>> Announcer: 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 theCUBE's coverage of the Grace Hopper Conference, here in Orlando, Florida. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We're joined by Vipul Nagrath. He is the Global CIO at ADP, a provider of human resources management software in New York. Welcome, Vipul. >> Thank you. >> It's great to have you on the show. So, before the cameras were rolling, you were talking about how this is your first ever Grace Hopper. How do you find things? >> I think this is exciting. Just the sheer numbers: 18,000 attendees, all the various different companies that are represented over here, the talent. I'm here with a sizeable team, there's about 30 of us. Many of my colleagues have been walking the floor and they've been just thoroughly impressed with the talent that they're meeting and the people that they're talking to. We're here actively recruiting. We've actually been doing on-site interviews. So, we're looking for top talent and if we can find it right here at the show, we'll do it. >> So, there are a lot of tech conferences that you attend, but what is it about Grace Hopper in particular? >> Well, this one specifically, one of our initiatives is around diversity and inclusion. So, what better place to come than Grace Hopper if you want to talk about diversity and inclusion? In addition to that, is we were talking earlier, right? The marketplace that engineering and tech and computer science is going to go into, the need is actually only increasing. Everything is run by software today or very shortly will be. In the end, every company's becoming a software company and offering some other services with it. We're all headed that way. Yet, the talent pool's actually getting tighter and smaller, yet more jobs are going to be created in that industry. So, I think it's a phenomenal and wonderful opportunity, and specifically from a Grace Hopper perspective and the Anita Borg perspective, is get more women involved in this. The pie is going to get bigger, and I think women have an opportunity to gain more of that share of that pie. >> So, is ADP doing anything to actively engage more women earlier in their career trajectories to get them interested in this area? >> There are a number of multiple- Sorry, there's a multiple set of initiatives that we have. In fact, I was joined here at this conference with our Chief Diversity Officer. She's also responsible for corporate social responsibility. So, diversity and inclusion is really huge for her, not just for us at ADP, but she actually has a larger message for the entire industry. So, she's pushing that agenda. So, there are actually many different things that we're working on. >> And as a human resources company that message can get through. >> Exactly. >> So, talk to me. We always hear about the business case for diversity and inclusion. How do you view it? >> How do I view it, is I start with, again, top talent, and then it's thought diversity. When you bring multiple disciplines in together, bring people with multiple backgrounds in together, even a different point of view, you realize, or I think you open up and realize that you might have had some blinders on some things. Now you start really getting rid of those blinders. Instead of them being blinders, they turn into opportunities. I think if you have too many people thinking exactly the same way, doing exactly the same thing, you fall into a not-so-good method, right? You fall into a not-so-good idea of just really channeling the same idea over and over and over again. >> The groupthink that is a big problem in so many companies. So, how do diverse teams work together in your experience? You talked about seeing wider perspectives and different kinds of ideas and insights that you wouldn't necessarily get if it's just a bunch of similar people from similar backgrounds, similar races, all one gender, sitting in a room together. How do these teams work together in your experience? >> Well, what I believe in is you got to put these teams together and you got to empower them. Absolutely, there's a stated goal. There is an outcome. There is a result we have to achieve. Give 'em the outcome, give 'em the goal, give 'em a loose framework, and then give 'em guiding principles. Then, after that: team, go ahead. You're empowered to do the right thing. But, these goals will be aggressive, right? We may want to make something two orders of magnitude faster. That's no small task. We may want to expand our capabilities so that we can handle six times the load that we handled today. That's no small task. So, they're very large goals to achieve, but they just have to go out and do them. If you leave that creativity to the team, and you let everyone bring in what their different viewpoints, some that have expertise today, and some that don't necessarily have expertise in it but they're really good programmers or they're really good software developers. So, they can learn from those folks that have the expertise, then develop a new solution that's more powerful than the one that exists today. >> What are some of the most exciting things you're working on at ADP right now? >> Well, me personally, we're going through a huge transformation in my group within ADP. That transformation is really just implementing more of what I just talked about, is these small, nimble teams that are multidisciplinary, and they're given, again, guiding principles and goals, and they go out and be creative and be innovative, and figure out how to do this. >> So, what your customers expect on the pipeline though, in terms of products coming out of ADP, and helping them manage their human capital? >> Sure, well actually, we have a lot of exciting, new, and innovative products coming out of our company, which in the coming months, in the coming years, will be released and put into production. But, basically, they should expect a better way to work. 'Cause that is our job. We're really out there to make work better. >> Rebecca: And more inclusive, too, and more, okay. >> All those things actually just go into being and making work better. Inclusion is in there, diversity is in there, creativity is in there, innovation is in there, stability is in there. But, all of that makes work better. >> Is there more pressure on a company like ADP to walk the walk? Because, you are a human capital management company. That is your bread and butter. >> I believe there is, sure. Just naturally, yes, there is. >> So, what is your advice to companies out there? I know you said your Chief Diversity Officer had a wider message to companies about the importance of diversity and inclusive teams. What would you say from your perspective as CIO? >> From my perspective, again, I do believe that diversity, that inclusion, makes for a more powerful team, makes for a wider understanding of what we're actually trying to do. So, I would just encourage others to do that, too, and not be very narrow-minded. >> Great. Well, Vipul, it has been so much fun talking to you. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> Thank you. >> We will have more from the Orange County Convention Center, Grace Hopper, just after this. (light, electronic 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 at the Orange County Convention Center. I'm your host Rebecca Knight. We're joined by Jigyasa Grover. She is a new graduate of Delhi technological university and a Facebook scholar here at Grace Hopper, thanks so much for joining us Jigyasa. >> Thank you so much. >> And you're actually a Cube alum, you were honored at the Red Hat summit in Boston this spring as a woman in open source, academic awards, so you're back, we're glad to have you. >> Yeah it's nice to be back here, I'm really enjoying the conference so far. >> Tell our viewers a little bit about what it is to be a Facebook scholar here. >> Facebook is a very nice company which gives scholarships to around 50 graduate women all across the world to come and attend the much acclaimed Grace Hopper Conference, make new friends, network with new people and most importantly, find jobs in the technological sphere. >> Do you apply for it, how do they find you? >> They publicize the scholarship a lot, obviously on Facebook and all of the social media networks, the application procedure is very simple, you just have to write an essay question, it's about who you are and what you want to achieve further in life and what have you done in the technological sphere so far, what would you like to do further, give your resume and school name, that's pretty much it. >> You have been, this is your first ever Grace Hopper. What has been the experience? >> It has been overwhelming I would say, seeing 18,000 plus women all in the same working in technology, it's like meeting your sister because you can feel how they feel and for the expo hall, you have loads of opportunities, you can make friends, I have seen so many people find their first jobs and internships. I would say come on, get your resume and there are lots of interviews going on, I'm sure you'll not only find software engineering jobs, but you end up finding jobs in product management, design, research, and there's a wide spectrum of companies out there. >> You're talking about the sisterhood that you feel here at Grace Hopper, but at the same time, the future, it's a little uncertain for women in tech just because of the headlines that we read about the sexism, the biases, the chauvinism in the industry, how do you feel as a woman on the verge of starting your career. >> I would rather say stay strong and do not let negativity affect you and what you are doing. It's more about working in sync with the other gender and in proportion, the numbers should be in proportion, there shouldn't be any gender gap. Just do your best and don't let the negativity affect you. >> How are you going to single handedly change things? >> Obviously no one can do this, no one can single handedly change the world, that's true, but doing my part, I'm just going to stay strong, work lots of open source and work with companies and hopefully my work will add contribution to the social upliftment of the world. >> What's next for you Jigyasa, you've already won a big award from Red Hat, you're a Facebook scholar. >> Next, I'm still finding my calling and I'm exploring all kind of works that will be with research, with open source contributions and of course traveling, that's my love. >> Wonderful, thank you so much for being on the Cube again, it's always fun talking to you. >> Yeah nice to meet you as well, have a nice day. >> We will have more from the Grace Hopper Conference in Orlando, Florida just after this. (techno music)

>> 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 everybody. Jeff Frick here with the Cube. We are winding down day three of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in Orlando. It's 18,000, mainly women, a couple of us men hangin' out. It's been a phenomenal event again. It always amazes me to run into first timers that have never been to the Grace Hopper event. It's a must do if you're in this business and I strongly encourage you to sign up quickly 'cause I think it sells out in about 15 minutes, like a good rock concert. But we're excited to have our next guest. She's Rachel Faber Tobac, UX Research at Course Hero. Rachel, great to see you. >> Thank you so much for having me on. >> Absolutely. So, Course Hero. Give people kind of an overview of what Course Hero is all about. >> Yup. So we are an online learning platform and we help about 200 million students and educators master their classes every year. So we have all the notes, >> 200 million. >> Yes, 200 million! We have all the notes, study guides, resources, anything a student would need to succeed in their classes. And then anything an educator would need to prepare for their classes or connect with their students. >> And what ages of students? What kind of grades? >> They're usually in college, but sometimes we help high schoolers, like AP students. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> But that's not why you're here. You want to talk about hacking. So you are, what you call a "white hat hacker". >> White hat. >> So for people that aren't familiar with the white hat, >> Yeah. >> We all know about the black hat conference. What is a white hat hacker. >> So a "white hat hacker" is somebody >> Sounds hard to say three times fast. >> I know, it's a tongue twister. A white hat hacker is somebody who is a hacker, but they're doing it to help people. They're trying to make sure that information is kept safer rather than kind of letting it all out on the internet. >> Right, right. Like the old secret shoppers that we used to have back in the pre-internet days. >> Exactly. Exactly. >> So how did you get into that? >> It's a very non-linear story. Are you ready for it? >> Yeah. >> So I started my career as a special education teacher. And I was working with students with special needs. And I wanted to help more people. So, I ended up joining Course Hero. And I was able to help more people at scale, which was awesome. But I was interested in kind of more of the technical side, but I wasn't technical. So my husband went to Defcon. 'cause he's a cyber security researcher. And he calls me at Defcon about three years ago, and he's like, Rach, you have to get over here. I'm like, I'm not really technical. It's all going to go over my head. Why would I come? He's like, you know how you always call companies to try and get our bills lowered? Like calling Comcast. Well they have this competition where they put people in a glass booth and they try and have them do that, but it's hacking companies. You have to get over here and try it. So I bought a ticket to Vegas that night and I ended up doing the white hat hacker competition called The Social Engineering Capture the Flag and I ended up winning second, twice in a row as a newb. So, insane. >> So you're hacking, if I get this right, not via kind of hardcore command line assault. You're using other tools. So like, what are some of the tools that are vulnerabilities that people would never think about. >> So the biggest tool that I use is actually Instagram, which is really scary. 