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

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

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

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

>> Announcer: Live from Orlando, Florida, it's 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)

(upbeat synthesizer pop music) >> Announcer: Live, from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE, covering Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, brought to you by siliconANGLE Media. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of the Grace Hopper conference here in Orlando, Florida. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We are joined by Ilit Raz. She is the CEO of Joonko, an AI-powered diversity and inclusion coach for companies. >> Ilit: That's right. >> Thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you for inviting me. So, I'd love it for you to just start talking about how you came up with the idea for Joonko. >> Sure, so I grew up in Israel, originally from Israel, spent about 14 years in the tech industry. Before that, doing computer science in high school, I was almost the only woman all along the way, for like 15 years, and I think the weird thing, I never thought it's a weird thing. This is how I grew up. I was one out of two doing computer science in high school, spent a few years in the Intelligence Unit, was the only woman around and this is how I grew up. And then, like 2 1/2 years ago, I joined a group of Women in Product Management in Israel. We, like, I went to their first Meetup. It was 250 women there. Israeli people have this perception of everyone knows everyone and I went into the room and literally know, like knew no one and I was like, "That's weird." And, then I think I realized, like, "We have a problem." I went back to two other friends, we worked on another venture before, and said, "Hey, what do you about changing what we're doing "to doing something for women in the workplace?" And, they were like, "Actually, that sounds awesome," and we started thinking about what is already outside in the market, what are companies doing now? And, I come from a lot of cybersecurity background and I'm like, "What do you think about doing anti-virus for biases?" >> Ooh. >> And, this is how we started this AI stuff and everything like this and as we moved forward, I'm starting to talk with a lot of companies. We realized the biggest barrier for a company was like understand what's happening on a day-to-day stuff for employees all around the world. Like, if they're head of HR or head of Diversity sitting in San Francisco or whatever in their headquarters, how do you know what's happening with your employees like at a really low level in offices around the world? And, we realized, like-- >> So, it's not just for the recruitment. It's also in terms of who's getting promotions, who's getting the choice assignments, who's-- >> That's right. What kind of language are you using when you talk on Slack? What type of code review do give to your female engineers versus a male engineer? Who gets promoted? What type of language are you using on peer-to-peer evaluations and all this type of stuff. >> That stuff is so hard and it sort of seems, >> Yeah. >> the code review assignments, it seems like a minor thing, but, in fact... >> It's really important. Like, if you get like, "You need to fix this," exclamation mark, and you're like, that's not really nice and it doesn't make you feel like, okay, I want to go ahead and fix it and probably you don't give this same thing to a male developer. You're like, "Maybe there is another way to do it," and you use different phrases and different tone. And, also, we see like on Slack messages, when there is a development channel, usually you're not going to see women and people of color are as active as men, just because they're usually a small portion of the team, even one person on the team. So, I think this is like the main stuff that's happening on day-to-day stuff that are not like trying to get the most important role in the company, but actually do I get a spot, generally speaking, in the company. Do I feel comfortable? Like, if someone making a joke is like, "You look so gay," as a joke, and you as a gay person, whether you are outspoken gay or not, like probably if you've spoken about it or not, then you don't feel very comfortable, even if it's a joke. >> Right. >> Like, it's not really funny. >> Right, right, right. >> So, how does your technology work? So, it detects these biases. >> Right. >> It understands when there are, is aggressive or hostile language to women or other minority groups and then what? >> So, basically we connect to these everyday SaaS platforms companies are using, so you had mentioned recruiting