>> Announcer: From San Francisco it's theCUBE. Covering Red Hat Summit 2018. Brought to you by Red Hat. >> Welcome back, everyone. We are here live in San Francisco, the Moscone West for the Red Hat Summit and we're covering three days of wall-to-wall coverage. I'm John Furrier with my co-host John Troyer. Our next guest is Jennifer Cloer, creator and executive producer of The Chasing Grace Project, formerly CUBE alumni, was on at the CloudNOW awards at Google. Great to see you. >> Great to see you, thanks for having me. >> So obvioulsy Open Source has been amazing growth, okay, and it has kind of democratized software. >> Right. >> You've got a project in my opinion that I think is democratizing, getting the word out on the tech issues around women in tech and more importantly, it's inspirational, but it's also informational. Take a minute and explain what is the project Chasing Grace? Obviously Grace, Grace Hopper. >> Right. Right, The Chasing Grace Project is a documentary series of six episodes about women in tech. The name does lend itself to Grace. We named it after Grace Hopper because she really exemplifies the grit and the excellence that we're all chasing all the time. It's also this idea that we're chasing the idea of grace in the face of adversity. It's not always easy but the women who we've interviewed and talked to exhibit amazing grace and are super inspiring. So the series doesn't shy away from adversity but it certainly focuses on stories of resilience. >> And when did you start the project and is there episodes? Is it on Netflix? >> Yes. >> Is it on DVD? >> (laughs) Let's hope. We hope so. We started the project, excuse me, about a year and a half ago. I put a call for stories out in a number of women in tech forums I belong to, was inundated with responses. Women are ready to share their stories. Spent every Friday for about four or five months on back-to-back calls with women, produced the trailer last May, a year ago, released it in September, and since then it's been a whirlwind. Lots of interest. Lots of men and women wanting to share their stories, as well as people wanting to underwrite the work, which is fabulous because it relies on sponsors. So yeah, we're about a year and a half in. We just finished episode one and screened it. We've got four or five more to go so we're early. We're early, but it's happening. >> And share some stories because I saw the trailer, it's phenomenal. There's women in tech and the culture of the bro culture, people talk about that all the time. It's male-dominated and you're seeing here with Red Hat Summit, there's women here but it's still dominated by men. >> Right. >> The culture has to evolve and I think a lot of men are smart and see it. Some aren't and some are learning. I would call learning a bigger (laughs) percentage. >> Sure. >> What are you finding that women who are really driving the change has been the big trend line? And how's the men reacting? Because the men have to be involved, too because they also have to take responsibility for the change. >> Absolutely, absolutely. I would say that by women sharing their stories we are starting to change culture. I'm actually keynoting today at the Women's Leadership lunch at Red Hat Summit. I'm going to talk about that, the impact of story on cultural change because there's a lot of reasons cited for the decline of women in tech, because we've gone backwards. There's actually fewer than ever before. But many things are cited. So the pipeline issue, poor education, but the biggest thing cited is the culture and the culture has changed over the course of the last decade in particular. So the women we've talked to, their stories of resilience are starting to change that culture. When people talk and share experiences and stories, there's empathy that comes from both men and women who hear those stories and I think that that starts to change culture. It's starting to happen. I think we are pivoting, it's happening. But there's still a lot of work to do. >> John Troyer: Jennifer, at the keynote, or at the luncheon here, the Women's Leadership luncheon, anything else that you'll be bringing up? That sounds like part of your message here that you're going to be bringing today and you want to share right before you go up? >> Yeah, sure. So like I said, I'll talk about the impact of story on culture. I'll talk about the stories of resilience. I'm going to share a few stories from women who we've actually interviewed and featured in episode one. Because you can't see episode one online because we're in discussions with distributors, I'm going to share those stories with this audience. And I think folks can, like I said, learn from those and gain empathy and walk away hopefully with action. >> That seems great. The storytelling of course is key, right? We're in an interesting place in our culture today and I think social media, the 10 or 20 years of social media that we've had is part of that. I know my feed is filled with incredible women leaders in tech and frankly it's much better for it. But you know, you do sense a sense of almost weariness in some folks because this is one, they get shit on, can I say that? >> Hey, it's digital TV, there's no censorship. >> But also you'd like to eventually, if you're a woman in tech, you'd like to be able to talk about tech, not just being a woman in tech. >> Right, right. >> I guess, is that just at the part, is that just where we are in society right now? >> I think so and you know, it's a marathon, not a sprint, right? It's going to take a long time. It took a long time to get us to this place, it's going to take a long time to move us forward. But yeah, women do want to build tech and not have to advocate for themselves. Hopefully projects like The Chasing Grace Project and other work that's happening out there, there's a lot of initiatives that have sprung up in the last few years, are helping to do that so that the women who are building can build. >> What's your big takeaway from the work you've done so far? It could be something that didn't surprise you that you knew was pretty obvious and what surprised you? What's some of the things that's come out of it that's personal learnings for you? >> I think the power that comes from giving women a platform to be seen and heard for their experiences. Almost every woman I've talked to says I feel so alone. They're in an office with mostly men. There might be another woman but they feel so alone and when they share their stories and they see other women sharing their stories, they know they're not alone. There may be few of them but the stories are very similar. I think that men learn a lot when they see women sharing their stories, too because they don't know. The experiences that we all have are very different. We're walking through the same industry but our day-to-day experiences are quite different. Learning what that's like, both for women, for men, there are men that are going to be featured in this series, and women of other women. Just the power in that. Most women tell me I don't really have a story. Well, you both know that when you dig a little bit, >> They all have stories. >> everybody has a story. Everybody has a story, multiple stories. So, yeah. >> So let me as you a question. This has come up in some of my interviews on women in tech and that is is that it kind of comes up subtlety, it's not really put out there, like you said, aggressively. But they say there's also a women women pressure. So how have you found that come up? Because it's not just women and men. I've heard women say there's pressure, there's other pressures from other women. Do more or do less and it's kind of an individual thing but it's also kind of code, as well to stick together. At the same time, there's a women and women dynamic. >> Yeah. >> What have you found on that? >> Mostly I've found, I think there's a shift happening, mostly I've found that women are forming community and supporting each other. Everyone has a different definition of feminism or womenism (laughs) as some women have called it, but I think there are some women who have told me, usually the older generations who have told me there's only room for one woman at the table. One woman makes it to leadership and she's very protective of that space. But we're seeing that less and less. >> I don't want to turn this into, you hate to turn this into a versus scenario, right? Especially online I see a lot of interaction of men coming up and saying, either trying to explain to women what their problem is or, but also saying educate me, like take your time to educate me because I can't be bothered to figure it out myself. Or also trying to stand up themselves and lead the charge. So one of my personal things I do, I sit back and let the women talk and listen to them about what they want to do. >> Right. >> Any particular advice you have for folks who are listening and who might want to, you know, what do you do? I guess sit down and pay attention. >> Yeah, I'd say listen to the stories. Listen to what women need and want out of their male allies and advocates. And listen to the women who you already are friends and colleagues with. What do they need from you? Start there. And then build your way out. I remember when I first started The Chasing Grace Project, I was actually advised by people, well don't feature men at all because they can't speak for women and that's very true but I've decided that we will feature both men and women because we're all part of the industry, right? When I talk about the future is being built by all of us. We need more women in leadership. We don't need just women in leadership, we need men and women. So I think though, right now at this moment in time men should listen and ask their, like I said, their inside circle of women that are friends and colleagues, what can I do? What do you need in terms of my support? >> And it's inclusion, too. There's a time to have certain, all women and then men, as well. >> Right. >> Kind of the right balance. >> Right. >> Well, I have to ask you obvioulsy, Red Hat is an Open Source world. Community is huge. Obviously tech has a community and some will argue how robust it is (laughs) >> Right. (laughs) >> and fair it is. And communities have their own personality, but the role of the community becomes super critical. Can you just share your thoughts and views of how the role of the community can up its game a bit on inclusion and diversity? And I put inclusion first because inclusion and diversity, that seems to be the trend in my interviews, diversity and inclusion, and now it's inclusion and diversity. But the community has some self-policing mechanisms. There's kind of a self-governance dynamic of communities. So it's an opportunity. >> It is an opportunity. >> So what's your view? >> There are a lot of things that are talked about within the Open Source community in terms of how to advance inclusion in a positive way. One is enforcement. So at events like this, there's a code of conduct. They've become very popular. Everybody has one, for good reason, but everybody's doing them now. I worked at The Linux Foundation for 12 years. When you have an incident at an event, if you don't enforce your code of conduct, it doesn't mean anything. So I think that's one very tangible example of something you can do. We certainly tried at The Linux Foundation, but I remember it was a challenge. If something happened, what was the level of issue and how would we enforce that and address it? So I think the community can do that. I think start there, yeah. >> What's your take on The Linux Foundation, since you brought it up? Lots going on there. >> Right. >> You've got CNCF is exploding in growth. >> Jennifer: Right. >> Part of that, Jim Zemlin is doing a great job. As you look at The Linux Foundation since you have the history, >> Yeah. >> where it's come from and where it's going, what's your view of that? >> My goodness. I was part of The Linux Foundation before it was called The Linux Foundation. It was called Open Source Development Labs, way, way, back. But you know, always impressed with what The Linux Foundation is doing. CNCF in particular is on fire. I watched my social media feeds last week about KubeCon in Copenhagen, a lot of friends there. You know, Open Source is the underpinning of society. If the world we live in is a digital one and we're building that digital existence for tomorrow, the infrastructure is Open Source. So it's just going to become more and more relevant. >> And they're doing a great job. And it's an opportunity with the community again to change things. >> Yeah. >> There's a good mindset in the Open Source community with Linux Foundation. Very growth-oriented, growth mindset. Love the vibe there. They've got good vibes. >> Yeah. >> They're very open and inclusive. >> There's some projects that are really prioritizing. DNI, one of which is Cloud Foundry Foundation. Abby Kearns is doing an amazing job there. The Node.js community I think is pretty progressive. So yeah, it's encouraging. >> Abby was on theCUBE. We were there in Copenhagen. >> Right, right. >> Thanks for coming on. >> My pleasure. >> What's next for you? Your life's a whirlwind. Take a quick minute. >> Yeah, I'm in Chicago next week for a shoot. We're shooting episode two which is focused on women in leadership roles. There's only 11% of executive positions in Silicon Valley are held by women. So it's a provocative topic because a lot of women haven't experienced that so we want more to do that. >> Well, if you need any men for the next show, John and I will happily volunteer. >> Okay, wonderful. >> To be stand-ins and backdrops. >> Fantastic, thank you. >> Thanks for coming on. It's theCUBE coverage here live, Moscone West in San Francisco for Red Hat Summit 2018. We'll be back with more coverage after this short break.