60% of the information that I need to hack a company, I find on Instagram via geolocation. So people are taking pictures of their computers, their work stations. I can get their browser, their version information and then I can help infiltrate that company by calling them over the phone. It's called vishing. So I'll call them and try and get them to go to a malicious link over the phone and if I can do that, I can own their company, by kind of presenting as an insider and getting in that way. (chuckling) It's terrifying. >> So we know phishing right? I keep wanting to get the million dollars from the guy in Africa that keeps offering it to me. >> (snickers) Right. >> I don't whether to bite on that or. >> Don't click the link. >> Don't click the link. >> No. >> But that interesting. So people taking selfies in the office and you can just get a piece of the browser data and the background of that information. >> Yep. >> And that gives you what you need to do. >> Yeah, so I'll find a phone number from somebody. Maybe they take a picture of their business card, right? I'll call that number. Test it to see if it works. And then if it does, I'll call them in that glass booth in front of 400 people and attempt to get them to go to malicious links over the phone to own their company or I can try and get more information about their work station, so we could, quote unquote, tailor an exploit for their software. >> Right. Right. >> We're not actually doing this, right? We're white hat hackers. >> Right. >> If we were the bad guys. >> You'd try to expose the vulnerability. >> Right. The risk. >> And what is your best ruse to get 'em to. Who are you representing yourself as? >> Yeah, so. The representation thing is called pre-texting. It's who you're pretending to be. If you've ever watched like, Catch Me If You Can. >> Right. Right. >> With Frank Abagnale Jr. So for me, the thing that works the best are low status pretext. So as a woman, I would kind of use what we understand about society to kind of exploit that. So you know, right now if I'm a woman and I call you and I'm like, I don't know how to trouble shoot your website. I'm so confused. I have to give a talk, it's in five minutes. Can you just try my link and see if it works on your end? (chuckling) >> You know? Right? You know, you believe that. >> That's brutal. >> Because there's things about our society that help you understand and believe what I'm trying to say. >> Right, right. >> Right? >> That's crazy and so. >> Yeah. >> Do you get, do you make money white hacking for companies? >> So. >> Do they pay you to do this or? Or is it like, part of the service or? >> It didn't start that way. >> Right. >> I started off just doing the Social Engineering Capture the Flag, the SECTF at Defcon. And I've done that two years in a row, but recently, my husband, Evan and I, co-founded a company, Social Proof Security. So we work with companies to train them about how social media can impact them from a social engineering risk perspective. >> Right. >> And so we can come in and help them and train them and understand, you know, via a webinar, 10 minute talk or we can do a deep dive and have them actually step into the shoes of a hacker and try it out themselves. >> Well I just thought the only danger was they know I'm here so they're going to go steal my bike out of my house, 'cause that's on the West Coast. I'm just curious and you may not have a perspective. >> Yeah. >> 'Cause you have niche that you execute, but between say, you know kind of what you're doing, social engineering. >> Yeah. >> You know, front door. >> God, on the telephone. Versus kind of more traditional phishing, you know, please click here. Million dollars if you'll click here versus, you know, what I would think was more hardcore command line. People are really goin' in. I mean do you have any sense for what kind of the distribution of that is, in terms of what people are going after? >> Right, we don't know exactly because usually that information's pretty confidential, >> Sure. when a hack happens. But we guess that about 90% of infiltrations start with either a phishing email or a vishing call. So they're trying to gain information so they can tailor their exploits for your specific machine. And then they'll go in and they'll do that like actual, you know, >> Right. >> technical hacking. >> Right. >> But, I mean, if I'm vishing you right and I'm talking to you over the phone and I get you to go to a malicious link, I can just kind of bypass every security protocol you've set up. I don't even a technical hacker, right? I just got into your computer because. >> 'Cause you're in 'Cause I'm in now, yup. >> I had the other kind of low profile way and I used to hear is, you know, you go after the person that's doin' the company picnic. You know Wordpress site. >> Yes. >> That's not thinking that that's an entry point in. You know, kind of these less obvious access points. >> Right. That's something that I talk about a lot actually is sometimes we go after mundane information. Something like, what pest service provider you use? Or what janitorial service you use? We're not even going to look for like, software on your machine. We might start with a softer target. So if I know what pest extermination provider you use, I can look them up on LinkedIn. See if they've tagged themselves in pictures in your office and now I can understand how do they work with you, what do their visitor badges look like. And then emulate all of that for an onsite attack. Something like, you know, really soft, right? >> So you're sitting in the key note, right? >> Yeah. >> Fei-Fei Li is talking about computer visualization learning. >> Right. >> And you know, Google running kagillions of pictures through an AI tool to be able to recognize the puppy from the blueberry muffin. >> Right. >> Um, I mean, that just represents ridiculous exploitation opportunity at scale. Even you know, >> Yeah. >> You kind of hackin' around the Instagram account, can't even begin to touch, as you said, your other thing. >> Right. >> You did and then you did it at scale. Now the same opportunity here. Both for bad and for good. >> I'm sure AI is going to impact social engineering pretty extremely in the future here. Hopefully they're protecting that data. >> Okay so, give a little plug so they'll look you up and get some more information. But what are just some of the really easy, basic steps that you find people just miss, that should just be, they should not be missing. From these basic things. >> The first thing is that if they want to take a picture at work, like a #TBT, right? It's their third year anniversary at their company. >> Right. Right. >> Step away from your work station. You don't need to take that picture in front of your computer. Because if you do, I'm going to see that little bottom line at the bottom and I'm going to see exactly the browser version, OS and everything like that. Now I'm able to exploit you with that information. So step away when you take your pictures. And if you do happen to take a picture on your computer. I know you're looking at computer nervously. >> I know, I'm like, don't turn my computer on to the cameras. >> Don't look at it! >> You're scarin' me Rachel. >> If you do take a picture of that. Then you don't want let someone authenticate with that information. So let's say I'm calling you and I'm like, hey, I'm with Google Chrome. I know that you use Google Chrome for your service provider. Has your network been slow recently? Everyone's network's been slow recently, right? >> Right. Right. >> So of course you're going to say yes. Don't let someone authenticate with that info. Think to yourself. Oh wait, I posted a picture of my work station recently. I'm not going to let them authenticate and I'm going to hang up. >> Interesting. All right Rachel. Well, I think the opportunity in learning is one thing. The opportunity in this other field is infinite. >> Yeah. >> So thanks for sharing a couple of tips. >> Yes. >> And um. >> Thank you for having me. >> Hopefully we'll keep you on the good side. We won't let you go to the dark side. >> I won't. I promise. >> All right. >> Rachel Faber Tobac and I'm Jeff Frick. You're watchin the Cube from Grace Hopper Celebration Women in Computing. Thanks for watching. (techno music)

>> Announcer: Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE, covering Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. (light, electronic music) >> 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 Joanna Parke. She is the Group Managing Director, North America, at ThoughtWorks based in Chicago. Thanks so much for joining us, Joanna. >> Thank you, it's a pleasure to be here. >> Your company is being honored for the second year in a row as a top company for women technologists by the Anita Borg Institute. Tell our viewers what that means. >> Yeah, we're incredibly proud and super humble to be recognized again for the second year in a row. Our journey towards diversity and inclusivity really began about eight or nine years ago. It started with the top leadership of the company saying that this is a crisis in our industry, and we need to take a stand and we need to do something about it. So, it's been a long journey. It's not something that we started a couple of years ago, so there's been a lot of work by many people over the years to get us to where we are today, and we still feel that we have a long way to go. There's still a lot to do. >> So, being recognized as a top company for women technologists, it obviously means there are many women who work there. But, what else can a woman technologist looking for a job expect at ThoughtWorks? >> So, we think about, not just the aspects of diversity, which is what is the make up of your work for us look like, but also put equal if not more importance on inclusivity. So, you can go out and you can make all sorts of efforts to hire women or minorities into your company, but if you don't have a culture and an environment in which they feel welcome and they feel like they can succeed and they can bring themselves to work, then that success won't be very lasting. So, we've focused not only on the recruiting process but also our culture, our benefits, the environment in which we work. We are a software development company and we come from a history of agile software practices, which means that we work together in a very people-oriented and collaborative way. So, in some ways we had a little bit of a head start in that, by working in that way, our culture was already built to be more team-focused and collaborative and inclusive, so that was a good advantage for us when we got started. >> So, how else do you implement these best practices of the collaboration and the inclusivity? Because, I mean, it is one thing to say that we want everyone to have a voice at the table, but it's harder to pull off. >> It is, absolutely. So, a couple things that we've done over our history, one is just starting with open conversation. We talk a lot about unconscious bias, we do education and training through the workforce, we try to encourage those uncomfortable conversations that really create breakthroughs in understanding. We look for people that are open and curious in the interview process, and we feel like if you are open to having your views about the world challenged, that's a really good sign. So, that's kind of one step. Then, I think, when bad behavior arrives, which it always does, it's how you react and how you deal with it. So, making it clear to everyone that behavior that excludes or belittles others on the team is not tolerated. That's not the kind of culture that we want to build. It's on ongoing process. >> So, how do you call out the bad behavior, because that's hard to do, particularly if you're a junior employee. >> Yes, so we try and create a safe environment where people feel like, if I have an issue with someone on my team, particularly if it's someone more senior than me, we have a complete open-door and flat organization. So, anyone can pick up the phone and call me or our CEO or whoever they feel comfortable talking to. I think, what happens is, when that happens and people see action being taken, whether it's feedback being given or a more serious action, then it reinforces the fact that it's okay to speak up and that you are going to be heard and listened to. >> One of the underlying themes of this conference is that women technologists have a real responsibility to have a voice in this industry, and to shape how the future of software progresses. Can you talk a little bit more about that, about what you've seen and observed and also the perspective of ThoughtWorks on this issue? >> Absolutely, we all have seen the power that technology has in transforming our society, and that is only going to grow over time. It's not going away. So, it really impacts every aspect of our life, whether it's healthcare or how we interact with our family or how we go to work every day. Having a diverse set of perspectives that reflects the makeup of our society is so important. I was really impressed by Dr. Faith Ilee's keynote on Wednesday morning-- >> She's at Stanford. >> Yeah, Stanford and at Google right now as well. She spoke about the importance of having diverse voices in the field of artificial intelligence. She said, no other technology reflects its designers more than AI, and it is so critical that we have that diverse set of voices that are involved in shaping that technology. >> Is it almost too much though? As a woman technologist, not only do you have to be a trailblazer and put up with a lot of bias and sexism in the industry, and then you have this added responsibility. What's your advice to women in the field? Particularly the young women here who are at their first Grace Hopper. >> Absolutely, our CEO-- Sorry, our CTO, Rebecca Parsons, often says that the reason that she put up with it for so many years is because she's a geek, and because she's passionate about technology. So, when you're in those trying times, being able to connect with your passion and know that you're making a difference is so important. Because, if it's just something that you view as a job, or a way to make a living, you don't have that level of passion to get you through some of the hardships. So, I think, for me, that sense of responsibility is kind of a motivating and driving force. The good news is it will get easier over time. As we make progress in our industry, you don't feel so alone. You start to have other women and other marginalized groups around you that you can connect with and share experiences. >> What are some of the most exciting projects you're working on at ThoughtWorks? >> We really try to cover a broad landscape of technology. We think of ourselves as early adopters that can spot the trends in the industry and help bring them into the enterprise. So, we're doing some really exciting things in the machine-learning space, around predictive maintenance, understanding when machine parts are going to fail and being able to repair them ahead of time. Things like understanding customer insights through data. I think those areas are emerging and super exciting. >> Excellent. What are you looking for? Are you here recruiting? >> Absolutely. >> And, with a top company sticker on your booth, I'm sure that you are highly sought after. What are you looking for in a candidate? >> We for a long time have articulated our strategy in three words: attitude, aptitude, and integrity. Because we feel like if we can find a person that has a passion for learning, the ability to learn, and the right attitude about that, we can work with that, right? The world of technology is changing so fast, so even if you know the tech of today, if you don't have that passion and ability to learn, you're not going to be able to keep up. So, we really look for people in terms of those character traits and those people are the kind of people that are successful and thrive at ThoughtWorks. >> If you look at the data, it looks as though there is a looming talent shortage. Are you worried about that at ThoughtWorks? What's your-- >> Absolutely. There is a huge talent gap. It's growing by the day. We see it at our clients as well as ourselves. For me, it really comes down to the responsibility of society as well as companies to invest in upscaling our workforce. We have seen some clients take that investment and realize that the skills they needed in their workforce a few years ago look very different from what they're going to need into the future. So, we believe strongly in investing in and training and upscaling our employees. We help work with our clients to do so as well. But, I think we can't rely on the existing educational system to create all of the talent that we're going to need. It's really going to take investment, I believe, from society and from companies. >> And on the job training. >> Absolutely. There's no replacement for that, right? You can do the kind of academic and educational studies but there's no replacement for once you get into the real world and you're with people and the day to day challenges arise. >> Excellent. Well, Joanna, thanks so much for coming on. It was a real pleasure talking to you. >> Thank you, it was my pleasure. >> We will have more from the Orange County Convention Center, the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing just after this. (light, electronic 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 have a great panel here today, we have three guests. We have Hilary Burns and Caroline Lester, both Reporting Fellows for the GroundTruth Project, and Tori Bedford, who is a Field Producer for the GroundTruth Project. It's great to have you guys on here. >> Thank you for having us. >> Thank you. >> So, I'll start with you, Tori, since you were a reporting fellow last year at the Grace Hopper Conference, tell our viewers what the GroundTruth Project is, and what your mission is. >> So, the GroundTruth Project is a non-profit based in Boston and it hopes to encourage young journalists and earlier-career journalists all around the world. So there is a series of fellowships going on, pretty much at all times. Different projects, there's one going across America right now that's looking at, it's called Crossing the Divide, it's looking at divides in America. It's a very divisive time for American politics so they're doing stories about that. And, obviously, we are re-upping our women in tech, women in leadership fellowship this year which we're really excited about. >> And so, each of you are working on your own, individual stories and then you will get back to Boston and produce. So, Hilary, let's hear from you, what are you working on here, what's your topic? >> Sure, so most of my time spend at the Grace Hopper Celebration so far has been spent talking with student about their career aspirations, any barriers they foresee, coming across any concerns they have about entering a male-dominated industry. And it's really been fascinating hearing their stories, some of them are international students, others are from universities all over the world and including Canada and the U.S. So, it's been very inspirational to hear. >> So, but here the ones that are aspiring to careers in technology and they're here at Grace Hopper, but there must be other ones who are too discouraged so they're not here. Are you also getting that angle, too? >> Well, I think it's important for that group of women to see these women who do feel empowered and are, a lot of them use phrases like, "We are making a difference in the gender gap "and if I don't do it, who else will do it?" So, I think it's important for all aspiring technologists to hear these women's stories. >> Are they discouraged, though? Because the headlines are bleak, I mean, we know that it's the numbers, but it's also the Google manifesto, it's the shenanigans of Travis Kalanick and people like him in Silicon Valley. What do they make of that? >> It's interesting, all of them are very intelligent, very aware of what's going on in the world. I've heard a mixed bag of responses from, "I try not to "read too much because I don't want to go in expecting "and having my own biases, I want to see for myself." Others are saying, "Yeah, I am nervous and I want to see "more women creating a path that I can then follow." So, I think there are a lot of people that are optimistically optimistic about their future. >> Cautiously optimistic. >> Thank you. Thank you for correcting me. (laughs) But, it's been interesting to hear all the different perspectives. >> Great, Caroline, how about you, what are you working on? >> Yeah, so, I am personally interested in the more personal stories of some of these women speaking at the conference. I've talked to the four really, wonderful, inspirational women. So, one of my favorites, I've just published a story on her, Chieko Asakawa, who is an IBM Fellow which is the highest honor you can receive at IBM. And she went blind at the age of 11, and has spent her life programming and creating programs and tools to help the blind access the world that is pretty hard to navigate if you don't have eyesight. So, she is super inspirational, super smart, super funny. So, it was a pleasure talking with her. And then I'm talking with three other women, Yasmine Mustafa, who started something called Roar for Good. >> Rebecca: We've had her on the show. >> Oh, you did? >> Yeah. >> Wonderful, great. So, she's fantastic, I'm really glad you covered her. And then another woman named Sarah Echohawk, who, sort of, is an advocate, an activist and is getting more and young, native women involved in STEM. And then, finally, I'll be talking with Stephanie Lampkin of Blendoor, who started this wonderful app to try and overcome the implicit bias, and unconscious bias that happens when people are hiring women or people of color in recruiting for them. >> So she's starting this app that she will then sell to companies, or sell to other recruiters? >> So, she's already started it and she has a lot of major tech companies involved. I think Airbnb uses it, I want to say SalesForce uses it, you're going to have to check me on that one. But she's got about 5,000 people on it right now. >> Wow, so the goal of these stories is to inspire other women by their success. >> Exactly, so these are four radically different women coming into tech in radically different ways and it's just really incredible to see how they've managed to overcome all sorts of obstacles in their way. And not only overcome them, but, sort of, utilize them to their advantage and stake out a place for themselves in this industry. >> Great, Tori, what are the projects that you are working on here? >> So, we've been hearing a lot about diversity, diversity is so important, and we've been hearing about how increasing diversity in a company makes your company better. It just brings in more perspectives, and it also, what's really interesting is that, in tech, it can catch people who have a diverse range of perspectives, can catch problems with products, or with a code, or with something, and how it would be implemented out into the world. I caught this really interesting panel yesterday about disability and looking at how people with disabilities can make companies, specifically tech companies, can help to improve them. This woman, Jennifer Jong, who is an Accessibility Program Manager at Microsoft, she was really interesting. She was talking about how, I wrote a piece on this yesterday, she's talking about how, when you bring people in with a disability, how they can catch things that other people just don't see or wouldn't normally notice. And also how, when we create things for those with disabilities, you know, a lot of things that have been implemented by the Americans with Disabilities Act. She talked about the button that you press to go through the door, how it can also be used by people who don't have disabilities and how it's important to create things that can be used by everybody, but that have inclusion in mind. >> So, why is that true? What is her perspective on why people with disabilities have this special ways to detect blind spots? >> So, if you're creating something, there's no way that you can know how many users are going to be interacting with it, there's no way that you can predict that a person with a disability won't be using it, and so it's diversity, it's really important to bring in different perspectives. So, they had talked about a video, a really beautiful, promotional video that showed a range of visuals, it was very effective but it had no sound and a blind person wouldn't get anything out of it. And so, it's like looking at a product, you need somebody to be in the room, just like you want women and people of color and a range of ethnicities, you want diversity, you want someone to be able to say, "This isn't going to work for me, this isn't going "to work for my child, this isn't going to work "for a range of people." And that's a really effective and important thing that ultimately saves your company's bottom line, because then, you won't have to go back and change your product in the future. >> And fix it, fix it as a problem. >> Right, you'll spend more money fixing your product than you would if you had just talked about, had inclusion and diversity, if you'd just considered that from the get-go, you'll ultimately save your company more money. >> So, the question for the three of you, really, is that as you said, we hear so much about the importance of diversity and of getting a variety of perspectives, and having people of different genders, and races, and cultures feel included and having a voice at the table, I just want to know, I mean, do companies really feel this way or is that what they say at Grace Hopper because this is what makes sense to say to their target audience? >> It's totally possible that it's just a marketing ploy, it's totally possible that they're realizing that half the population makes money and can do things, and that makes more money. I mean, a lot of tech is driven by the bottom line, it's driven by financials, but in the case of the disability thing, it's like, it almost doesn't matter. It is not only the right thing to do, if you need a financial incentive, that's not good. Obviously, it's the right thing to do so you should be doing it for that reason, but if you do also have a financial incentive, that's not bad. And if we're, sort of, driving more towards empowering women and giving women a voice and allowing women to do things and taking them seriously, ultimately that's not a bad thing. >> And just to add to that, I think there is a lot of research out there today, for example, having more women on corporate boards, that that does impact the bottom line and, obviously, that's what companies are most concerned about. So, I think that companies are starting to realize that having that diversity and inclusion is good for business as well as a marketing ploy. >> And I think, I mean, just to add, I also think that, you know, whether or not this is a good thing, I think companies do realize that that is important. And they're realizing that it's necessary, I don't know, it's necessary to impact the bottom line and that is something that, whether or not we like it, it is the most convincing factor for many of these companies. >> I think it's also, when you have women moving up to positions of power, to the C-Suite, to positions of leadership, they understand that women are people with skills and they are the ones who are, you know, hiring more women, and that ultimately helps the bottom line. So, as you have more and more women moving higher and higher to the top, that's when, like when we talk about the companies changing, that's because women are changing. And they're changing the perspectives of men and everybody else in between that works at the company. >> Are women changing? I mean, I think that's a question, too, is that we're all as collectively as a society, becoming more aware that these biases exist in hiring and recruitment practices. But, I think that's the question, are women starting to change, too, the way they behave in the workplace, the way they go about managing their careers? >> I know it's changing minds, like other peoples' minds. >> That's a really interesting question, though. One student I talked to who was from India, talked about the gender discrimination she has faced. And she said she did change how she acted, she shut down all emotions, she took any emotion out of her responses because her colleagues would say, "Oh, you're a woman, "you're so emotional," and she was tired of that. So, it's an interesting question to look at. I don't know, I don't have the data in front of me but it would be interesting to look into that. >> Yeah, great, that's the next GroundTruth project. Excellent, well Hilary, Caroline, Tori, thanks so much for being on theCube, we've had great fun talking to you. >> Yes, thanks for having us. >> Thank you. >> We will have more from the Orange County Convention Center, 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 SiliconANGLE Media >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with the Cube. We're at the Grace Hopper Celebration of women in computing 2017, 18,000 women and men here at the Orlando Convention Center it gets bigger and bigger every year and we're really excited to have our next guest, the soon-to-be looking for a new job, and former CEO but still employed by AnitaB.org, Telle Whitney, the founder of this fantastic organization and really, the force behind turning it from, as you said, an okay non-profit to really a force. >> Yes So Telle, as always, fantastic to see you. >> Oh it's great to see you, glad to welcome you back and glad to have you here. >> Yes, thank you. So, interesting times, so you're going to be stepping down at the end of the year, you've passed the baton to Brenda. So as you kind of look back, get a moment to reflect, which I guess you can't do until January, they're still working you, what an unbelievable legacy, what an unbelievable baton that you are passing on for Brenda's stewardship for the next chapter. >> Yes, I mean, I've been CEO for the last 15 years and under that time period, we've grown into a global force with impact, well over 700,000 people. We have well over 100,000 people who participated with the Grace Hopper or the Grace Hopper India. It's grown, and what's been really exciting the last few days, is hearing the stories. >> Jeff: Right, right. >> Of how, the impact that this, the AnitaB.org has had on the lives of young women but also mid-career and senior executives. It's very inspiring to me. >> It is, it's fantastic, and I think the mid-career and more senior executive part of the story isn't as well-known, and we've talked to, Work Day was here, I think they said they had 140 people I think I talked to Google, I think they had like 180. And I asked them, I said, is there any other show, besides your own, that you bring that many people to from the company for their own professional development, and growth. And there's nothing like it. >> That's true. The reason why the Grace Hopper celebration has grown as significantly as it has is because more and more organizations, companies, bring a large part of their workforce. I mean, there are some companies that have brought up to 800 people, and sometimes even 1,000. >> Jeff: Wow >> And there's a reason why, because they see the impact that the conference has on retention and advancement of the women who work for them. >> And that's really a growing and increasing important part of the conversation, >> It is. >> Is retention, and two, getting the women who maybe left to have a baby, or talk about military veterans getting back in, so there's a whole group of people kind of outside of the traditional took my four years of college, I got a CS degree, now I need a job, that are also leveraging the benefits of this conference to make that way back in to tech. So important now as autonomous vehicles are coming on board and all these other things that are going to displace a bunch of traditional jobs. The message here is, you can actually get into CS later in life and find a successful career. >> Yes, we have a real diversity of attendees. So about a third of them are students, and that's really, they're brought here by their universities because that makes a difference. We have a great group from the government. So there's this real effort to bring state-of-the-art technology into our government, initially spearheaded by Megan Smith but really has grown. And the government brought quite a few women. And yes, we do have re-entry people. The companies are looking for women who are very interested in getting back in the workforce. The wonder about our profession, is that they're in desperate need of talented computer scientists. And so, because of that, more and more organizations are being innovative in how they reach out to different audiences. >> And outside of you, I don't know that anyone is more enthusiastic about this conference than Megan Smith. >> Yeah (laughs) >> She is a force of nature. We saw her last year, we were fortunate