is one of them, Slack, Salesforce, Atlassian, basically all the companies around here, and then once we connect with these platforms, we peel out the data in real time, all the time. We analyze the data, we look for patterns and when we get this metric, okay, there is a pattern here that was probably based on biases, we reach out to the most relevant person, like the person who has the most effect on the current situation. Whether it's you as a female developer that needs to be more active or you as a recruiter that was just keeping these 10 diverse candidate CV reviews, you as an individual who can make the most impact on the current situation, we're going to reach out to you, whether via email or Slack message, and say, "Hey, this is the situation, "and here is how you can fix it." So, we have another engine that like matched a problem with a solution. >> With an action? >> Yeah, with an action that you can do in like less than two minutes, so it should be like a really quick thing that you can do on the go. You don't need to like, "Okay, I need to set time for this Joonko thing." No. >> Right. >> It's like super-quick thing >> Right, right. >> that you can do or you need to do and it basically should help you either really improve the situation or basically overcome it before it gets to like what we call, we call it like micro-events of unconscious biases before it gets like really big thing. >> So, are people, so it really is putting the onus on the individual to act. >> That's right. And, are, do people do it? Is there follow through? >> Yes. >> What are you seeing? >> I think that the numbers that we have on even open rates for the insights that we send and follow-up rates, I think every marketing company in the US would love to have these numbers; like they are really, really high. I think it's just people, like for the first two times, they give it a try and when they see that it's really helping, they just keep doing it. Like, we have one company that reached out to us and say, "We know you have a limit of three engagements a week, "because you don't want to bother us, can you take it off? "We want to get all of them. "We really find them helpful on our day-to-day stuff. "Can you give us more of these insights?" So, I think people are like really into giving it a try and then see that it's helpful and keep using it. Like, we really see high improvement, so I think that's another good reason for people to kind of keep engaging. So, yeah, people are super happy about it. >> So, what are you finding? What do your clients tell you is the return on investment, here? >> I think the first main stuff that we see, one, because we have a lot of capabilities, of like, let's take recruiting, for example, when you look at recruiting and a company say, like, "We want to improve our recruiting numbers," they don't really know beside the fact that someone voluntarily gives their ethnicity, age, gender, whatever, they don't know who is the applicant unless they manually take like one person by one. We know how to analyze gender and race automatically by email addresses for like 90% of the candidates, so it actually gives a really clear picture for a company. Like, okay, what is happening in our recruiting efforts and where we, where are the pitfalls and where do we fail? And, it's basically like turning the light in place they like, they had no clue what's-- >> Showing them their blind spots, yeah. >> Yeah, that they had no idea what's going on. In other places, like what's going on on Slack channels, I don't think anyone here knows what's happening on their Slack channels. It's really, really hard to follow. So, I think it's the smaller spots and the like little places that we can turn, basically, turn on the light for a lot of companies. >> And, so who are your companies? Are they already the forward-thinking companies or are you seeing-- >> You have, I think at this point, you have to be a forward-thinking company to go ahead, give a third-party access to all this stuff, really want to make a change. Honestly, I think you need to be like a few hundreds, maybe lower few thousands, to actually being able to make a quick change. Like, for our companies that have a few hundred employees, they see, in less than three months, 5% to 8% improvement on your recruiting efforts, like actually hiring more diverse candidates. I think when you get to a size of like 100,000, and 200,000 employees, making a 1% change-- >> Rebecca: It's a lot harder. >> It's much harder. >> So what is your message to those companies? >> Wow, I think, A, start with business units. Don't make this huge announcement with like you're going to be 50/50 by 2020. To get to 50/50 by 2020, you need to fire half of your team and then hire half diverse candidates, like half