs there and how we could help them because they really want us to set up some classes there to teach these entrepreneurs how to grow. And the second prong of our mission is around technology and coding. So we've got classes. We've got things with AWS like We Power Tech, so that women can learn technology and use it for their competitive advantage. So while it seems like we're doing a lot of things, it's really around that two prong mission, entrepreneurship and that coding technology focus. >> Alright, well, Sandy, thanks again for stopping by, and really congratulations to you, not only in what you do at AWS, but really just some very, very important work with Girls in Tech. >> Great, thank you, and thank you for being so supportive. We appreciate it very much. >> Our pleasure. Alright, She's Sandy Carter. I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE from Girls in Tech Catalyst in downtown San Francisco. Thanks for watchin'. (upbeat electronic music)

>> From San Francisco, it's theCUBE covering Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference, brought to you by Girls in Tech. (upbeat digital music) >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown San Fransico at the Girls In Tech Catalyst Conference 2018. About 700 people, mainly women, some men. I think they brought in a school bus load of girls to participate. And really it's a two-day, single track conference. A lot of, just presentations by senior executive women telling their story, how they got to where they were, giving some inspirational advice. And we're psyched to be here. Adriana runs a great, great conference. It's a super organization, and we're excited to have our next guest. She's Wendy Howell, the chief of staff for Cisco Services. Wendy, great to see you. >> Great to see you, thank you for having me. >> Absolutely, so you're here instead of Cisco Live, which I think is great for you. What do think about this event? Why are you involved in Girls in Tech? >> Yeah, so I discovered Girls in Tech probably about three years ago and saw Adriana speak on just some interview. And I went, I don't know who she is, but I love her, and I love her message. So fast forward, attended my first Catalyst about three years ago, found out that we had two VPs that were on the board at Cisco which I didn't know. So, what's going on here? Let's do something with these guys. They were trying to put together a global partnership, and we really, they just couldn't get it over the line. Well, what's the problem? Funding. Okay, well let's fund it and let's just go. So we signed a global partnership two years ago with Girls in Tech. We've done, I think we've sponsored, overall with Cisco, about 15 different events. Catalyst Conference, AMPLIFY Women's Pitch Night. I think we've done eight. Hacking for Humanity events globally. It's just an amazing organization. It's the right organization at the right time. You know Adriana. She is amazing, she's a force of nature. And so I liken myself to be a mini Adriana for Cisco. (laughs) It's the time to get more and more focus on getting women in tech, and especially making sure that we have role models for the young ladies that are coming up in technology. >> Right, right. That's funny, that's how we found Adriana as well. I think she was on at a IBM event many, many moons ago and said you know, we got to get involved. >> It was random. >> The Pitch Night is really fun. You know, that's just a great event. And one of the ones from a couple years ago is really taking off, the little like, tile-like device. >> That's right, that's right. >> Which I can't remember the name, but it's not tile. >> And in fact, I saw one of your interviews, I think it was Sandy Carter. I don't know whether it was >> Yeah. the last year or the year before, I just did volunteer, >> Good, good. and it was great. >> So you know, the sponsorship list has really grow this year, and it's a who's who of corporate logos, >> Absolutely. which is great. We're looking at it over, across the way. And we talked about it a little bit before we turned on the cameras, about how some of the bigger tech companies specifically, 'cause it's kind of a tech focused event, obviously, can be, not only more involved, but a little bit more thoughtful, a little bit more organized, a little bit more coordinated in the way that they put resources behind events such as Girls in Tech. So why don't talk to kind of what your experience is there, what are guys doing, how are you trying to add a little bit more purpose and organization behind your efforts? >> Right, and again, originally the partnership, it came together quite fast after we sort of said hey let's just go do this. So then our first year, we really were focused specifically on events, and let's do events together to really get our name associated with the brand of Girls in Tech, which is global, and phenomenoal, and 100,000 plus members, etc. This year, in our second year, I think we're being a little more thoughtful, and we really want to continue to show the ROI for our organization. So we're really focusing more on the recruiting aspect. And there's some new cool things coming out on that front from Girls In Tech. And I really want to just say, hey it's great to have our name associated with Girls In Tech, but what's it doing for us? What are we doing for the women that we're supporting? Let's hire them into Cisco, let's hire them into AWS. So that's a real big key focus area for us this year. Plus the events, 'cause this is, you know, not only is it great for us, but I get to bring my team here and they come away feeling fantastic and amazing, and I get all psyched watching all these young ladies walk around. >> Right. >> Many of them, I'm like, I wasn't even thinking about things like this when I was your age. Back in the day (laughs). >> That's right, dune day, thankfully. >> That's right. >> So that's interesting, in terms of how do you measure your ROI in the investment? Clearly, recruiting has got to big a piece right? You can never get enough >> Yeah. people, and even though machines are going to take everybody's job, Everyone >> That's right one day seems to have a whole lot of open recs, and can't fill the people. So is there anything else that you look at besides just hiring, or is it the number of people that come through the process? How do you measure? 'Cause we know it's not only just good and the right thing to do, but there's real business benefit to participating in diversity programs. >> Absolutely. And I mean, every large organization right now, over the last three years, has come to that realization. This diversity is not just a buzz word, it's a thing. We know that there is greater ideas that come out of it, more diverse ideas, bookings, I mean, there's real, relatable, tangible feedback that you can get from it, right? >> Right, right. So recruiting is a big one for us, but also we look at the impact. You know, every quarter, we sit down with Girls In Tech and we get an impact report of what are you Cisco, what have you done, Cisco, and what has it done for Girls In Tech, and what has it done for us? How many people have we had attend a Hack-A-Thon? How many dollars have we supported with? How many people are going through a boot camp? So that's sort of the way we look at it as well, the impact report, also. >> And do you find it's a higher kind of ROI, in, not so much a smaller organization, but these are relatively small events compared to Cisco Live and a lot of the big events that are in the industry. Is it just a more focused return? Is it a better return? How does it fit in with your whole strategy? Yeah, I would call it more focused. It's more of a niche, but it still provides us, and we're growing, right? So we're only >> Right. the second year in, and I truly believe that if we continue our focus in this area, I can see a strong, high trajectory if you will. >> Right. So just a pitch for companies like Cisco that aren't involved with Girls in Tech, who you may compete with, you may not compete with, you probably partner with out in the ecosystem, what would you tell 'em about this organization and why they should get more involved? Yeah, I mean, I think there's a couple things. So number one, Adriana herself, and the brand of her, and the brand that is Girls In Tech now. If you think about it, I mean, 10, 11 years now, so going from one chapter to 62 plus, hopefully 75, I think, by 2020 is the goal, and now 100,000 plus members, being associated with this brand is fabulous for your business, but you know, it's also the right thing to do. Because again, I go back to my super passionate about the next generation of female leaders and these role models that the younger folks are seeing. You can't, you can't even put a price on how valuable that is for them. >> It's so funny, talk about the role models, we interviewed Maria Klawe, who runs Harvey Mudd, years ago, at Grace Hopper, and that was such a big part of her theme right? >> Are there people, >> Absolutely. are there women that the younger gals can look up to, and see oh, she looks kind of like me, or I could be like like her one day, and it's such an important thing. And she talked about, you know, Zuckerburg, and Jobs, and kind of the male tech rock stars, if you will, are tech rock stars, but they're not necessarily the ones that some 14 year old [Wendy] 10-25, or 14 13 year old, or 25 is going to look up to and say, that's me >> Exactly. in a few years, if I work, so ... >> Exactly. >> It's such an important piece of the whole component. >> My friend, a buddy of mine, she's the founder of Austin Women magazine. And she has this catch phrase that's fabulous. She goes, the female role models, if you can't see it, you can't be it. So if I'm a 24 year old young lady that's graduating, and I don't see anyone else who looks like me, then what do I do? So that's why I love this event in particular. It's my passion event, yeah. >> Alright, well Wendy, your passion comes through and thanks for taking a few minutes of your time with us. >> Absolutely, thank you for having me. >> Absolutely. Alright, she's Wendy Howell, I'm Jeff Frick. We are at Girls In Tech Catalyst in downtown San Francisco, thanks for watching. (upbeat digital music)

>> From San Francisco, it's theCube, covering Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference, brought to you by Girls in Tech.. >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Rick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown San Francisco at the Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference 2018. About 700 mainly women, a few men, and they just brought in a busload of kids to come in and hear inspirational stories, really of women in technical leadership positions for the last two days. It's a really great event. We're excited to be back for a second time, and our next guest who's been travelin' just as much as theCube team, all the way back from Cisco Live, which we were at yesterday. Shubha Govil, she's the director of product management from Cisco. Welcome. >> Thank you. >> So how was Cisco Live? >> Cisco Live was awesome. Yes, we had very different audience there. Percentage of women, as you can imagine, sometimes in the networking industry, is not as much as we would like to see, but that's why we are here. >> That's why you're here. >> And we are really trying to bring in lot more women in our product teams within Cisco. Again, it comes down to having the 50/50 voice, so this is a great place to be to meet other like-minded women, in industry, and trying to get some talent. >> Well, good for you for making the trip, 'cause I'm sure you guys are wiped out. When it's your own show you work harder than any other show, but it really begs a question. How long has Cisco been involved in Girls in Tech, and, again, what is it that this gives you that's so different than a big conference? >> Correct, so Cisco has been involved for last few years for Girls in Tech, and just like we have been involved with several other organizations in the industry, really it comes down to being out there and spotting the talent. Big part of that is being at the events, and networking with the talent, and understanding their needs. This comes down to really finding the right perspective, as well as the cultural fit for people that we bring in. The best part about the Girls in Tech events is that they're a lot more hands-on training that they are doing, in terms of as part of Cisco's DevNet environment. So I'm part of Cisco's DevNet team, and we are driving Cisco's developer program, to build more on top of Cisco's APIs, and in that role, always looking for people who are ready to go hands on, and build cool solutions on top of Cisco API, so this is a great place to have been doing a lot of coding camps, and other formal boot camps where girls can come in, and be part of this ecosystem, be ready for the next opportunity that comes. >> It's interesting because you can't just do what you could do in the past, which is just go do the campus recruiting, and kind of the things that we think of as everyday HR pipeline, because you need more, and you need more diverse. So to be active in all these various organizations that have very strong focuses in diversity, whether it be women or unrepresented