to get her on the Cube this year, which was really exciting. And she just brings so much energy. We're seeing so much activity on the government side, regardless of your partisanship, of using cloud, using new technology, and that's really driving, again, more innovation, more computing, and demand for more great people. >> Yes, we're very blessed that Megan has continued to come here every year. She came back this year, she sat on the main stage, and she has really been, her message to so many of the young women is that, consider government technology as something you do, at least for a while. And I think that that's a very important message if you think about how that impacts our lives. >> Right, for the good. >> Telle: Yes. >> And that was a big part of her message, she went through a classic legal resume, and some other classic resumes where you have that chapter in your career where you do go into government and you do make a contribution to something a little bit bigger than potentially your regular job. It does strike me though, how technology and software engineering specifically is such an unbelievable vehicle in which to change the world. The traditional barriers of distribution, access to capital, the amount of funding that you used to have to have to build a company, all those things are gone now through cloud, and the internet, and now you can write software and change the world pretty easily. >> Yes. Technology has the possibility of being equal access for anybody. Open-source, anybody can start to code through open-source. There are many ways for anybody, but particularly women to get back in. But I also like to think about many of the companies here who bring their diversity, they bring their senior executives, they bring this large number of women and they create this view across the entire company of how to create a company that's impactful as well as, you know, developing the products that they are invested in. >> Jeff: Right. >> I mean you can have impact in many different ways, through companies, through non-profits, through government, through many different ways. >> Right, and not only the diversity of the people, but one of the other things we love about this show is the diversity of the companies that are here. Like you said, as government, as I look out there's industrial equipment companies, there's entertainment companies, MLB is right across from us and has been there the three days. So it's really a fantastic display of this kind of horizontal impact of technology, and then of course, as we know, it does make better business to have diversity in teams. It's not about doing just the right thing, it's actually about having better bottom-line impact and better bottom-line results. And that's been proven time and time again. >> Well yes, and, so what I know is that every company is a technology company. If you think about the entire banking industry, they have this huge technology workforce. Certainly classic technology companies have a lot of engineers, but insurance, and banking, and almost anything. I mean, we have a lot increasing amount of retail, Target, Best Buy, places like that. >> Right. Okay so I tried to order in a horse so you could ride off into the sunset at the end of this interview, but they wouldn't let me get it through security. >> Okay >> But before I let you go, I'd just love to get your thoughts on Brenda, and the passing of the baton. How did you find her, what are some of the things that you feel comfortable, feel good about, beyond comfortable, to give her the mantle, the baton, if you will, for the next chapter of AnitaB.org? >> I've been very blessed to lead this organization for 15 years, and this is my baby. But there is nothing more heart-warming than to be able to talk to a visionary leader like Brenda. Brenda is extraordinary. She really believes in computer science for all. She believes that all women should be at the table creating technologies. She has a vision of where she wants to take it and yes, she just started last Sunday, so we have to give her a little time. (laughs) >> You were right into the deep end right? Swim! (laughs) >> But she is just, I mean, I just feel very blessed to have Brenda in my life and I will be there in any way that she needs for me to be there to work with her. But she is going to be a great leader. >> Oh absolutely. Well Telle as always, great, and as you said, you're more busy than maybe you expected to be here, so to find a few minutes to stop by the Cube again, thank you for inviting us to be here. It is really one of our favorite places to be every year. Finally my youngest daughter turns 18 next year, so I can bring her too. And congratulations for everything you've accomplished. >> I love to be here, thank you for coming. Glad we could talk. >> Alright, she's Telle Whitney, I'm Jeff Frick, if you're looking for a highly-qualified woman in tech, she might be on the market in 2018. (Telle laughs) Give me a call, I'll set you up. Alright, you're watching the Cube, from the Grace Hopper Celebration of women in computing. Thanks for watching. (techno music)

(upbeat music) >> Announcer: Live from Orlando, Florida it's theCUBE. Covering Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. Brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. (upbeat music) >> Woman: (clears throat) Here today. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of the Grace Hopper Conference here in Orlando, Florida. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We are joined by Josie Gillan and Laurel McLay. They have just launched a new collaboration, Twinovate. Tell our viewers about Twinovate. You are identical twins, I first of all should say his. >> Yes, we are. So Twinovate one in, what it is is Laurel and I are actually mirror twins and I'm left brain, I'm right-handed. Laurel's right brain and she's left-handed. So what I am is, I'm in my previous background is engineering leadership. I've worked at companies like Salesforce, Atlassian, Cloudera. But Laurel and I saw an opportunity with our diverse viewpoints to start a collaboration together. So I'm the left brain twin. I'm logical, I'm problem-solving, and I love nothing more than to get that code compiled. >> And I'm the right brain twin, so I'm creative, language, any of that messy human emotional stuff. I'm a career coach back in New Zealand. And so I love nothing more that helping people with their identity, their uniqueness, and looking at some of the behavioral challenges which might be holding them back. So we looked at the two of us together and we thought, wow, we've got some great stuff and what are we truly passionate about? We're truly passionate about women, particularly in STEM, being able to contribute themselves fully in a way that works for them. To not only their own legacy, but the legacy of who they're collaborating with. >> Now you are here at Grace Hopper, you're running a workshop, and before the cameras were rolling, you were talking about an apology epidemic. Explain what you mean by that. >> Well, if you think about an epidemic, it's something that spreads, and often it spreads without people even realizing it, before it's too late. And so what we realized was that women, and particularly when you're using language like just, I'm sorry, it's only me. If someone gives us a compliment we say, oh, I bought this, this old thing, I got it on sale. And what we realized was the message of that was saying was I don't count, I'm invisible, please put yourself before me. And the challenge about this epidemic is a lot of people don't realize they're saying it. >> Yeah, and some great examples. This is really resonating with people. So I'm actually on a moms in tech Facebook group, and I asked for some stories. And one woman talked about softball practice. And she practices at the same field where men practice. And what she noticed is every time the women dropped a ball or missed a pitch they would say sorry, sorry, and she turned around and looked at the males and the males never, never did that. So why are we apologizing? >> And we have created this cool little sheet we call Apology Bingo that's available on our Facebook page, and it helps people to look at the many times that they might say these words. One of the words that I have realized I say all the time is actually. And even though actually may not sound apologetic in itself, it's absolutely. >> It's a qualifier, it's, right. >> It's qualifier, exactly. And so what we're talking about apologizing, over-explaining and qualifying. >> And that makes you appear a lot less confident, and really can have career-limiting impact. >> Well, I want to talk about the career-limiting impact, but I also just want to ask you about so it's one thing to understand and acknowledge and become aware that you are using this kind of language. How do you eradicate it from your vocabulary? >> So what we talk about in the workshop is little shifts and big calls. So the little shifts are those small things that you can do to catch yourself. And that's at the language level. So for example, there's a Gmail app called Just Not Sorry. >> It's a Chrome plugin. >> And so what you do is, you add that to your Gmail and it will show and underline some of the language in each email which is apologetic. But then I call it the big calls. And that's really two things. The first thing is do you want to start a revolution? Because let's face it, when you turn up previously apologetic and maybe not too troublesome, let's just say, and you start kicking out your unapologetic language, there are going to be potentially some people around there who don't take kindly to that. And they may call you angry or uppity. >> Or even worse (laughs). >> Or even worse, exactly. So I feel it's about people learning and doing some personal development work on themselves to get the courage to that. Not saying that everyone needs to start a revolution, but for those who feel inspired to do it. And for everyone I believe it is a symptom of the I'm not good enough self-worth and we have an interesting take on self-value, don't we, Josie? >> We do. Being an identical twin is very interesting because what we've found is I might get really quite snippy at Laurel and she said to me, well, why are you so snippy at me? And it was like, well, I see things in you that I don't like in myself. And so we have decided let's turn it around. I want to acknowledge in Laurel things I do like in myself and accept the things that, the bad with the good. >> Right, right and we could all learn from that. I mean, it's just a lesson in humanity. >> And one other point I want to make though, with the people might not appreciate this. We're not dropping manners here. Clearly we are not suggesting that you're no longer courteous. What we want to say is save sorry for when it really counts. >> Rebecca: For when you need to apologize. >> Right. >> Absolutely. >> So in terms of the career-limiting factors that we were talking about, what are sort of the unintended consequences of this apologetic behavior? >> Well, I can talk to that. In some of my roles in the past as an engineering leader, I've really focused on maybe more building up my team, collaboration, and sometimes my management may not agree with the way that I'm doing it, right? Now, rather than having a healthy dialogue about why I'm doing it this way and maybe coming to some kind of general agreement, I have in the past tended to say I must be wrong, he or she must be right. And the ironic thing is, with my experience, I meant to bring that in. I meant to bring my experience in. I've heard in reviews that you don't have enough of an opinion. So really I think that was certainly career-limiting for me and something I'm learning how to do much better. >> So at Twinovate you are empowering women in STEM, you are making sure that they feel included, making sure that they feel like they have a voice at the table, making sure that they are, as you said, not apologizing for being women in the workforce. Do you go in and do you work with individuals? Do you work with companies who say we need to help our workforce deal with these issues? >> Absolutely. So in this workshop we just had an hour and it was a packed audience, it was fantastic. So something that I'm really clear about is it's such a privilege being in front of a room, so we want to make sure that it's just not the talking heads, that people look at their own situation, and we give them examples, both professional and personal, because let's face it, that's a big part of it, isn't it? When people are apologetic in their own worlds. And so they all work together at the table to be able to come up and discuss, and we share that as a room. And the workshop capacity is something that we will deal with people one-on-one because that's when I've done this the whole. I think that one of the reasons I am good at uniqueness and identity is because I'm an identical twin. And so I can work with people and nail their specific challenge in a heartbeat. So for me it's about sharing that power of group but also giving the individual attention so people can walk away knowing the stuff that's particularly relevant to them. >> Okay, alright. So how, I mean I think one of the other questions I would have for you is that you're based in Silicon Valley, you're based in Auckland. Is the tech industry similar? How would you describe the different tech industries in your respective countries? >> Look, it's been so interesting, because I do quite a lot of work in New Zealand and Australia, and not just in technology, but also in engineering, which is the other part of STEM, of course. And it's more flipped the other way because I understand the challenges in new Zealand and Australia, I've been having wonderful conversations on the floor here in the last couple of days, and saying, is it true that when you turn up or someone turns up to your offices that they immediately assume you're the receptionist? And they just go, oh my goodness, absolutely. You know, is it true that you have sometimes direct reports who don't like what you say and they'll literally say it's because you're a woman? And they'll go, yes. So I feel that this is a global epidemic. >> It's a challenge, >> It's a challenge, yes. >> They're facing it everywhere. So what is next for Twinovate? Where do you go from here? I mean you're here at Grace Hopper, which is obviously a receptive audience, a vast audience for the message, but what's next for your collaboration? >> Well, as Josie said, we were really quite surprised about how strongly it resonated here today, and we've got some great feedback. We're both got children, but we're both lucky enough to have fathers of those children that are very, very supportive, and so, hey, we've got this great opportunity to see more of each other. I'm coming back in March, we're coming back next year for Grace Hopper, so I'll be coming to the states twice a year and Josie's coming down to New Zealand and Australia at least once a year. And we're just having very limited partnerships with people who want to work with us and we'll look at some public stuff too. >> And maybe a book in the works? >> So I've already written a book. >> Okay. >> But I wrote it about, I was being unapologetic at the time, and this is what I'm really passionate about. So by the time I come back in March, my unapologetic book, which is literally about unapologetic careers and lifestyles will be in our hot little hands. And Josie's contributing to that with a particular Twinovate chapter that we've been working on. >> Excellent, well, Josie, Laurel, thanks so much for joining us. It's been a pleasure having you on the show. And Josie, you're a Cube alum I should have said, too. >> There you go, yes, exactly. >> Great to see you again, Rebecca. >> Well, best of luck to you both. >> Thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> We will have more from the Grace Hopper Conference just after this. (upbeat music)