diverse. >> So, start small. Start small. >> Start small, start where pains really are. Don't say you have 50/50 when all the 50 are in marketing and sales and like assistants or whatever and then on your R and D teams, you have like 10/90, which is what most companies have. So, start small and, I guess, lead by example by putting money into internal work and not marketing out or like go ahead and be like, volunteer work, come here to Grace Hopper. This is nice, but this is more customer-facing marketing versus actually doing something internally to change the numbers, so. >> Great, great. Well, Ilit Raz, thank you so much for joining us. >> You're welcome. Thank you for having me. >> It was a pleasure, yes. >> Thank you very much. >> We will have more from theCUBE's coverage of the Grace Hopper conference in a little bit. (upbeat synthesizer pop music)

>> Narrator: Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE, covering Grace Hopper's Celebration of Women in Computing. Brought to you by Silicon Angle Media. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of the Grace Hopper Conference. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We are joined by Rory Budnick. She is the engineering manager at Procore. Thanks so much for joining us. >> Thanks for having me. >> So tell our viewers a little bit more about Procore. >> Sure, so, we make cloud-based construction project management software. So what that means is everything in your construction project can be stored in Procore, everything from the budget for the project, to the drawings that your subcontractors need to see on the job site. >> And so these are two, it's mixing construction and engineering, two very male dominated fields all in one. So, talk a little bit about what your experience at Procore has been so far in your career. >> Sure, so, I joined Procore when there were 150 people, which was a little over three years ago, and now there are over 1000, we're in international markets, it's a whole different ballgame. It's been an awesome experience. I feel like I've gotten to grow with the company. I started out as an individual contributor and now I'm a manager. I've been involved in a lot of hiring at Procore, and so, we talk about two things here at Grace Hopper, in terms of getting more women in tech, more female software engineers. One of those is the pipeline, and two being retention. So, in terms of the pipeline, being in hiring is important, right? Being here, having a Procore booth, making sure that we are having our recruiters talk to female software engineers in the first place. And, in terms of retention, Procore has been just a really supportive place to work. I mean, me being here is a testament to that, but things like unlimited time off. >> Unlimited time off? >> Yeah, it's one of the many perks. I mean, it's just a comfortable office space, where we're making diversity a priority, and realizing that our employees need to be happy to get the best work done. It's definitely the most supportive company I've ever worked at in that respect. >> Now, research shows that women engineers really go into this field because they like to solve real world problems. So, can you talk a little bit about the kind of technology challenges that engineers face at Procore? >> Sure, that's one of the things I love about Procore is that we work on really tangible problems, so you see the payoff, you hear it directly from the customers. So, like, I work on the Drawings team. Drawings is one of our flagship tools. People upload all their drawings for a project, and we make sure that people are always working off the current set, which is really important, so that you don't have to do any rework, and you stay on budget and on time. >> And these are the headaches of any major home project too, is the fact that the timeline always slips and the budget always balloons. >> Yes, whether it's a home project or it's La Guardia Airport, which is one of the projects that's in Procore, it's the same problems. So, we get to work on things like making sure that clients are working off of that current set. What's the best way to do that? We hear their real world problems, like different ways to keep track of drawing revisions, and we make sure we adjust for whatever their method is of doing that. The biggest thing that we're working on right now, technically, is scaling, which is an exciting problem. We're working a lot on performance. We have about two million users, so it's sort of like the best problem to have where we have such high demand that now we need to meet it. So, a lot of the real world problems that we're solving, we have pretty solid solutions in place, we just need to scale to meet that demand. >> And as you said, the company is growing so much, so how are you making sure that