you hi I'm Lisa Martin with the cube on the ground at Google for the 6th annual cloud now top women and cloud awards event and we're very excited to be joined by our next guest jennifer clora the executive producer of the chasing Grace Project welcome to the cube thank you this project is so interesting I was telling you before we went on that I watched the trailer for it and tell us a little bit about the chasing Grace Project what your plans are for this dunkey series being being released and really the the inspiration sure so it's a documentary series of six episodes about women in tech it really talks about the culture of tech the adversities that women face doesn't shy away from those but moves pretty quickly to inspirational stories of women who have navigated a successful path in tech so that other women can learn from those experiences and join us in tech and for those women thinking about leaving maybe inspire them to stay and give them the tools they need to navigate their own paths forward I love that I was very impressed with some of the women that are featured even in the trailer of how honest they were being did you find that they felt either intimidated to share or maybe liberated to say this is what's going on there needs to be voices and faces to it yeah I think there I think women are feeling empowered right now to talk and when they share their stories they're even more empowered by the community of men and women that come around them and give them support so the women that are on camera volunteered to be so I put out a call for stories in a number of places Irish I was inundated with responses I spent four months the beginning of the year interviewing over a hundred women and trying to understand what the collective experience is for women in tech and so these women are not intimidated they're they're powerful amazing women who I am in awe of their courage what were some of the common maybe that the top two or three kind of common challenges that you heard over and over again that women in tech regardless of if they're in marketing like one you and I are or in engineering that they're facing access to opportunity they seem to feel like they hit a wall you know there's the talk about the ceiling but a lot of them talk about they hit a wall that others don't see but all of a sudden they can't go any further a lot of microaggressions that we've all heard and read about dismissiveness being overlooked in medians and for promotions our first episode is on the pay gap we've heard stories about women who have found out their male counterparts are making more than them and the differences and when they confront their bosses and when they don't so a lot of different examples we have some very explicit stories about online harassment there's some of that in the trailer one of the women Cassady shares a really amazing story about that so they vary but certainly it's happening right and we don't want to shy away from that because I think once you acknowledge what's happening and tell those stories you can start to chart the course forward I agree I think that awareness is incredibly important you are also in technology tell me a little bit about your career path in technology did you always aspire to be in tech were you interested in engineering in software or was this sort of a zigzaggy path to where you are now it wasn't a zigzaggy path I went to journalism school and studied communications and my first job out of college was during the dot-com bubble if you will and so I went into tech it was a lucrative you know career path and I fell in love with it at first it was very intimidating because I didn't speak the language but I learned the language and I learned to work with entrepreneurs I've worked with a lot of startups and translating really amazing vision into stories that anyone can understand and so that's been my pathway through tech and I'm grateful to be here and like I said I think one of the one the the mission of the chasing Grace project is to recruit and retain female talent because we as an industry needs you know a diverse workforce but also women need opportunities to these types of careers they're the most lucrative careers in the world and so that economic opportunity for women as individuals and the need that we have in the industry just put underscores the need for these types of stories to be told definitely so we're at the cloud now six annual top women and cloud awards event how did you come to be involved with cloud now and what are some what if some of your perspectives of now being involved with it yeah so I met Jocelyn the founder of cloud now just a few months ago we were introduced through mutual colleagues and she watched the trailer of the chasing Grace project and said you have to come to the event I want to share your project with our community which was so amazing to hear and so I'm super grateful to be here and to be sharing the trailer a little bit later at the event as well as exhibiting for the first time our photo exhibit called persistence that accompanies the documentary so we will host a photo exhibit at every screening of each episode and that will grow over time as more and more women are photographed for the project but the very first showing is here at the event so we were really excited to be able to do that exciting yeah so uses a six-part series correct when can people expect to start seeing episodes so the first episode is is expected around the end of February 18 2018 exactly we're in post-production now on Episode one we shot it a couple weeks ago and we're already planning episode 2 and when our shoot will be in early probably the first two three months of the year so we expect to release episodes every eight to twelve weeks so that people kind of stay connected and and we can bridge episode to episode for example the first episodes on the pay gap the second episode we think may be on female founders and there's a bridge between women who feel like they aren't being paid fairly to wanting to become the owners of their own companies so they can determine their own worth so so we want to make sure there's continuity in the episodes so as you've gone through and and you said interviewed 100 plus women in the last year what are some of the things that inspire you with the chasing grace project that you feel like we're gonna make a difference here yeah I'm inspired by the courage of these women you know there's so much more awareness about women in tech now among both men and women but a lot of times when women speak up they become that women in the office you know that woman who you know is talking and causing trouble and complaining and that's not the case these women are sharing stories that are important for all of us to understand to build a better future through technology so I'm inspired by their courage because it's no small thing to go on camera and talk about your personal story in hopes that it can help other women and help men also be a part of that conversation so I'm inspired by the courage of the women and that's you know I get notes now you know back from women who are part of the project when they see something go live the trailer the photo exhibit today that are just like I'm so excited to be a part of this and I feel empowered and I found my voice I didn't even know I had a story most the time they tell me and they do so I mean I'm inspired by that I love that and it's so great that that they're not intimidated that they are feeling empowered that they have a voice mm-hmm they matter and what they're doing should be valued there should be no differences would be great if we actually get to a world where there aren't it right we're headed there being more attention and eyes to it thank you I'll get there Thank You Jennifer thank you so much for joining my pleasure where can people find once that the episodes go live where can they find the chasing grace episode they can find them at chasing grace film calm we will have an exclusive media partnership or they will also be distributed online but they can always find them on our website excellent well I'm looking forward to watching it I thank you for sharing your story and for inspiring I'll say inspiring me and probably many of our viewers thanks so much thank you for having me I'm Lisa Martin on the ground with the Cuba Google for the cloud now top lemon and clouds award event stick around we'll be right back

>> Announcer: Live from Orlando, Florida. It's the Cube. Covering, Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing brought to you by Silicon Angle Media. >> Welcome back to the Cube's coverage of the Grace Hopper Conference here in Orlando, Florida. I'm your host Rebecca Knight. We're joined by Jarvis Sam, he is the manager of global diversity issues at Snap Inc. Welcome. >> Thank you so much for having me. I'm really happy to be here. >> So, I've gotta--first of all, you're wearing a Rosie the Riveter shirt, we've got these tchotchkes here, can you explain to our viewers a little bit about them? We got to, we got to talk about these first. >> Of course, so, the shirt was actually inspired by our Lady Chilla, that's our local women employee resource group at Snap. The idea was take the ghost, a representative mascot of Snap Inc. and parlay that with the idea of Rosie the Riveter, of course powerful in her own right. >> Rebecca: Alright, I love it, and then these spectacles are...? >> Yeah, so spectacles are Snap Inc.'s first ever hardware product released earlier this year. They allow for you to take an in-the-moment Snap, to be featured on your phone, using Bluetooth technology for iPhones and then WiFi technology for Android. They allow individual users to record Snaps on their phone, while of course not distorting the experience of being able to use their hands in the moment. >> Rebecca: So, I love it, these are the recruiting tactics: your own products. >> Exactly >> Want to play with these toys? Come work for us? >> Yes! >> So, tell us a little bit about what you do, Jarvis. Before you were at Snap, you were at Google. You were interested in really engaging in these diversity issues. So what do you at Snap? >> Yeah, so, at Snap, I manage our global diversity effort. What that includes is analyzing the diversity framework across three key verticals; first on the pipeline layer. So, what are we doing by way of K-12 education to ensure communities of color as well as women-- >> Rebecca: K-12? Wow. >> Exactly. >> Have specific opportunities in the space to be impactful. We often create this framework or archetype for what we think is ineffective software engineer for example or account manager. Reframing that by providing access and opportunity is showcase to people that the image that we have is not always the image that we want to portray, is critical. Next then we focus heavily on the idea of the candidate, so candidate experience. Deep diving into understanding key talent acquisition measures as well as key HR practices that will allow for us to create the best experience, moves us forward in that regard. But then finally, and this is where we get to the whole global perspective. Is the idea of the employee. Creating a nurturing community where the idea of psychological safety is not only bolstered but ensuring that your community feels empowered to the idea of inclusion. Making sure inclusion is not just a seat at the table but rather a voice in the conversation that can be actioned upon. >> So I want to dig into that a little bit, this voice in the conversation. Before the cameras were rolling you were talking about these very difficult candid conversations that employees at same have. Tell our viewers a little bit more about that. >> Yeah, so I think one of the greatest challenges across the tech industry and at Snap as well is the idea of referral networks. The tech industry on its own right has grown so greatly out of referral networks. People that you have worked with perviously, people that have the same academic or pedagogical experience as you. The problem with that is, the traditional network analysis would seem to let us know that you often refer people who look like you, or come from a similar internal dimension background as yourself. In a community that's largely rooted in a dominated discourse by white or Asian males. That means that we're continuing to perpetuate that exact same type of rhetoric. >> Rebecca: That's who you're recruiting. >> Exactly. And so then idea of getting more women or communities of color involved in that space can often be distorted. So that remains a challenge that we as a company as well as the tech industry need to overcome is understanding; one, how do we encourage more diverse referrals over time. But then two, creating an ecosystem where this seems natural and not like an artificial standard. >> Okay, so how do you do it? I mean that we've pinpointed the problem and it absolutely is a problem, but what are the kinds of things that Snap is doing to improve the referral process? >> So it's the idea of being innovative by design. One thing that's unique about Snap in particular is that we are an LA-based company. >> So based out of Venice Beach and Santa Monica, California. We don't face a lot of the core challenges that we see in Silicon Valley. And as a result have the opportunity to be more innovative in our approach. As a result when we look to referral networks in particular. One thing that Snap has focused on is the idea of diversity recruiting as a core pillar or tenant of all of our employee research groups. Not only do they join us to attend conferences like Grace Hopper, like the National Society of Black Engineers. But we actually do sourcing jams. Where we sit down with them and mine their networks. Either on LinkedIn-- >> Rebecca: Sourcing jams? >> Yes >> Rebecca: I love it. >> Yes Either on LinkedIn or GitHub or any of the various professional networking sites that they work on. Or technical networking sites to find out who are great talents that they've worked with before. >> Who do you know? Who can join us? >> Exactly. And what's more significant than that, is creating a sense of empowerment where we actually having them reach out to their network as opposed to a recruiter. This creates more of a warm and welcoming environment for the candidate. Where the idea of being a simple passive candidate is further explored by activating them to showcase how your experience has been great. >> And how are you also ensuring that the experience at Snap is great, particularly for women and people of color? >> Yes, so one area is our employee resource group. So we have a couple, so Lady Chilla is of course what I am wearing today. But Snap Noir for the black community. Snap Pride for the LGTBQ plus community and Low Snaps for the Latin X community. >> Rebecca: How big is Snap, we should just-- >> Yeah, about 3,000 people globally. >> Okay, 3,000. Okay, wow. >> And so one of the exciting things that we do is ERG that. So it's where we bring all of our employee resource groups together and they hold massive events every single quarter. To encourage other communities that are either allies or individuals of the sociological out group to understand what they do. But this deploys in so many different ways. In June, for Pride for example, we held drag bingo. Where our LGTBQ plus community participated. In March, we did a whole series of events celebrating women in engineering, women in sales, and women in media that resulted in a large expanse of events allowing for people to come in and learn about, not only the female experience more broadly, but particularly at Snap and some of the great endeavors that they're working on. >> And I know you are also working with other organizations like Girls Who Code, Women Who Code, Made with Code. Can you tell the viewers a little bit more about Snap's involvement. >> 100% Made with Code is one of the most exciting projects that I've had the opportunity to work on. It was for me personally this great combination of working with my previous employer Google, and Snap. So Google's Made with Code project is an idea that started to empower teen girls to code, ages 13 to 18 primarily. What they found is was that's exactly the same demographic that primarily uses our product. And so about three months ago, we decided to come together to launch an imitative where we'd have teen girls make geofilters, one of Snap's core products. The project actually launched one week ago, and teen girls are using Blocky technology to actually go about creating their own geofilters. And then writing a 100 word personal statement defining what their vision for the future of technology is. I'm personally exciting to say after checking the numbers this morning, more than 22,000 girls have already submitted responses to participate. And they will culminate in an event, November 1 through 3. Where we will take the top five finalists to TED Women in New Orleans. To not only showcase women who have done incredible things in the past and present. But also showcase their work at participating in this competition, as the women of technology for the future. >> Rebecca: And the next generation. >> Exactly. >> So we're running out of time here, but I want to just talk finally about the headlines. It's very depressing, you know the Google Manifesto, the sexism that we've seen against women. The racism in the industry. These are are-- we don't want to talk about it at this celebration of computing because we want to focus on the positives. And yet, where do you feel, particularly because you have worked at large tech companies, on these issues for a while now? >> Not facing challenges head on is going to be the greatest threat to the tech industry. The idea of avoiding conversation and avoiding sheer communication of these challenging issues will continue to raise-- >> Rebecca: And ignoring the bad behavior. >> Exactly, and it results in negative rhetoric that inherently put these communities out of wanting to work in this specific industry. But arguably given that technology not only represents the face of the future but how every single product and entity is made for the future, we have to include individuals. Everyone often wants to highlight the McKinsey study from Diversity Matters. Highlighting all of these great ways of diversity impacting business, but we need to look at it in addition from an ethic standpoint. The idea that technology represents how we are building our future. Leaving entire communities out of that primarily focusing on people of color and women, will result in a space where these communities will never have access, opportunity and thus employment to exist in this space. Being able to attack these issues head on, address the bad behavior, highlight what the potential implication is step one. Step two though is being proactive in everything that we're doing, to attempt to ameliorate that from the beginning. You'll notice one thing that's very different about Snap's diversity strategy is we seek to build infrastructure first, then focus on talent acquisition. Once we can ensure that communities of color and women are entering a space that is psychologically safe, open, and inviting. Then we can focus on how we're bringing in talent effectively so that the idea of retention and advancement is not an afterthought but rather top of mind. >> Right, because you can't recruit them if they haven't had the opportunities to begin with. >> Exactly, and that's what Snap often upholds the value of the idea that diversity is our determination, while inclusion is our imperative. >> Jarvis, I love it. >> Thank you so much. >> This has been really fun talking to you. >> Thank you. >> We will have more from Orlando, Florida at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing just after this. (upbeat music)