>>Fly from Houston, Texas. It's the cube covering Grace Hopper celebration of women in computing. >>Welcome back to the cubes coverage of the Grace Hopper conference here in Houston, Texas. I am your host, Rebecca Knight. We have a great panel today. Uh, three distinguished guests, Jeanette Epps, an aerospace astronaut. Uh, an engineer at NASA, Mimi Valdez, a executive producer on the film, hidden figures and Christina DOJ who is a, I want to call her a rocket scientist. She will not let me, she's an electrical engineer at, at, at NASA. Thank you so much for joining me. Hey Jeanette. I want to start with you. Um, recently president Obama has said we're gonna put men on Mars, men and women, men and women on Mars. How realistic is that? I mean, it's exciting for the, for the rest of us, non astronauts to hear this is, is it realistic? >>It is realistic. And one of the things I love that he, he did that was that it gives a national initiative to go back to Mars. And so that means that people will get more involved in STEM careers, especially girls will get more involved. And it's kinda like, you know what JFK did back in the 60s to give us that push a goal, an end goal to do something. Great. >>And do you think that, you know, he said by 2030, it's not very long from now. I mean, is it going to happen? I mean, what's, >>well right now a witness is working on is we have the NASA Orion program and it's a, uh, a power light capsule that will be launched off of one of the largest rockets bigger than the Saturn five or as big. And so that the mission of NASA, Orion is to take us beyond low earth orbit and go deeper into space. So we're looking at NASA, Orion, potentially maybe being the ship that will go to Mars and you know, maybe we have more work to do, but all of getting the nation onboard with going to Mars will inspire a new generation to do great things that will help us to get to Mars. Even >>Obama has said he loves science as a kid. That was his favorite subject in school. And do you think that it will have this galvanizing effect of, as you said, making sure more little boys and girls are studying STEM? >>Well, I've seen it already with some of the tweets and different things, questions that kids ask me nowadays. I think every kid has in their heart this goal to go to Mars now. And um, I can't go to a conference or anywhere without, uh, some young child asking about Mars and what, what are, how are we going to get there? When are we going to get there? And you know, I think one of my jobs is to inspire them to get involved in STEM and help us to get to Mars. There's a lot of technology that we need to develop and produce so that we can get astronauts to live longer away from the earth surface. We have the propulsion system that can get them there faster and bring them back home long. Will it take, well, it depends on the propulsion system that we developed. So there's a number of things that we're working on to make sure that what president Obama has said will get us to Mars in the 2030s if it's pushed out to a little later, that's fine. We're working on it and we're, we're going forward with them. >>Mimi, I want to talk to you now about the film hidden figures. Uh, we'll be out in some theaters and Christmas wide release in January. It is the story of black women mathematicians working in the 1960s at NASA. How did you find out about this story? Well, I give credits at Donna gelato, one of the producers on the film who optioned the book when it was a book proposal. So before the book was even written, she optioned this the story, and it's just this amazing story that the world doesn't even know about. We all know about John Glenn's mission. He came back a national hero. It was a moment in history that galvanized the world. You know, America winning the space race. But we don't know the story of all these brilliant mathematicians, all these women who actually will really responsible Katherine Johnson specifically who hand calculated those numbers for his cause. >>Everybody, I mean, I think this is such an amazing thing to do. And, and again, we just don't know her story. And as well as Dorothy Vaughn and Mary Jackson, I mean, so many women that worked at NASA that were just, um, they were hidden. You just don't know their stories. So, so the film tells their story, it tells their, um, it tells what they did, how they helped John Glenn. Did John Glenn appreciate that John Glenn actually would not go into space unless Katherine double checked the numbers. Like he wanted her to actually, you know, he, he, he trusted her because this is when the IBM computers were first coming into NASA. So they had started asserted use that and he was like, Hmm, I, I need Catherine to check the numbers before I go into say they were friends, professional colleagues. I mean he just knew who, you know, obviously she, she was really responsible and sort of that whole mission. >>And, and you know, for him it was just sort of like, eh, these computers thing, this was like a new thing at NASA. He's like, I need a human to make sure that these numbers are right. Right. Yeah. So we're excited about the film. Who's in it? Taraji P Henson plays captain Johnson. Octavia Spencer, please. I'm Dorothy Vaughan and Janell Monae. Um, she's a, uh, a musician. This is sort of her first really big role and she plays Mary Jackson. Kevin Costner is the head of the space station. Um, we have really great actors, but I think what was really important to everyone who participated in the film was everyone understood the importance of the story and wanting to make sure that we got it right. And also, you know, movies are supposed to be entertaining, but when they can be also inspirational and educate in some way, the fact that some young girls somewhere may see this movie and decide to pursue a career in math or science or any of the STEM careers is really gratifying to us because that's what we would love to accomplish. >>You know, Christina, you have been at NASA for nine years. Uh, tell me about your style, how you got, how you got to NASA in the first place. So I've always loved space since I was like a young child. I was in fifth grade when I told my parents that I wanted to work for NASA. So really since that point, like that was, you know, my dream. And so I, you know, pursued the math and science. Those were some of my favorite subjects. Um, luckily I had some supportive parents who really like saw that desire in me and kind of nurtured and encouraged me to, Hey, if that's what you want to do, then you go for it. We'll do whatever we can. Um, and then I came across some NASA opportunities in high school. Um, and one of the programs was the high school aerospace scholars program. >>And in that program I kinda got a glimpse into what it was like to be an engineer, to work at NASA. I got to speak with, you know, fight directors and um, flight controllers. And there's so many people who contribute to the space program. And that experience really solidified my desire to pursue STEM, STEM. Um, so I started to electrical engineering and then from there, um, you know, did the internship at NASA and I've enjoyed my career so far. It's been a, it's been a great experience. And so you work on the jet propulsion system of spaceships. Um, I work Lena. Um, I work on the power systems power systems. So you are, what do you do? So, um, as an electrical engineer on power systems, I work on the design of the power system testing. Um, basically everything on the spacecraft is going to need power. >>So I'm responsible for how I need to provide power, how much, um, when we talk about going to Mars, that's a, that's a long duration mission and power is something that, um, you have to budget for. So we need to advance that technology to support these missions that, um, our administration has said we want to go there. How are y'all going to accomplish this? So there's a lot of um, design hands on work and it's, you know, it's a challenge. But I mean, together as a team, we can, I believe that will, you know, meet that goal and be able to deliver a power system that will take us to Mars. So this is a question for rip for really all of you. You're an astronaut, you were working at NASA, you just made a movie to encourage young women to, to, to, to get into the STEM field. Why is it NASA recruiting here at, at, at Grace Hopper and, and should it be, do not, do you want to take this? >>Well, that's a good question. It's not that I'm mass and I don't, it's not that I don't think NASA has a desire to recruit here. I think there's recruiting times where people come out and do that. But I think I'm, one of the things that we do in the astronaut Corps, we try to go out and attend conferences like that and try to inspire students to be interested in NASA to understand what NASA is doing, to understand, you know, the shuttle retired. But we're still flying. In fact, when I fly to space and hopefully in 2018 I'll fly with the Russians. But in the meantime, NASA's building two shadows that would take astronauts to the international space station and NASA, Orion, that'll take us deeper into space. So we want to try to inspire with our stories and get people interested in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and now even the arts, the arts play a big part of this. The arts play a big part of the well, yeah, I think I'm as a scientist and looking at patterns and things like that, there's a lot of um, people who, um, begin to work in the arts, even if it's building things with their hands and making, sculpting things, painting things. And so there's a lot of artwork that comes into play in science that is >>really refreshing, exciting, count, counterintuitive. I mean, what would you say are the ways we've talked about getting them, getting them interested through, through film. Um, talking about, uh, Obama making this, this grand announcement and Treme, what are some other ways that we can get the next generation into this field? Well, representation is obviously important. I think when people get to see images in the media of these different fields and all the possibilities, I mean every kid on this planet is obsessed with their phone, maybe not realizing like the importance of these STEM careers that are making these phones even possible or even exist. And I think the more that we can expose these careers and all these possibilities, I think it will just be just more beneficial just for humanity in general. I mean, as we know, nothing in this world can exist without math. >>Nothing. So the more that we can sort of encourage young people to see what an incredible career this is in all the possibilities that go into it, I just think we'll be better off as a nation and as a, you know, just globally as a world. Jeanette, I mean, do you have any thoughts about how, what you would advise someone? I mean you started at NASA nine years ago. So I mean, as an engineer I feel like, I mean I am making some contribution, but really the way I feel like I have more impact is through mentoring and you know, participating in those outreach type of activities for, uh, younger students like K through 12. And then also, um, you know, undergraduate like where they're really like trying to figure out what are the career options and STEM. And so that's how I feel I can have an impact there. >>And these movies help because there's a surge of like, like it's inspirational for young students to see this and be like, Oh, I never knew that that was an option. And so we get outreached to NASA, um, our request to, you know, interact with, uh, local schools and communities and kind of, um, you know, do all my lessons or just teaching with them, just talking about kind of like what the career is like. So, um, I mean I hoping that I can contribute in that way for younger, younger people. Janette are, you are an impressive astronaut, but you are also known as a black woman astronaut. Yeah. D do you do, do you bristle at that or do you embrace it? What, what do you, how, what's the responsibility? >>Oh, I totally embrace it. You know, I'm young ladies always ask me, did you have a problem being a black woman and engineering? And I always tell them that, um, I don't have a problem with being a black woman. And if other people do, then that's their problem. I totally embrace it because I'm, one of the things that I didn't realize was that, um, there's still a need to have positive role models and images of yourself. You know, growing up, my mom never taught my twin sister and I that you couldn't do something because you are a female or Brown. But there are a lot of young ladies that actually do experience that. And so having a positive roam out of it, show them that, Hey look, if I can do this, you can do this too. There's no reason you shouldn't be doing this right now yourself. >>So you are a role model. And how do you then also make sure that it's active role modeling and not just sort of standing on a pedestal of. >>One of the things I like to do is like Catherine Johnson and these great ladies that, you know, without them I, you know, I wouldn't be here is you have to do well and you have to perform well. You have to do the same work that your colleagues are doing and don't do less and don't accept less either. And when it comes to the hard work, put in the time, do the work, complete the tasks and make sure you're, you're representing yourself and your group well and you don't want to be accounted as well. You know, she's the one that we've got to help and we've got to do this, but you want to be a contributing member to every group that you're a part of and completing the tasks, doing the same work if not better. I like to say do better work, but you know, you want to be a part of the. >>Yeah. But that puts so much pressure too because it is, it's, it's be a contributor, but also don't mess up because you are under a microscope to some degree because those are, >>you know, messing up isn't, isn't. Um, failure is never, um, should never be. If it's unintentional, that's okay because you always learn from your mistakes and you have to forgive yourself and keep moving forward. If you stop right there because of a failure, um, you wouldn't go anywhere. We all fell. And it's how you respond to it. That matters. >>Yeah. Every failure is an opportunity to learn. And I think, um, you know, yeah. You can't be scared. I mean, the first and foremost is just doing a good job that, cause once, if you're just dedicated and focused on that, then I think great things can happen. And then failure is really a, a buzzword in Silicon Valley too. Right now. It's a fail fast. Um, and this idea, as you were talking about that it's your response to failure that makes a difference. Yeah. And NASA, I became familiar with this famous phrase of failing forward, meaning that yes, you're going to encounter problems, but if you are learning from the, if you're making improvements, you can design something better. So we call it failing forward. And that concept has, I've embraced that comset and it's, you know, I've encountered many failures. I mean, designing new hardware. It's not gonna, you know, work right off the box. And I'm kind of embracing that idea that it's a learning experience. As long as you don't give up as if you're applying what you learned, then that is not a failure. Christina, this is great. Christina DOJ, Mimi Valdez, Jeanette Epps. Thank you so much for joining us today. This has been such a having to be here. I'm not worthy. Thank you. This has been Rebecca Knight live coverage of the Grace Hopper conference here in Houston, Texas. We'll be back after this break.

>> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown San Francisco at The Hotel Nikko. It's International Women's Day, March 8th. A lot of stuff happening all over the world. We came here today 'cause Accenture's got a great program, put together about 400 people, a number of panels on a number of topics. We're excited that they invited us to cover it and we've got some really exciting guests. And our next guest is Sabeen Ali, she's the founder and CEO of AngelHack. Sabeen welcome. >> Thank you so much. >> And she's joined by Ellen McGirt, the senior editor of Fortune, welcome. >> Thank you. >> So I think we all know what Fortune is. >> Ellen: We do. >> But we don't probably all know what AngelHack is. So Sabeen, what is AngelHack? Give us kind of the overview. >> Yeah, I'll give you the eight second elevator pitch. We are an international hackathon organizing company. We travel the world and organize hackathons all over the world. And we basically create a bridge between Silicon Valley and the rest of the world to bring entrepreneurs here and give them the same opportunities that Silicon Valley entrepreneurs have. >> So do you do independent hackathons or do you like contract it? 'Cause every conference we go to, we do like 100 conferences a year, always has some hackathon component. Do you help other people put on hackathons or you just do your own kind of independent? >> We do both, actually. So we organize a 50 city global hackathon series which is our own, and then we also work with corporate partners such as Accenture and HPE and others to organize hackathons for their brand. >> And is it thematic? Is there a special thing about the hackathons that you guys do and why you think that that's a interesting way to either develop talent, deliver a message, deliver solutions, what's special about hackathons? >> Yeah, well, what I can tell you is, what's special about hackathons is that it's a community space where people feel comfortable exploring themselves and exploring their talents, working with new individuals, and really giving them an opportunity to learn new things and try new things. What's very different about AngelHack is we're actually the world's largest and most diverse in developer ecosystem, so we actually have a wide range of diverse backgrounds and genders that come to our events, and we personally think that that's really where innovation happens, when you bring a variety of different backgrounds and minds together to get together and solve problems using technology. >> Can I just brag on you for a second? Because we just got off stage together where she just wowed the crowd with stories of these hackathons from around the world, and it's not just that there's diversity, and it's not just that they've given them the tools to succeed. She's going to Kabul, she's going to San Diego, she's bringing people who ordinarily never get the attention although plenty of people in San Diego get attention, I didn't name all the right cities, and she's bringing them together and then she's helping them fine tune, and then she's bringing them to the attention of people in power, it is extraordinary. >> Thank you. >> This is the sign of the times. The innovation, like things are starting to happen and markets are opening up, and Sabeen is one of the people who is absolutely making it happen. And that's what Fortune does best, we brag on the people that we write about. (laughing) >> That's great. And why do you think, Ellen, why are things changing now? It definitely feels like they are. >> Ellen: It does. >> But, you know, the cynic would say, yeah we've heard all this before, and, you know, pick your favorite time, you know, it's not really different, you know, this too will pass. Why is it different now? >> You know, and we were talking about this and I actually wish I knew, and I'm a cynic too depending on where I am in my deadline cycle, so sometimes I'm super optimistic and sometimes I think it's just crazy, but I think it's the confluence of many, many things. We've had a lot of stories about injustice and lack of access from every possible sphere, and race, and age, and country, and religion, all of it. And we have the very same tools, social media tools that are spreading things that are false, are spreading things that are true. And people are legitimately finding each other, and people are legitimately finding a tribe, for lack of a better term, and it's kind of exciting. So when you hear about things like AngelHack, which I always am looking for these in my daily column, it can resonate with people who are not part of the ecosystem and they can absorb the lessons of inclusion and optimism and bring it to the rest of their lives. And plus everything's crazy right now, in the world. >> Yeah, I think it's really important to also point out that in America our political climate and certain personalities that are in power right now, there's certain topics and subject matters that are becoming everyday topics. People are becoming a lot more comfortable talking about sexual harassment and talking about women in the workplace and it's not like a lot of the stories that women are telling are things that just happened yesterday, this is stuff that's from, that's happened in the past that now unlocked in their memories or they're feeling a lot more comfortable talking about it because we're actually creating an environment where people can talk about it and we're actually creating a language that people can use to express their experiences and their emotions about it. >> You're absolutely right. >> So many places we could go. But it was interesting that we're in kind of this rough middle ground where we haven't really kind of made this transition to where we're hoping to go, and it was an interesting comment at one of the other panels, you probably weren't in it, you were in your panel, about the Me Too has actually scared some men away from being mentors, and somebody said, you know, there's less. We cover the Grace Hopper Celebration and the sum of the numbers of women coming out of engineering programs, computer science specifically, are actually not going in the direction that you would think. So we're still kind of in these choppy waters, but I'm just wondering, when you set up your hackathon have you ever set up just not diverse teams to show that the output with the diverse team of opinions, points of view, backgrounds, race, sex, pick your favorite variable, actually deliver better results? >> Well, there's a ton of scientific research that actually shows that diverse groups and a diverse set of backgrounds delivers better results. So groupthink, it's been proven to be very detrimental. At our events we don't form the teams, we let the community self-organize, and we've seen time and time again that we can actually never predict who the winning team is going to be and what the make up of that team is going to look like. >> Yeah, you have to try that sometime. Put 'em in little, I don't even know, it doesn't even matter which single group you chose, you just know, as you said, the evidence is pretty clear, they're not going to perform as well as difference of opinions. Ellen, you're shaking your head. >> I know, I just sort of thought about like the sad little homogenous group who is sort of like set up to fail. (laughing) And that maybe there's a kinder way to make the case. >> Give them gummy bears or something. (laughing) So, with all you've done at AngelHack, where are you going next? What do you see as you look down the road? I still can't believe it's 2018 and we're almost a quarter of the way through this calendar year. What are some of your priorities if we come together a year form now, what will you have worked on? >> Yeah, hopefully a year from now we would have expanded into more than 92 cities, into more remote regions than we have now, and also we're doubling down on our accelerator. We want to make sure that our winning teams have an opportunity to really come to Silicon Valley or get access to funding that's available in Silicon Valley so that they can have funding and they can be successful for many years to come. >> And do you see within some of the groups that don't have access, obviously, to the money and the location in Silicon Valley, that people realize kind of what a powerful world changer technology can be, that you can actually write some code and deliver it to the entire world, that people actually use your code to do something different? >> Yeah, absolutely, that's what we're advocating for, that's really, honestly, what a lot of out topics discuss, that technology doesn't discriminate. It's really when people take a look at it, and in fact, GitHub did some research that they put code that was written by men versus code that was written by women and then they had people rate it, and immediately people were rating the code that was written by men higher, and then they didn't put what gender wrote it and then the code that was written by women was higher. So I think the research is starting and people are starting to realize to put technology first and gender maybe doesn't even belong in the judging criteria here. >> And do you think, Ellen, part of it's maybe just because we need more people? I mean there's, you know, on one hand autonomous everything is going to knock out all the jobs, on the other hand check the job listings 'cause we need a lot more people. >> We do, we do. And you're right, we're losing, what, 25% of jobs with new technology coming in, but we're also going to bring all kinds of people online who do not have access to even modern services. We're going to need some very basic things and they're going to need access to markets, and then they're going to become more responsible consumers and they, in turn, will then propose ideas that will make everybody's lives better because one of things that we talked about is that innovation tends to happen in a bubble and people are solving problems that they themselves are happening, but there's a whole world that would be improved by new levels of thinking and that would also create more jobs. >> And they're new jobs, right? There wasn't such a thing as a software developer, you know, 20 years ago, and if you're a buggy whip guy it's probably not a great time to be in business today. So while there are many jobs that are going to get wiped out, there's new jobs. You know, social media manager, I mean, that didn't exist, what, five years ago at most companies, now it's a huge part of a lot of corporations. So it's this constant evolution and yin and yang. >> Constant evolution. >> So what are you looking forward to in 2018 as you kind of, you've got kind of a broad view of the landscape. >> I do, and I write a daily column about race and culture, so that is how we got a chance to meet. You know, diversity and inclusion has been sort of the thing I've been studying for the last two years and as difficult as the world is and as crazy as it is, I really do see an opening that's happening where people are becoming more open to the idea of thinking different ways and embracing people who are different from themselves and not feeling threatened. We're still in choppy waters though, you're absolutely right. >> Well, and the other thing too, right? I was thinking if you're a 100 miles from a coast in the United States, I won't speak for other countries 'cause I don't know it as well, you know, there's a point of view and if you're more than 100 miles from the coast, maybe with Chicago as an island or Denver, there's a little bit of a difference, are you seeing, kind of, it getting beyond those kind of short borders, 'cause obviously, as you said, a lot of social stuff going on right now, there's a lot of diametrically opposed views, and I blame actually technology for a lot of it because thanks to the recommendation engines we tend to get served up things that we've read in the past, so unlike where you had kind of one newspaper in town, everybody had to read it so it had to be kind of down the middle. Now, the silly algorithms will keep delivering stuff that supports my point of view and other people will get delivered with their point of view, and I think the surprise after the election illustrated it more than anything that people didn't know anything about the other side, the shock, so are we getting past that? Do you see, kind of, what's your take on that? >> I'll start and then you jump in. I think that when we invest in communities that are under invested in, wherever they are, I live in St. Louis, you will see innovations. And maybe you won't always see the innovations that you're hoping for that will knit society together, but investment will flow and new product ideas will flow, and most importantly to your point, an understanding of how the world actually works will flow. The reason why to study software and code engineering is maybe that you don't want to be that, maybe you want to be an opera singer, but it will make you a better, more informed citizen. It will make you understand what's real and what's not real. I'm a big fan of liberal arts education in technology because it helps you understand how people actually behave and what markets actually need. >> Right. >> So I think that as people have the tools and use the tools, investments will follow, lifestyle will follow. So I guess I'm just outing myself as an optimist here. >> Jeff: Good, that's good. >> Sabeen, what do you think? >> I have to be optimistic, as well. Again, being at the forefront of emerging technology, I know that there's people looking to solve that very problem, and they're coming form a diverse group of engineers, and I really feel like that we're going to come up with a lot of tech solutions that are going to make a lot more diversity, inclusion, easier to facilitate, and easier to implement in corporations as well. >> Well, keep up your good work. I mean, at the end of the day it's about democratization. It's giving more people more access to the tools and you're going to get better solutions, more solutions, more diverse solutions. So, great job, and thanks for taking a few minutes. >> Thank you. >> Thank you so much. >> Alright, I'm Jeff Frick, we're at the Accenture International Women's Day Celebration. Thanks for watching. (electronic music)

>> 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)

>> 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 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]