populations, et cetera. So, pretty interesting investment that you guys are making there, with time, money, and people. >> Absolutely, absolutely. It is key. It is totally the key for Cisco, and for every single technology company out there to be out there and finding the diverse opinion. It really comes down to technologies not made just for men, and 50% of female population, there's not a lot of thinking that goes in in designing the technology as to how different people will use it, and big part of it is bringing the people who can think from that perspective, and that's kind of where we are out there, making sure that we can bring in that opinion. >> And the culture's such a bit thing, and you guys had such a big culture change with the new CEO shift, because there's such strong personalities, and now you guys have moved onto a new CEO. We keep hearing about culture over and over again, and how important it is to bring that up. So how important is it from the cultural aspect to be involved, and get these diversity of opinion? >> It is huge. So really, Chuck Robbins has been bringing a very humble culture, people really trying to be there for everyone, each other. And as a committee, you are really building the talent, not just for doing the right jobs, and bringing the right perspective, but also culturally bringing those opinions, as well as bringing the thinking that's going to change the culture moving forward. The technology disruption that's around us has to do a lot with how, culturally, things are changing. There is amalgamation of people coming from all over the world, and in that mode, when you're designing a technology, or when you are from networking perspective, as we think about Cisco's networking culture, network engineers are evolving too, and they are becoming more part of programmable network, and that culture shift goes along with it, which is to bring in the right people culture, and part of it is being out at the events, and meeting people coming from different places, and bringing those opinions. >> It's interesting we're at Bespoke, because I think it was last year we were here with the Cisco DevNet Team, and really a different kind of point of view coming out of Cisco, led by Susie Wee and the team, in terms of reaching out for developers, not a closed system, really trying to engage with the developer community. >> And that's part of it. Cisco's DevNet Committee is, we recently crossed a milestone of 500,000 developers. >> Oh, so I heard that was the big celebration at the party, right? Half a million, very good. >> Big celebration at Cisco Live. >> Congratulations. >> And DevNet Create was an attempt in that direction as well, to really bring the application developer, and that thinking about network engineers who have been changing the way each application works, how the internet of things is going to further drive the growth of internet, in that world, we also need a lot of application developers coming in, and that was the attempt for DevNet Create Conference, and that's where Girls in Tech and other such events are very important. >> Right, and only going to be more crazy when 5G comes online in a couple years. The demand for networking is, and the bandwidth is not slowing down anytime soon. >> It's not. (laughs) >> All right, Shubha, well thank you for spending a few times, I'm sure you are tired after the long event, so hopefully you get through this and you can take it easy this weekend. >> Thanks, Jeff. It was good to talk to you. >> All right, thanks for stopping by. I'm Jeff, and you're watching theCUBE from Girls in Tech Conference 2018. Thanks for watching. (laid-back electronic music)

(music) >> From San Francisco, it's theCUBE. Covering Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference brought to you by Girls in Tech. >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown San Francisco at the Girls in Tech Catalyst event. Really great event, about 700 people, couple days. It's just a single track, a lot of presentations, about 20-minute presentations, by a bunch of female leaders telling their story, how did they get where they got. What advice could they give. And there's men, women here. They just brought in, I think, a busload of students. So it's a really great event. We're excited to be here and we're psyched for our next guest. She's Rashmi Kumar, the SVP Supply Chain and Procurement from McKesson, welcome. >> Hi, thank you Jeff. >> Absolutely, so you said you hadn't been to this event before. You keep trying to come, but things don't, keep getting in the way. So, what do you think, now that you're here? >> Absolutely, I'm so glad to be here. I'm so thankful to McKesson for being the lead sponsor of the event. I'm really excited to see the energy here. >> Yeah, so how did McKesson become the lead sponsor cause that's a really nice statement on the company to really get involved in something like Girls in Tech. >> Yeah, so McKesson is a company which is sitting at the intersection of healthcare. Guess what, it's something on which our lives depend on. But this is the industry which is most behind in technology. So we want to do everything to grow technology talent across the country in this space to enable better health care for our patients. >> Right. It's interesting, we talked before we turned the cameras on that there's still a huge talent gap. It's funny cause we go to a lot of shows and they talk about the machines are taking all the jobs and there's not going to be jobs for people. But, in fact, there's still a ton of jobs, there's still a ton of opportunity in tech. We still don't have enough people so we have to bring in women, we have to bring in other folks to help fill all these great opportunities. >> Yeah, absolutely. When we talk about machine and AI, we are not talking about pure AI taking away the job. It will be enabling human being to do better job and will improve our quality of life. Who will build those machines, though? You need technologists, we need technologists who will build that machine and we are here to grow ourselves and grow our people. Sitting where I am at SVP of Supply Chain role, all the commerce is moving from store front to e-commerce. That is run by programs and technologies and there are jobs in warehouses for people to enable the e-commerce but how do we build those platforms that will enable our patients to get their medication at their doorsteps and not have to go run from pharmacy to pharmacy to find it. We need technologists for it. >> It's interesting because supply chain's been automized for a long time and early days of tech innovation where is was ERP and SAP. So what lessons can you tell from procurement that now we see in more customer-facing and direct-to-consumer tech involvement? Because you still have people, you still there's a lot of automation in procurement, but you still have a lot of things for people to do. >> Yeah, so as the supply chain was more business-to-business we were focused on the customer experience of for, say, pharmacists or the experience of a person who was working on the warehouse floor. And we didn't worry about it, the gray screens, green screens, whatever we put. Now you think about an autonomous car or you think about a drone delivering medicine... You need to give the interaction to every person which enables them to consume those services. This whole field of human computer interaction is new. >> [Jeff} Yeah. >> Machines will run the cars and we don't have to drive it. How I interact with it, somebody needs to define it and then tweak it and grow it. That's also another point about all technology and digital product. You can pivot and change and bring in new functionality, satisfy human consumerization of technologies, changing human needs to interact with technology as well. And we need all kinds of people, from all backgrounds because diversity brings in diverse thinking, which brings in better products. >> Yeah, it does. It's not only the right thing to do, but it actually delivers much better results and bottom line. So you're here, you're running a workshop today. So tell us a little bit about the workshop that you're running. >> Yeah, so the workshop, my topic is make your pitch perfect, which is around the whole topic of elevator pitch. But because it's Girls in Tech Conference, we women want to be 200% sure that we are good to do a job and we don't branch out to highlight the work that we are doing already. Which could get us in that next position. So, how as a professional we should interact with not only our managers and peers, but other leaders within the company. Maybe other leaders across my industry as well as in technology and impress them with what I can do so that we leave a lasting impression on the peson's mind and when he or she is looking for a role, for a person for a role, they think of the girls who are here >> Right. >> Training these two days. This is just kind of the icing on the cake. >> So what are some of the tips and tricks for the people that didn't make the conference that you help them with? Are there some common errors that people make over and over and over that you're trying to tell them not to do? Are there a couple little guideposts that you can help them to get their pitch down? Is it the timing? Is it the focus? Is it the way it's structured? What are some of the things you share with them? >> Absolutely. So HBR did an article on elevator pitch for elevator pitch. (Jeff laughing) >> I've got to see that one. >> That means that that we leave lot of interactions on the table because when we are riding in elevator, riding in train or just sitting at a bar we don't take the opportunity to open up that conversation so we'll be focusing on that a little bit. And then also talking about, as you define your individual pitch think about your own passion, your own skill and where does it fit with some companies' or some projects' need? At that intersection lies the sweet spot for that person and how they hone and how they really practice it and have it handy and available to say it when the time comes, right? So that's the main kind of gist of the workshop. >> Well, and it's an interesting concept, too, because we go to a lot of conferences and one of the great values of conferences if you're exhibiting is you get to practice your pitch with a whole bunch of people over a really short period of time and hone it so it's an interesting concept to take advantage of those opportunities maybe if they're not even great ones but just to get the reps in, just to see what resonates, what do people listen to, what do they grab? >> Right, so they will do a practice. >> Right, right. >> Think about what their skill, what they're passion about, what does the place where they want to go need and see the intersection. And maybe the places they're thinking of might not fit their passion and skill but they're just enamored with that place so it also kind of gives them some toolbox to think ahead of time around how to plan their careers. >> All right, well, important work and again, thank you for your sponsorship of the conference. It's really important and it's a great, great statement on McKesson. >> Thank you. >> All right. She's Rashmi. I'm Jeff. We are at Girls in Tech Catalyst 2018, downtown San Francisco. Thanks for watching. >> Thank you. (music)