it stays and remains that comfortable place to work as it gets bigger? >> That has been very interesting to watch. It's just been a great professional development experience for me, as a growing manager. And I think that the key thing we're doing is, in hiring, we look for three qualities, and they are ownership, optimism, and openness. They all start with Os, so it's easy to remember. But we really do look for those qualities in people, and find people that, you know, demonstrate that ownership, want to run with a project, feel like they're showing, that they put their self-worth in the project, and so they're willing to go the extra mile. In terms of optimism, doing well with change. I mean, growing that quickly, we're looking for people who work well with change, are excited about our growth. >> Rebecca: Are adaptable. >> Exactly, and then-- >> Rebecca: Openness. >> Openness, yeah, I almost forgot the last one. Openness, for me, where I see that the most at Procore is just communication from the executives. No matter who you are, you could go up to one of them and start a conversation, and they make a point of doing, you know, all hands meetings where they're communicating what the top company priorities are, what our investors are saying, things that you wouldn't think that an individual contributor would even be aware of. They lay it all out there. >> So, I mean, it sounds great, the idea that the lowest person on the totem pole can go up to a senior manager and give her input on a new idea, or pitch something. How does it really work, though? I mean, how do you empower that junior employee? >> I mean, I think a lot of that's individual management, but an example I can think of, in terms of empowering individuals' ideas at Procore is we just started a diversity and inclusion council as part of our efforts to kind of begin tackling the problem of increasing the number of women in tech. So, that means that 20 employees are meeting, they're funded by the company, and they get to figure out their takeaways, figure out their initiatives, and that's fully supported by the executives. >> Great, great, great. So, here you are at Grace Hopper. This is your second Grace Hopper. What is your takeaway from this conference? How would you describe the energy? >> It's incredibly inspiring. It's like being in a bubble for a few days. You know, it makes me want to extend that out into the real world. Melinda Gates yesterday was amazing, Debbie Sterling this morning. >> Rebecca: Who's the founder of GoldieBlox. >> Yeah, it's just, it just reminds me of that saying, you can't be what you can't see, and this is the opportunity for people to see. Procore sent about 30 women, and this is showing them, here are these women in leadership, here are women who have had really long careers in tech, so it's possible for you too. >> And, you know, you're not one of the new entrants to this field. You're already having a successful career, but you're also not a veteran. What keeps you going, even in spite of the Google manifesto, and the headlines that we read about the bleak numbers of women in leadership roles? >> I mean, I would be lying if I said those things didn't hurt, and it's really a mind game, where you have to sort of self-manage, and believe in yourself despite what other people are saying, not give people's opinions power over what your abilities actually are. >> And what's your advice to the young women here at Grace Hopper, who maybe it's their first time being here? >> I mean, my advice for actually attending the conference would be just make the most of it. >> Rebecca: And how does one make the most of it? I mean, it is big, it's overwhelming, 18000 people. >> Yeah, it definitely is. I think, for me, I'm a big note taker. I write down those big takeaways and I revisit them. So, you know, in six months, when another one of these articles comes out with negative news about women in tech, I can revisit that and kind of feel bolstered by that. >> Rebecca: Are you hopeful that things are changing? >> Yes, I am hopeful-- >> And you're on the ground floor here. I mean, you're one of the women fighting the good fight every day. >> That's nice to hear, and I think, you know, last year's Grace Hopper, there were 13000 people, this year there's 18000. Things are trending in the right direction. For me, I think that pipeline problem is something I think about a lot, and getting young girls interested in technology. For me, I didn't start coding until I was done with college, so it's important to me that people are aware of the possibilities at a young age. >> Well, Rory, thanks so much for joining us. It's been a lot of fun talking to you. >> Yeah, great talking to you too. >> Thank you. We will have more from the Grace Hopper Conference, just after this.