(techno music) >> Narrator: Live from Orlando, Florida. It's the Cube. Covering Grace Hopper's Celebration of Women in Computing. Brought to you by Silicon Angle Media. >> Welcome back to the Cube's coverage of the Grace Hopper Conference here in Orlando, Florida. I'm your host Rebecca Knight. We're joined now by Anjali Menon. She is the VP of Technology at Morgan Stanley. Thanks so much for coming on the show. >> My pleasure to be here. >> So I'd love to just tell our viewers a little about your journey as a woman in technology who now works at an investment bank. >> Yes, absolutely. I think it's a very long journey, if you will. It started when I was seven years old. Back in my school we had an extra curricular computer science course, so I signed up for it. And I remember starting out as, you know, someone who was coding in basic. And, you know, it was just very simple things. You draw a line, draw a kite, watch it move across the screen. It was just so exciting for someone of that age. So, you know, I kept at it. I continued to enroll in the same course over the years. So, middle school, high school and then I did my undergraduate in computer science in engineering. And then in 2011 I graduated from NYU with a Masters in Computer Science. And, you know, Morgan Stanley was one of those companies that had showed up during on campus recruitment. And just the feedback that I had heard from my other peers who were already in the company, just, you know, about the work culture at Morgan Stanley. It was just really, really good. So, you know, I joined Morgan Stanley and right now I'm, you know, Assistant Owner. I own the Equities and Options order entry application. So I'm responsible for, you know, the overall design and development. So it's been a really exciting journey. To, uh, you know, Morgan Stanley, yep. >> So you as a woman in technology and now working in finance. >> Yes. >> I mean these are two very male dominated industries. >> Mm-hmm (affirmative) >> That are come together to provide your jobs. >> Yeah. >> How, what is it like to be a woman on the front lines? >> So, you know it's interesting, I fee like a lot of people have, you know, misconceptions about that. You know, about being a woman in tech. But we have a very diverse and inclusive culture at Morgan Stanley. Like I mentioned, I am Assistant Owner for the Equities and Options Order Entry Application. So, you know, when I'm sitting at a table with senior managers, because I'm the subject matter expertise, expert, it's great to, you know, look at them sit and listen to me talk because, you know, I'm the one who's bringing in the information. So it doesn't really matter if you're a woman or a man. What matters is, are you the one with the expertise? Are you the one with the talent, right? And they're going to sit up and listen to you irrespective of your gender. So, you know, that's just the culture at Morgan Stanley. So, uh, yep. >> So now, talking about the culture. And you are here, obviously, trying to recruit bright, young talent at the Grace Hopper Conference. >> Yes, yes. >> What are you hearing from potential employees? What are they looking for in a company? >> What are we looking for in students, or? >> I'm interested in both what Morgan Stanley wants to see out of perspective candidates. >> Mm-hmm (affirmative) >> But also what you're hearing from the recruits themselves in terms of how they want their job to fit into their lives. >> Absolutely, a lot of, one of the recurring questions that I do get when I'm interviewing students is, you know, how do you maintain the whole work life balance? Like you said, finance and tech. It's a very grueling industry, right? So how do you keep that balance? And what's really wonderful is that, you know, you don't have to sacrifice you personal life, or your passion projects, for your work. Me personally, uh me personally, for the last year I've been taking a lot of extra curricular courses. Non credit courses at NYU in film making and photography. Because that's just my passion project. I love telling stories, and I used to be a writer, and I was just looking to explore other mediums for telling stories. So in the last year, since the summer of 2016, I've been taking courses at NYU and it's just been such a great experience then, and I think Morgan Stanley sort of allows you to have that culture. Right? You have your nine to five job and during those hours you're very focused on what you're doing, but, you know, they do give you time outside of that to just, like, work on your passion projects. And it's great that I can find that balance between the two. >> So Morgan Stanley could be a choice employee, employer for a young woman looking for a work life balance. >> Oh, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. >> And now what are you looking for in a potential recruit? What are you telling the young women here at Grace Hopper? >> We are looking for women who are bright and very confident. I feel like all of the interviews that I've done in the last few days, I've met such wonderful young women. And it's really difficult to choose because everyone has their own area of expertise. And you can tell they're very, very intelligent. They love challenges, right? A lot of the questions that I ask are typically around, like, problem solving, and puzzles. And, it's great to see how they can approach it, and deconstruct it. So, it's been really difficult trying to find, it's been really difficult trying to choose one over the other because everyone is just so equally bright, yeah. >> So, how are you, how are you going about this recruitment process? What are, how are you assembling a diverse team? >> So we've been doing a lot of on the spot quizzes. So like once a day we have two problems that are presented. We have students stopping by and they're working it out. We're helping them through the process of, you know, figuring out the solution. And, you know, anyone who stands out, we're pulling them aside, scheduling interviews with them. We are actually also making offers on the spot as well. >> Oh wow, Okay. >> So, that's, that's been a new experience, so, yeah. It's been, we have a lot of interviews already scheduled as well, so , yeah. >> So when you're, in terms of your job, what are the things you are most excited about that you're working on? In terms of the real technical challenges that you're facing? >> Absolutely, so, I work within the capital market space and wealth management. Our clients are financial advisors, right, so, my job, when I came in three or four years ago, was, I wanted to enhance the order entry experience for the equities and options product. And essentially what we were looking to do was enable the FAs with the tool, that would enable them to do their jobs efficiently and quickly. So the last couple of years, we've been building an equities trading platform that would enable them to do just that. And it's just really exciting to see what the legacy system did and what the new system does and the progress that we've made. And we just hear really good feedback from the field as well. Like, our clients, the FAs, Financial Advisors, who are using the new system. It's great to hear things like, "Oh, I love that I can do my job so quickly. It's just like one or two clicks and I can do so much more than the legacy system.". So it's really exciting. >> So what is the difference there? What are you enabling to happen so much more speedily than happened in the legacy system? >> So, our legacy system was a single order entry application. While the new system allows them to submit multiple orders across securities, across accounts in a single, in a single, operation. So what would have taken, you know, minutes to submit say ten orders, is now just takes a few seconds. So, it's just a faster enhanced order entry experience. And I love that I was a part of that, that journey, yup. >> So, so speed is one thing. What are some other priorities that you have going forward in terms of enhancing the products that you provide to financial advisors? >> Just be able to efficiently, you know, submit orders as well. So with respect to, you know, just submitting multiple orders going across securities. Or even like quickly creating tickets. With the legacy system it was a lot of like form filling. You start, you entered the account, you entered the security and you fill out all the other details. But we've enabled them with quick ways to create tickets. So, in just a few keystrokes, with, like, semantic based entries, they can create like, multiple tickets and submit the orders. So, just being able to efficiently do their job as well was one of the key things that we were looking to deliver. >> And are you focused at all on the user, the sort of the design user experience element too? >> So we do have a dedicated user experience team. But since I started off as a front end developer, I did work very closely with them, to help, like build out that interface. So, yeah, we do have a dedicated team. It was great to actually work with them to help build that out, yup. >> Great. And finally, I just am curious about your thoughts about this Grace Hopper Conference. This is, is this your first time? >> It's my first time at Grace Hopper. >> A newbie here. >> It's been overwhelming. I remember walking in yesterday and I could see a sea of people and it's been wonderful, yeah. >> Great, great. So we'll see you here next year? >> Absolutely. >> Excellent. Well Anjali thank you so much, it's been a pleasure talking to you, having you on the show. >> Thank you. >> I'm Rebecca Knight. We'll have more from the Grace Hopper Conference in just a little bit. (techno music)

>> Narrator: Live from Orlando, Florida, it's The Cube covering Grace Hopper's Celebration of Women in Computing brought to you by Silicon Angle Media. >> Welcome back to The Cube's coverage, we are wrapping up day one of the Grace Hopper Conference here in Orlando, Florida. I'm your host Rebecca Knight along with my co-host Jeff Frick. Jeff, it's been a great day. What's been your highlight? >> The highlight was Megan Smith. We were really excited to get her on. We tried to get her on last year. She's a really hard get. She's a super high energy, super smart lady. >> So she's the third CTO of the US. >> She's fantastic. We got to go back and read the tape, but there's probably an hours worth of material there that we could've followed up on her. I think she was definitely terrific. Also of course Brenda, the new president of Anita Borg. Doing the research on her and understanding what she accomplished at the Chicago Public School System is just phenomenal, something we've talked about time and time again. Are we turning a corner? Do people understand that computer science is a basic thing you need to learn in 2017, like biology, like math, like reading and writing and arithmetic. I think those were two terrific points of the day. >> I completely agree. We've had those veteran women of the technology industry, but then we also have had two young up-and-comers on the show, Jasmine Mustafa, who is the head of Roar for Good, which is a B Corp that makes a wearable self-defense tool, and then just now, we had Morgan Burman of Milkcrate, which does a platform that helps companies and non-profits measure and grow social and environmental impact. It's really exciting to sort of see the baton being passed, you can almost witness it being passed. >> Right, right, and it physically is. From Kelly, who we will have on Friday, to Brenda. So we're absolutely seeing it. >> Rebecca: Right. >> The other piece I'm taking away... You're hearing from Boston, and I hate to do the sports analogy, but I am anyway. Most great quarterbacks, Tom Brady, jumping out having a huge chip on their shoulder. They were passed up, they were told they couldn't do it, and they continued to excel, way more than the fair-haired people that have an easy path. So many times today, we heard about being told I can't do it and using that, internalizing that, as a force to do it. Debra, the physicist, being told by her mom overtly don't be a physicist a number of times, the Roar story again you can't do this. Even Erin Yang from Work Day said specifically I want to surprise people, I don't want them to know what I'm going to be able to do. Really, this concept of having a chip on your shoulder and taking negative feedback and turning it into a positive spin that you can feed off of, really important attribute that I don't think enough people have, they take the hit and absorb the hit instead of taking the hit and saying I'm going to prove you wrong. This does not apply to me. I think that's another thing that I did not expect to hear today but came up over and over again. >> No, I agree. We also heard, and this is really the Silicon Valley mantra right now, is Fail Fast. We've been hearing about redefining failure and one of our guests said don't even use that word, make up some sort of safe word for yourself. It's not that I failed in that endeavor, it didn't work out. But no matter what, you cannot be deterred from that. >> Right, and you got to learn and you got to move on. I tell people a lot of times, it's kind of like the old sales analogy. If your hit rate is one out of 10, that eighth call you should be excited about because that means you're almost to number 10. Don't be depressed that number eight doesn't go well, change your attitude. Eight is just one step closer to 10. Grind through one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. It is a real resilience, and that was another thing that came up is the people that win are not the smartest, they're not the fastest, they're not the most intelligent, but often they're just the most persistent. They just keep getting up. The age old saying. Give me the wisdom to worry about the things I can control and not to worry about the things I can't. It's not what happens to you, it's what you do about it. That's what you can control. You can't control what happens to you. But do you get up, do you take your hit, do you use it as motivation, do you move to the next step? Again, another great theme. Move to the next step. Take the next step and that will get you. A journey of a thousand miles starts with one step. >> That's right. That's right. Those are >> I'm cliche-ing, it's been a long week. >> This is the largest Grace Hopper ever. 18,000 attendees, 700 speakers, three days. We've got another big lineup tomorrow. We start right after the keynotes. We go through to the end of the day. Is there anything you want to highlight to our viewers that you are especially looking forward to tomorrow? >> What am I especially looking forward to tomorrow? Just another good day. The great thing about this show is you don't really know what you're going to get. >> It's true! >> A lot of the names, you don't know who they are. You don't necessarily know the companies. I think we will have a number of the Women of Vision award winners, which is always good. It's such an atypical tech show, which is why I love it. >> Rebecca: Which is why it's so fun! >> And we've got to get you warmed up, >> I know, it's freezing in here! >> Out into the heat. >> It's so true, it's so true. >> Alright well let's wrap it up. Great day, Rebecca. >> Great day it's always so much fun to cohost alongside you. >> Thanks for coming down. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for Jeff Frick, we will have more from Grace Hopper tomorrow! >> Jeff: Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> Narrator: Live from Orlando Florida it's theCUBE covering Grace Hopper's celebration of women in computing brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. >> Welcome back to The Cube's coverage of the Grace Hopper Conference here in Orlando, Florida. I'm your host Rebecca Knight along with my cohost Jeferick. We are joined by Monica Bailey and August Goldman. Monica is the Chief People Officer at GoDaddy and August is the Senior Vice President of Customer Care. Thank you both for joining us. >> Thank you, it's great to be here >> So let's start out with the numbers because you're a big number crunching company and you are collecting data and you're also sharing some data, so talk a little about what you have found. >> Yeah, well for the last few years we've been tracking how we pay men versus women because we really care about making sure we're paying all of our employees really fairly, and so we're happy this year to be able to say that for every dollar a man makes in the company a woman in a similar job also makes a dollar. And so that's great, that's the goal. The goal is fairness for all of our folks, so we're really excited about that. >> So how long did it take you to get there? >> So we started it three years ago with our CEO Blake Kirby onstage here at the Grace Hopper Conference which was in Houston at the time in front of 12,000 folks, and we showed the numbers. We showed pay parity and it wasn't parity at that point. >> Was it close? What are we talking about here? >> It was $0.96 cents, $0.96 per dollar, so it was close but it wasn't parity. And here's what's interesting, we've always said we need to be comfortable with uncomfortable data. I think we've talked about that before on this stage, and even if the data is not what you want it to be expose it, dig into it. What we've done together is we've found out what's wrong. >> Okay so how did you go about finding out what was wrong, and then also fixing it? >> Yeah well we looked at a few things, so first of all, we looked at different populations so we'd look at how are our technical employees paid, how are our non-technical employees paid, how are our leaders paid? And so we definitely see things when we look into those groups of employees, But we also just took, let's take the slice of our biggest set of jobs, our engineers, pretty applicable for this audience here today. So, we took a look at our engineers and said How are our entry level developers paid, men versus women? And we're also this year looking at our minorities as well. It's really important to not just stop at gender and look at how all your employees are paid. So, yeah, we definitely have made great progress on that. I don't know if you want to speak to it. >> So here's what's interesting, when we dug into this data that Monica is talking about we actually found that software development engineers one, and two, women were paid more. More. In those roles. So we said 'Oh, well that's fantastic' Well, guess what? The population size by percent of three, four, five, and six, the women dropped off. Fell off. And then we said well wait a second, what might be happening here, and all of a sudden, something came up in the data that we were just, we wouldn't have known unless we dug into it. Women stayed longer in those roles. They didn't ask for promotion. >> They stayed longer in the ones and twos. >> The ones and twos and guess what? If you stay longer in a role every year you get a little merit increase, every year you make more, eventually you'll make more, versus someone who is clipping through the levels at a good pace. So because of that, Monica put it something, You want to talk about promotion flagging? >> Yeah, we tried an experiment two summers ago and we took a look at this phenomenon of women and also some introverts, not just women, right? But it tends to be women aren't pounding their fists on the table for a promotion. So as a result their promotion rates are lower. So we went in and said let's try a little experiment called promotion flagging, let's just say hey, a good performing SDE, Software Dev Engineer, They're normally in role about 12 months or 18 months, a good one, before they get promoted, sometimes longer, good ones, too, but that's just on average When does the first time a good performing person would get promoted, and we said that will be our flag to managers, just to say hey, you're going through review, don't forget, all these folks have been in level a certain amount of time. Because some folks aren't begging you and demanding a promotion so let's consider everyone equally. And the goal wasn't really to promote more people, the goal was, let's just not forget anyone in the process, because that happens, unconsciously people just, they're forgetting folks across the industry. So they did that and it was amazing. The result was amazing. Also I should say, though, our goal was to make sure everybody got really actionable feedback to grow their skills and their impact at the company and their likelihood of a promotion down the road, which is exactly what we're going for because that makes your company better, so we love that. But the cool news is, because we've been following this data really closely because we're very nervous, because I also don't want to suddenly treat one of my populations not as well as they were being treated before. So we are really excited that men's promotion rates stayed unchanged. Women's promotion rates were jumped by a third. So just by merely saying don't forget all your folks please and give them good feedback, we saw that women got promoted 30% higher rate than they had in years prior, and so that's pretty cool for us. >> So I have two very specific questions: One, is there low-hanging fruit that somebody else watching this can see where there was the big disparity that was the easiest to fix? And two, you keep talking about reviews. There's a whole lot of conversation about the annual review process and how broken it is. You mentioned 18 months. Have you changed your, or maybe you changed it before, but has this forced you to look at the typical annual review process and reevaluate? >> Alright so I'll take the first if you want to grab the second Because the first one's easier so I'm just trying to get the first one she can do the hard one. That's why she's the head of HR now. She took my job by the way (laughs). >> I wasn't going to ask that. >> You weren't going to ask that, how can you not ask that? >> Stay with the easy question though. >> Okay, the first one is exactly what Monica was just talking about and that is actually flag folks in role after a period of time, and say you know what, both men and women, flag them and say, review them for promotion. Review for promotion. It's very simple, it's very easy. After a year of level one, maybe 18 months of level two, just say hey, have a look, is this person ready? And if they're not ready, what should they do to get ready. >> And that's the actionable feedback >> And here's what's interesting, here are the stats, which is really cool. So, two years ago we had 6% of our software development two were women. Last year was 15%. This year, 31%. 31% of software development two are women, and our software development one is now up to 41%. So you see we're building our pipeline so we're getting them in. Now the question is, once they're within the company how do we develop and grow them and promote over time? >> It begs the question, what are the threes? >> Oh, it's 13%. So you can see it's dropped off. So no, give us a year or two, we'll be back on the stage. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> And the goal is then 30, 40%, so, you know give us a few years. >> That's a great little actionable item though, just to make sure that you're paying attention to the people that aren't paying attention for themselves. >> And they did it as an experiment and are you going to now scale that to the rest of the company? >> We have scaled it to level twos and level threes and this year we'll probably scale it to a level four so each time we add another level we look at the data and see how it works. At some point folks are allowed to do an awesome job in the jobs they're in so we're not an up or out kind of company, some places are like that, so at some point we'll probably stop saying, 'should you promote this person to be leader of the universe?' because they're pretty great. But Jeff, you asked a great question about performance reviews, and I'm super passionate about this topic, so we were selected by Stanford's Clayman Institute as their partner a few years ago to basically conduct experiments with. They choose one company a year to say hey, are you open-minded enough to try some crazy stuff with us and see if there might be a result that we can share with the industry afterwards. And so we just felt so happy they chose us, and we shared tons of our data with them, they saw our employee survey, they saw redacted performance reviews, they got to sit in on our most senior talent review which is a calibration session to hear how are we talking about all of our employees. And the Clayman Institute, they care about the advancement of women in leadership, but my first meeting with them, I'm like, look, I super care about the women in my company, but I kind of care about all my employees in my company, so like, I need to make sure we're being really fair to everybody, and they're like, 'that's what we care about, too' and I'm like, okay, phew, first hurdle we passed. Anyway they're stunning foot partners and what they, after doing tons of this analysis, what they said was, tackle what almost no company has tackled. Tackle unconscious bias that lives within the people, processes, specifically around career advancement. So again, that's promotion that we talked about, that's also performance review. So we're like, that's us at GoDaddy, we're like let's try it, who knows what's going to happen, let's just see, so we jumped right in and basically what the found is at GoDaddy we care about what you do and how you do it, so those are, so what is sort of career ladder levels you hear companies talk about, and here's a general expectation, and how do you do against your goals. Great. And how you do it is how we collectively work together to get good stuff done at our company, right? And it sort of lives within our values. Our values don't live within a big poster that are shiny, and people kind of walk by and go ha, that's not what it's like here. We literally pay people to live our values, and to demonstrate that because we think it makes us better as a company and more impactful. So we took a look at these values, and I'll be honest I had created with the best of intentions basically some competencies, too many, that lived under these values, and when you have way too many things for people to keep track of, it's almost like having nothing at all. Which a lot of companies have also done, blow it up, put it in the hands of managers, let's assume they'll all do the right thing consistently, which doesn't happen. So what we did with the Clayman Institute is we interviewed about 20 of our leaders and we did some focus groups, and we said, look, these are the six behaviors that line up against three of our values central to performance. These behaviors are critical for all of us. It's stuff like, do you share information with other teams, or do you look for ways to integrate your work across your team or across multiple teams, depending on the scope of your job. Do you work fearlessly? Do you include others in conversations so you're driving innovative solutions and working fearlessly for your folks. >> And you know what it's not? Your style, how do you approach others, are you bossy, nothing about that, nothing about approach. You could be an introvert, an extrovert, all different styles. These are actionable behaviors around how we're going to get stuff done and be distinctive in our company. >> So, what is your advice to other tech companies when they are writing their values and thinking about how they want their employees to live out these values? >> Well it's interesting, number one, it has to result in business results, right? So, it's really easy to have a really fun time writing these but they have to make a difference in your company and mean something, otherwise why would you want to reward them? Right, they're just nice otherwise. Two, they really collectively should drive the culture of your company. So when you look at it en masse, if you see, if I get everyone doing these things, is that the culture that drives my company? Is that going to attract and retain people, and drive again the business result we want? So to me those are super, super important. But the Clayman team will take you to camp and help you with all this stuff but really also, is your language equally accessible to men and women? To introverts and extroverts? To all of your employees, to minorities, to different employee populations, because some things like, 'aggressive drivers get things done.' Now, I know a lot of women by the way, who are very aggressive drivers and get a lot of things done but certain language is sort of unconsciously attributed to men more than women, and so if you have one role model for what success looks like and it happens to be subconsciously a man that you think about, women are disadvantaged. So they really, we went so deep with them. So my main advice is, if you can, frankly I'd just become a member of the Clayman Institute fan club and try to get some consulting help from them, but there are great folks out there that do this kind of work for a living who are really helpful, because it's really hard to take a look at yourself objectively. >> Well actually I was just going to mention that, so when Monica mentioned we had monitors sitting in our most senior review of the top 150 people. When we calibrated them together a group of 30, of the next 150, we actually had two monitors sitting and writing, when are we talking about style. When are we being inconsistent between one VP and another VP And we actually, the first year, we didn't get an A. The first year we did not get an A, by any shot of the imagination. >> It makes me feel better to say probably most companies wouldn't, right? But we did not and we were brave. >> If you don't measure it you can't make a change. We've had Lori a couple times on theCUBE but the Cayman Institute does fantastic work. >> Lori was the one who guided us, and they're amazing. And I think what's interesting, we're all well-intended, wonderful executives, I mean we are well-intended, wonderful people. You look around the room, I'm going, 'we don't have bias, we're great, we're going to get an A, bring monitors in, bring them all in, this is going to be great.' At the first year they're like, mm, no, look how many inconsistencies you did over the day. And they showed us the data and we just sat there and went >> Did they record it 'cause tape don't lie >> They did not record it but I can tell you they typed faster than I could >> Lot of data, lot of data >> They came in the next year. So we did a hard look at ourselves, we talked about doing it differently, they came in, the same two people, the next year, real different. And by the way, we will continue to have them every single year. >> Well you need the reflection back. Well August, Monica, thank you so much for being on this show. It's always so much fun to have GoDaddy here on the Cube. >> Thank you >> Great. We will have more from Grace Hopper in Orlando, Florida just after this (techno music)

>> Announcer: Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCube, covering Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. Brought to you by SiliconANGLE media. >> Welcome back to theCube's coverage of Grace Hopper Conference here in Orlando, Florida. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We're joined by Vicki Mealer-Burke, she is the Vice-President and Chief Diversity Officer at Qualcomm. Thanks so much for joining us, Vicki. >> Thank you, Rebecca, it's great to be here. >> So, before we the camera's were rolling, you were describing how you've been at Qualcomm for 20 years, but you've been in this job for one year. And you're the first person to ever hold the position. >> That's right. >> So, tell our viewers how it came about. >> Yeah, I have been at Qualcomm almost 21 years now, and mostly in product development, product management, and then, my last role was as a general manager of one of our wholly-owned subsidiaries and I really thought that my run at Qualcomm was done, because we're consolidating a lot of our businesses. I started working on some women's programs while I was shutting down our last business, and it just so happened, it was the same time the company decided to create a chief diversity officer. My initial reaction was, "That's so great, we're going to "get one of those people, and we really need them." I wanted to be a champion for that person, and then I started getting myself interested and thinking that I could really be a change agent and a leader for the company. And kind of leave a legacy back to the company, a company that's actually been really, really good to me. >> So, when you were thinking about this job, you described it as a business problem that needed to be solved. And as someone who'd been at Qualcomm for two decades, how did you define the business problem? >> The way that my brain works is, I'm a problem solver and that's why I got into product management. And so, I really thought that if the company saw this as compliance or some sort of regulatory issue, I would really have no real interest, but I really knew that we could solve the probably by likely re-engineering some of the processes that had been in place. And, Qualcomm has had a tremendous growth over the years, and we've ramped from, I was employee 5,000 to now well over 30,000, so many of our processes really just had to be re-engineered. And I knew that I could speak that language to our leaders, we understand re-engineering problems. So, I really tried to get down to root cause and focus on a couple of the areas that would really make a big difference, and discuss the business value of why we were doing this. >> So, what are the areas that you are focusing on? Just give our viewers of a sense of the the top two or three areas where you think you can have the most impact? >> There's really two levers that I'm focused on. One is talent acquisition, so continuing to bring the best and brightest minds, the most innovative people in the world now to help us move our wireless technology into the 5G world. The possibilities are endless so we need all kinds of bright minds looking at this from all different kinds of directions. That's the diversity piece of it. The second big lever is, once we get them in, we have to keep 'em. I mean, this show shows how talented women engineers are really at premium, and so the more we're hiring, the more we're losing people on the other side. People call that the leaky pipeline or the leaky bucket. So, I'm working on retention programs to make sure that once we get our diverse talent in the door that we can keep them by really supporting, promoting, progressing them, making sure that they have wide variety of opportunities and that they see a bright future for themselves at Qualcomm. >> So, are you starting new programs? Is this about mentorship, is this about making sure there is flexible work? I mean, what are some of the nitty-gritty things that Qualcomm is doing? >> Yeah, we have started a series of sessions with our senior-most leaders, what we call, like, our directors and above. We have terrific support at the C-level at Qualcomm, terrific support. But at a 30,000 person company, you really need to get into that next couple-down layers. And so, we're doing training about, basically, how to run an inclusive team, how to empower. One of the big things that we're training on is the process of, how do you pick people for that next big project? And, like many managers, they go back to the people that have been successful year after year. What we're trying to do is disrupt that and either create, like, a apprenticeship, product leader positions where someone can tag along and lead and understand how those projects were run so well. But that's what we need to do is really try to expand the project opportunities, that's when people get a lot of visibility, a lot of experience, and that's where their own talents will just then accelerate them through our levels. >> You were talking about the need to make sure that a couple rungs down from the senior brass, really understand that there is a real business case for diverse teams that are collaborative. How receptive are these managers in your experience, and what do you say that really tips them over? >> So, Qualcomm is full of extremely bright people. There's an awareness and the benefit of the doubt that we're giving all of our employees is, "Let's give you the "facts, let's make you aware, let's let you drive the "solution, so that we're all working together." We don't have any kind of quotas, we just want to make managers, give them all the data and have them make good decisions, and empower them to be part of the solution. That empowerment need is where we're building trust with those managers. We're not saying, "Oh, you've been doing it wrong for "a million years." We're saying, "Here's what you can do to get better. "Here's what you can do to have a more engaged team. "Here's what you can do to have a more empowered team." That leads to productivity, productivity goes straight to the bottom line, and it makes sense. So, we're trying to do it more in a partnership, giving them the respect that they've earned with the positions that they're in, and empowering them to be the change. >> So, earlier in your career, you worked on some really exciting projects in terms of wearables, in terms of smart-cities, in terms of home-base technology. Do you miss the tech, I mean, do you see yourself going back and working in that? >> Yeah, it's a great question. When you're in the business, there are daily, weekly, incremental successes. We fixed that bug, we got that contract, this is really more, I call it kind of like forming jello, it's hard to get those feelings everyday like you're making progress on something. I do miss the technology, this is the biggest problem I think I've ever been tasked to solve, so that is extremely inspiring, and luckily, I get to work side-by-side with a lot of our best technology leaders. But, I do miss the technology, for sure. >> And working in the business? >> Sure. >> So, you talked about the, sort of, difficulty with measuring incremental progress, and then really we're at a point in time where the Google manifesto and Travis Kalanick's antics are front-page news. Is this discouraging, or is does it make you more excited by the cause and what you're doing? >> There are aspects to it that are discouraging, but I am really a glass half-full type of person, I think shining the light, really shining this big, bright light on the issue makes 99% of the people in our business really say, "Wow, I can't believe that's really going on." So, I actually think it's good, it's allowing us to have these conversations which are uncomfortable and a lot of leaders want to have the conversations but they don't know what to say. So, all of these things coming out in the press just give us that entry to be able to say, "Let's talk about it." And we've been doing that at Qualcomm, we do it with our employees, I want people to feel free to ask questions and not think that they should know it all. This is actually a fairly new area, so we've got to allow all of our leaders to have a level of comfort, but also know they don't have to be perfect in every single thing they say, just be inquisitive and really start the discussions. >> When you are pitching Qualcomm as a potential employer to young women, what is your value proposition? We heard Fei-Fei Li during the keynote talk about there is a real crisis if women are not actively involved in creating the next generation of artificial intelligence, and we're half of the end users, that there is going to be this real disconnect between the technology and how it's used. >> And as a product leader, I have always been fascinated by these public stories of product failures that no one was trying to make them fail but it was very clear that they didn't have a diverse team, because they just had some really big misses. So, one of the things we talk about at Qualcomm, you know, we're a wireless technology company, we started with 3G and now 4GLTE, that whole wireless technology, that backbone of it, is all Qualcomm tech, and it allows us to go into 5G. 5G is where the thing gets exponentially more interesting, more exciting, a much lighter set of problems to solve can be solved through 5G. So, if we don't have a diverse set of people thinking about all the different use-cases, variables, that we can use 5G technology, we'll miss something big. And I know that our CEO believes that, we've talked about it, we are inventors, we are innovators, and we have to have a wider variety of people that are being inventors of the future. >> So, I just want to wrap up here but finally ask you about this conference, this is not your first Grace Hopper, and it's a very young conference and you're really looked at as a veteran, I mean, me, too. We're the old bags about this place. (laughing) Can you just describe a little bit, I know you said that you were introducing one of the keynote speakers and you got to meet a personal hero of yours, just what it's like to be here? >> It's really amazing, last year was my first year. I was not the Chief Diversity Officer a year ago, yet, and I came here and people like, Telle Whitney, who you read about, I've gotten to meet here, I can hug her. >> Rebecca: You'll never was your hand again. >> I know, it's amazing. The women that have been leading this for years and years and years, and now what this has turned out to be, I was talking to one of my colleagues, and I go to a lot of technical conferences and business conferences like CES, CES is almost where we should be here meeting in the middle, a lot more men here, in years to come, and a lot more women at CES. And I think that's when we'll know that we're actually making progress. >> Well, Vicki, thank you so much for joining us. >> Yes, thank you, thanks for having me. >> I'm Rebecca Knight, we'll have more from theCube's coverage of the Grace Hopper just after this. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE covering Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of the Grace Hopper Conference here at the Orange County Convention Center, I'm your host Rebecca Knight. We are joined today by Emilia Sherifova, she is the VP of Architecture and Engineering at Northwestern Mutual, thanks so much for joining us Emilia. >> Thank you for having me. >> So I want to start off by talking about how you got to Northwestern Mutual. You came via an acquisition, you were CTO of LearnVest. What is LearnVest? >> LearnVest is a financial planning start up, it's a company that is bringing financial planning to the masses, it's a very mission driven organization. When Northwestern Mutual came as an interest to acquire us, we saw an incredible opportunity to partner with a Fortune 100 company, and tap into its client base of five million people, and bring sort of best in class digital experience and innovation, with best in class financial services products. >> Talk about that problem a little bit, in terms of bringing financial planning to the masses. Why don't the masses have financial planning? What's the disconnect? >> I think it's not easy, often it's a human driven problem. Often humans do not want to deal with their finances, as I know personally for myself, historically when I met with my financial advisor in the past I would get a plan and I wouldn't follow up on that. So building delightful experiences that engage our clients, with the combination of a financial planner that's prodding you, and giving you guidance. >> So there is a human there? >> Absolutely, there's no way to avoid a human. So it was that regional model of LearnVest to have the human help the robot part of it, and we are doing the same thing with Northwestern Mutual, where we're leveraging Northwestern Mutual best in class distribution work force and providing them tools to help them do their work best. >> I love the idea of a delightful experience when dealing with your finances, it seems antithetical. Give me some examples of what you mean by this. >> I think ability to give you a 360 view of your life, and give you a financial wellness score, for instance, after we've gotten a couple of data points about you, but also gathered some of the predictive data points that we know are probably true about you, and give you a score, one score, that gives you an idea what's the probability of you reaching your financial goal, or you retiring, or you going broke. So there is a way to do that in an easy, digestible and kind of delightful way where we're able to leverage technology and predictive capabilities to really push for financial security of our clients. >> And what is the customer response here? >> Customer response, it's been great. Now that we've rolled out a lot of these experiences for the customer base of Northwestern Mutual we have massive engagement with our customers, our traffic has gone dramatically up. >> So people are hungering for this? >> Absolutely, it's a much needed thing, and we're here to help them. >> So you've now been with Northwestern Mutual for a few years now, dividing your time between New York and Milwaukee, you're in both technology and financial services, both male dominated fields, can you describe a little bit about your career path, and how you got into it, and what you've learned along the way. >> Oh, absolutely. I'm originally from Russia, and I come from a family of engineers, so it was a somewhat natural path for me. I got into software engineering in the late 90s. My go to language initially was C programming, and I participated in the Y2K Challenge on Wall Street. >> Which seems so quaint! (laughs) >> And I've spent over a decade on Wall Street, building electronic trading systems, market data feeds. So I feel honored to have been able to pursue and have these possibilities, but I know how not easy it is, given what a male dominated world this is. >> Is it as bad as the headlines make it out to be? I mean, it really does, when you read it, it's sickening. The sexism, the biases, what's your experience been? >> I think I've been lucky enough to work in very supportive places, but I can tell you majority of teams that I've been part of are majority male, and whether my team mates want to be inclusive and engaging, when the majority is someone else that doesn't look like you, act like you, lean on similar defaults as you, it does not make for a very welcome environment. So I recognize that, and a big part of that, I feel, is having proper on boarding practices. Because on boarding often can happen, if you don't have a formal on boarding process, on boarding can happen in informal ways, and when it happens in informal ways, you tend to be attracted to the people who are like you, and you hang out with. So if you look at the technology world, it's dominated by mostly male. If you are in a start up world, it's mostly young males. And so I am determined to bring operational excellence and sustainability and diversity through strong operational practices, like ensuring that there is proper on boarding. Where for instance, a young mother who has a child has the potential to go home at 4 p.m., and cannot hang out with the guys and drink coke or beer at 7 p.m., to really understand the culture of the group that she joined. We want to make sure that she has sustainable, thoughtful on boarding practices, feeling like she's part of the organization. This is just one way of doing it. >> In terms of the on boarding, and I think you're absolutely right in a sense, that we do gravitate towards people who are just like us, look like us, talk like us, think like us, so are you pairing the new people with people who are not like them? >> Absolutely, but also actually I am pairing them with people who also recently just went through on boarding, that just join also fairly recently. That way they can explain the pitfalls that they gone through, and so we're definitely making sure we have these co pilots, but also rigorous processes to get people comfortable, whatever their background is. >> Now how many Grace Hoppers have you been to, Emilia? >> I have to say this is my first one. >> Your first one, you're a newbie! So what is your experience been so far. >> I am incredibly moved by the experience, actually. I have to say I've never seen so much energy before. I am moved by the stories that I have heard, incredibly inspired. I am inspired to keep pushing. I felt I could relate to a lot of presenters' backgrounds, I also came from a small town, that actually is not on the map, because it was a military town in the former Soviet Union, and a lot of stories of overcoming, and persisting, and ending up here, is what I can relate to. So I'm very excited, and very grateful, and I want to be here every year. >> So you'll be back? >> Totally! >> Great! Well, Emilia, thanks so much for joining us, it's been really fun talking to you. >> Thanks for having me. >> We'll be back with more from Grace Hopper just after this.