>> From San Francisco, it's theCube, covering Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference. Brought to you by Girls in Tech. >> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown San Francisco at Bespoke. It's at the top of the Westfield Mall. Come on by sometime if you're doin' some shoppin', but we're here at Girls in Tech Catalyst. Really cool convention. We were in Phoenix a couple years ago, about 700 women, girls, some students that came in, and a few men as well. Really talking about great inspirational stories. Unbelievable lineup of leaders telling their stories, how they got to where they were, and sharing the information. Now we're excited to have our first guest. She's Patty McCord. She's an author of this great book, Powerful, and she used to be the head of HR, or chief, >> Talent officer. >> Talent officer at Netflix. Patty, great to see you. >> Nice to meet you, too. >> Absolutely. >> Yay. >> So you're going to be speaking in a little bit, so what is your topic on today? >> The future of work, but mostly I'm going to talk about my experience with work over the last 30 years, and that the future of work is right now. We just don't operate that way. >> So, Patty, what do people get right about culture, what do they get wrong about culture? >> What they get wrong about it is they think it's a document. They think if you write it down, you're done, and what they get wrong about it is they don't walk the walk, right? I mean, I know that's simple and cliched, but I can't tell you how many startup CEOs I meet that say, I want to be this, and I want to this. I want to be efficient, right? I want to be straightforward. Well, is there information that you hide from employees, and do you show up to meetings on time? Uuh, right? And it's also about the stories that you tell, what becomes legend, and people love those positive legend stories, and they forget that when you screw up, we'll tell that story for 10 years, right? And the third thing, I think, is people get nostalgic, and they think they can keep it, especially in little companies. Let's keep the culture the way it is, and you cannot do that if you are successful. >> It's so bizarre that people don't get the kind of do what I say, versus do what I do. I mean, this is 101, and it's such a slap in the face when a leader says one thing, and then immediately does something different. >> And you wonder, how did they end up to be this way, when their saying is break things, right? >> Well, failing up is a whole different conversation that we'll save for another day. >> But let's take failing up, right? I talked to a CEO who told me I give everybody who makes a mistake a bottle of champagne to celebrate failure. I'm like, well that's stupid. (both laugh) But it only matters if you fail up if you learn something from it, and that's the demonstrable stories that you tell, that become part of your culture, rather than you get rewarded with champagne if you screw up. >> And then the other thing we were talking about before we turned the camera on are some of these just kind of arcane, old processes that people just put 'em in it, is it-- >> Well, let's start with the fundamentals. I'm going to hire you, and you'll have a career for the rest of your life in our company. Big fat lie, has been for decades, and we still tell it, right? Second one-- >> God, people still tell that story? >> They still do tell that story. >> I've been in Silicon Valley too long. >> Yeah, me too, but I mean, I travel all over the world now, and I hear that story all the time. The second one, which I'll talk about in a minute, is we're family. You're not, right? It's not family, it's work. It's two different things. >> You pay me to come every day. >> That's right, so it's not just the processes that are archaic, like you and I talked about the annual performance review, which is we don't step back like we do with every part of the business and say, why did we do that? What's its purpose? Is it still effective, right? If it is a process to give people feedback so they'll improve their performance, you do it once a year? >> Right, like that's really going to make a big impact. >> Yeah, that's kind of dumb, and then I'm going to figure out how to pay you based on what you did or didn't do last year? And particularly for women, I mean particularly for women, the compensation systems that we have, equal pay, those are issues that they're just writing checks. How hard can this be to figure this stuff out, and when you do it, it's actually not that much money. So I'm advocating, I'm kind of on my bully pulpit here, saying people in my organizations, in HR, we need to fix the stuff that's broken, own the fact that we broke it, and stop talking about it in a language nobody understands. >> Is there some just historical legal compliance issues and stuff that keeps things like the annual performance review going, or is just minutiae? >> There's sort of this inward naval gazing thing we do, where go, well, it's best practices, 'cause everybody does it. I mean, I talk to people who say, well it's a legal requirement. No, it's not, right? We don't even ask. (laughs) If there's a law, I coach people-- >> You haven't seen it yet, and you've had the C title forever. >> I coach people all the time. When your lawyer says you can't do it, you say why, and they say, well it's against the law, and you say can I see the statute? They're written in english, right? It's not Sanskrit, right? So look at it and say, well that's not what I read it to say. Well, if you didn't do it, you'd get sued. What's the most recent lawsuit? What was the settlement? How many people sue for this sort of thing? So there's a-- >> Such a business-minded and analytical approach to these questions, right, as opposed to just accepting the status quo. >> You just said you'd been in Silicon Valley all your life, me too, and I love innovation, and I love being inventive, and I don't want to be on the outside of all this fun. It's like, if somebody, like when I was at Netflix, if we could invent a new way of consuming entertainment, then why couldn't I invent a new way of working? >> Right, interesting. And so I wanted your take on another kind of hot trend right now, especially with the younger kids comin' up, is mission, and mission-driven companies, mission-driven opportunities, and I think, rightly or wrongly, and it's kind of like we're going to have you forever, it's a more and more important reason why people are choosing to go to certain companies, and it's so competitive here, say in the Bay Area specifically, whereas you're an employer, how should they look at this? How real is it? >> Well, first of all, before you blame them, right? Before we blame them, we have to realize that these are the children of burnt-out corporate citizens, right? And they've watched their parents toil, and come home burnt-out and upset and empty after careers in the companies that they belonged in that didn't give 'em back what they promised, right? So I think we all want mission. I don't think it's unusual for them. I think they're just asking for it. When we felt like we had to wait until later in our career to ask for stuff that mattered to us. And the other thing is, I think the companies who are building now are more capable of delivering that. And I don't think that by mission they're talking about world peace. They just want to know, how do I matter, right? And so, for me, that's teaching people how businesses work, and what the complexities are, and what the opportunities and the challenges are, and being part of that, right? So that's what they're asking for. They're not asking for every single day to go home and feel like they've changed the world, for curing, not that curing cancer's a bad thing, I think we should do that too, but we can still feel mission driven by just connecting with our customers and our products and the work that we do every day. >> All right, Patty, well I know you got to go get mic'd up for your big presentation, so thanks for takin' a few minutes of your time. >> Yeah, it was great fun. >> And I look forward to jumping into the book and getting into the day. >> Great, okay, thanks. >> She's Patty, I'm Jeff. We're at Girls in Tech, the Catalyst Conference at Bespoke in San Francisco. Thanks for watching. (laid-back electronic music)

>> From San Francisco, it's theCUBE covering Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference. Brought to you by Girls in Tech. >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown San Francisco at the Girls in Tech Catalyst event. About 700 people listening to two days of short presentations by senior leaders, mainly women senior leaders, and it's a really good event. We were here a couple years ago. Girls in Tech's a great organization, and so we're excited to have a board member with us right now. She's Mayumi Hiramatsu. She's a senior vice president, Cloud Ops, Engineering and Security for Infor. Great to see you. >> Great to see you, too. Thanks for inviting me. >> Absolutely. So let's just jump in. So you've spoken in prior years, you're not speaking this year, but from a corporate perspective as well as a personal perspective, what does this event mean to you? >> From a corporate perspective, from Girls in Tech's perspective, it's just amazing. Every year year it gets better. I did speak the last two years, and I'm humbled by the speakers this year. So I'm actually really enjoying it. (laughing) It's quite a caliber of-- It's kind of fun when you can just sit and relax and watch everybody else speak, right? >> Exactly. And quite a caliber the team's put together. So as a board member, I can't be prouder than what the team's pulled together. And it's so much buzz. Everybody's inspired, I see people taking notes. Folks are really taking this to heart in terms of takeaways, practical tips, and getting energized. So I think it's great. From a personal perspective, a little bit about myself: So I'm from originally Japan, I came here at 17. I didn't speak any English. I wasn't planning on getting in engineering, I have an economics degree. So you can imagine, I got into engineering and built my career here. It was not easy. For a foreigner, a female, Asian, a non-speaking English person. >> You checked all the wrong boxes, right? >> Yeah. I don't know why I choose to do something harder than it needs to be, and I don't even have an engineering degree. I have an economics degree. But I love technology. I've been doing this for 20 plus years, and I think it's a wonderful place for any woman like me to be able to give it a chance and actually have a wonderful career. I also love the fact that it sort of gives, it evens out everybody's potential. So with an economics degree, or from another country, I've been at Silicon Valley and have done great. So if I can do it, I know anybody else can do it. So for me, giving back to the community and making sure the next generation can successfully come through the technology ranks, or have their own company, is really exciting. So it's great to be on the board of Girls in Tech, and I can channel my energy through that way, and I think Girls in Tech is one of the largest, if not the largest world non-profit organization to help women with very practical, and great tips, as well as, not only these Catalyst conferences, but, my goodness, we do hackathons, we do pitch nights and give entrepreneurs a chance to actually shine, global classrooms where we can actually give a lot of teaching opportunities, and learning opportunities. So, super excited to be here. >> Then what about from the Infor perspective? Did you spearhead the Infor participation? Did Girls in Tech, Adriana come seek you out? How did you get directly involved, how did you sell it, and why does it matter to Infor? >> Yeah, so I've been a board member for year and a half, and not so coincidentally you can see Cisco's also there. I used to be a Cisco. Once I introduced Cisco and Infor to Girls in Tech, everybody was really excited. There's just so much win-win. So for Infor, it's great on a couple of things. You may know that Infor is a pretty large company. We're the third or fourth largest ERP. And we have really important business solutions software. For example, focus on verticals; for example, health care, manufacturing, retail, and as a company we're doing really well, but the other thing that really attracted me to Infor is our diversity programs. So we have two of them. One is WIN, Women Infor Network, and it's about essentially women network to help each other out and continue to grow our career, which is important. But the other program is EAP, which is Education Alliance Program. And I love the fact that we actually have a program, we have 80 plus universities that we tie in with, to bring in a diverse workforce, and teach them in the universities and bring them into the workforce, whether it's Infor or not, candidly. So it's STEM programs that gives diversity, whether it's gender, or background, or international location, or even age, right? Because we're bringing in college grads. I just love the programs that Infor has. >> So what is that? How does the relationship go between Infor and the universities? What's kind of the formal structure? >> Yeah, so there's a program called Education Alliance Program, EAP, very, very successful as I mentioned. 80+ universities that we work with already. And what we do is we essentially give these students in the university training program that teaches our software, and there are actually a couple of great things that come out of it. Of course, it's promoting STEM, and making sure that these kids have, young adults, have great technology STEM education coming out of college. It's also great for Infor because we also have people graduating with our technology skillset. So not only directly impacts us as they join our company, but also even if they don't join our company, we've given them a chance to get into technology and it's very, very successful. I'm very proud of it. So Infor is big on diversity in technology as you can see. And, of course, we're proud to be here this year as one of the sponsors. >> So I'll give you the last word as a board member to the audience. How can they get involved with Girls in Tech? How should they get involved? What are some of the ways that you would suggest for them to get their toe in the water if they're not familiar with the organization? >> Yeah, girlsintech.org is a great place to start. We have a wonderful website, of course, and we have various types of programs involved so depending on what it is. If you want to learn you can actually join some of the hackathons or global classrooms to get some practical skills. If you're a founder and you actually want to pitch your idea and get some funding, you can actually go to Pitch Night. There are different programs that we can leverage and I highly encourage everybody to join. >> Alright, well Mayumi thanks for taking a few minutes. Congrats on the sponsorship and all your good work on the board. >> Thank you very much. >> You're welcome. She's Mayumi, I'm Jeff. You're watching theCUBE. We're at Girls in Tech Catalyst 2018 in downtown San Francisco. Thanks for watching.