>> Announcer: Live from Orlando, Florida, it's the Cube. Covering Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. Brought to you by SiliconAngle Media. >> Welcome back to the Cube's coverage of the Grace Hopper Conference, here 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)

>> Announcer: Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE covering Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. Brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of the Grace Hopper Conference in Orlando, Florida. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We're joined by Morgan Berman. She is the founder and CEO of MilkCrate, a platform that measures and grows social and environmental impact. Thanks so much for joining us. >> Thanks for having me. >> So I want to, start off by telling us a little bit about MilkCrate. >> Sure. So we're a tech company. We got our start about four years ago. We've grown and changed a lot in that time, but what we really focus on doing is helping big organizations either for- or non-profit, engage people in social and environmental impact in a game app. And we build custom versions of this app based on the goals of each client. So whether it's a big company that wants to engage employees in volunteering and riding a bike to work, or a nonprofit that has kids that they're trying to get to go to art museums, and encourage them to go more often, we can gamify both of those behaviors in unique apps and then those clients have their own engagement experience for hitting those goals. >> Well, that's a really neat idea. Tell me how you came up with it. >> Well, like I said, it's changed and grown over time. Originally it was my own personal desire to grow my impact in the world. I grew up in this kind of crunchy, kind of wonderful bubble, I guess, where my mom would only buy food from the farmer's market, she was actually a farm-to-table chef, one of the first female chefs in Philly. She wrote books rating and reviewing thrift shopping, so I grew up with like fresh local food, thrift shopping, there was a community garden behind us. >> She was a hipster before her time. >> Exactly, my mom's like the original hipster. And my dad was also an entrepreneur. So when I moved to West Philadelphia, which is like the crunchiest part of the city by far, I was trying to figure out how to ride a bike in the city for the first time, and how do you compost with worms when you live in an apartment and you don't have a backyard. Where's my nearest food co-op so I can start feeding myself this way? And my interest grew and grew as I started learning about things like climate change. And I went to a Bill McKibben talk about fossil fuel divestment, and there were these children in Haiti holding a sign that said Connect The Dots Your Actions Affect Me. And it really hit home how my privilege as this western world person with this degree and all of these things that most people don't have that every choice I made about my life was having a direct impact on someone on the other side of the world, or often not even that far from me. And so I wanted to figure out how to live my life in a way that my values weren't conflicting with my actions. So I applied for graduate school in sustainable design to originally, the idea was to help design sustainable buildings but I quickly learned that even though I had this degree, architects weren't going to take me seriously. And so I pivoted and took all my extra-curriculars in Industrial Design and Interactive Media. And I had the head of the department for Interactive Media actually helping me with the first mock-ups of MilkCrate, which was all about designing an app to help people live their values, particularly around sustainability. And then, after a few years of learning and growing, we actually, Forbes picked us to be one of the five companies on the Forbes Under 30 stage and that catapulted us onto this path of suddenly going from a school project to a startup company that needed to raise money and have a business model. And I was like, what's a business model? So after about two years of learning and growing, we realized that there's this opportunity with big corporations to engage employees in sustainability and that there was a pain point on this enterprise level that we could solve, and yeah. >> And what was this pain point? I mean, I think that's the thing is we can all say it's great for companies to get their employees to ride more bikes and to start a recycling program-- >> But why do they care? >> Yeah! >> And that's what investors would always ask, and I'd be like, ugh! And I had to learn the answer! And the answer is 75% of the S&P 500 issues a CSR Sustainability Report every year, and that has grown exponentially over the last few years. And the reason they do that is because employees want to work for a company that's making a difference. 