>> Announcer: Live from Orlando, Florida it's the Cube covering Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. >> Welcome back to the Cube's coverage of the Grace Hopper Conference here at the Orange County Convention Center. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We are joined by Aysegul Gunduz, she is a professor at the University of Florida-College of Engineering. Thanks so much for joining us. >> No, thank you for having me. >> So, congratulations are in order, because you are a ABIE Award winner, which is awards given out by the Anita Borg Institute, and you have been given the Denice Denton Emerging Leader Award. So, tell us a little about, about your award. >> Well, thank you for asking. We've heard a lot about Grace Hopper and Anita Borg throughout the conference, but Denice Denton, she was actually very close friends with Anita. And she was a leader in her field, her field was development of polymers, and she worked on the first development of RAM. But she was actually the first ever dean of a college of engineering at a major university... >> Rebecca: First ever woman. >> First woman dean, yes, so she became dean at the University of Washington, and then she actually became chancellor at University of California, but just beyond her research she really promoted and lifted the people around her, so she was a big proponent of minority issues. So, she supported females, she supported international students, and she was openly gay, so she really had a big influence on the LGBTQ community, so I just wanted to, you know, just recognize her and say that how honored I am to have my name mentioned alongside hers. This award is given to a junior faculty member that has done significant research and also has had an impact on diversity as well. >> So, let's start talking... >> Denice is a great inspiration. >> Yes! The award given an homage to Denice, so your research is about detecting neurological disorders. So, tell our viewers a little bit more about what you're doing. >> Sure, I'm an electrical engineer by training, who does brain research for a living, so this confuses a lot of people, but I basically tell them that our brains have bioelectric fields that generate biopotential signals that we can record and we're really trying to decipher what these signals are trying to tell us. So, we are really trying to understand and treat neurological disorders as well as psychiatric disorders, so I work with a lot of neurosurgical patient populations that receive electrode implants as part of their therapy, and we are trying to now improve these technologies so that we can record these brain signals and decode them in real time, so that we can adapt things like deep brain stimulation for the current pathology that these patients are having. So, deep brain stimulation, currently, is working like, think of an AC and it's working on fan mode so its current, you know, constantly blowing cold air into the room, even though the room might be just the perfect temperature, so we are basically trying to listen to the brain signals and only deliver electricity when the patient is having a pathology, so this way we are basically turning the AC onto the auto mode, so that once they are actually not having symptoms, unnecessary electrical, it is not delivered into their brains, so pace makers, when they invented were functioning that way, so people realized they could stimulate the heart, and the person would not have a cardiac arrest, but now we know that we can detect the heart pulse very easily, so someone thought about 'OK, so when we don't detect the pulse, heartbeat, let's only stimulate the pace maker then,' so that's what we're trying to adapt to the neuro-technologies. >> And what is the patient response? I mean I imagine that's incredible. So, these are people who suffer from things like Parkinson's disease, Tourette's syndrome, I mean, it's a small patient population that you're working with now, but what are you finding? >> So, first of all, our patients are very gracious to volunteer for our studies, we find that, for instance, in Tourette's syndrome we can actually detect when people are having tics, involuntary tics, that is characteristic of Tourette's syndrome. We find that we can differentiate that from voluntary movements, so we can really deliver the stimulation when they are having these symptoms, so this is a paroxysmal disorder, they really don't need continuous stimulation. So, that's one thing that we're developing. We find that in essential tremor, again, when people aren't having tremor we can detect that and stop the stimulation and only deliver it when necessary. We're working on a symptom called freezing of gaits in Parkinson's disease so people define this as the, having the will to walk, but they feel like their feet are glued to the floor so this can cause a lot of falls, and at that, really, age this can be very, very dangerous. So, we can actually tell from the brain when people are walking and then we turn the stimulation in this particular area only during that time so as to prevent any falls that might happen. >> So, it's really changing their life and how they are coping with this disease. >> Yes, true, and it really makes going to work in the morning (laughs) very, very exciting for us. >> So, another element of the ABIE Award is that you are helping improve diversity in your field and in Denice Denton, in the spirit of Denice Denton, helping young women and minorities rise in engineering. >> Yes, so, I'm going to talk about this in my keynote session tomorrow, but I really just realized that all my confidence throughout engineering school was due to the fact that I actually had a female undergraduate advisor, and once I came to that realization, I joined Association for Academic Women at the University of Florida, which was established in 1974, because these pioneering women fought for equal pay for male and female faculty on campus, and this is still honored today, so I'm very honored to be serving the Association as its president today. All of our membership dues go to dissertation awards for female doctoral students that are, you know, emerging scholars in their fields, and I also approached the National Science Foundation and they supported the funding for me to generate a new emerging STEM award for female students in the STEM fields. So, you know, that is my contribution. >> So, you're passing it on... >> I hope so. >> the help and the mentoring that you received as young faculty member. >> I truly hope so. >> I mean, (stammers) right now we're so focused on the technology companies but on campuses, on the undergraduate and graduate school campuses, how big a problem is this, would you say? >> So, I'm a faculty in biomedical engineering, so, in our field we actually have some of the highest female to male ratios compared to other engineering fields. People attribute this to the fact that females like to contribute to the society, so, they like to work on problems, they like to work on problems that have a societal impact and I think working with, basically, you know, disorders in any branch of medicine, it really fires, fires up female students, but yes, when we go to other departments such as electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, the ratio is really, really small. And it still is a problem and therefore we are really trying to mobilize, you know, all female faculty, just to be present, just the fact that you're there, that you're a successful female in this field... >> Rebecca: The role models. >> Yeah, really makes an impact, you know, I think, the most repeated quote at this meeting is that 'You can't be what you can't see." So, we're really trying to support female faculty. So, we're tying to retain female faculty, so that, you know, the younger generation of females can see that they can and the will do it as well. >> You can't be what you can see, I love that. Those are words to live by. >> Right. >> Yeah. Well, thank you so much Aysegul, this is a pleasure, pleasure meeting you, pleasure having you on the show. >> Thank you so much, pleasure's mine. >> We'll be back with more from Grace Hopper just after this.

>> Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE covering Grace Hopper's Celebration of women in computing. Brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. >> Hey welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here at theCUBE. We're at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, the best name in tech conferences. 18,000 women here in Orlando, filling up the Orange County Conference Center. We're excited to be here for our fourth year, and part of the whole program is getting some of the leadership from AnitaB.org on to give us an update and we're really excited to have Elizabeth Ames. She's the SVP of Marketing and Alliances and Programs but we just think of her as Elizabeth at AnitaB.org. So, Elizabeth, great to see you. >> Great to be here. >> Absolutely >> We're thrilled to have you here at the Celebration. >> I can't believe it's been four years. I've been telling so many people. There are still so many people that have never been here. I was amazed at the keynote, the first day, there was the call, the houselights went up, how many people it's their first time, and as big as this conference is, as much the people that know it love it, there's still a lot of people that have not been exposed to this show. >> It's absolutely the case. We have every year it seems like more and more sort of first timers. Which is great because we love to have them come but we'd love to have them come back. I think it's really an expression of how this issue has become a big issue and that the women are really engaged and excited and they want to be a part of it, so it's great. >> The other thing I don't think a lot of people know is there's obviously a lot of recruiting going on, there's a lot of young people here which is really what I think gives it its flavor, but we had Workday on. They said they had 140 people here from Workday. I talked to a guy last night at dinner from Google, I think they had 180 people and I said to her, "Do you have any show "that you bring that many people to "that's not your own show, so the amount of investment" And then I said, it's all young, fresh out of school No, it's all ranges, all ages. So again, I think there's a lot going on here that people are just not that exposed to. >> Yeah, that's absolutely true. So, if you look at our attendance overall, about 70% are industry and a lot of those are companies that are bringing their women and some of them are their younger women who have maybe been in the firm, in the company for a year or two or three or something like that, but the place where a lot of women drop out of the industry is more mid-career and so I think more and more companies are seeing this as a way to help their mid-career women recommit to the field and make those connections with the community at large and get a little bit more reinvigorated so we definitely see companies bringing all kinds of women out of their organization, and they like to bring a mix, so that they have some of their senior women that are sort of mentoring women who are mid-career or women who are more junior and it just gives them a really good mix. And then about 30% of our attendees are academic, we call it academic, but it's primarily students, so undergraduate, graduate, post doc, and research type people, and then some amount of professors and teaching assistants, those types of people. >> Yeah, and I really think it's the youth that give this show its special vibe. I mean there's a lot of great keynotes and some fantastic stories and really great global representation, a ton of African representation. But I do think it's the youth, it's the youngsters that bring a really unique and positive energy that you don't really see at many other conferences. >> Yeah, and I think part of that is that the community at large, you know women that are in the field they care about the women coming up and they want them to succeed and they want them to have every single opportunity so everybody's kind of invested in them and interested in nurturing and helping them along. So it does create this really, I don't know, positive environment, right. We always jokingly say there's a reason we call it a celebration. We don't call it a conference, we call it a celebration. >> Everyone's a delegate too. I like that too. It's not attendees. And that's come up on a number of interviews too where when people have reflected back on people that have helped them along the way the payback, it's almost like it's been scripted is, OK, now you need to do this to the next person to really pay it forward and that again is a consistent theme that we have also heard from the keynotes earlier today, that it is about paying it forward, which is funny because sometimes you'll hear kind of a catty women reputation that they're trying to keep each other down, you know that that was kind of a classic, another hurdle that women had to face in the professional world that they weren't necessarily supporting each other, and that is not the case here, at all. It's very much a supportive environment. >> We may have a self selection bias going on here >> Well that's okay >> But I think there's nothing but support for one another in the community and everybody recognizes that we all have to pull together. >> Right. So interesting times at AnitaB.org, the organization that puts on Grace Hopper, change of leadership, we had Brenda on, so kind of a fresh face, fresh energy. Telle. I'm going to see if I can get her a horse tomorrow to ride off into the sunset if the sun breaks out here in Orlando, so it's exciting times. It's a time of transition, always a little kind of mixed feelings, but also tremendous excitement and kind of new chapter, if you will. So tell us a little bit about what's going on at AnitaB.org >> It's an incredibly exciting time. First of all, a nod to Telle. She's been at the helm for 15 years. She's seen an incredible amount of growth. She took this on really as a favor to her dear dear friend and then took on the mantle upon Anita's death. She's done an amazing job. She's certainly an icon within the community overall I'm sure you'll hear more from her in the future. It's been great. Brenda is new fresh face. She has accomplished some pretty amazing things with the Chicago Public Schools. She's really invigorated to step into this space and it's great having her. I think the thing that you really, hopefully you got from her when she was here is that she is just this incredibly genuine person. She's lived the experience. She can relate to what all of these women have gone through. She has this profound commitment to make things different. And just the biggest heart that you could possibly imagine. >> Right, and a little chip on her shoulder. Which she talked about and it's come up time and time again where when people are told they can't do things for a lot of people, there's no greater motivator than being told you can't do this, you shouldn't do this, you're not qualified. She said "I've been in positions "where I've been told I can't be there." So to have that little chip on her shoulder I think is a real driver for many folks. >> It is. We recently did a little written piece it hasn't actually gotten published yet where we kind of went back and looked at a lot of the language that we're hearing today about women are not biologically suited to be programmers or women aren't this or women aren't that. And we did