>> From San Francisco, it's the Cube, covering Girls In Tech Catalyst Conference. Brought to you by Girls in Tech. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with the Cube. We're at the Girls In Tech Catalyst event in downtown San Francisco about 700 people coming together, mainly women, two day single track event, where people are getting up and giving like 15-, 20-minute overviews of their story. Really sharing insights and how they got to where they were. Most of them had no idea that they were going to end up where they are now. So there's really a lot of great stories. And we're excited to be back for our second time. And our next guest we're excited to have is Lawdan Shojaee and she is the CEO of Axosoft, Lawdan welcome. >> Thank you, thanks for having me. >> So, what is Axosoft for people who aren't familiar? >> Axosoft builds tools for developers, mainly product management tool, a gate goi, a issue tracker. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> And then, how long have you have you been involved with Girls In Tech? >> With Girls In Tech, about five years. We were the top sponsor and brought the Catalyst Conference to Phoenix when the first year they had it and this was back in I think five years ago. That's when I got involved with the board and loved the mission and couldn't stop. >> Awesome. >> I wanted to be involved in every way I could. >> Yeah, so we were there is Phoenix in 2016, I guess so a couple years ago. >> Okay, okay. >> So that's great. So it's such an important organization. What do you see some of the benefits, how are you guys really participating and helping take the advantages beyond the participation events? >> So I'll go just for today, right. And some of the things that I've listened to just this morning, just talking and re-familiarizing yourself with how important culture is. If you don't create a space for females in your corporation, they don't belong. So by creating spaces where they belong, then you automatically help them have voice. And the sessions today have all talked around that and I really am excited that I brought one of my employees with me here too. So she's definitely learning that and together we're going to take it back to the company, so. >> No I'm just curious how old is she in terms of... is she kind of young-- >> I think she's 27. >> and getting started in her career or (mumbles)? >> No, no she's 27 and she's a director of her departments. She the marketing director. >> That's great. Yeah, it's so important to have role models. And that's the other thing that keeps coming up over and over and over again. You know, they need to have the young girls. Young women need to have, >> Yeah. >> like looking people, women, >> Right. >> in women in senior executive positions, so they can envision themselves going there. >> Yes. >> So I know one of your passions is basically, obviously, your business is built around development and coding. >> It is. But having people have the knowledge, girls specifically, get some basic overview-- >> Yes. >> of what is coding, what is software development. So it's not this mysterious, this mysterious thing that's out there in the ether. >> Right. >> I know that's something that you've been putting a lot of time in. >> So here's how I view our education program right now. What we do with our kids is we put them in there, and we say go. And we educate them on how to become industrial workers. In the future, is everything software. All companies, if they're going to stick around, somehow are going to be software. From the person you get your sandwich from at a fast food place to everywhere else. So we're sending these kids to school. They're going and learning how to become industrial workers. We never introduce them to programming at all until they hit college. And then we say, pick a career path. How do they even know that they want to go into programming if during high school, or lower years, they haven't touched it. >> Right. >> And as we heard it, one of the other speakers yesterday say, she wanted to be an actor and singer and on a whim she took a computer science class, fell in love with it and she's the VP of Engineering at Birchbox now. So, on a whim. >> Even though she had lots of examples to look at on the music and entertainment side. >> Yeah she went into the other side. You know she just tried one class and from there, >> Right. >> you know, she fell in love. If you don't know what it is, if you're intimidated by it, then you don't try it and I think that waiting until college when it's career time, it's too late. You got to introduce kids to it earlier. >> So there's a lot of things are trying to help, that obviously, changing the public school system is not easy and we were talking offline about what Brenda Darden Wilkerson has done in Chicago with part of the school district there, getting basic CS, >> Yup. >> into the program. But it's really not easy. >> It's not. It's very grassroots, so my company's based out of Scottsdale, Arizona and our state is not doing very much as far as putting computer science into the schools. And, which means in 10 years, when I'm trying to look for developers, I'm not going to have enough. Not only am I not going to have enough developers period, I'm not going to have enough diverse developers, right, because, we're not even introducing it to girls at all. So a few years ago, actually in combination with Girls In Tech, I put a campaign together called, "It Was Never A Dress." With "It Was Never A Dress", we started a program where we took 15 to 16 year olds, sometimes 18 and we taught them programming. And we turned them into Ambassadors of anything STEAM. And we took 50, put 'em back into the public schools and they're now actually now creating their own clubs with sponsors in their own schools and we taught them skills like how to fundraise with, ya know, Go Fund Me-- >> Right, right. >> to come up with this and there's actually working. I mean it was very grassroots, it was very small. >> And how old were they, when you grabbed 'em? >> So our youngest was probably 12. >> Okay. And the way we found them was we went to the schools and we said, who's your smartest, ambitious, who do you think is motivated, who wants to do something different, send them to our conference. And we took 'em for two days. We taught 'em programming, basic programming. We taught 'em, wearable technology and we made sure that they were in different districts, sent them back into the school system. (Jeff laughs) >> That's great. >> Grassroots right? >> That's the way to see it. >> A little guerrilla-style. >> Right, right, right. Well, ya know, we see that more and more. Like I know LinkedIn does-- >> Yeah. >> weekend Hackathons all the time. So there is kind of the grassroot corporate effort from people who that are paying attention. >> Yup. >> And do the investment, but as you said the schools are lagging way behind on the CS (mumbles). >> They are, they are, but ya know, I feel like if each company took a small amount of time and created little grassroots movements, we could make a pretty large impact. We're not organized right, because you know, someone's doing it in San Francisco, someone's doing it in Arizona. If we kind of got together as just major corporations and said, let's do this, let's just... Because tomorrow we have to hire these people and if there's enough then we can't have the equality we want if we're not teaching girls early enough, then maybe we can make a difference. >> So I'd just love to get your perspective since you've been involved in Girls In Tech so long is trying to be one of the catalysts for that type of, you know, activity cross. >> Yup. >> Not only cross-state, but cross-country and around the world about the growth of this organization and how Adriana has taken it from... >> Yeah. >> I mean how big was it when you joined five years ago to where it is today? >> I mean the growth in numbers, I can't tell you what those are. But I can tell you the impact is huge. Every year I'm part of the Girls In Tech events and corporate boards. Seeing the impact and the feelings that it leaves for these woman is amazing. You now can talk internationally to woman and they know what Girls In Tech is, and they're familiar. And they're taking the Hackathons, they're taking the programs that this organization offers and they're learning and their getting jobs. And now I've been in it long enough where someone I met a couple years ago, who was just at a conference, kind of dabbling, took a course from Girls In Tech and is now in the career field, and they're kind of introducing Girls In Tech to others. So it's amazing. It's no longer grassroots. This is actually making a difference. >> Right, that's great. Well Lawdan, thanks for taking a few minutes. >> Thank you. >> And thanks for your longterm support of the organization, clearly you're not the only sponsor anymore and there's a lot of people-- >> Yes. >> that have jumped onto the bandwagon and that's all a good thing. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> You have a great day. >> You too. (laughs) Alright, she's Lawdan and I'm Jeff. You're watching the Cube. We're Girls In Tech Catalyst 2018 in downtown San Francisco. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> From San Francisco, it's The Cube. Covering Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference. Brought to you by Girls in Tech. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with The Cube. We're in downtown San Francisco at the Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference 2018. It's a great event, we've been here before. About 700 attendees really listening in. It's a single track conference for a couple days of women leaders telling their stories. How they got to where they are. Some of the challenges they had to overcome. There's a ton of women, some men, I think they just brought in a busload of students, so it's a really good event, and we're excited to be here again. 'cause Arianna just does a terrific job with Girls in Tech. And we're excited, our next guest, she's Laura Messerschmitt, VP Global Customer Experience for GoDaddy, Laura, good to see you. >> Nice to meet you. >> So we've had a ton of GoDaddy guests on, at Grace Hopper, so we're very familiar with the company. So it's great to meet you but it's funny. When we first met with August at Grace Hopper, I'm like August, what are you doing here? You guys have like the most sexist print ad at least back in the day of anybody. They are going to run you out of the building. But you guys changed the culture and you're a big part of that, and that was your presentation. >> Yeah, I started with GoDaddy through an acquisition. And when I came in, the only thing I knew was those Superbowl commercials. And I was, I came in very skeptical, like what is this place? Is this the right place for me? It doesn't stand for my values. But what I found was this amazing company that actually did promote women in tech, and that had this big presence. And so we went to go and change it and try to make it even better for women in tech, and change the brand. And so that's what we've been doing over the last five years is working on making that change to be a premier leader for women in tech. >> So how hard is that when literally your forward facing brand to the outside world are these super racy commercials that you can't even see the end of it, you have to jump onto the internet to finish them. So how did that get started? How does it get implemented? What are some of the lessons learned in going through that process? And I assume it's still an ongoing exercise. >> It is, I think at the beginning, the hard part was that we new we wanted to make a change, and we new that 60% of our customer base was women. And so we had to make a change. It was a business imperative. But we didn't know where we were going at first. And so we sort of circled for a little while, where we were trying to think how do we make this happen. What do we do? And we started to set the vision, that we were actually going to change not just our own selves, but the industry, to make it better for women. That then set us on a course for where we would go, and then things moved pretty quickly. For example, we moved our hiring of tech women from 14% one year, to 40% the next year. >> In one year. >> In one year, yeah. >> So what did you do to do that? That is not a statement, that's a lot of steps and processes. So what are some of the things that you guys did? >> So what we found is that the small things really do matter. And so we changed all of our job descriptions. So we got rid of words like code ninja, that women wouldn't relate to and made them gender neutral. And that brought in more women. And then what we did is we required each hiring manager to have at least one diverse candidate when they interviewed. And what we found is that when the hiring managers would go out to find diverse candidates, they would go searching and they'd find not one, but they'd find five. And so suddenly you'd have this huge pipeline of incoming women. And we also did things like go to the Grace Hopper conference to find more woman that could come in and recruit. And that actually what made that major change from the 14% to the 40 in one year. >> Wow, and again, kind of that top down vision. I'm curious, who woke up one day and said wait, 60% of our customers are women, maybe we should do something a little bit different. >> I think it was a lot of people. The one I would mention in particular is Blake Irving. He was our CEO that came in right around when we were making this change. And he had a personal story with his sister, where she had unfortunately passed away, but prior to her passing, she had promoted women and he had promised her that he would also promote women in the industry that he ended up in. And so once he became CEO, he was bound and determined that we were not only going to change GoDaddy, but we were also going to make an impact in the industry. Because he'd made that promise. >> That's great. You know on the hiring manager story, we can't help it. Everybody has a bias whether they know it or not, or admit to it. And we're also like birds of a feather, right. It's comfortable to be around and be with people that look like us and sound like us, and that's kind of the natural state. So unless you force someone to look beyond that they're just not going to do it, as a natural course. It's interesting that you said, once they, once you