45% of millennials would take a 15% cut or more in their salary to work for a company that makes a difference in the world. The reason that B Corps are growing exponentially around the world, all of these things, of business is a force for good in the world, it's the norm now. Whether you realize it or not, that's what's driving people to work for a company, to stay for a company, for customers to buy a product from a company. That's how people are starting to make their important life choices. And so now companies invest in having a Corporate Social Responsibility, not only a director, but a whole department. And they're, what we learned when we were researching how to figure out this whole business model was that CSR directors, their top three pain points are engaging employees, tracking and analytics, and having a scalable, cost-effective program across the whole company. So we realized our product could do all three of those things, and I was like, oh, I think that's a business model, when you solve the major pain points for an important corporate role in the world. So that's how we started moving in that direction and we started getting validation, and then we realized we also could work with nonprofits when they started reaching out. And so now we're kind of filling both of those needs that are a little bit different. >> So you're gamifying, making it into a game, making it fun for employees, or clients or customers or whoever the target audience is. So what kind of rewards are they getting for this? How do you light up their bulbs? >> I'm actually giving a lecture on this at Warden on Monday, so it's top of mind. You've got intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, right? There are the things that you do because they make you feel like you're being your authentic self, where you're expressing your values and that lights up your brain in a way that nothing else ever will. Then you have your external, extrinsic motivations, things like prizes, but also social acknowledgement. Seeing that you are functioning the way your peers are, that sense of I am not alone, or I am normal, that's a really important validation as a human. So seeing that you're in the top 10 or that you're above average, that feels good. So we have things like your rank and how you're doing on your team and how your team's doing in comparison to other teams in your MilkCrate community. And then there's the actual rewards. So university clients of ours have given tickets to sporting events, or credit to the bookstore. Corporate clients, gift certificates to local, sustainable restaurants and coffee shops near the headquarters. We're actually now partnering with an amazing B Corp company, United By Blue, that has ethically made and environmentally thoughtful products like mugs and candles and things like that. So, it depends on the client what their goals are, what their budget is, what motivates those people. But it really, the beginning part, when you first download the app, the first couple of challenges are things like answer this question about how important is to you to live your values? So you get them thinking in that mindset about why they're using this app. >> Priming them to-- >> Priming them, exactly! Getting them in that headspace. That's the most important thing you can do in the beginning is just to help them understand why they're using this, and then the rewards are almost, they're a distant second. >> Okay, okay. So you've also, you are a B Corp, and are there many other B Corps here at Grace Hopper? I mean, what's your experience there? As you said, it is now the norm that the business is functioning this way. But B Corps are still a minority, relatively speaking. >> Right, there's a lot of room for growth there, yeah. I think having the CSR report is the norm, but doing everything you possibly can, there's still a lot of room in that department. One thing I saw that I loved was that instead of giving out swag, Facebook was actually donating money to nonprofits that help women code. I was like, that's great! So I haven't seen any B Corps here that I've, yeah, I don't think I've seen other than ROAR For Good-- >> Which we had on the show earlier. >> Yes, so Yasmine and I are definitely two Philly B Corps. I would love to see more tech companies go in that direction but yeah, there's a lot more growth that needs to happen. There are about, I think, I actually just got to meet one of the other founders of B Lab that does B Corp certification. He gave a great presentation answering in more detail why do companies do this? It was amazing how many stats he had. It was like yes! But 2,300 for B Corps and I think something like 16,000 benefit corporations. So they're slightly different things, but it's a growing movement for sure. >> So talk a little bit about your experience at this Grace Hopper Conference. It's day one, we're near the end of day one. How would you describe the energy, the atmosphere, what's your feeling about being here in Orlando? >> So I've heard over and over again people saying it's just so good to be in a room full of women who are all doing awesome things. And it keeps reminding me of when I went and saw Wonder Woman with my parents. And I remember sitting in the theater and going like this and being like oh, my cheeks are wet. Oh, I think I'm crying. Oh, I think I'm having feelings. I think it's because I've literally never seen on a screen several dozen, or hundreds of women just being powerful, physical beings with like, aggression and skill, and it having nothing to do with sexuality or being attractive. And it was just the first time I'd seen that in my 32 years of existence. And to just, there's something so powerful about having that icon, that image reflected back at you to see, oh, if you can do that, I can do that. And actually, over the last 13 months, I've been training in Brazilian jujitsu and competing, and to see women being physical, strong warriors, and only women, and it not being sexualized, it was like oh, that's the feeling I get when I compete, and when I'm with my teammates, my female teammates. Anyways, I think that's kind of what's happening here is that sense of like, these are my people, and we are doing