this little let's look back historically, and when did women get certain rights, and one of the things that really stood out for us in looking at that was women weren't admitted to all of the premier colleges, Harvard, Yale, whatever, until the 1960s. Which is kind of shocking when you think about it. >> Yeah, it's like yesterday practically. >> The language that was used at the time was almost identical to the language that we're hearing today. Women weren't biologically suited for this, it's really not in the right makeup for them. And yet today, half the students at those schools are women. And women have earned their way there. I just kind of laughingly say it's like deja vu all over again. We've heard all of that. we've heard people tell us you can't do that, you shouldn't do that, no you're not welcome and I think women they're not going to back down. >> It's interesting times too, because the classic gates, the distribution gate, the financing gate, the investment gate, to build companies, to create companies, they've all been broken down and kudos or serendipitously computing is the vehicle that's broken down a lot of those traditional barriers. You used to be, you couldn't start a new company because you had to get into distribution. You couldn't be a writer, there was only a few newspaper editors that controlled everything. That's all completely changed and now ubiquitous distribution, democratization of software, open source, you don't have to raise a bunch of money and buy a bunch of servers. It's so much easier to go out and affect the world and there's no easier way to affect the world than writing a great piece of software. >> Yeah, I think you're spot on on that. There's so much more leverage out there for people that want to start something. I believe that will accrue to the advantage of women. I always end up saying women are going to do great things and then I have to stop myself and say they are doing great things today. I think we've seen that already with some of the keynotes. Fei-Fei Li, and yet you hear her story as an immigrant and as a mother, as an Asian woman. She's had her challenges and she told her personal story not like with a woe is me but with a clear eye towards the things that she had to overcome to get where she was. >> And a lot of hard work, just a flat out a lot of hard work including working at the dry cleaners while she was going to school. >> Yeah, exactly. And yet there she is, one of the leaders in that space and doing incredible things. So I think you're starting to hear more and more about those women. I think they've always been there. I think that we just don't hear as much about them. So, this venue is such a great opportunity for us to hear more of their stories. >> Right, and we learned a lot about that last year with the whole Hidden Figures thing that we had on here as well as the movie and that was again, in the 60's. So we're in October, it's kind of the end the year. As you look forward to 2018, what are some of your priorities for AnitaB.org? I won't put you on the hook to tell us where Grace Hopper will be next year. You can tell us if you want. >> I saw it posted at Pride someplace. >> Is it posted already? >> I saw that and it was like whoa, I didn't know that was in the wild yet. >> But give us kind of a look. What are your priorities for next year? I know AVI Local has been a thing that's been growing over time. What are you kind of looking at as you're doing your 2018 planning? >> As amazing as it is to have 18,000 people here, which just blows our mind, we hope it continues to grow. We also know that no matter how big this conference gets that not everyone will be able to come here for a variety of reasons and so building out the local communities and making it so that, empowering those local communities to have smaller versions of this type of thing and growing this movement to a bigger scale that really encompasses all the women that are out there because even though people here say "Oh, 18,000 women, holy cow" it's a tip of the iceberg. There are thousands and thousands more women out there, we know there are. We really want to find a way to reach every single one of them and bring support and connection and inspiration to every single one of them so that they stay in the field, can achieve their dreams and their highest potential. That will have an impact on them and on the communities they live in. That's really what our focus is. >> Well, Elizabeth, again. Always great to see you. Congratulations on a phenomenal conference. And thank for inviting us to be here. It's really, honestly, one of our favorite places to be. >> We love having you here. I would just end by saying all you people out there, come join us next year. >> There you go. Are you going to tell them where? >> Houston, Texas. >> In Houston. - Back in Houston. >> Good barbecue. Ask me, I'll tell you where to go. Alright, she's Elizabeth Ames. I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE from the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing 2017. Thanks for watching. [Upbeat Techno Music]

>> Narrator: Live from Orlando, Florida, it's The Cube covering Grace Hopper's celebration of women in computing. Brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. >> Welcome back to the Cube's coverage of the Grace Hopper conference here in Orlanda, Florida. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We're joined by Aubrey Blanch. She is the Head of Diversity at Atlassian. >> Yeah, thank you so much for having me. >> Well, thank you for coming on the program. >> Absolutely, it's great to be here. >> So, tell me a little bit more about what you do as the Head of Diversity at Atlassian. >> Yeah, so I was always tell people that my job is to make people really happy and to give them an equal opportunity to succeed? But what that actually means day-to-day is that I spend a lot of time looking at the data that tells me are we hiring the right people, are we hiring people equitably, do they love coming to work and are they having an impact? So, I, that means sometimes designing programs, sometimes doing focus groups, but always trying to think about how do we make sure that everyone has the thing that they need to be really successful at Atlassian and sort of fulfill our company mission which is to help unleash the potential of every teams and for us, you know, we, we unleash the potential in every team and we know that every team is diverse and so we know that it's just an imperative for us to look like the customers that we're serving because it means that we understand them and it means that we can help them do better work. And I know that you are really dedicated to the idea of including empirical science-- >> Yes. >> In, in what you do. >> Aubrey: Yes. >> Talk to me about some the, the most powerful studies, the most powerful research that you try to bring to your thought process in terms of hiring. >> Yeah, absolutely, so I'm a recovering social scientist by training so I get really excited about the idea that you can use research to make little tweaks to the way that you do things that changes outcomes in really big ways. So, one example. We know that women, on average, when they have the same contributions as their male colleagues, actually tend to rate themselves lower. Right? Same work and then they say, "No, that's not quite as good." And so, last year we made a change to our performance review process that helps get rid of problems that might be introduced by that. So, if you're a manager and you're reading two people's work and one person has given themselves a three and one's given them a four that might affect your rating. So, we actually changed it so that now managers right the review without seeing their direct reports review. Turns out it removes bias, it shortens the process, and it helps identify whether people have an agreement about what people's work is. And we found that that meant that everyone was getting a more equitable set of ratings and we could say, "Eh, we removed bias "and it made it easier for the business." And it meant that people were getting rewarded for the value that they were creating. >> And you're also, you're also big on data. >> Aubrey: Yes. >> And so you, you first of all have to collect the data. >> So what's kinds of-- >> Yeah. >> How are you collecting data and polling employees about whether or not they are happy? Absolutely, so first, you have to collect data about who people are and how they identify. So, things like gender, race, disability status. We collect that data. And then we survey people, right? Asking them not, are you happy, but have you grown in the last six months? You know, does your manager support you in doing those things? And you can sort of triangulate what a person's experience looks like that way. But you also look at bigger things. You look at things like promotion velocity. Or what is your attrition and retention rates? And those tell you a lot of things. You dig into exit surveys and you say, "What's the number one reason that people are leaving?" Let's fix it. >> Right. >> And the other piece of data that I get really excited about and something that's sort of Atlassian's thing, I guess, is that we actually report on the diversity of our work force at the team level. So, you can check it out. It's atlassian.com/diversity. But in addition to those corporate level statistics, we really think that the diversity on your teams matters because your teams are who you're engaging with day-to-day. And you get the value out of diversity because two different people come together. And so it doesn't actually matter if you have 30% women in your company if all the women are in HR and marketing and all the men are in engineering. What matters is each of those teams is diverse because it helps them build better. And so we think it's important to measure it that way. >> That is such a great point because I think that a lot of companies can bolster their diversity numbers. >> Aubrey: Yeah. >> And with women in the more traditionally female-oriented parts of the company. >> Absolutely. But that cut of data also helps drive bigger impact. So, I'll give you an example. When we cut our data at the team level, what we saw, and this was about a year ago, that about 13.5% of our technical employees were women but when we looked at all of our teams that were developing software, two thirds of them had a woman team member. And so from that insight we were able to say, well those women are probably isolated on their teams. And so they're likely lacking a sense of community and belonging and so instead of just investing in recruiting, we created a variety of programs that helped women collaborate across their teams. So, things as simple as a coffee dates program where women opt in and are assigned to another woman in their office to have coffee with every other week. Or something more structured like a peer-mentoring ring that's cross-functional. And what we found is that that actually helped drive retention for women in those rolls. So, while we're investing in recruiting, we're also making sure that we're keeping and growing the women that are already on our teams. >> So this is, this is incredible. These small tweaks as you started off saying-- >> Yeah. >> That are really changing the way you do business. >> Absolutely. >> What is you're, you're best advice to the rest of the tech industry where Atlassian, feels like you've figured out something here? >> Yeah, I think it's trust the data and know that there are no best practices or silver bullets. So, we've made incredible progress over the last few years so-- >> And you do, and you publish your numbers. >> Yes we do. >> As you said. >> Yeah, every year. We've improved our hiring of women in technical roles by 80% over the last two years and it's, we've honestly just adopted the same approach that our software teams use. Which is we test something, we see whether it works and then we iterate and improve it. >> Agile, right. >> Right. And so it's not about one training or one program, it's about re-thinking about how you engage with your people and how you respond to their experiences. Because they'll tell you what they want and need and it's about providing that. And I always tell people best practices are a starting point but they may or may not work for you. So, you need to be open minded to the idea that the first thing you try just might not work because your culture might be different or something like that. For us, we also like to think about diversity in a really broad way. So, my other piece of advice is think intersectionally, right? So when we say-- >> What does that mean? >> Yeah. >> How do you define that? >> So, it's a big, complicated word but it just means that we all have layers. So, I, for example, identify as a woman but I also identify as American and Hispanic and five feet tall and an HR person and all of us carry all of those identities around and what you, so you need to understand that women is a diverse group. But, when you do that, when you start talking about axes of diversity that are past gender, it turns out it turns what could be an us-versus-them conversation into something that's about we. Because maybe someone says, "Well, I don't identify as female "but this is the unique thing that I bring in." And suddenly you've created it where everyone has an incentive and has skin in the game to create inclusion and you will get greater gender equity out of that. So, it's a little bit counter-intuitive to start backwards in a way, or start complex and work towards simple but that's something that we've found has been incredibly helpful in galvanizing people to get involved and really changing the culture in a way that it's not a top down initiative or a bottom-up initiative, it's everyone moving in the same direction. >> Well, Aubrey, it sounds so common-sensical, of course, yes, yes. >> Yeah. >> But it's only obvious after you say it. >> Right, yeah, yes. >> And after you've tried it and tested and iterated on it. (laughs) >> So that would be my thing is, is whatever diversity matters to you because at Atlassian, for example, we're an Australian company and so international diversity is incredibly important, right? Where you come from. You know we, I always joke, you're more likely to hear three languages walking across the office than anything else and that's a really cool place to be but it means we've already gotten used to working in a diverse environment and now it's how do we just add additional aspects of diversity to our culture and to our teams? >> Right, and let's not fight that. >> Absolutely. >> 'Cause it's working. >> Right, and the other thing that I've found which is really exciting is as I've seen teams start to change their composition, you don't just hear really great things from those folks who come from under-represented groups. People from those majority groups say, "Wow, it's actually improving my experience at work," because they have access to more perspectives and people who have different experiences than them. >> So, it's firing different parts of their brains to-- >> Yeah. >> To-- >> It's just more interesting to do your job that way. >> Have better ideas, yeah. >> So, that's the other thing that's real important is this is a win-win-win solution, it's not a zero-sum game. >> Right. Well Aubrey, thanks so much for joining us. It's been a lot of fun talking to you. >> Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. >> We will have more from the Cube's coverage of the Grace Hopper Conference just after this.