forced them to look, not only did they find, but they found a whole bunch of great opportunity. >> Another piece of in was not putting a quota on it. So it wasn't a quota on the hiring, it was just a quota on you have to have at least one in your interview pool. And so that, that meant that people were okay with it. People did feel like they had to pick, they wanted to pick the best candidate, and so we were just making sure that the best candidates we actually showing up. And when they did show up, a lot of times, the women were the ones getting hired because they were the best candidate. >> So I'm curious in terms of the cultural change. How did it affect in a more general level as you were successful in making this transformation which was a top down prerogative from the CEO? >> Well for me, being a woman, that seeing a lot more people like me in the company, and sort of at all aspects of the company. So previous to this change, a lot of the technical people were all men, and sort of marketing and other functions were women. And I started to see women being hired into these other functions, and it opened up sort of, a world of possibility. And I also think the company's better off because of it. Our financial results have been great, and I think that's partially due to this huge change that we've made. And I think it does impact the finances because we had more diversity in our thinking and they way we made decisions. >> Well, I think it's been proven time and time again, that diversity's only the right thing to do, but it does lead to better outcomes, which goes right to the bottom line, so it's certainly a huge contributor, because you just get different points of view that you wouldn't have ever thought of. A little bit about Girls in Tech here. Why you here? What is this event and this organization about for you personally as well as GoDaddy? >> So I would say, GoDaddy has been working with Women in Tech, oh sorry, Girls in Tech for about five years now. And I think we believe in there mission, right because their mission aligns very much with ours, which is to help women in tech. But over the past five years, we've seen them transition, and they've started focusing also on women founders. And given that our customers are small businesses, we care a lot about that, and so it's been very lock step for the last five years. And just being here at the conference is great to get to talk to other women that are trying to do similar things in their companies, and to share notes. >> Right, so I guess we'll see you at pitch night, later this year. All right Laura, well thanks for taking a few minutes and sharing your story. It's funny, when we were at Grace Hopper, you know most of the girls there, are just fresh out of school, didn't know the old GoDaddy. So, we don't necessarily want to talk about it, but it's actually a really great story to be able to make that transition at such an extreme from one side to the other. So the best to you guys. >> Thank, work to do, but we're keep going. >> Well thanks again for stopping by. >> Thank you so much. >> She's Laura, I'm Jeff, you're watching The Cube. We're Girls in Tech Catalyst 2018 in downtown San Francisco. Thanks for watching. (techno music)

>> From San Francisco, it's The Cube covering Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference, brought to you by Girls in Tech. >> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here with The Cube. We're in downtown San Francisco at the Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference 2018. About 700 professionals, mainly women, a couple of men, a couple of busloads of younger people coming in to get inspired. And we're excited to be here. It's a single track event, two days, probably 20 presentations per day of people really sharing their story. And we're excited to have Diana Cappello. She's the lead solutions engineer from Clari. Just before you get into your talk, right? >> Exactly, yes. >> So welcome. >> Thank you. >> So, what's your talk going to be on? >> I'm leading a panel on the topic of innovation. So we've got four amazing women, two co-founders, two product managers. >> Okay, so clearly, diversity of opinion, diversity of thought, diversity of point of view, diversity of problem solving. It's a huge piece of the innovation game. >> Absolutely. And so, that was the challenge for me, is with this broad set of speakers, how do you tie it together in a theme? So we're focusing on emerging technologies. So AI, big data number crunching. >> Right. So it seems to me that the solution to innovation, one of the solutions, there's a couple simple things, one is kind of just give more people access to the data, give more people access to the tools to manipulate the data, and then give more people the access to actually do something once they get the data out of tools on top of the data so they can actually be empowered to make change. And a lot of companies never have done that in the past. But really with the democratization of the data, the tools, and hopefully the control, that's one of the big engines that we see. What do you think? >> That's absolutely the key. So we are thinking of it in the reverse in our panel. What's the problem that you're trying to solve, and then how can you leverage big data and these merging technologies to solve that problem in the real world. >> Right. So how do you, in your day to day life, how do you make sure that you guys are staying innovative? How do you make sure that the quiet voice in the back actually gets heard? Or the person that doesn't necessarily have the social capital, or the title capital, or whatever the capital is to make an influence, that that voice gets added to the conversation? >> So that's my role as a lead solutions engineer, is to listen. The number one thing that we do when we meet a customer is listen to the problems that they're experiencing, and then listen to the goals that they have, the objectives that they want, the outcomes. And then we think about how can we meet their need with the technology. So, number one thing for lead solution engineer, and for anyone else in tech, is listen to your customer. >> You don't just stand up in front and tell them all the great stuff that you do? >> I would love to. (laughing) I could talk all day. >> No, it's so funny, right? 'Cause so many people, that's what they do. Instead, they don't listen. They're just, they're so excited. And I think, especially in a product management role, you see it a lot where people are just so excited, so passionate about the things that they built that sometimes that's all they want to do is just ell that story, and maybe more the story than the customer needs to hear, is ready to hear, or cares about hearing. But really, it's listening that's the more important skill. >> Yep, I mean, we have seven modules in our product. If I showed you all seven, yes, you would find something of value there, but it would be so much more valuable for your time and mine if I showed you that one thing. >> Right. >> In the context of what you want to do with it. >> So shifting gears a little bit, have you been to Catalyst before? >> This is my second one. >> Right. >> I'm really excited to come back two years in a row. Can't wait to come next year. >> So I'm just curious, from a professional point of view, where do you see the value? Obviously, you're excited now. You're participating. To take a minute out of your day job. We're all busy. We have too many emails, and too many meetings, and too many calls, but to really kind of take a break form that and come, and spend a day, and spend time on the panel, how do you find that valuable? >> For me, it's all about career development. I am making connections. I'm learning so much. I got to speak to Parker Harris this morning about AI and applied AI. I would never have had that opportunity if I stayed at my desk. >> Yeah, well, great. So good luck on your panel. >> Thank you. >> And we'll be watching, and hopefully you'll get some good questions. >> She's Diana. I'm Jeff. You're watching The Cube from Catalyst 2018. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> From San Francisco, it's theCUBE, covering Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference. Brought to you by Girls in Tech. (upbeat music) >> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Downtown San Francisco at Bespoke. It's in the Westfield Shopping Mall, kind of a cool event space up on the fourth floor, and we're at Girls in Tech Catalyst. We were last here a couple years ago in Phoenix, and we're excited to be back. 700 people, really great event, and the program's pretty simple. You've got great women leaders telling their story, and the stories are varied and really cool, and we just got out of Christina's story. She's Christina Kosmowski, global head of customer success at Slack. >> That's right. >> Christina, really good job up there. >> Thank you. >> There was a couple of things I wanted to really kind of jump on that I thought were so important. In the first one you talk about early in your career and raising your hand. When opportunities come up, don't be afraid, raise your hand, go for it. >> Yeah, absolutely. I was always saying, yes to everything. And now I work on saying no to some things. (laughs) >> That's a whole other conversation-- >> I think it's really important that you know there's all those cliches around the fact that you know you've got to go through the window sometimes or you know opportunities are masked and they really are and so just saying yes to everything and really being open to trying new things and learning new experiences will give you opportunities you didn't even realize you had. And so, I always raised my hand, you know, in college to start the soccer team. I raised my hand in my first job to go to Europe and start the London office. I raised my hand to come to Salesforce, at every single point, Salesforce had something new, I said, oh I want to do it and so I was kind of known as the person who always liked to start and build things from scratch. And so, I always wanted to be that yes person and experience these new opportunities. >> And that was huge, I think you said when you started Salesforce, revenue was like 20 million and when you left it was-- >> Almost 10 million, yeah, it's crazy. It was quite a ride, quite a ride. >> But great, cause then you get those opportunities. >> Yeah. >> Another story you were telling which I thought was pretty impactful was, your college soccer experience, you're a soccer player and you know, the difference between putting in your own work and time to achieve something and, you know, nobody ever sees the work that happens when they're not there, but more importantly, bringing along the team. >> Yeah. >> And getting everybody else to buy into your work ethic to raise the performance of the team. I wonder if you can expand on that a little bit. Cause then you said you've used that throughout your career over and over again. >> I have, it was an important lesson. I think, for those that didn't see that speech, I talked about the fact that my freshman year in soccer, it was the first year of the varsity program. We won three games and I was very angry about that and so I spent the next year kind of working my butt off. And so I got to this level but my rest of the team didn't get to the level and so I was able to challenge them to match my level and we were ultimately able to get, you know, into the top six team in the country at the end of my career and that was the first time that I realized it's not just about me. And I've seen that in every step in the way is, I can get there, I can get my idea there, I can work as hard as I can but if I can't empower the team and I can't bring all the cross-functional leaders along with me, we aren't going to achieve what we need to achieve. And at Slack, I've even seen that to be even more of the case, because I've come into a function that's brand new, it started very much as a product-based company versus Salesforce was a little more sales focused. And so it's really important that people understand what our mission is, why it's important, how we can bring these other organizations with us. >> Right, so a great kind of business theme that touched both on Salesforce and at Slack, it's kind of the subscription economy. >> Yes. >> And we've done this conference and we all switched over to our paid Adobe subscription versus trying to find a friend who'll get you a license for a deal at the end of the year. (laughs) But I think the really important thing that you touched on, when you go to subscription economy it really changes the dynamic between you and your customer. And you run customer success. >> I do. >> Because it's not just take the check and send 'em the 15% maintenance bill anymore, now you've got to build a relationship, you've got to deliver value each and every month cause they're paying you each and every month. And so you've translated that into actually building an organization that supports this very different relationship. >> That's right. >> So why don't you tell us, you know, how did that transform? How hard of a sell was that and what's the ultimate outcome with your relationship with the customers? >> I think it's so important to realize that technology is really important, but if we can't apply that into the business setting and to specific outcomes and use cases, it doesn't become valuable over time. And so, we've built an organization that really focuses on customer maturity and value. And so we take it in steps. And so we look at what are those things we can do to give value and outcomes and affect people the way they're working today? And then what does that look like tomorrow, how do we build upon that, and then what does it look like to, they can get to this fully transformed state, and we've done that through a combination of working with product to build features and in-app education, we work with all of our customers to understand what are their needs, we bring people to the table, we bring one to many programs, we've really created this champion network where we are able to allow these peer to peer relationships, and really have this network effect with our customers, and so there's lots of different methods and vehicles that we're doing to really ensure that our customers are getting that outcome. >> Yeah, it's interesting, we cover a lot of the AWS shows and, you know, Jeff Bezos will talk about them just being maniacally customer