>> From Palo Alto, California it's theCUBE, covering VMware Women Transforming Technology 2019. Brought to you by VMware. >> Hi Lisa Martin on the ground with theCUBE at VMware Palo Alto California at the 4th annual Women Transforming Technology event wt². And pleased to welcome to theCUBE for the first time Rashim Mogha, the Head of Product at Automation Anywhere. Rashim it's great to have you on theCUBE. >> Thank you so much Lisa very excited to be here >> And good to see you again you and I were, moderating the together woman achieve event a few months ago that Dell sponsors back in I want to say November 2018 >> Yeah. >> where you one of the exciting things in that swag bag was one of your five books, Fast-Track Your Leadership Career. Tell me about the book what inspired it what can readers learn in that book. >> Absolutely so I come from a project management background and for me everything has to be in the form of a template and that's how it works, right? So when I was new to my leadership career, I would read all these leadership books but they would just focus on one area so you had to read like so many books and skim through all those books to extract what worked for you. Now for me it was important to kind of templatize that and when I templatized it, I actually started talking about it at various events, one of them was Women Transforming Technology last year and as I gave that after I finished that session and we started I started walking out, one of the attendees came to me and said, this was such great information do you have a book? and I said no I don't but I'll have one soon and then I met with my publisher whom I met through one of the speakers at WT2 and we started working on it and in September we had a book. >> September 2018 and then, probably surprisingly to you 11 hours later, this book was on the Amazon number-one bestseller list. >> Yes it was >> that must have been like whiplash what? >> It was a very emotional day it was a roller coaster so we had thought about my publishers had more belief than I did in terms of the book having the potential to be an Amazon bestseller. And number one bestseller to be precise and I was like okay let's give it a try. So I was supposed to go to Grace Hopper Conference last year at that time, and I decided to stay back because the book launch was planned on that day. So we launched we started telling everybody that the book is on Amazon, at about ten o'clock in the morning and by seven o'clock I got an got a text message from my publisher with the screenshot, saying it was number one. >> So yeah very exciting it it took me a few days to realize what it really meant to be an Amazon bestseller. >> I bet that feels amazing. So tell me a little bit before we dig into the book and what you're doing here at wt² today, tell me a little bit about your career path in technology so we can understand some of the recommendations that you're giving the current and subsequent generations about how to fast-track it. Where did you start was it I was a stem interested kid to college. >> Yeah so I was actually studying to be a doctor because I come from India so in India they're just three careers, you're either a doctor or an engineer or you're nobody right so and this was when I was growing up so I actually unfortunately fell sick and could not take my medical exam and missed it actually took the exam, missed it by a few points and and did not know what to do because all my life I had thought about becoming a doctor and it just so happened that there was a computer science program that was out there and my mom saw, saw in a scholarship opportunity over there and she said well just give it a try if you get the scholarship then we'll talk about it and then fortunately for me I got 75% scholarship in that. So I was like okay I'll give it a try so I botany majored and did computer science and that's where my journey started into into the technology field. And got an opportunity to be absorbed within that group the same company absorbed me as as a developer. And within six months I get an opportunity to write a book and that was amazing because I never thought that I could be a teacher or be in front of anybody because I am so impatient as a person right? So so then we started when I started writing the book I realized , this is a great way to empower people and you know and it's a it's a great way to use my technical skills but also my writing abilities. And then you know six months down the line, I got an opportunity to be a project manager I took that so in my life if you see if my career path I've kind of bounced around a little bit, taken risks early on in my career and I continue to take risks in my career because if you don't give it a try you would never know. >> Exactly. >> So and that's what I tell women today like when you come out of college or even if you are in somewhere in your mid-career. You know don't don't tie yourself to a particular job role, or to a particular area try out different things and if there's an opportunity that's given to you, grab it with both your hands and then figure out how you're going to do the job well. >> I like that I always think if you have a goal that doesn't give you butterflies, it's not worth having. >> Yeah >> So in in just giving our viewers a little bit of a snapshot what are some of the things that they can learn and take away from Fast-Track Your Leadership Career book. >> Yeah so first and foremost is understanding your superpower right? How are you different from other people what do you bring to the table that others do not. Because in today's day and age, almost everybody does a great job right? What sets you apart for the next role is what you should always know. Building your personal brand most often we introduce ourselves as what job title we have and the company that we work for. It's important to know and have your identity beyond the company. The third piece is understanding the difference between sponsors and mentors. And that is the place where I think women really need to invest some time because we normally seek mentors. We very rarely go out and look at people and say you know what this person is going to be my sponsor and she or he is actually going to be my cheerleader when I'm not there in the room and and recommend me for that next job. >> So that's the difference between a sponsor I like that a sponsor and a mentors. Mentor is giving you advice and guidance, a sponsor is actually out there championing, >> Absolutely >> why you should hire a Rashim bring her into your team, these are all the great things that she does. >> Absolutely and then then there are other