>> Announcer: Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. Brought to you by Silicon Angle Media. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of the Grace Hopper Celebration in Orlando, Florida. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight along with my co-host, Jeff Frick. We are here with Brenda Darden Wilkerson. She is the new president and CEO of the Anita Borg institute. Thank you so much for joining us. >> I'm so excited to be here. >> This is a new position for you. >> Absolutely. >> But you've obviously been involved with the Anita Borg Institute for your career. At least been aware of it. So tell us a little bit about what this appointment means to you. >> Oh, it's so exciting. It's like coming full circle back to a tech career that I started. Back to understanding the needs of women having been there. Gone through the various stages of my career and then going into education. Helping encourage women into a career in tech. And now being able to advocate for them to be able to contribute at whatever stage they're in. Whether they are just entering or whether they're one of the women who have been in tech for a long time and are getting promoted into C-suite. Or whether or not they went through traditional education pathway to get in or if they learned on their own. So it's very exciting. >> And it cannot be as hard as the challenge that you just accomplished. I'm so impressed. Getting computer science as a requirement in the Chicago School District. >> Yes, yes. >> I mean that must've been quite a battle. I can only imagine. >> It was. It was, but you know when you want something, and you believe in it, it is amazing how you find other people who believe like you do. And you form a collaborative partnership that's really about caring about people. >> Jeff: Right. >> Many of us had been in tech and we had had the challenges and myself, personally, I came about computer science accidentally. I went to college thinking I was going to go into medicine. So I was pre-med. So I only learned about computer science accidentally. And of course obviously it changed my trajectory. It's been my career path and I was fine with that. Until years later when we were working on making computer science core, I was doing some lobbying on Capital Hill on a panel with a bunch of people. One happened to be a 19 year old girl who had a story similar to mine. And I thought how could this still be happening? >> Jeff: Right, right. >> How can people not have this choice and have this exposure early in life so that they know how to choose to contribute to the thing that's changing the way we live every single day. >> So do you see it changing? I mean we talked about this so many times on theCUBE. You know, that the core curriculum is the core curriculum. It's been there forever. >> Yes, yes, yes. >> And then the funny joke, right? Go back 100 years, nothing looks familiar except if you go to the school. I mean they're still reading the same Mark Twain book, right? >> Brenda: Right, right. >> Do you see it changing 'cause computing is such a big part of everyday life now. And it should be core everywhere. I mean the fact that you got that through, do you see it changing in a broader perspective from, kind of, your point of view? >> I do, I do. Education changes slowly, unfortunately. But actually when you look at, we launched computer science for all in 2013. And now it is an initiative that is national. The Obama White House embraced it and we were so proud. And it made the knowledge of going after computer science as something that all educators should really be thinking about as early as kindergarten for our students. It is making a difference in the lives of women. I've seen girls who many times would have been talked out of getting into a technical field by high school. For the few that could trickle in and get into those one or two classes that used to be available. I'm seeing girls learn that they could be innovators as early as five, six, or seven years old. Okay, so I'm just waiting to see the world that they're going to create for us when all of them. Because now, in Chicago, they're required to have computer science to graduate. So that's everyone so that's the key. It's computer science for all. And it is making a change. Not just for the kids, but the educators. I'm seeing women educators go, I could do this? I could get in and teach computer science? I could create something? That's exciting. >> So the Anita Borg Institute does so much good work around these issues. From getting computers into the hands of kindergartners to helping women on the verge of C-suite jobs in some of the biggest tech companies in the world. Where do you want to focus? As the new president, what are some of your special pet projects that you want to look at in the upcoming years? >> So I really want to think about how we dig into intersectionality. I want to first and foremost make vivid for more women of different backgrounds, who may have traditionally been left out of the equation, that there is an opportunity here for you if you want it. Okay, so that's about listening to them. That's about building additional alliances. That's about figuring out how to partner with organizations that we're all going in the same direction, right? So that more people that bring their unique lenses and experiences can help us create solutions, products, services that serve better just because they're there. So that's the first and most important thing. But then of course to, in order to do that, we have to figure out how to accelerate the work that anitab.org does in helping companies to figure out how to solve any problems that they may be having about diversifying their work force. So that's the other half of the equation. >> Do you see that the message is resonating? And this, I mean, you've been in the tech industry for, you're a veteran of the tech industry. Let's just say it, let's just put it at that. Let's just put it at that. But do you, I mean, just in terms of what we've been saying here too is that it's a lot of the same stuff. A lot of the same biases. And then there's things like to Google Manifesto which was this year, you know? And you just think, are we really still talking about this? I mean, where are you on the spectrum of completely discouraged to hopeful and inspired? >> Oh, I'm hopeful. I mean, look around you. (laughing) Look around you at all these women who are also hopeful. I am hopeful for them. We are hopeful together. And I think many times some of the remarks or things that happen out there are just an indication that maybe we're getting closer to moving that needle, you know? Sometimes that's when you hear from people is when changes are being made. So I'm not discouraged at all. I'm very excited to be on this team. It's a very powerful team. And to create the coalitions that our women are counting on us to do. >> It's pretty interesting with a lot of the negative stuff that happens in the news. And it actually has a really bright silver lining. And that it kind of coalesces people in ways that wouldn't necessarily happen. >> That's right, that's right. >> I thought your comment kind of about overt, or no, I guess the last guest. Overt, kind of, discrimination versus, kind of, less overt. It's harder to fight the less overt. So when somebody shines a big bright light on it, it actually, in a way, is a blessing because then it surfaces this thing. >> The stuff that's kind of, you know, it's lukewarm. It's easy for people to explain away. Even if it's really obvious to most people. But when it is as overt as it's been, it's out there now. It's like now we have something that we all have to deal with. It's not, you know, we can't be lukewarm and mealy mouth about it. Let's go to work and address this because it's so obvious. So in that way it's a silver lining. >> Jeff: Right, right. >> But the culture war that we're dealing with this. With what Melinda Gates was describing as the brogrammers. The hoodie guys, the sea of white dudes. >> Yes. >> Where we think all the great ideas are coming from. >> Brenda: Yeah. >> What is you feeling on how do we combat that? >> So, you know, here's an interesting perspective. I'm going to put a call on the entertainment industry. >> Rebecca: Okay. >> To put more images out there that are representative of what's really happening, right? So, you know, I have a sister that's a lawyer. And she's older than I am. And there was a time when you just didn't see very many images of women lawyers or women doctors. But if you watch television, you watch the movies, there are plenty of those now and the numbers. People can be what they can see. But if the images out there are all about the sea of white men. Then we will fight that struggle because people are impacted by what they see. >> Rebecca: The power of representation. >> The power, absolutely. And so I'm calling on people who have the power to change the images to do so. And to show the truth of what's really going on. >> Okay, so Hollywood, are you listening? (laughing) Do you have any final advice for the young women who are here. And maybe it's their first Grace Hopper Conference. >> Yeah, yeah. >> What do you think they should do to get the most out of their experience here in Orlando this week? >> Well, first of all, I'm so glad that you're here and I want you to be encouraged that there is a sisterhood. There is a community that cares about you that has seen some of the same things, some of the challenges. And maybe you don't even know about yet. But together, we can make a better world. We can be the change agents that we already are but on a such bigger scale. So, you know, go for it. Don't ever let fear stop you. And you will make a success out of whatever you're going after. >> Those are words to live by. >> Yeah, we need to get a bigger boat though. You got 18,000 people. >> I know. >> That's right. >> You can't get that on you IM placard. >> That's right, that's right. That's a new solution for tomorrow. (laughing) >> Great, well, Brenda, thanks so much. We're so excited for you and to be here at Grace Hopper again. >> Thank you so much. I appreciate being here. >> Great event, great event. >> Okay, thank you. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for Jeff Frick. We will have more from Grace Hopper in a little bit.

>> Narrator: 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 in Orlando, Florida. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my cohost, Jeff Frick. We are joined by Yasmine Mustafa. She is the founder of ROAR. Thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you. >> So ROAR is a self-defense wearable technology for women. Tell our viewers a little bit more about the technology and also really where you got the idea. >> Sure, I got the idea about four years ago. I decided to do something a little bit crazy. I got rid of all my possessions. I got rid of my apartment. I put a backpack on, and I booked a solo trip to South America for six months, and I did it for two reasons. The first reason is refugee, and when I came here, even though I was brought here when I was 15 applying for colleges, I actually found out I was undocumented, so I spent about 10 years working under the table trying to become legalized, and it was a very long, hard battle. It was very difficult to go to school and get a real job, and once I became a US citizen which happened five years ago, I was also able to sell my first company. I had a software company before ROAR. And after those two events, I said, "You know what, I'm 30 years old. "I deserve a break. "I've had a long journey. "I'm going to go celebrate." >> Jeff: Start another long journey. (laughs) >> Yeah, exactly. (laughing) I wanted to travel for so long and I couldn't 'cause when you're undocumented, it's really-- >> Hard to get back into the country. >> And you don't have the right credentials and even after I got my Green Card, I could. You can travel after getting your Green Card but I was so worried that I wouldn't be able to come back 'cause I've heard stories that I intentionally didn't, and so I booked this six-month trip as a way to reward myself and as a way to kind of make up for everything that had happened beforehand, and it was amazing trip. It was really life-changing. When I talk about it, I talk about my life in relation to before the trip and after the trip because it was so transformational, and I went to Spanish school for three weeks, did full Spanish immersions, stayed with a Spanish family in Ecuador, and then I went to Colombia and Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru. I spent a month in each country but as incredible as it was, it was also incredibly eye-opening because everywhere that I went and visited, I just kept hearing story after story of a time a woman had been attacked or abused or harassed, and it really opened my eyes to the violence women face every day, and a week after I came back to Philadelphia, it was in a downtown, when my neighbor went out to her car. It's a horrible story. She was grabbed from behind. she was dragged into an alley. She was severely assaulted, brutally assaulted. When I saw the news story the next day, that was when the light bulb moment hit, and I called up my cofounder, my formal adviser of my last company and told him about it, Anthony Gold, and we ended together to start ROAR for Good, and the concept initially was completely different. We thought the problem was that existing self-defense tools, pepper sprays, tasers was that you have to pull them out of your pocket or your purse for them to be useful, and it's not like you could just be like, "Excuse me. "One second," (laughing) and dig it out, so we thought let's make it wearable so that it's readily accessible. This is when Fitbit was huge, and the initial idea was actually called the macelet, mace in a bracelet, and (laughs) exactly, and as clever as that name was, we found out through market research that it was actually a terrible idea, that the number one fear that women had of self-defense tools is, "I'm afraid I'm going to be overpowered, and my own self-defense device used as a weapon against me," and another one, "What if I use it against myself accidentally?" And when we did more research, we found that existing self-defense tools are actually made by men for other men, and when the market opportunity for women came about, they shrunk it, they shrinked it and pinked it, and they didn't really account for women's needs, so we went back to the drawing board, and we said, "All right, we need to make something "that's stylish but discreet, "something that can call for help, "something that can ward off an attack, "and something that cannot be used "against the person wearing it", and that's how we came up with Athena. >> So do you have one that you can show are yours, what it looks like? >> I do, I do, yes. >> This is what it looks like. >> How it works, okay. >> So it has a magnetic band. Initially it was actually a bracelet, and when we were doing self-defense classes with prototypes, we actually found out the worst place to wear a safety device is on your wrist, and can you guess why? >> Somebody grabs your wrist, grabs your arm, right? >> Exactly, or now you only have the opposite hand to activate it, so we said, "No, we need to make something "that's more readily accessible "where both hands can be free," so we designed it with this magnetic strip so that you can clip it on any which way you want. The most popular options we've seen are purse, pocket bra strap, or lapel, and the way it works is if you feel nervous, if you want someone to watch over you, you triple press the button, and it sends your coordinates to your family and friends showing exactly where you are, and if there is danger, if you really need help right away, you press and hold it for three seconds, and it will also sound an alarm, and in about seven rings, you'll also be able to call emergency number, the local PSAP, 911 center in your neighborhood. >> Wow. >> It's such a great concept. As are so many great inventions are, it's really assembling a bunch of components that already exist, your cellphone, an app on your phone, your network of your contacts, the GPS in your phone, and assembling it in a slightly different way for a very specific application. >> Everything that's commonplace, it's in the device. There's nothing proprietary about it. It's just the way that we put it together. Again, we took existing technology and put it together in a way and tested it to make sure that it's something that can work, and we worked with police officers and self-defense instructors to put it together, which is really eye-opening as well. >> And the other part, if you can explore, it's a different way to interact with 911 so if it is an emergency, you're not picking up the phone, you're not talking but according to your website, it's faster, in a lot of ways, it's more efficient. There's a lot of benefits to a not phone call connection with what traditionally has been the way you ask for help, and how did getting that through, is that a regulatory thing? How did that whole process work? >> That's a great question. It's something that we probably spent about a year working on, and we actually have a partner that does it for us, so this partner, what's really cool about them is that they have a relationship with all 500 PSAPs, so a PSAP is just your local 911 center in your area, and our service is going to be able to to leverage their partnership to be able to connect with all of them. The way their system works is they can actually better track you through their service than your normal cellphone can, which is also really cool, and if you're my emergency contacts and I press this button 'cause I can't call 911 and you're in Orlando, I'm in Philadelphia, it will actually route you to the PSAP in my neighborhood versus your local PSAP so then it saves the time in terms of calling the Orlando PSAP and then having them call the Philadelphia PSAP and then finding me, so we're really, really excited about this opportunity. >> So apart from the technology, I want to talk to you a little bit about funding. Funding is one of the greatest barriers that really, all technologists but in particular, women founders face. Can you describe a little bit about how you went about finding sources of money? You already sold a company by then so you'd already been successful. >> Yes. >> But what about people without the track record? What would you say? >> Sure. I'd love to touch on the social mission aspect at some point too if you don't mind. For funding, I'm very lucky in the sense that my cofounder, he's also founded several companies in the past and fundraising is his thing, so he's been the one to lead it but what we did