focused, and lots of companies like to talk about being maniacally customer focused, but most of them are not, they're product focused or they're competitor focused or they're kind of opportunity focused, they're not customer focused. So, how do you build that culture, can you switch if it's not there or does it got to be from the top down at the beginning? >> You can, you can, I think, you know, at Slack, we've been really fortunate it also has that extreme customer focus, but our organization started about 15 months ago, so we brought even more rigor to that, and so there's lots of programs you can do to affect the culture. So, one of the programs we have is a red account program, and one of the things there is really about bringing all the company together to swarm around issues or risks that our customers might have seen, and that's one way that we can start to talk about customer importance. >> What do you call it? >> We call it the customer red account program. >> Red account, so red like treble, because, so you basically-- >> We swarm. >> Swarm, swarm, what a great, swarm meaning a lot of people from a lot of different places. >> Lot of different places, and there's full accountability on all parts of the organization to solve it, because my organization can't solve everything, we're really just the advocates and the facilitators back into, back into Slack, and so that's important that we have that accountability, and we're swarming all around the customer. We have product feedback sessions where we're able to bring that advocacy back, we have a lot of surveys and that promoter score, things where we're measuring and looking for accountability about how we're doing with out customers, and so there's lots of different programs that you can help bring this to light, even in just tactical ways that help ultimately build this culture of customer success. >> See, so like I said, you've got a lot of sniffers in the system to see when you need to call a code red. So, I'm just curious, when you get everyone together, are people surprised where the problems are, is it like, oh, I thought we were doing a great job, and this group's like, no, no, no, you know, you're the problem? >> Sometimes, sometimes, but I think it is really around it being a team effort and really understanding that when issues or challenges expose themselves, there's multiple root causes and you can really understand, okay, part of it could be a product, part of it could be how we supported them, part of it could be in some of our marketing and messaging. And how do we all solve that in a more universal experience? >> All right, last question before I let you go. Just your impressions of the Catalyst today, you said it's your first time here. >> This is my first time here, I am blown away by the energy and excitement and really the quality of speakers and conversations that are happening, I've been hanging around all morning, and just really powerful conversations, and I think I said this in my speech, but we are in a really fortunate time right now, and I think our time is now, and it's so great to see all these women come together, and we, you know, we're the ones that can do this. >> Excellent, we'll see you Amplify later this year. >> Absolutely. >> All right, Christina, well, thanks for stopping by and sharing your story. >> All right, thanks. >> All right, she's Christina, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE, we're at Girls in Tech Catalyst in downtown San Francisco. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> From San Francisco, it's theCUBE. Covering Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference. Brought to you by Girls in Tech. (upbeat music) >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown San Francisco at the Girls in Tech Catalyst event. About 700 professionals, mainly women, a few men a busload of some kids came in to watch as well. And we're really excited to have the founder and CEO of Girls in Tech, Adriana Gascoigne. Adriana, first off congratulations on another great event. >> Thank you! Thanks so much, it's been awesome. All the energy, all the vibrancy in the room everyone's here to learn and grow and listen to these amazingly accomplished speakers from astronauts to venture capitalists to serial entrepreneurs, it's really exciting. >> They're great stories, I mean it's a really cool program just a single track program, single room. And they can have, how many sessions all together probably 30, like 15 a day? >> Lots. >> (chuckling) Lots. More than you can count. >> I think it's about 20 per day and then we also have some breakout sessions like workshops so it's a little more hands-on. We had a cocktail party last night, a lot of networking, a lot of connecting. So a lot of really productive ways of helping careers develop and also finding out about new and interesting opportunities and really connecting with other women in tech. Both in the high-tech sector as well as the start-up sector so it's really cool. >> Just some really simple advice, right? Like raise your hand, take advantage of new opportunities. Go into areas that you don't have expertise in. >> Be authentic, yeah. >> Ask questions. Be authentic, be curious. And that's what I really like. It's good, actionable, simple, straightforward things that you can do to advance your career. >> Exactly, exactly. >> You are everywhere. This organization has grown, (Adriana laughs) I keep an eye out on you on twitter and stuff obviously and you are all over the world so give us kind of an update as to where Girls in Tech is in terms of members and locations and kind of how it's grown over 11 years you've been at it. >> Yeah, over 11 years and our international or global footprint is something we're extremely proud of. We're in 60 chapters, so 60 cities around the world, in 36 countries and in six continents. And now we have over a hundred thousand active members. By the end of 2020, we're increasing that to 200,000 active members, approximately. And we're growing into 45 different cities and hopefully, knock on wood, in 100 chapters. So that's a pretty massive growth spurt that we're experiencing and there's just huge demand. Right now we have a list of over 160 people who want to start chapters in their city which is really telling about what people think about Girls in Tech, how our programs are impacting these tech communities, how we're empowering women to have a voice and really creating change within societies. So for us it's a pride thing but it's also the impact that we're making and really encouraging women to excel in their careers in tech. Whether it's become a manager at a start-up, or a high-tech executive, or start their own company. Everyone has a different path. We want people to find their passion and purpose in life and achieve that. Because if you do what you love and, you know, a lot of us do what we love, some of us don't. But if you do what you love you can be way more productive and happier. And at the end of the day, isn't that our goal? >> Exactly, and so much of the corporate participation has just skyrocketed too, since I think we first saw you a couple years ago in Phoenix. The number of corporate logos on the banner is fantastic. And really, the messages from the people we've talked to today is they not only see the value but want to get more involved and do more events with you guys. 'Cause they see, and it's altruistic a little bit, but it's also real basic business ROI. They need more good people and this is an avenue to get more good people. >> Exactly. I think diversity, inclusion is no longer a buzzword. They're really seeing the ROI in creating diverse workforces. It helps with building revenue. Right, so if you have a more diverse and innovative workforce, then you're able to create products and services that are more diverse, more comprehensive. You have more opportunities to problem solve in a creative way, so really there is a lot of different elements in addition to creating a company culture that's more conducive to creating safety and comfortable work environments for all employees. Minority groups, people of different genders, et cetera. So I think that it's something that is not just like I said, not just a buzzword. It's really important that they incorporate it into their strategy, overall business strategy. Recruiters are now flagging it as something that's extremely important 'cause they are seeing how it really impacts the company and their business. >> Right, really interesting story on the GoDaddy side. We've interviewed GoDaddy a ton of times at Grace Hopper. And I remember like GoDaddy, what are you doing at Grace Hopper? You guys were like the not as Grace Hopper of all. But they changed their culture and the interesting part of the story is it's a lot of little small steps can actually have a really, really big impact. And they've completely turned it and oh by the way, their financials are looking pretty good as well. So it definitely pays. >> Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, GoDaddy was actually my very first sponsor. >> Really? >> Yeah. And so it's really exciting to see that. And people actually asked me, I mean they're so controversial, or they were in their Superbowl ads. Like, why would you go out on a limb and work with them? And I said, well I talked to their whole executive team. They hired this amazing CTO, happens to be a woman. We had multiple discussions about them changing their brand around and you know, everyone deserves a second chance, I believe. And so they ended up supporting not only the organization, but me as their leader, and I owe them a lot for that because we were able to produce the first Catalyst Conference as a result and many other programs. And more importantly start hiring a staff, have money to invest in operations, different resources for our chapters around the world, deploy more programs like our coding boot camps, our amplify business pitch competition, our global classroom which is our e-learning platform, our hacking for humanity series, so GoDaddy is is really, has been really a strong partner to us and we owe them a lot for our success. >> Right, well it's funny too, 'cause she said that they did the analysis and like 60% of their customers were women operating small businesses and it's like, hello, maybe there's a good thing there. >> Yeah, that is the entrepreneurial sector. That is the target, yeah. >> Well I know you're super, super busy. Give you the last word before I let you go, and again, thanks for having us. We're super excited to be back here again. And really, you put on such a great program. >> Thanks so much. Yeah, we always love working with theCUBE and we love you guys having a presence here and capturing the amazing soundbites and stories from our very accomplished speakers who happen to be amazingly passionate and amazingly altruistic. >> Yes, there's no shortage of energy in the room even though they're all a little tired, been a long week. (both laughing) All right well thanks again. >> Thank you. >> She's Adriana, I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching theCUBE from Girls in Tech Catalyst 2018. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> From San Francisco, it's theCUBE, covering Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference, brought to you by Girls in Tech. >> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here at theCUBE. We're in downtown San Francisco at the Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference, about 700 professionals. It's a really cool conference. It's a single track, two days. All the presentations are about 15, 20 minutes of people telling their stories, vast majority of women, a couple of men. I think they brought in some younger kids to get inspired. So we're excited to be here. Been coming for a couple years. And our next guest, many time CUBE alum, I just know her as Sandy Carter. She does have a title, VP of Enterprise Workloads at AWS, but I dunno, Sandy, how long have you been coming on the CUBE, how many years? >> Oh, wow, I don't know. >> Too many to count, and we don't want to admit to it. >> Yeah, it's true, but thank you guys for supporting events like this, Jeff, because I know that you guys have been supporting Women in Tech, and Girls in Tech for so long, and we really appreciate that very much. Thank you. >> And it's so important, and we love to do it, and we especially love when it's right in our backyard. It makes it really easy just to grab some crew and run up here. >> (laughing) That's right. >> So give us an update. You are chairman of the board now, and I think we've probably talked to probably three or four board members today. It's a really impressive group of people, and Adriana has done amazing things with this organization in the last 11 years. And you're sittin' watching it grow internationally, the number of events, the types of events. Give us your perspective. >> Yeah, so I think Girls in Tech is an amazing organization. That's why I decided to join the board and then to take on the chairman of the board position. And the reason I think it's so powerful is that it's really focused on young women, millennial women who are looking to become business owners, leaders, entrepreneurs and who want to apply technology to make themselves more competitive. You know, I know Adriana came up with this in 2007, but even today, the mission and the values are still really relevant. These are the top things that women need to know about today, and this is really about filling up the pipeline, sharing experiences. The conference today, I don't know if you got to hear any of the sessions, but they're really not about, you know, let me do technical skills. It's really about how do you break through the next level, how do you grow your business, how do you scale. And so it's really those type of topics that we can share experiences as experienced businesswomen with others so that they can learn and grow from that. >> Right, and just really simple stuff, like raise your hand, take the new assignment, take a risk. >> You got it, the crooked path. >> The crooked path, that was the one I was looking for. And do something that you don't necessarily have experience in, whether it's finance or accounting or HR or product management, sales. You know, take a risk, and chances are you're going to get paid off for it, and I think those simple lessons are so, so important. And then, of course, which comes up time and time again is just to have role