topics that we cover we cover navigating work politics. Most of us tend to stay away from politics but actually how to get into that you know understanding that I would call it work force intelligence if you will and leveraging it to further your projects in a good way. And then also building your support system now typically when we women talk about support system, we think about just two aspects. Emotional support system and the logistic support system but but there is also financial support system and intellectual support system and that's what you need to start building, to be able to further your career. >> I got to get a copy of this book. You probably have some, I'm guessing (mumbles). So you have a couple of sessions here at WT wt², building voice experiences through Alexa skills but one that I want to dig into in the last few minutes that we have. Project you a DevOps approach to a leadership career. Tell me about that pan and that breakout. >> Yeah so if you if you really look at the concept of DevOps it's or CI/CD model its development and then pushing it into operations and then moving into development again and then operations. So when you actually start preparing for your leadership career, that's the way you go. You you rinse and repeat the cycle what works for you in this role, will not work for you in your next role. So how are you continuously preparing yourself and using that DevOps approach, to kind of move to the next level, is what we'll cover in that session. >> That's fantastic. So one thing I also want to mention is that so we talked about becoming a number one Amazon bestseller, the book Fast-Track Your Leadership Career, just about six months ago in fall of 2018. It also inspired you to found, an initiative called eWOW, empowered Women of the World. Tell me a little bit about eWOW and why this book book number five being so instantly successful was so inspirational for eWOW. >> Yeah so I come from a training and enablement background so for me it was and and you know when you when you look at my personal brand, it's all about enabling and empowering people. So I wanted to basically find avenues, to be able to empower other woman. And essentially you know at eWOW, we believe that every woman, has the capability or is a leader in her own, you know her own right. And all that she needs is an intellectual platform and a framework and that's where eWOW came into being. We started off with just podcast, doing weekly podcast picking up topics around leadership and technical topics, we have audience in about 20 countries right now and then as an extension to that, we also launched five Alexa skills and that's going to be the topic that I'm going to be speaking about later today and it was all about you know different ways of enabling and empowering people. >> I love that. Well Rashim it's been such a pleasure, to have you on theCUBE. We thank you for giving us some of your time and we look forward to talking with you again about, maybe book number six? >> Well you never know. Last time I walked out of this conference, I had a book in ring so you never know what's up. >> You never know. But thank you so much. Your story is very inspiring and and i can't wait to, get my hands on a copy of that book. >> Thank you so much. >> My pleasure, Lisa Martin with theCUBE on the ground at wt² from VMware. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Announcer: Live from Madrid, Spain it's The Cube, covering HPE Discover Madrid 2017. Brought to you by Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. >> Welcome back to Madrid, everyone. This is The Cube, the leader in live tech coverage. We're here, this is Day Two of of HPE Discover 2017. My name is Dave Vellante and I'm here with my co-host for the week Peter Burris. Ana Pinczuk is here, she's the Senior Vice President and General Manager of HPE Pointnext Group. >> That's right, that's right. >> Welcome back to The Cube. >> Glad to be here. >> Many time Cube alum. >> That's right, that's right. >> Pre-HPE and second time since, when did you start, in February? >> Yes, I know it's been nine months, I'm a veteran. >> You're a vet, right. (laughs) How's the gig going, you hitting your groove swing? >> Yes. >> Dave: Looked great up on stage yesterday. >> Thank you so much, yeah I appreciate it. Yeah I think we are, I came on board in February and it's been a run ever since. We launched a brand in February, so that's when I think when we sort of talked last. And then since then, we've just launched another brand which is HPE GreenLake for flexible consumption model stuff. And we've been doing a lot of great things, we've been doing partnerships with folks, I've been going out to each one of the regions talking to different customers, it's been going really well. >> Well so Pointnext has become a linchpin of HPE strategy. After the spin-merges, things became more clear when you talk about making hybrid IT simple, getting to the intelligent edge, services is now front and center. Meg talks about it, Antonio talks about it. >> That's right. >> Why is services so important and how do you see that scaling in the organization? >> So first of all, I definitely believe the world is turning to be a services-led world and I tell folks that it's really two things, it's services-led and then advisory-led, really advisory. And particularly because our customers want to really undergo these new digital journeys. I was just on stage talking to one of our customers, the Tottenham Hotspurs, and they're redoing their whole stadium and they're trying to increase the interaction and the engagement that they have with fans. So that's where services come in, and so we're really services-led that way and the second thing that's a phenomenon is really the cloud has really helped us learn to want everything instantaneously and to want things when we need them and when we think we need them. And so a lot of services is really about enabling those experiences in a consumption model. So that's the transformation I think that HPE is going through right now, just being a product company, but really moving to being services-led to deliver these digital experiences. >> Well one of the things that we've observed over the years, as folks who work with customers in thinking about their technology, is that there's a co-mingling, a bringing together of the idea of invention. And one of the things that's most attractive to me about a services-led, or acknowledging the role of services, is it really, innovation, is a two-part process. There's an invention, which is the engineering element, and enters the innovation, which is the social, the change. And