amazing things, and to just see each other when historically, you never got to see a room like this. I think it's an unfortunately necessary experience to be reminded that we are out there, we are doing this, and it's growing. >> And there is a sisterhood and the belonging that we talked about earlier, too. >> I mean, you see men who don't seem particularly uncomfortable here. They can kind of, they're like okay with this. And they get to kind of know what it's like to be in the minority. And I kind of want to ask them, how are you feeling? What's this like for you? But like, to see everyone flipping the ratio and we're all good, so that means if we could get somewhere more like parity I think that could be pretty magical. >> So as a female founder, a female technologist, what is your advice for the younger versions of you who maybe are just graduating from college, or maybe even younger than that and sort of wondering, can I even do that? Can I aspire to be that? >> You absolutely can. And I gave some advice at the end of my session earlier. And my two bits of advice were detach yourself from any negative association with the word Failure. Try and come up with a new word for yourself if you need to because learning and growing is what you're going to do your whole life, and so taking risks, that's what you need to be doing every single day. And so pushing against those things that scare you. And the second thing was to find a mentor, because no one piece of advice I can give is ever going to fill the role that having a mentor can give you over the course of a career, or even just for a few years. The amount that I've grown in just the last four years of building my company with some of my mentors, it's incredible. So, find someone who reminds you of who you want to be, and then latch on to them and get them to help kind of carry you along. >> Great. Well, Morgan, it's been so fun talking to you. >> Thank you, this has been great. >> Thanks for joining us. >> I'm Rebecca Knight, we'll have more from the Grace Hopper Conference in Orlando just after this. (rippling music)

>> Announcer: Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE! Covering Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. Brought to you buy 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're joined by Dr. Deborah Berebichez. She is the chief data scientist at Metis, which is owned by Kaplan. Thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you, Rebecca. Thanks for inviting me, too. >> You have had such an interesting and varied professional career. You were even a host of a lot of different science-oriented television programs. You work on initiatives to get young women into technology. But one of the things that is most impressive is that you were the first Mexican woman to ever earn her PhD in physics-- >> Deborah: In physics, at Stanford. >> From Stanford University. What an accomplishment. But talk a little bit about your path to Stanford. Tell our viewers a little bit more about your trajectory. >> It's definitely a convoluted, and not a typical path. I grew up in Mexico City in a conservative community that discouraged girls and young women from pursuing a career in the hard sciences. I was told from a very young age that physics was for geniuses, and that I had better pick a more feminine path, like communications or something else, which were great careers, but they were not the right ones for a very inquisitive mind like mine. When I confessed to my mom in high school that I loved physics and math, she said, "Don't tell the boys, "because you'll intimidate them, "and you may not be able to get married." >> Rebecca: Nonsense! >> Actually, it's funny, because that kind of overt bias is sometimes easier to combat than the one that more women experience, which is a more subtle bias. You know, that the media tells us that some things are for boys and for women. So, in my case, it was very open, and so it almost gave me more courage to try to fight against it. Anyways, so, it came time to pick what career, what BA to do in college, and I was told by the advisors in school that philosophy was a more feminine and acceptable path, but it also asked a lot of questions about the universe. So, I enrolled in a local college in Mexico City to study philosophy, but the more I tried to stifle my love for physics and math, the more that inner voice was screaming, "This is your path. "You have to do it, you have to study physics." Just like a lot of kids do their rebellious things behind their parents' back, I would go and rent from the library books about obscure physicists like Tycho Brahe, this Danish astronomer who was locked up in a tower, and I was thinking, I'll be just like him, kind of antisocial, nobody will like me, but at least I'll have my data, my numbers, to keep me company. >> Rebecca: This was your teenage rebellion, is reading about brooding philosophers? >> Well, there other-- >> Okay. >> In the middle of my BA in philosophy in Mexico, I decided to apply to universities in the US to give it a chance, and give myself the opportunity to pursue both BAs, physics and philosophy. I was very fortunate to get a full scholarship to attend Brandeis University, and I say that because, in Mexico, universities are about eight times less expensive than in the US, so I could have not afford to go anywhere else. While at Brandeis, I took the courage to take a very general course in astronomy. Very little math, introductory course, and there I met the teaching assistant, who was a graduate student by