models, senior role models who've been successful, who have an interesting story, they have a crooked path, it wasn't easy it wasn't even defined, but here they are as successful so that the younger women can look up to them. >> Yeah, absolutely, and I think that it's, you know the big message today, I think, for women was have the confidence. Basically that sums up what you just said, right? Be confident, and even if you don't feel confident, show confidence. >> Right, right. >> Which I think is so important.. >> Fake it 'til you make it, right >> That's right. You got it, you got it. >> 'Cause everybody else is, you just don't know it. >> That's right. >> You think they know what they're doing. They're doing the same thing. >> That's right. Well, it's interesting, one of the stats today said that men will apply for a job if they have 60% of the qualifications. Women will only apply if they have between 90 or 95%. So I think being able to know that you're confident and that you're going to make it, that you're going to do things and going ahead and taking that risk is really important. >> So the other big shift that we've seen in this conference is really the corporate sponsorship. So AWS is here obviously. You're here. You're on the board. But the amount of logos, the size of the companies on the logos has really grown a lot since I think we were first at this one in Phoenix in 2016. >> Phoenix, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. >> So not only, again, is that the right thing to do, but it's also really good business to get involved, and you great ROI for being involved in these types of organizations. >> That's right. You know, innovation is really about having diversity of thought, and so having women, having different colleges, having different sexual orientation, just diversity really helps you to innovate. >> Right. >> 93% of CEOs said that innovation is their number one competitive advantage. So we're seeing a lot of companies now pick up on that and know that they've got to come and they've got to be attractive, not only as a company that people would want to work at, an employer, but also just as a company that you might want to do business with. So today, I love the story of GoDaddy. She was saying GoDaddy was targeting small businesses. Well, most of those are run by women, but they weren't doing the right targeting. So I think it's a phenomenal change that we're seeing with companies like this doing the support. AWS, Amazon Web Services is proud to be one of the major sponsors. We had Charlie, one of our SVPs on stage today, chatting about lessons he've learned, but we've also don't things like understanding how women are buying, and we're doing focus groups, and we're doing different things like that to really help us gain insight. >> Right, so final question, from the board point of view as you look forward in the expansion opportunities, they seem almost unlimited between the countries, the participants and the variation in types of events that you guys are undertaking. It's really quite a bit to bite off. >> Well, you know, we have kind of a two prong mission. One is for entrepreneurs, and so you're seeing us really emphasize classes and things like our Amplify event where we have women come and pitch ideas that really grow that side of the business. In fact, I was just in Cuba last week, on behalf of Girls in Tech, talking to female entrepreneurs there and how we could help them because they really want us to set up some classes there to teach these entrepreneurs how to grow. And the second prong of our mission is around technology and coding. So we've got classes. We've got things with AWS like We Power Tech, so that women can learn technology and use it for their competitive advantage. So while it seems like we're doing a lot of things, it's really around that two prong mission, entrepreneurship and that coding technology focus. >> Alright, well, Sandy, thanks again for stopping by, and really congratulations to you, not only in what you do at AWS, but really just some very, very important work with Girls in Tech. >> Great, thank you, and thank you for being so supportive. We appreciate it very much. >> Our pleasure. Alright, She's Sandy Carter. I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE from Girls in Tech Catalyst in downtown San Francisco. Thanks for watchin'. (upbeat electronic music)

(upbeat music) >> From San Francisco, it's The Cube, covering Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference. Brought to you by Girls in Tech. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here, with The Cube. We're at Downtown San Francisco, Girls in Tech Catalyst. Great event. We've been coming for a couple of years. About 700 professionals, mainly women, a few men, and I think they brought in a busload of kids to get inspired, talking about their stories, and really, it's a series. It's a one-track conference, two days, about 20 minute talks and really good stuff. Really great content. Check it out online if you didn't register this year. Make sure you come next year, and we're excited to have our next guest, Cube alum, really from one of the hottest companies in tech right now, she's Wendy Pfeifer, the CIO of Nutanix. Wendy, great to see you again. >> Hey, nice to see you, Jeff. >> Absolutely, so we see you at Nutanix Next all the time, but we haven't seen you at Girls in Tech. >> Yeah. >> So how long have you been involved in Girls in Tech? >> So, I've been involved since the very first meet up, more than 10 years ago. Girls in Tech was very inspiring to me, and I was here at the Catalyst Conference last year, and I'm a member of the board of Girls in Tech as well, so I'm able to give back and provide some leadership at that level. >> So we just had Adriana on, and she was going through-- >> Yeah. >> Some of the numbers, I mean, the growth of this organization, second to Nutanix, is off the chart. >> Yeah. >> I mean, really amazing. >> It really is amazing, you know. In some ways our time has come. Adriana's had this big vision for a really long time. Really focused on educating women, helping them to understand the potential of careers in tech, and technology knowledge, and that's a global message, and a message that resonates at every age level, and in lots of different sectors of society, so it's juts a privilege to be able to partner with her and others on the board, to enable the vision, and Nutanix as well, you know, is donating, is present here at these conferences, and partnering at Catalyst and Amplify, and other parts of the organization. >> Right, because it's not only the right thing to do, it's also good business, which has been proven time and time again. >> Absolutely, and you know, it's kind of taken on this passion, mission, just excitement thing, but it is practical as well and you know, all the studies, I'm sure so many folks have talked with you about this. There's so many studies, there's so much research that says diversity brings better decision-making, better product development. >> Right. >> And better satisfaction in our work environments as well. >> Right. The other thing that struck me talking to Adriana, and I guess I just didn't know, kind of the breadth of types of activities that Girls in Tech's put on. So we've been to Catalyst before. We've been to-- the Pitch Night, Amplify-- >> Amplify, yeah. >> But I didn't know, she's running, you know, there's all kinds of different-- types of things. >> Absolutely. I think the underlying passion is for education. If you think about, particularly people in underserved communities, there is a real opportunity, you know coding, and learning to code, learning to interact with computers; that's a language that transcends geographic boundaries, ethnic boundaries, age, and religious boundaries, and it's something that, you know ever since my days at Yahoo, I really felt like technology could bring the world together, and today in particular, there is so much disparity between women and men and their access to technology education and technology careers. >> Right. >> That this is, you know, more than just creating a level playing field. I think we're making our own playing field. We're not going to their playing field, anymore. We're creating our own at locations like this. >> Right, and clearly a bunch of founders are here today, who've-- >> Yeah. >> Started their own companies. But the other thing I think is interesting, is culture keeps coming up time and time again in all these conversations, and Adriana's built a culture starting, always from the top down, with the board. It's a phenomenal board of professional women-- >> Yes. >> That she's pulled together of this organization. >> Yeah, there are a couple of males on the board, too. I want to make sure I point out. >> Yep. >> Because we're a diverse board as well, but she has. She has brought together people who are leaders in the technology space, but also folks who are passionate about building a healthy nonprofit organization; one that's global, one that can scale, and so we also look at the fundamentals, and the business fundamentals as well, so we are expanding from 60 to 100 countries, and from 100,000 members to 200,000 members, I mean, who would think, right? >> Right, right, right. >> It's extraordinary. Even then, though, those 200,000 women are a drop in the bucket, compared to the 50% of the global population-- >> Right. >> Who are female. >> Right. And then you work at Nutanix. Super hot-- >> Yeah. >> I don't want to say startup anymore. You guys have IPO'd. >> Right, right. >> But, you know, but you're livin' it in terms of trying to get enough, good, qualified talent-- >> Yes. >> Just to feed the one engine that I Nutanix, so it's a real-- >> Yeah. >> Demand in the market place. >> Definitely, that's the case, you know, we sort of struggle with the thought, you know, are there just not enough women candidates in these fields, but what we learn at conferences like this is, that there are enough women candidates, but we don't necessarily recognize those women, and we don't know where to find them, and they may not find the sort of work that we represent to be attractive. And so we're sort of trying to change how we speak and think. Culture is a good word, but it's a revolution. It's a cultural revolution in terms of identifying talent where it sits. We spoke a lot in the last day and a half around blended careers, the bringing together of art and technology, or communication and technology, and the fact is that technology just underscores everything we do-- >> Right. >> Nowadays. >> Right. >> And so, you know, having people who can blend those things, is a real advantage, and women have this ability to take a multi-faceted approach to the work that we do and the way that we live our lives. We multi-task as a sport. >> Right, right. It's interesting, too, as the machines get better and as A.I. gets better, machine learning, the softer skills applied with the context become so much more important than necessarily just the super hard-core coding skills. >> You know, I have a story around that. So, we've just deployed, my IT department has deployed a machine-learning tool at Nutanix, to replace a lot of the interactions that happen on our help desk, and we found we just couldn't scale as the company was scaling, so we've been training A.I. from a company called Moveworks, and you know, we've been training it uniquely with our voice, and I think a little bit with my voice, and I just had one of our employees write back to me and say, "Not only is this thing", we call it Xbot, "Not only is Xbot solving my problems, but", he said, "she is pretty sassy, too." And I'm like, yay, he knows it's a she! >> Right, right. >> Right, and she's sassy too, so yeah, that unique voice-- >> Right. >> Is infusing even the machine-learning training that we're doing-- >> Right. >> And I think that makes for a more delightful experience-- >> Right. >> For all of us. >> It's funny, the voice thing, 'cause you know, Google had their very famous, the restaurant reservation call-in demo-- >> Yes! >> They got capped on a little bit-- >> Right. >> For, you know, was it real or not, but what made it so, so dramatic was the human-like elements in the conversation of the machine-- with ums, and ahs-- >> Absolutely. >> And uhs, and pauses, which we laugh about, 'cause we can shoot Cube interviews, everybody wants to cut those parts out, and we're like no, that's what makes people, people. >> Right, exactly, I agree with you. And at the same time, you know, there are, you know, things that are uniquely female stereotypes. We're more wordy. We have more things to say. >> Right. >> You know, we're more multi-dimensional. We can hold two thoughts at the same time, and so that's part of the richness of communication and our interaction too, but to the extent to which we can embed that in our technologies and our interactions, those are the extent to which they'll be more delightful-- >> Right. >> It's no coincidence that Siri and Cortana and all of those A.I.s sort of have this female persona, and I don't know if you know this, the, you know, Cortana, who's the Microsoft, you know, A.I., you know, she's voiced by the same character that's Cortana in one of their video games-- >> Oh, really? >> And she's sort of this like, badass fighter gal, too, so check it out. >> Well, we know what happened to Bob, right? >> Right. >> I know, poor Bob. >> Which, ironically, was Melinda Gates's project. Which, I don't know if you knew-- that story. >> I did not know that. >> So yeah, Melinda Gates's introduction to Bill was as product manager for Bob, which, if you don't know that story, check it out. It's old history. >> Oh, that's-- fantastic! >> But it's very good. Alright, before I let you go, one last thing. >> Yes. >> So you spoke, and they've got these great posters all around the room with little highlights from people's-- >> Yes. >> Conversations and yours was, I described it off the wall, "It's okay to be bad." >> Yes. >> I'd love, for the people that missed it, what's the message there? It's an important message. >> Yeah. >> Especially for women. >> Yeah, I think as women, you know, we don't have a lot of role models and when I get up as a role model, I'm one of the few CIO's who's female and Silicon Valley. You know, we give these speeches, and they sort of make us like Mother Teresa, you know. First you hae your mission in mind, and you lean in, and you do all these awesome things. But the fact is, it is actually okay, to be yourself. It's okay to be bitchy. It's okay to be cranky. It's okay for anger to fuel you. It's okay to be aggressive, and even if your male counterparts tell you otherwise, or say, "Wow, that's "unseemly.", I think it's just okay. We don't have to be pure and perfect in order to be successful. I can be those things all at the same time. And I also say, it's also okay to be good, to be merciful, to be soft-spoken, to be wordy, to be studious; that combination of things. We're allowed to be our genuine selves, and we don't have to be perfect to be successful and I feel like I embody that-- in particular. >> Yes, you certainly do. You certainly do! >> What, I'm not perfect? >> Yes, I mean the Nutanix story is a phenomenal story. >> It is. We are fortunate, we've been there since the beginning-- >> Absolutely. >> Watching it grow, and so no-- >> Helping us to frame the story, so thanks to The Cube. I appreciate that. >> Well, and you're super successful, and the company's successful so the fact that are Wendy, you know, you are who you are. You're a big personality, and it comes through, and it's great, and it works, and you're successful, so, if they need someone to look up to, you're certainly a fantastic role model. >> Thank you so much. Well I appreciate that. It's funny, 'cause I have never tried to be a role model, and now, just by accident, I've survived long enough. Here I am. (both laughing) >> Well that's a whole different conversation-- >> Right, right. >> You just look around like, I am the oldest guy in the room. But that's a different thing. >> I know. You're actually the only guy, just sayin'. >> Alright, well Wendy thanks for takin' a few minutes, and I guess we'll see you next at Nutanix next, if not sooner. >> I look forward to it, thanks. >> Alright, thanks. She's Wendy, I'm Jeff, you're watching The Cube from women, or Girls in Tech Catalyst 2018. (upbeat music)