initially, so we spent about 18 months in product development, and we did a lot of testing, I mean really awkward, we put ourselves in really awkward situations where we went to parks and coffee shops, and showed people this and said, "Why would you not use this? "Tell me why you don't like this," and then we went back to the drawing board and did it again and again, and then we got to the point where people said, "Yeah, I want this. "I want this for my mom. "I want this for my child. "I want this for my college student." But there is a world of difference between, say, yeah, I want it versus buying it, so what we did initially is we actually launched a crowdfunding campaign. We launched an Indiegogo campaign, and for us, it was really a way to test if we really had, we were onto something. We initially had the goal of $40,000. The results really blew us away. We hit that $40,000 goal within the second day, got to 100 by the 10th day, 100,000, and then we ended the campaign with a little bit over 300,000 funding, and that really allowed us to do our seat stage round, and we were lucky from the sense we have a really interesting story. There is a billionaire couple in the UK that found out about us through the campaign after it took off. We had sales in every state in the country, 50 countries worldwide. Ashton Kutcher tweeted about it. It was amazing. It went viral for a little bit, which was incredible, but they learned about it, and then reached out to Indiegogo and said, "We want to meet this team, the company behind this team," and we connected with them, and they immediately put $2 million into the company. We went and met with them in Chicago after they came over, and within three days, we had the money in our bank account, so we got a little bit lucky but having that crowdfunding campaign, the success as validation really helped us to be able to raise that additional funding, and then we went to Ben Franklin Technology Partners, and they put in $250,000, our local economic resource center that does matching, and that's how we raised our initial seed to growth. >> And you mentioned the social mission piece so I want you to tell our viewers a little bit more. >> Yeah, so I, for a long tIme, lived in fear, so being undocumented, not really knowing what could happen, and I'm actually giving a talk tomorrow about my whole journey, and learning about women living in fear in another different way while traveling throughout South America. I didn't want to build a company that just built products and sold them to women that just put the onus on women 'cause it's too common for us to say were you drinking when something happens or don't do, don't wear this, don't go here, and we wanted to change that narrative, hence, the ROAR for Good aspect, and what we found after talking with psychologists and researchers is that violence against women stems from gender discrimination and inequality, and that there is one trait, if taught to young kids when they're most impressionable, can actually reduce violence against women, and that's empathy, and that empathy has actually decreased 40% over the last 20 years, and there is a controversy on whether or not it's something that's learned or innate but wherever you fall in that category, there is no denying that it is falling regardless, so we invest, we have what we call a ROAR Back program, which is we invest a portion of proceeds of every sale to nonprofits that specifically focus on teaching respect and healthy relationships to young kids when it matters most. >> Yasmine, thank you so much for joining us. >> Thank you. >> It's a really exciting technology. Thank you. >> Hopefully we'll see you at Philly. We got to have a Philly show. >> Come to Philly, please. >> So you got Josh as a buddy so-- >> Yes. >> Come on, Josh. We got to have us some Philly. (laughing) >> I'm Rebecca Knight with Jeff Frick. We will have more from Grace Hopper just after this. (light 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, along with my co-host Jeff Frick. We're joined by Sarah Clatterback. She's the Senior Director of Engineering at LinkedIn, and Erica Lockheimer, the head of Growth Engineering at LinkedIn. Thanks so much for coming on the show, again. >> Yes, thank you. >> Thanks for having us again. >> We're getting the band back together. >> Absolutely. >> So before the cameras were rolling you were talking about the exciting initiatives and programs you have at LinkedIn. One of them that definitely caught Jeff's imagination was Reach. It's sort of a cross-fit for engineers. So tell us more about Reach. >> Yeah, so Reach is a program where we wanted to really look at how we're hiring talent in a different way. So one of the things, actually it was an inspiration of a candidate that we had at Grace Hopper last year, where she had come and she gave us her resume. >> Yep. >> Abby, and she said "I can't get an engineering job. I did a boot camp but no one will hire me. I don't have enough experience." And she really was the catalyst that really created the program. We said, we need to look at talent in a very different way. So we decided, it stemmed also from her and also from Whit where if there's working mothers, how do they get back into the workforce? So these two ideas started coming together, and we said, why not create a program where we can maybe have them come to LinkedIn, get their skills back up, teach them how to code, and eventually work at LinkedIn. So we kicked off the program, and we did very little media, and we had over 700 people apply, and we went through 500 applications, and had 30 candidates at LinkedIn. So they just finished the end of the group session, but they are converting. They're learning how to code. They're checking code live to the site, and these are people from different backgrounds. As a veteran, returning back to work, even some people that have been in a bad situation of being homeless. I mean, this is talking about, not only about career transformation, but transforming their lives. And it's such a special program that has just changed the way that we're thinking about hiring. I don't know if you want to add anything. >> Yeah, I mean, I think that it's had a great impact on our company. I think, the way we think about hiring, but also how the whole team has interacted and really come together to support these apprentices, in being successful as engineers. So I've seen it actually transform the entire culture of our engineering team through this whole program. >> It's interesting, you use the word apprenticeship . And I think of that too, 'cause there's always the talk, right, about technology taking jobs. On the other hand, we hear over and over, there's all these open tech jobs. There's nobody to fill them. >> Yes. >> And then you got the transition with the truck drivers that are all going to be displaced by autonomous trucks, in the not distant future. So it's interesting as you point out, to kind of rethink, kind of the classic, go to school do your time, come in at the bottom and work your way up. Because there needs to be a much more variant to be able to get people to retrain, to take people through various backgrounds. And are you seeing that reflected, 'cause you guys, obviously, represent a bunch of companies that are looking for people. Are you seeing a broader adoption of this kind of non-traditional approach to getting talent? >> Well, it's a program that we started off as a pilot. >> Okay. >> We are definitely going to do a second round. So we would love to share and open source how we're doing it and we'd love to have other companies thinking this way. But it's truly, back to Sarah's point, it's really not only transformed our culture, but it's even thinking about how we're hiring. We're in hiring committee every single week, and we start looking at these candidates, like oh, it looks like a Reach candidate. Before you would've maybe bypassed them and said oh they're not ready. This is now a different way to invest. But I definitely want more companies to do this, and we'll pilot, we'll share it, we'll open source it, and it will be fantastic. >> So talk about some of the other programs including Invest, and how you're helping, making sure that employees are happy where they are. >> So Invest is a program that came out of the Women and Tech Initiative between Sarah and I, and we thought about some of the personal experiences that we had, is how did we get to where we're at? And you want to design a program about your own experiences. You're like, hey I know that works. Let me just create a playbook around it. So we met, and we said we have executive coaching. We had basically a community of people, we could talk to about some challenges and we had managers invest in us. So why not create a program about that. So we have, this is our third session that we're doing it, and we have 50 women in the program. But the program consists of two day executive coaching, one-on-one with your manager, continuant of bringing the community of women together, and going through this. And what we've found in the success results is there's zero in the last 10 months of them being part of this program, and 40 percent promotions which is fantastic. And then what also happens is they go into this program, and they want to be mentored, and they graduate really literally from the program. Now we want them to pay it forward. >> Pay it forward to the next cohort that's going to come through this program. And I think we have several things we can measure. I mean, you talked about the promotion rate, but we can also talk about, did they have, sort of, a career moment in the year following their trip through the program. Were they able to step up and take a bigger assignment, more responsibility. There are other ways to measure the success of the program, as well, and we're seeing that across the board. >> Yeah, and just to add on to it, it really is a community that we're starting to build within the company, and it just feels fantastic. People feel great. We're walking around through the hallways like, I'm part of Invest when can I sign up. Everybody wants to be a part of it. So we need to figure out, and we can scale it faster. >> Well measurement is also so important too, because so many companies want to know what the return on investment. So how do you think about the data collection and then measuring progress? >> Yeah, so basically for all these initiatives before we start them we say what are going to be the things that we're going to measure? What are the metrics of success. And I think in this particular case, Erika mentioned attrition rate. That's what's in it for the company is retaining top talented women. But then on the other side, are they achieving their career goals? Are they getting promoted? Are they able to step up? So those were, kind of, the two metrics that we had set for the program before we even started. And then we can basically check and see, are we achieving those results, or do we need to pivot something about the program, or reshape the program. So we do this at least yearly, if not quarterly, to see if we're tracking towards our goals. >> And just to add on to measurement, like she mentioned, it's hard to mention, how do you feel? You went through this program, how do you feel? They are feeling better. They are feeling more empowered. They want to actually be part of Whitmore and then help pay it forward. So that's also an amazing measurement of success too. >> I went to an interesting pitch night a little while ago. Stanford, I think MIT, Babson, and Cal, and there was a start up there. They were looking at external data sources, social media, et cetera to try and quickly identify high-risk leaves inside the company. So to basically would be the drive your candidate's election to say this person looks like, they're doing behaviors that might indicate they might be boogieing. >> Right, right? >> So maybe they should invested in to keep it going. 'Cause obviously it's so much better to keep your good people than to have to hire, retrain. >> Definitely. >> Et cetera. The huge ROI. And of course, the last thing, and I joke with you guys every time I see you. 'Cause I see you so often on LinkedIn usually, in a classroom. >> Good, keep on using LinkedIn >> With a bunch of little girls, teaching them, taking your weekends to teach coding and tech. It's just fantastic. But really interesting that you're expanding that program as well. So that Sarah can get some of her Saturdays back which I'm happy for. And really taking something successful. >> Yeah. >> And as you said, open sourcing. Open source continues to be such a great innovation engine. One of you can tell us a little bit about that. >> Yeah, absolutely. So our high school trainee program, we've been running it for three years now. We just finished our third cohort, and I think the results sort of speak for themselves. We've got a 96 percent rate of students going on to pursue stem degrees, and 89 percent studying computer science in particular. So I think we're actually seeing the result that we want out of the program, and we've even gone and reached a lot of girls who might be first generation college attendees, and we're even having the same success with them. So we really wanted to expand this program, horizontally scale it so to speak. So what we've done is we've put our program outline, as well as our curriculum that we do during the summer, online on GitHub, and we're encouraging other companies to pick this up, to adapt it to their own needs, and to provide additional opportunity for students around Silicone Valley and beyond. >> What's the biggest, consistent, it's not a surprise if it's consistent, and you've been doing it for three years. But as you run these programs, when you get the girls in for the first time, what's the thing that most people would never expect that you see over, and over, and over? >> I think for me, it's really seeing the identity transformation of the students. They come in. They're not sure if they belong. They feel intimidated, and by the end of the summer, they're confident, they're certain that they're going to be engineers. They see a future for themselves in Silicon Valley, and that's reflected not only at the end of the program, but also as they follow up with us in the subsequent years. So, for example, one of our first cohort has already finished her undergrad at Berkeley >> Yay! >> Wow! >> in two years, in computer Science. >> She finished in two years? >> She finished her undergrad >> She's a very motivated lady. >> She's so excited. >> She's amazing. >> Wow. >> And she's in a third year master's program right now. I get updates periodically from all the students. How they're doing, how their programs are going. One of the women from our first cohort, Vanessa, is also here at Grace Hopper. So we're going to meet up for dinner tomorrow night. It's really great to follow them as they become confident technologists into their career. >> Great story. >> So I want to ask you, being here at Grace Hopper, it's easy to feel that companies really get it in the sense of the importance of recruiting and retaining women, making sure that there's opportunities for them. But in terms of the state of the industry, and I'm asking LinkedIn which really epitomizes professional career management. >> Yes. >> Do companies get it? Where are we? >> So I think there's several companies that want to do something, I think we're all still trying to figure it out. As sad as that may be at times, but it's a hard problem to solve. When you're at a conference like this and you're like, there's not enough women in tech. There's tons of women in tech. If you have to think about how you're hiring in and if you want different results, you have to do something different. So what are you doing? Your old ways of doing things is not the way to do it, clearly. So how can you pivot and change? So I think they need to continually try different things. But I feel good. I feel we're going to get in that right trajectory, but it's going to take some time. >> Yeah, I think this is algorithm optimization, right? >> Yes, good analogy, good analogy. >> The inputs and the outputs. Are we getting the result that we want? And we're all iterating our algorithms to figure out what's working, and how we can do better. >> New inputs, new inputs. >> Excellent. Well Erika, Sarah, thank you so much. It's always so much fun having you on the show. >> Well thank you for having us, it's fantastic. >> Absolutely >> I'm Rebecca Knight, for Jeff Frick who will be back tomorrow with more from Grace Hopper. See you then. (upbeat music)