>> Announcer: Live from Orlando, Florida it's the CUBE, covering Grace Hopper's Celebration of Women in Computing, brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of the Grace Hopper Conference here in Orlando, Florida. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We're joined by Pamela Rice. She is the Head of Technology, Strategy, and Innovation Labs Engineering at Capital One. So, thanks so much for joining us. >> Absolutely, it's good to be here. It's really good. >> So, you're only been at Capital One for nine months. >> That's right. >> You're new to the job, new to the company. Tell our viewers a little bit about why you chose Capital One and what your first experiences were. >> Yeah, absolutely. So, I'm leading technology, strategy, and innovation, and what that means is looking at how we can use emerging technologies to set our course for really creating better and different changing products for our customers. We know that customers' expectations are changing drastically and technology is really rapidly accelerating. So, using things like IOT, machine-learning, streaming data, these are all ways we can connect with our customers better. It's funny, when I first walked in the Capital One doors to interview nine months back, they had been talking to me for some time and I'm like, Okay, I'll talk to you. I didn't have high expectations-- >> Because it's a-- >> It's a bank! >> You thought it was a buttoned up kind of-- >> I had been part of Fintech and startups and I'm like, rapid, let's change the world kind of thing, and I walked into the building in Richmond, and I asked a person, 'cause I could immediately see that teams were working on things together, there was a sense of real purpose and energy. Like you could feel the energy in the walls. They were using buzzwords like machine-learning, and I was like, wait a minute. I must have gone to the wrong place. I went back to the front desk and I'm like, "Is this Capital One?" I really did that, because it felt like a tech company. The walls were bright and shiny and people were running around, and it was a little bit of a hectic pace to it. I just thought immediately, there's something to this place that looks different than my expectations of a bank were. >> What is Capital One doing right in the sense of bringing this technology buzz into a financial institution? >> I think that it's safe to say that, to Capital One, really understands that customer expectations are changing so fast, and technology is changing so fast, that they have to invest heavily in technology to really reach their customers and go where their customers are going to want to go. So, part of my job is looking at strategy. Where do we think technology is going to go and how do we make big bets now so that we can meet our customer needs in the future? I think one of the things that holds true for me is that our internal moral compass, our fiber, our DNA, comes out when we talk about how we get there. We want to get there together with diverse teams, and that's why it's so important for us to be here. Because, the way we build products is the way that we will connect with our customers, and we want our customers, all of our customers, to feel connected to our products, not just one segment of the community. >> So, talk to me a little bit about the process of designing a new product for your customers, with that diverse team behind it. >> It's funny, because in the old waterfall ways, an idea would be born in some boardroom or some shadow room, and then all a sudden, engineers would get a speck on their plate that would say, hey, go build this. Then, oftentimes, they were so disconnected from the customers. We've taken that and pivoted it totally around, so that we have whole teams that are filled with designers, with design thinking, with product, with engineering, and they can connect with the customers in a way that really optimized towards getting a product out to market faster. By the way, that tight life cycle from the time an idea is born to the time you can get something in customers' hands, that needs to shorten as well, so that you can focus on innovation. If your day-to-day activities takes you months, if not years, to get out to market, you have no time for innovation. So, part of my job also is optimizing how we get things out to market faster and in a streamlined way, and empower that team to connect with the customers better. >> And see what the customers like and what they don't like, and then iterate. >> Exactly. >> What are some of the most exciting things you're working on now? >> Well, it's hard to say that there's just one thing. We have so many really big milestones underway. It's no secret that we have a heavy migration to the cloud. We were one of the first financial institutions that really doubled down and said we're all in, we're going there. In fact, I think there's going to be more and more financial institutions that start going there, because it's such a time-saving. If I don't have to worry about all these racks and all this hardware, I spend more time connecting with the customers. Again, operational efficiency in connecting with your customers. We have a high dev-ops mindset, meaning we disconnect that bridge from engineer to throwing something over the wall, and we combine the team that has everything it takes to get something out to the customer, and then fix something if something goes bump in the night. We also have a high culture, that is we have a goal of getting into microservices more. So, instead of these big monolithic applications, really focusing on these small, microelements that have functionality that is enabled to the customer so we get things out the door faster. >> So, when you talk about diverse teams, and you're talking about a lot of cross-functional teams, so you've got teams with engineers and designers on them, working together. But, you're also talking about racial diversity and gender diversity. So, how do you make that happen? >> It's a tough problem. I've been asked a lot of questions about how do you have diversity programs that actually work, and I will say it is not just one program. When you're focusing on diversity, you can't just think about it from a program perspective. You have to think about it at your DNA level. Like every conversation, every way that you think about who should be promoted or who should get an opportunity, or economic parity, all of these things you should be questioning, am I thinking about this through a diversity lens? So, even in conversations I have with my team where somebody should be bring up something as innocuous as man-hours, I correct them. I say, it's not man-hours. These are people-hours. So, even if you can have those small hints, you need a program, absolutely. But, you need diversity included in every conversation you have, whether it is about who's going to get promoted, who's going to get a bonus, or how we talk about people and where they spend their time. >> As a woman engineer- I hate saying a woman eng- You're an engineer! You're a human being engineer. But, you also are a role model to the younger women here at Grace Hopper. What is your best advice for them, if they want to have a career as an engineer? >> It was funny, yesterday I was on a panel. Over 700 people came. I was just so honored to be part of that experience. My role in technology and being an executive now in technology really has shifted quite a bit. I feel like it's my job to give back to the community. There's nothing more empowering for me personally than to see somebody helped by words of advice or being connected to somebody else. I think that my biggest words of advice are really to know that you deserve it, know that you deserve this career, know that you deserve to dream big. You deserve a loud voice. You deserve a seat at the table. You deserve the whole table. You deserve whatever you want to dream and if you have voices in your head or external voices that are telling you you can't have it, quiet those voices and believe in yourself. Because, there's nothing more powerful than believing in yourself. We are all here believing in you, because these engineers deserve it. I would just tell them to believe that. >> That's great advice. >> Thank you. >> Well, Pamela, thanks so much for being on our show. It's been really fun talking to you. >> Thank you so much. >> We will have more from Orlando and the Grace Hopper Conference just after this. (light, electronic music)

(electronic music) >> Announcer: Live from Orlando Florida, it's the Cube, covering Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. >> Welcome back to the Cube's coverage of the Grace Hopper conference here in Orlando, Florida. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We're joined by LaFawn Davis, she is the global head of culture and inclusion at Twilio. Thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you for having me. >> So let's start by telling our viewers what you do at Twilio. What does the global head of culture and inclusion do? >> That's a great question, it's kind of a newer title, so the culture piece is around our environment, our workspace, how employees feel, and it also incorporates employee experience, so we want to make sure that all the great talent we get in, we actually keep and develop and grow, and then there's the inclusion piece, the D&I piece, and that's the piece that people typically understand, so that is attracting, recruiting, retaining and developing top talent, it's making sure that we're looking at all of the diverse workforce that we want to have in the company, that we're serving our employees in the right way, and so it's nice that it's going to have both sides of that so it's not just purely about recruiting, it's not purely about numbers. It really is about how employees feel and it's whether or not they feel included, but also belong. >> So how do you do that? I mean, that's what every company wants, is to make employees feel happy about coming to work every morning. How do you do it? >> You have to ask. So it's really important that we have values that we can stand upon, every day. So we have what we call Nine Things, and they really are values, things like draw the owl, which is like you have to start somewhere. >> Rebecca: Draw the owl? >> Draw the owl. It's from an old internet meme that's around the way you draw an owl is you start with two circles, and then you draw the rest of the owl. You have to start somewhere. We have another one that's be humble. No shenanigans, that one you hear a lot, like if you're in a meeting and people are kind of ... thinking of doing things a different way? >> There are a few tech companies that maybe could have benefited from those shenanigans, but yeah. >> We'll call each other out, I mean, you'll hear it around the office. >> Rebecca: Do they, though? >> Oh no, absolutely. They absolutely will, they'll say, "That sounds a little shenanigan-y." or, you know, "We're not supposed to be doing "shenanigans here, so let's really "figure out how to do the right thing." And I think when you have values that are that specific, you can stand on them, you can count on them, and you can call each other out. >> Shenanigan-y? I love it, okay. >> (laughs) So it's like, let's be honest, and let's do what's right. >> But at the same time, I mean, it is, I understand how that can become the sort of safe word, and it's almost funny to say, "Hey, what are you doing here?" But how do you make those employees feel empowered enough to be able to call someone out, particularly if that person is a manager or a white guy that just has more bluster. >> Yeah, it starts from the top down. But even before I got to Twilio, I've only been at Twilio for six months but I did in the space for well over a decade, and what Twilio has is a top down and a bottoms up, so they were doing diversity inclusion and had employee resource groups before I got there. Three years before I got there, and the CEO is fantastic, and it really starts from that, messaging, you can tell the CEO he's being shenanigan-y. He expects you to, so we're hiring in people that espouse our values, we're looking for that, we're making sure that people come in with that understanding of, we don't want shenanigans here, we want you to be humble here, we want you to draw the owl, we want you to really acquire knowledge and thirst after it. Those are the things we look for, and so if you keep hiring people like that that already lend to your values, you're going to have, continue to have that culture. And it's not really about, oh I don't want to say this in front of, like, a C-Suite executive or in front of a leader, it's expected of you that you live those values no matter who you are. >> So as you've said, you've been in this space for a while, you worked for PayPal, Google, Yahoo. What have been the biggest changes you've seen over the course of your career? >> Yeah, so it's really a journey, right? I think the diversity journey especially ten years ago started with diversity, numbers, demographics, and it was really just gender globally and ethnicity U.S., and that's it and that's what people talked about, and those were the efforts that people made. It was really about recruiting, and now it's gone into more of the inclusion space and making sure people feel like they have a voice that can be heard, or they have a seat at the table, but honestly right now where we're at is the belonging space, right? Inclusion is really about making sure other people feel included and that you're hearing other perspectives. Belonging is a personal feeling. I feel like I belong here, and I'll tell you a funny story. When I first started Twilio, probably about two weeks in, I sit on the people team, which is next to the legal team, and the legal team's having this discussion and I'm like, wait a minute, oh my gosh, are you all conspiracy theorists? And they're like yeah! And I go, oh! Oh, you're my people! (Rebecca laughs) 'Cause I'm the one with the whiteboard and the red string and the tinfoil hat, and I immediately felt a sense of, you're my people, I feel like I'm supposed to be here. Everyone wants that feeling, and so the belonging space is really where companies are starting to focus, it's not just about having a seat at the table. Do you want to be here, do teams work well together? Are we working on something that's important to you? Do we have a vision that's inspiring to you? And that's more around belonging. I think the next step in this journey is equality, and we are a long way from that. >> And what do you make of that? I mean, you have been in this space for a while now, at some of the biggest, most respected tech names in the industry, and some of their names have been dragged through the mud around these issues, so I mean, are you discouraged, are you hopeful, what's your feeling now? >> I'm hopeful. I don't think I would still be doing it this long if I wasn't hopeful, and yes, I get tired. (laughs) >> Yeah, that we're still talking about it. >> Definitely get fatigued, but I'm very passionate about it, and that's how I ended up in this career. I started off in operations when I was at Google, and I was one of the founding members of the Black Googler Network, which is an employee's resource group, and I just got really passionate about being strategic. It wasn't just about building a sense of community. It was, no, let's figure out how to attract, recruit, retain and develop talent. Let's figure out like what the company needs and how we can plug in, and not just ... I mean, it lit a fire in me, and so I took lots of different roles within the D&I space and every time I think I'm going to step out, I get sucked back in. (they laugh) And so I think there's so much work to do. I think people inherently want to do the right thing. There's some bad apples that have been dragged through the mud lately, absolutely, but I think for the most part, people are coming from a good place. They may not know what to do, I think we have to change the conversation, because if we continue to do the same things over and over again, and they're not working, that should say something, right? >> So these, in terms of your past companies, Yahoo, Google, PayPal, they are much bigger than Twilio, Twilio is ... >> Less than a thousand employees. >> Less than a thousand people. How would you describe the biggest differences in terms of trying to affect change? >> Yeah, so I think the nice thing is, this is the first company where I don't fee like I have to talk about the business case for diversity. >> Rebecca: They already get it. >> They already get it, it's already got. My CEO will tell the story that when he started this company, he's like, I'm trying to build a company, and people were like, diversity, diversity, he's like, I'm trying to build a company. And then he really thought about it, and said, "Well, when is the right time to think about diversity? Is it when I have a thousand white male engineers?" Right, at that point you're fixing a problem as opposed to just starting with it and hiring people around that, and so it's the first company where I feel like that was already there, which is wonderful because now I can focus on the things that make the greatest impact, instead of starting from scratch, and so a smaller company, especially with more of a startup mentality, they just went public last year, I think it's almost easier in a way to make more progress because of that. >> And just in terms of what your CEO said about having to fix the problem, how do you think Twilio's products, how can you, how would a customer be able to tell that this was made by a diverse group of people, and it wasn't just a bunch of white guys in a room wearing hoodies, developing the Twilio suite? >> Platform. >> Rebecca: Yeah. >> The whole goal of the Twilio platform is to power up communication, right? That's the entire goal, and so I think as we're out and about, I mean we have this really cool role and it made this all tour, I just don't know it, and they're called developer evangelists, which I would love to be if I actually coded a little bit more, and they actually are the kind of, the middle of coding and evangelizing kind of what Twilio does, but a little bit of sales too, and so they're actually touching the community. We have community developers, we have, so it's not just people sitting at a desk in a room talking about what's best for people. It's we get out into the community, we understand what developers need, and we're constantly trying to figure out how do we create more doers, that's what we call people who create things. How do we create more doers? We have twilio.org, which is our foundation working with nonprofits, and there are social justice apps built on the platform. There are life-saving apps built on the platform. And we're funding these organizations so they can continue to build more and more on our platforms and change people's lives, and so I think that, and those examples, actually help people understand it's not just 400 white guys sitting in a room creating something for them. We're actually getting out and understanding what people need. >> And the research around diversity shows that diverse teams, it may take them a little slower to get the work done but the work is better, because it has taken in multiple perspectives, it has there's been more sort of fighting, and I don't mean to say fighting in the pejorative sense, but just getting to the ... >> LaFawn: Debating. >> The right answer, yeah, debate, exactly. (LaFawn laughs) To get to the right answer. I mean, would you say that's the experience? And I know you're not on the technical side, but what are you hearing from your ... >> I challenge that. >> Rebecca: Okay, all right. >> Every employee is encouraged to build something on the Twilio platform when they start, no matter what role they're in, and I am not in a technical role, but I know a little bit of coding now. But yes, absolutely, healthy debate is absolutely encouraged. How else are you going to build something for other people? It's really easy to just say, "I think we need to do this feature," right, but if that's not what people need, or you're not getting other perspectives, then you're building an inferior product. And so absolutely, you have to have that healthy debate, it's encouraged, and I see it (laughs) but it's not in a disrespectful way. So I have, being a part of the tech industry for a long time, I have seen some conversations that weren't so great, and people not treating each other well, thinking that that's how you have-- >> A little shenanigan-y. >> That's very shenanigan-y, right? Or calling each other names because they think that's how you get your point across. And I just don't feel that way at Twilio. It's much more respectful. I'm not saying that they don't get into it because I think you have to in order to really innovate. >> Well, LaFawn, thank you so much for joining us. It's been really a lot of fun talking to you. >> Thank you so much, you too. >> We will have more from Grace Hopper just after this. (electronic music)