>> From San Francisco, it's The Cube covering Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference, brought to you by Girls in Tech. >> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here with The Cube. We're in downtown San Francisco at the Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference 2018. About 700 professionals, mainly women, a couple of men, a couple of busloads of younger people coming in to get inspired. And we're excited to be here. It's a single track event, two days, probably 20 presentations per day of people really sharing their story. And we're excited to have Diana Cappello. She's the lead solutions engineer from Clari. Just before you get into your talk, right? >> Exactly, yes. >> So welcome. >> Thank you. >> So, what's your talk going to be on? >> I'm leading a panel on the topic of innovation. So we've got four amazing women, two co-founders, two product managers. >> Okay, so clearly, diversity of opinion, diversity of thought, diversity of point of view, diversity of problem solving. It's a huge piece of the innovation game. >> Absolutely. And so, that was the challenge for me, is with this broad set of speakers, how do you tie it together in a theme? So we're focusing on emerging technologies. So AI, big data number crunching. >> Right. So it seems to me that the solution to innovation, one of the solutions, there's a couple simple things, one is kind of just give more people access to the data, give more people access to the tools to manipulate the data, and then give more people the access to actually do something once they get the data out of tools on top of the data so they can actually be empowered to make change. And a lot of companies never have done that in the past. But really with the democratization of the data, the tools, and hopefully the control, that's one of the big engines that we see. What do you think? >> That's absolutely the key. So we are thinking of it in the reverse in our panel. What's the problem that you're trying to solve, and then how can you leverage big data and these merging technologies to solve that problem in the real world. >> Right. So how do you, in your day to day life, how do you make sure that you guys are staying innovative? How do you make sure that the quiet voice in the back actually gets heard? Or the person that doesn't necessarily have the social capital, or the title capital, or whatever the capital is to make an influence, that that voice gets added to the conversation? >> So that's my role as a lead solutions engineer, is to listen. The number one thing that we do when we meet a customer is listen to the problems that they're experiencing, and then listen to the goals that they have, the objectives that they want, the outcomes. And then we think about how can we meet their need with the technology. So, number one thing for lead solution engineer, and for anyone else in tech, is listen to your customer. >> You don't just stand up in front and tell them all the great stuff that you do? >> I would love to. (laughing) I could talk all day. >> No, it's so funny, right? 'Cause so many people, that's what they do. Instead, they don't listen. They're just, they're so excited. And I think, especially in a product management role, you see it a lot where people are just so excited, so passionate about the things that they built that sometimes that's all they want to do is just ell that story, and maybe more the story than the customer needs to hear, is ready to hear, or cares about hearing. But really, it's listening that's the more important skill. >> Yep, I mean, we have seven modules in our product. If I showed you all seven, yes, you would find something of value there, but it would be so much more valuable for your time and mine if I showed you that one thing. >> Right. >> In the context of what you want to do with it. >> So shifting gears a little bit, have you been to Catalyst before? >> This is my second one. >> Right. >> I'm really excited to come back two years in a row. Can't wait to come next year. >> So I'm just curious, from a professional point of view, where do you see the value? Obviously, you're excited now. You're participating. To take a minute out of your day job. We're all busy. We have too many emails, and too many meetings, and too many calls, but to really kind of take a break form that and come, and spend a day, and spend time on the panel, how do you find that valuable? >> For me, it's all about career development. I am making connections. I'm learning so much. I got to speak to Parker Harris this morning about AI and applied AI. I would never have had that opportunity if I stayed at my desk. >> Yeah, well, great. So good luck on your panel. >> Thank you. >> And we'll be watching, and hopefully you'll get some good questions. >> She's Diana. I'm Jeff. You're watching The Cube from Catalyst 2018. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> From San Francisco, it's theCUBE. Covering Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference. Brought to you by Girls in Tech. (upbeat music) >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown San Francisco at the Girls in Tech Catalyst event. About 700 professionals, mainly women, a few men a busload of some kids came in to watch as well. And we're really excited to have the founder and CEO of Girls in Tech, Adriana Gascoigne. Adriana, first off congratulations on another great event. >> Thank you! Thanks so much, it's been awesome. All the energy, all the vibrancy in the room everyone's here to learn and grow and listen to these amazingly accomplished speakers from astronauts to venture capitalists to serial entrepreneurs, it's really exciting. >> They're great stories, I mean it's a really cool program just a single track program, single room. And they can have, how many sessions all together probably 30, like 15 a day? >> Lots. >> (chuckling) Lots. More than you can count. >> I think it's about 20 per day and then we also have some breakout sessions like workshops so it's a little more hands-on. We had a cocktail party last night, a lot of networking, a lot of connecting. So a lot of really productive ways of helping careers develop and also finding out about new and interesting opportunities and really connecting with other women in tech. Both in the high-tech sector as well as the start-up sector so it's really cool. >> Just some really simple advice, right? Like raise your hand, take advantage of new opportunities. Go into areas that you don't have expertise in. >> Be authentic, yeah. >> Ask questions. Be authentic, be curious. And that's what I really like. It's good, actionable, simple, straightforward things that you can do to advance your career. >> Exactly, exactly. >> You are everywhere. This organization has grown, (Adriana laughs) I keep an eye out on you on twitter and stuff obviously and you are all over the world so give us kind of an update as to where Girls in Tech is in terms of members and locations and kind of how it's grown over 11 years you've been at it. >> Yeah, over 11 years and our international or global footprint is something we're extremely proud of. We're in 60 chapters, so 60 cities around the world, in 36 countries and in six continents. And now we have over a hundred thousand active members. By the end of 2020, we're increasing that to 200,000 active members, approximately. And we're growing into 45 different cities and hopefully, knock on wood, in 100 chapters. So that's a pretty massive growth spurt that we're experiencing and there's just huge demand. Right now we have a list of over 160 people who want to start chapters in their city which is really telling about what people think about Girls in Tech, how our programs are impacting these tech communities, how we're empowering women to have a voice and really creating change within societies. So for us it's a pride thing but it's also the impact that we're making and really encouraging women to excel in their careers in tech. Whether it's become a manager at a start-up, or a high-tech executive, or start their own company. Everyone has a different path. We want people to find their passion and purpose in life and achieve that. Because if you do what you love and, you know, a lot of us do what we love, some of us don't. But if you do what you love you can be way more productive and happier. And at the end of the day, isn't that our goal? >> Exactly, and so much of the corporate participation has just skyrocketed too, since I think we first saw you a couple years ago in Phoenix. The number of corporate logos on the banner is fantastic. And really, the messages from the people we've talked to today is they not only see the value but want to get more involved and do more events with you guys. 'Cause they see, and it's altruistic a little bit, but it's also real basic business ROI. They need more good people and this is an avenue to get more good people. >> Exactly. I think diversity, inclusion is no longer a buzzword. They're really seeing the ROI in creating diverse workforces. It helps with building revenue. Right, so if you have a more diverse and innovative workforce, then you're able to create products and services that are more diverse, more comprehensive. You have more opportunities to problem solve in a creative way, so really there is a lot of different elements in addition to creating a company culture that's more conducive to creating safety and comfortable work environments for all employees. Minority groups, people of different genders, et cetera. So I think that it's something that is not just like I said, not just a buzzword. It's really important that they incorporate it into their strategy, overall business strategy. Recruiters are now flagging it as something that's extremely important 'cause they are seeing how it really impacts the company and their business. >> Right, really interesting story on the GoDaddy side. We've interviewed GoDaddy a ton of times at Grace Hopper. And I remember like GoDaddy, what are you doing at Grace Hopper? You guys were like the not as Grace Hopper of all. But they changed their culture and the interesting part of the story is it's a lot of little small steps can actually have a really, really big impact. And they've completely turned it and oh by the way, their financials are looking pretty good as well. So it definitely pays. >> Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, GoDaddy was actually my very first sponsor. >> Really? >> Yeah. And so it's really exciting to see that. And people actually asked me, I mean they're so controversial, or they were in their Superbowl ads. Like, why would you go out on a limb and work with them? And I said, well I talked to their whole executive team. They hired this amazing CTO, happens to be a woman. We had multiple discussions about them changing their brand around and you know, everyone deserves a second chance, I believe. And so they ended up supporting not only the organization, but me as their leader, and I owe them a lot for that because we were able to produce the first Catalyst Conference as a result and many other programs. And more importantly start hiring a staff, have money to invest in operations, different resources for our chapters around the world, deploy more programs like our coding boot camps, our amplify business pitch competition, our global classroom which is our e-learning platform, our hacking for humanity series, so GoDaddy is is really, has been really a strong partner to us and we owe them a lot for our success. >> Right, well it's funny too, 'cause she said that they did the analysis and like 60% of their customers were women operating small businesses and it's like, hello, maybe there's a good thing there. >> Yeah, that is the entrepreneurial sector. That is the target, yeah. >> Well I know you're super, super busy. Give you the last word before I let you go, and again, thanks for having us. We're super excited to be back here again. And really, you put on such a great program. >> Thanks so much. Yeah, we always love working with theCUBE and we love you guys having a presence here and capturing the amazing soundbites and stories from our very accomplished speakers who happen to be amazingly passionate and amazingly altruistic. >> Yes, there's no shortage of energy in the room even though they're all a little tired, been a long week. (both laughing) All right well thanks again. >> Thank you. >> She's Adriana, I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching theCUBE from Girls in Tech Catalyst 2018. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)