the name of Roopesh. He was from India. Roopesh and I became good friends, and he told me that I wasn't the typical student that just wanted to get an A in the class and do the homework well, that my curiosity had no end. That I would ask questions about quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics, and I wanted to know everything about the universe and nature. So, one time, we were walking in Harvard Square, and I realized that I was the only one who could make my dream of becoming a physicist happen. With teary eyes, I told Roopesh, "I don't want to die without trying. "I just don't want to die without trying to do physics." He called his advisor on a payphone. He was the head of the graduate student committee, so he called me to Brandeis. He handed me a book called Div, Grad and Curl, Vector Calculus in Three Dimensions. For me, it was an alien language. He said to me, "There's a problem, "because the BA in physics takes four years, "and your scholarship is only for two years. "But guess what, someone else has done this at Brandeis. "His name is Ed Witten. "Do you know who he is? "He switched from history to physics." I said, "You're kidding. "Ed Witten is a very famous physicist, "the father of string theory. "Clearly, there's no way I could pull this off." He says to me, "I give you two months this summer. "If, by the end of the summer, "you pass a test on this one book, "I'll let you skip through "the first two years of the physics major "so you can complete the BA in only two years." Roopesh decided to mentor me and tutor me 10 hours a day for eight weeks. I tell the story of Roopesh because I always wanted to pay him back. He said to me, when he was growing up in India, in Darjeeling, there was an old man who would teach him and his sisters the tabla, the musical instrument, English, and math. And when they wanted to pay him back, the old man said, "No, the only way you could ever pay me back "is if you do this with someone else in the world." That's how my mission in life started, to inspire, encourage, and help other, especially women, but minorities who, like myself, want a career in STEM, but for some reason, whether it be financial or social, feel that they cannot achieve their dreams. >> Great story. >> Yeah, wow! Incredible! >> And then, you asked about Stanford. So, then I went back to Mexico, and I was doing a Master's in theoretical physics, and I was again told by my community, "Okay, you've got it over with. "Stay here, get married and stay as part of the community." But I was still more hungry for knowledge, and to do more physics. I was very late in the application cycle, and I decided to apply to schools. I went to my Mexican advisor's office, and I said, "You know, I'm going to leave again. "I'd like to go to the US where I can pursue experiments. "I wrote to a couple of professors." He says, "Who did you write to?" I say, "Well, there's one particularly interesting one, "Steve Chu at Stanford." His jaw dropped. He said, "Steve Chu?" I said, "Yes, why?" He said, "Do you realize he just won the Nobel Prize "a couple of months ago?" And Steve Chu later became Secretary of Energy in the US. I was so fortunate that he received my email with interest, invited me to work directly with him at Stanford. That's how my career started. >> It's such a good mix of fortuitousness, serendipity, but also doggedness on your part, so, really, there's a lot going on. >> Don't be shy, is my-- >> This gets to our final question, really, which is, what's your advice for the younger versions of you? >> The first thing is that it was not all easy for me. There was a lot of failure along the way. My first advice is, the people who get to the end of the line and succeed in life are not the ones that simply persevere and get everything right. They're the ones that keep getting up and succeeding step after step. It's the courage to get to the end and persevere even when failure exists. The second piece of advice, especially for parents out there, is when your kids ask questions about the world and nature, don't just give them the answer. Go through the pleasure of finding things out, as Feynman would say. Especially with computing. Computers are a tool, a magnificent tool. But they're just a tool to another goal, which is to gain insights about the world. It's more important to be a critical thinker and a thought leader, rather than just focus on being proficient at coding. >> You had the element of humor, you had the element of storytelling, you had the element of everyday things in the way, 'cause you're obviously a super smart lady to accomplish these things. Not everybody's so super smart, so you've created a style in which you can help those that aren't maybe necessarily PhDs from Stanford to gain interest, to become interested, to kind of hook 'em into this interesting world that you're so passionate about. >> Yeah, thank you. I try to do it through my TV show that I cohost with The Science Channel called Outrageous Acts of Science, which serves exactly that purpose, to get people interested in the fact that science and STEM is behind everyday life. It's not just some complicated equation in a board. It's what we go through every day, and if you just gain the joy of discovering those concepts, you're set. >> Great. Well, Deborah, thank you so much for joining us. It's been so much fun talking to you. >> Thank you. I loved being here. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for Jeff Frick. We will have more from Grace Hopper just after this. (fast techno music)