>> Announcer: Live, from Orlando, Florida it's the Cube, covering Grace Hopper's Celebration of Women in Computing, brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. >> Welcome back to the Cube's coverage of the Grace Hopper Conference, here at the Orange County Convention Center. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We're joined by Maureen Fan. She is the CEO and co-founder of Baobab Studio, which is the industry's leading VR animation studio, so, welcome Maureen. >> Thank you so much for having me. >> It's excited to talk to you, because you just won an Emmy. Congratulations. >> Thank you. >> You just won an Emmy for "Invasion", so, tell us a little bit about invasion. >> It was our first piece ever and it was just an experiment to see if we could even create VR and it's a story about these adorable little bunnies and you are actually a bunny too, you look down, you have a furry, little bunny body and these aliens that come to try to take over the Earth, with their advanced technology and you and your bunny friend end up saving the entire Earth and it's starring Ethan Hawk and it just came out last year. And we're really excited, because it became the number one top downloaded VR experience across all the headsets and it's getting turned into a Hollywood Feature Film. >> Very cool, very cool >> Thank you. >> And you have another film coming out too and this is "Rainbow Crow" >> Yes. >> Tell our viewers a little bit about "Rainbow". >> So, "Rainbow Crow" is based off of a Native American legend about how the crow used to have beautiful rainbow feathers and a beautiful singing voice and it's John Legend, in our piece and how he decides to sacrifice himself, by flying into the sun to bring warmth and fire back to the Earth and in the process, loses all his beautiful feathers, becomes black and burnt and his voice becomes like the crow's voice, but it's about how beauty is within and there's also, huge themes about diversity and how if you learn to accept yourself and your differences, that's when you can accept others and that's why we specifically cast minorities and women, so, we have John Legend, Constance Wu, from "Fresh off the Boat" as a skunk character, Diego Luna, from "Rogue One", for the moth character, as well as Randy Edmunds, as a Native American elder, narrator, and we have a whole bunch of other stars to announce, soon-- >> Well we cannot wait to hear. That's already an amazing line-up. >> Thank you. >> So, when you're thinking about "Rainbow Crow" and particularly, because it's VR, which is relatively new, still experimental, I mean, the messages of diversity, does it lend itself to VR, better than, say, a standard animation film? >> Absolutely, because if you think about stories that you just watch passively, the reason why we need stories and humanity, in general is to experience characters and stories beyond those we can experience in our real lives and we think, "Oh, how would I feel if I was in the "position of that character or what would I do?" but in VR, because you are actually playing a character in a role, you actually have to decide at that point, "what would I do?" so, it's not just a experience that I just see, it's one where I'm actively experiencing it, so, I create a memory and remember afterwards and there's all these research studies at Stanford by Jeremy Bailenson, who is head of the Stanford VR lab, that shows if you are made a homeless person, inside a VR experience and you have to go through a day in the life of a homeless person or you would look in the mirror and see that you are a black woman, that you, when you get out of the headset, you act completely differently. You have so much more empathy for these people than you would normally and so, it gets you to care about these characters, in a way that you don't normally and in VR, because you're doing it in a real-time game engine, these characters can act and react to what you do, so you can turn that empathy into action and actually act upon your caring, which we call compassion, so, it really changes you in a way, that normal, traditional story-telling doesn't, so, I think that having voices and characters that are different, in front of the screen, and also, behind the screen are really important to create role models and different perspectives for all the people out in the world. >> And these are movies that are targeted at kids, children, but do you see a future in which, where there is more targeted at adults, for VR? >> Absolutely. The funny thing is, in the beginning, the VR distributors didn't think that people would want our VR animation, because they're like, "Oh, it's just going to be these hardcore boys "that just love to play games. "Are they going to want this animation?" and VR is targeted towards adults, that's why they were surprised and we were surprised when "Invasion" became the number one downloaded VR experience. It shows that the audience for our content is from little kids to grandmas and everyone in between and that's probably why it became the top downloaded experience, is because it's universally appealing and has themes that are appealing to just, every single generation, so, absolutely, but for VR to become mainstream, there needs to be more universally appealing content. Right now, the content tends to be for games, like parkour games, as well as documentaries, which are two amazing pieces of content for this medium, but for it to become mainstream, we need more universally appealing content and I'm excited about, right now, it's a new industry. This is when minorities and women in particular, can enter the space and help shape the voices and the direction of the industry. >> That is exactly where I wanted to go next. So, let's talk a little bit about Baobab Studio. It's not that old and VR is not that old and so, why are there more opportunities, would you say, for women, and minorities? >> Well, if you look at traditional animation in the traditional entertainment fields that's a very mature industry and to break into that industry, you have to either have lots and lots of money or unfair distribution advantage, but VR, there's technological disruption, which means nobody has an advantage at all, means it's a level playing field and everybody can come in and start something, so, this is a perfect opportunity, when there's low barriers to entry of coming in, for women and minorities, anyone who wants their voice heard, to start companies or to make experiences and we can set the groundwork, because there's no one telling us what we can and can't do, because no one actually knows what we can and can't do yet. >> Right, right, but yet you are still of a female, asian figurehead of a studio, that will hopefully, someday be a major studio. You're working on it, but do you find that people take you as seriously in Hollywood? I mean, what are you coming up against? >> Well, it's really interesting, because I heard for even fundraising is one of the hardest parts of starting a company and there was a Stanford Research Study that showed that if you took a deck, a pitch deck for a company and you had a male voice-over versus a female voice-over the male voice-over was, I don't remember what, it was like 50% more likely to get funded than the woman with the same exact pitch deck, so I knew from that and they also show that if you are married and wear a ring you're taken more seriously, or if you're less attractive, also, you're taken more seriously and my hypothesis and some of the hypotheses out there, is it takes away the whole entire female attraction thing, like what does it mean to be an attractive female, so, I had to go into the meetings, knowing this. I even considered wearing a ring. I considered wearing a paper bag over my head. >> A bag over you head. Exactly, exactly. >> But at the same time I felt that I need to be myself and the best thing to, there's a correlation between the perceived leadership and confidence, that I needed to just go in there and be confident in myself so, I knew that, that could work against me, but I just needed to be myself, but I had to make sure that I was really confident and really believed in what I said and honestly, besides being confident and aggressive, I also, felt comfortable, because a lot of the people I talked to, I knew from my network and I had many of my male friends and female friends who knew these VC's, do the initial introduction, so I felt more comfortable going in, for them already knowing that I had somebody else saying that I was awesome. >> Yeah, and you've had many mentors and sponsors along the way too. >> Absolutely, I would say it's one of the most important things, for my career from the very beginning. When I graduated from business school, I actually emailed my mentors and said, "Here are the things I care about for finding a job." I didn't have to go find any jobs. They actually found all these jobs. for me, set up informational interviews, for me and I just went in and did it, all the informational interviews, got the offers and just choose one of them that I wanted to be in but, even for starting my company, my co-founder, Eric Darnell was a write and director of all four "Madagascar" films and I got introduced to him, through my mentor, Glen Entis who is the co-founder of PDI Dreamworks Animation and he was my mentor through Zynga and then, Gen Entis introduced me to Alvy Ray Smith, who is the co-founder of Pixar, who also became our advisor, Alvy Ray Smith, then introduced us to Glen Keane, who is the animator for "Little Mermaid", "Alaadin". >> The power of networks. >> It was all through the network and through my mentors that I found, a lot of the opportunities that I have and they also helped my through my personal life and how to navigate being entrepreneur and I rely on them so much. >> So, beyond finding the right mentor and sponsor what else would you give, your parting words to the young Maureen fans out there? >> I think there's a tendency for society to pressure you to conform, to money, fame, beauty and you don't need to listen to that and you don't need to be bucketed. I designed my own major at Stanford and with an eBay, I took four different roles. I just kept on creating my own roles and refusing to be bucketed as a creative or a suit and you can be who you are and create a category onto yourself and so, don't feel pressured to listen to what society is telling you. The other thing, is if you are faced with pushed back for being promoted and you feel like it's maybe because you're a woman, we have a tendency as women to start blaming ourselves and thinking there's something wrong with us, versus research shows men are most likely to blame the system, don't let it affect you and bring you down, because you need to actually be confident and believe in yourself in order to rise above. >> Great. Great advice. Maureen, it's been a pleasure having you on the show. Thanks so much. >> Thank you. >> And best of luck to you. >> Thank you, so much. >> Hope you win another Emmy. >> Thank you. >> Come back and talk to us again. >> Thank you. I'm Rebecca Knight, we'll have more from Grace Hopper, just after this. (techno music)

>> Announcer: Live, from Orlando, Florida, it's the Cube covering Grace Hopper's celebration of women in computing brought to you by Silicon Angle Media >> Welcome back to the Cube's coverage of the Grace Hopper conference here in Orlando, Florida I'm your host Rebecca Knight, along with my co host Jeff Frick. We're joined by Megan Smith. We're very excited to have you on the show. >> It's good to be here >> She is the third US CTO and also the CEO of a new company, Shift7.co, so thanks so much for joining us. >> Thanks for having me, it's great to be here. It's so fun to be at Hopper, >> Rebecca: It is, it is! >> It's cool, it's the Grace Hopper celebration, because we're trying to celebrate women in computing, and we're what, at 18 thousand people now, >> The biggest ever, >> Plus I think, 6 thousand people joining on the livestream, which is great. >> Before the cameras were rolling, we were talking about your role as the 3rd US CTO, and just talking about getting more technology into government to help leaders work together, and move faster. Tell us a little about this initiative. >> What's so great, is it's not partisan, fixing the government and making it work better, so all the work that we were doing continues. What we were able to put in place, during the Obama administration, and continues to Trump, were things like, the CT office. Having technical people, so I worked at Google, people work at Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, these companies who have that background, to join in on policy conversations, one, to join in on capacity building the government, so data sciences and tech and, let's have our services be as great as Amazon, or as Twitter, or Oracle, and not be sort of retro, really serve the American people. And then also, helping the American people in general, with capacity building, things like computer science for all. So that was an initiative that continues to get all of our children to have coding at school. That all children, you couldn't graduate from high school without having had some experience on learning of coding Coding is a 21st century fluency, it's a skill we all need, Like freshman biology. You want to know some biology, you want to know some coding, you want to know how to write, so making sure they have is tech-up, which was a program we started to help train Americans, there's six hundred thousand jobs open, in the United States, and they pay 50% more than the average American salary. The companies are starving. How do we rapidly get more Americans into these jobs? It turns out that people have, of course, created these fabulous code boot camps, you can train in three months for these jobs, some of them are paid, some times they pay you, all different kinds, some are online, some are offline, they're all over the country. So we're able to get more people to consider, a job like that, culturally they think, Well I don't, why would I, I don't know how to do that. Well you can, this is a fun and interesting and exciting career, you can do digital marketing, you can do user interface design. You can get involved in front end or back end coding, product management, all those things, sales. And so, how do you pull lots more Americans in, get our companies fueled so we have really the economic opportunity, and they're all over the country. Location wise, and topic wise. So we did tech hour now, and a tech jobs tour, which is not what we did in government, but we continue some of that work. >> This weird dichotomy, because on one end, people are worried about tech taking jobs, on the other hand, there's a ton of open tech jobs. And there's this transition period, that's difficult, obviously for people that didn't grow up, but one of the keynote speakers today, told a really heartening story, that she didn't get into it until the day she had to leave her abusive husband, and now she is a coder >> That's Doctor Sue Black, who was just given the Order of the British Empire, I mean, she is an incredible computer scientist. Yes, she escaped an abusive marriage with three small children, in her early 20s, I think. Ended up moving into public housing, and dealing with three children only being the school from 9 until 3, and eventually getting her PhD in computer science, and really, she started Techmoms now, she continues to do research in other things, but she's really trying to use her story, and her organizing capacity, to have more people realize this isn't hard like figuring out gravity waves that won the Nobel prize. This is hard like writing a hard essay, so we all can learn to write an essay. It takes some mastery work, you don't learn it in kindergarten but by the time you're in 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 12th grade, you can do it. >> It's not rocket science. >> Right, so coding is like that. >> The other piece you said that's very interesting, is the consumerization of IT. We've seen it at enterprise, a huge trend. But, now I expect everything that's on my phone, when I interact with Facebook or Amazon, or whatever, to be in all the applications, so, as you said, that's influencing government, and the way they have to deliver services, and I would imagine, too, with kind of the next wave of kids coming in, graduating, going into public service, they certainly have that expectation, right? They've been working on their phone forever of course it should be on the phone. >> And so we want everybody in our country fluent in computer science and coding at a basic level, like again, like freshman biology or takin' chemistry in high school, or taking writing. So that everyone could realize this is not rocket science we could have these kinds of capabilities as part of our services, from Housing and Urban Development, from the Department of Education. You know, a lot of us use our phones to get places, you know, on our maps, and so that's actually data coming from the US Geological survey, if you're looking at the weather, you're looking at NOAA's satellites, this is open government data. We were able to open over two hundred thousand data sets, from all over government, not private data, but public data, that you could make an entire app store, or Google play set of products on top of that. Government wouldn't have to pay for that, it just packages up the API as well. A really good example of that, is the US census team. There's nothing more big data than census, they have all of our information from a data perspective, and so they did opportunity.census.gov, and they said to various agencies, let us help you bridge these data sets into something that someone could build on top of, like we're seeing from the courses sector, we saw wonderful things like, Housing and Urban Development said, okay, our challenges are housing affordability, mobility, these are the challenges instead of having HUD make an app for Americans to come to, they just can explain what their problem is, what data sets, and then engage extraordinary companies, like airbnb, Redfins, Zillow, these fabulous tech companies, who can make instead a product for 100% of the Americans, rather than only wealthy or middle class Americans, and so they did things like, opportunity score, and airbnb helping you figuring out, if I rent a room in my house I can make my rent more affordable, very creative apps, that we can see, same thing for the Department of Ed or Department of Labor, and as the data gets out there, and as apps come, also the opportunity for data science and machine learning. What if, as much as we serve ads to ourselves, in these algorithms, what if we use the algorithms to help Americans find a job that they would love? You know, job matching, and these kinds of opportunities. of the problems in the world, and helping government get more fluent at that. And the way to do that is not so much, jam the government You have to do this, but find terrific talent like we see at Hopper, and have them cycle into the government, to be co-leaders just like a surgeon general would come. >> Are you facing recruitment challenges in that same way though? In the sense that technology is having a hard enough time recruiting and retaining women, but the government, too, is that seen as enough of an employer of choice for young talented, bright ambitious, young women? >> I'm not in government now, but when we were in there, we found a very interesting thing. Alex Mcgovern, who had been the general counsel of Twitter who was Stephanie's CTO with me and led a lot of our tech quals we called TQ like tech IQ in policy, together with economists and lawyers and others have if we're going to decide net neutrality, let's include everyone, including computer scientists, and we're going to sue bridge and open source, So we talked about that, and on the way going in Mcgovern, he said, wouldn't it be cool if, just like when you look at a lawyer's resume, you might see that they clerk and they served their county through clerking and through the judicial system, as well as being a private lawyer, they were a public defender, that's a pretty normal thing to see on a legal resume. If you looked at medical, you might see them going into NIH or doing some research, if you looked at a scientist, they might have gone to, done some NSF work or others. But for the tech crew, there is of course amazing technical people in NASA, NAH and the Department of Energy, and there's great IT teams, but there's not this thing that the Silicon Valley crew resume would say, oh, yeah, I served my country. So that's why, under President Obama, we were able to create these incredible programs. The Presidential Innovation Fellows, which was a one year term of service, The United States Digital Service, which is a three months to a two year term of service in the VA. What's more amazing if you build Amazon, than to go as a second act and help our veterans? It's an incredible honor, to the point of, will they come? Yes, that's what we were hoping, could we have that be a normal thing, and yes it's become a normal thing. And the Trump administration continues it. The 18F team is in the general services administration, they're on 18th and F so they have a code name. But that particular team is located around the country, not only in DC but in San Francisco, in Chicago, and others. So you see this tech sector flowing now into the government on a regular basis, and we welcome more peoples. The government is who shows up to help, so we need the tech sector to show up cause we've got a lot of money as a country, but if we're not effectively using it we're not serving the American people and foster children, veterans, elders, others need the services that they deserve and we have the money, so let's make it happen the way the tech sector is delivering Amazon packages or searches. >> What is your feeling, this is not your first Grace Hopper obviously, but what is your feeling about this conference, and advice that you would give to young women who are here, maybe for their first or second time, in terms of getting the most their time here? >> You know, I think the main thing is, it's a celebration, that's fun and you can walk up to anyone, so just talk to everyone. I've been talking to a million people on the floor, fabulous. Students are here, more senior technical leaders are here. We've been running speed mentoring, we're running a program called the Tech Jobs Tour, it's at Techjobstour.com, it's a #Americanshiring, and we've been going to 50 different cities and so we're running a version of that, and we do speed mentoring, so come to the speed mentoring sessions, it's a five minute pop, talk to someone about what you're tryin' to do. Lot's of programs like that, get into the sessions, come to the keynotes which are so inspiring, and Melinda Gates was amazing today, Dr. Fefe Lee was incredible, just across aboard, Dr Sue Black was here, I thought it was great today, actually, just to reflect on Melinda's keynote, I think this might have been the first time, I was talking to her, that she's really talked about her own technical experience >> That struck me, too! As a coder, starting in computer science. I didn't really understand that she had really started very early, with Apple 3 and the story of her dad >> And her love of her Apple 3, right! and really high school coding, which is so important for young people in high school and middle school, even younger. The Muscogee Creek Tribe, in Oklahoma, is teaching robotics in head start, so we can start in preschool. Just make it fun, and interesting. They're funny, they don't do battle bots, because you don't really want to teach 3 and 4 year olds to fight, so instead they have collaborative robots. >> Robots who work together Age appropriate. >> Well Megan Smith, this has been so fun talking to you, thanks so much for coming on our show. >> Thanks for having me. >> We will have more from the Grace Hopper Conference just after this, I'm Rebecca Knight for Jeff Frick (music)