one of the beauties of taking a services as opposed to a product approach, is that you end up focusing on the social change. >> That's right. >> You end up focusing on what does it mean to use this, apply it, make it happen, and it accelerates the innovation process. I'm wondering if by having a more services-approach, HP's able to look at this significant new range of problems you're going to try to address, but address them as a social innovation challenge as opposed to just getting product into market. >> Yeah, no and that's absolutely right. I'll give you another cool example, we have a customer Yoox Net-A-Porter, and they're a digital sort of online experience provider. They support brands like all of the expensive luxury brands that we know and love. And they're trying to help stores innovate, so let's say you're Prada or Marni or Louis Vuitton, they're helping provide a social experience to their luxury brand consumer. And being able to do that, not just mirroring what you would get in a store, but really innovating in how do you engage with that kind of a consumer online. And so for example, they allow you to shop online but then they'll bring the product to you, it'll be all wrapped really nice, they wait for you to try it on to make sure it's okay. So that's an example of social innovation, not just thinking about how to provide product to enable a website, but how do you actually then help a customer innovate in that whole engagement model? >> It's innovation that is made possible by a whole lot of technology combined with simple ways of introduce change, not just to consumers, but also the people who are ultimately responsible for providing that service. >> Ana: That's right, that's right, that's exactly right. >> Peter: Is that one of the basis then for thinking about Pointnext? >> It is, yeah, it is because people ask me, you know we've always done services and a lot of our services were product-attached services, you do support services, operational services, data center care, those sorts of things. And then we decided to sort of launch Pointnext, and the idea is that this is more than just what we've traditionally done as product-attached. This is really coming at it from a completely different angle, which is recognizing that there is an element of social and management of change that comes through digital. And that's why we talk about advisory-led. Part of that advisory-led is really helping companies figure out what is that new phenomenon, how do I actually shift the experience that I want to enable and how do I bring social innovation with a set of partners, too, because experiences really require us to work not just with our own products, but with software providers, with inside and others. >> Peter: And your customer's partners too. >> And our customer's partners as well, I mean who the customer is is shifting as we put this together. I'll give you an example, when we work with automotive companies, we've gotta think not just about, let's say, the car company and their connected car, but we also have to think about how the consumer of the car is going to interact with the IT environment in the car. >> How the dealers are going to sell it, >> Ana: And how the dealers are gonna sell it. >> how they're gonna make money, the whole thing. >> How they're gonna do predictive maintenance on it >> Exactly. >> So you start to think not just about one experience, but all the elements that come from that single experience. >> Well we just had Deloitte on talking about retail experiences and transforming brick and mortar stores, so that's a key part of it. So partnerships is also something critical, 'cause you can't do everything. >> Ana: That's right. >> So I want to come back to some of the invention piece. When you were up on stage talking about flexible consumption models, you know, cloud, when we went into the downturn it was kinda a tap on the shoulder. Coming out of the downturn it became a kick in the butt to a lot of tradtional IT players. So you've had to respond to that. And you have, flexible consumption models, pay-as-you-go models. So I started to make a list because we've been talking all week about two ends of the spectrum. We've got here at HPE Discover, AWS re:Invent's going on this week, completely different philosophies about what customers want and how to serve those customers. And so you've got to a great degree mimic the cloud experience. And you can't do it 100%. At the same time, the cloud can't mimic what you guys can do. So I kinda wanted to go through a list and think about where have you closed those gaps, where do you still have advantages for customers. So things like pay-as-you-go, flexible capacity, you've done a lot of work there. Can you give us the update on that and how big is that gap when you talk to customers? >> So first of all, it's interesting because when some of our competitors talk about pay-as-you-go, they start by talking about just a leasing arrangement. They say "Okay, it's a lease." And this is far beyond a lease. I think I can eliminate quite a few of our competitors, (laughs) not cloud competitors, just by saying we've gone beyond that, right. And we provide a full service. So it's the hardware, the software, the data center care, the operational management. And then we turn that service into a pay-as-you-go model. So that's the first sort of innovation and differentiation. And we do that on-prem or in a hosted environment, that's the first thing. The second thing is that part of what we do is we help to manage that environment for the customer. So in a flexible capacity model, we over-provision in a sense and we have a buffer and we understand where the customer's going, how much their utilization is, and then we automatically sort of manage that whole thing for them, up or down depending on what happens. I think the third thing, which is part of the innovation, which is a little different, is we also do the integration of other technologies into the offer. So yesterday I was talking about private backup as a service. There we've got the hardware, the software, it could be Commvault let's say backup software, all the management associated with that, including the support that you need for that, offered in an outcome-based service. So what we're doing there is we're also innovating in the metering, what we're saying is we're going to really provide you an outcome, and that outcome is a successful backup. So you don't actually have to worry about the equipment, you don't have to worry about is it infrastructure-as-a-service? You know, AWS, whatever, we're actually providing a full solution in an outcome-based. And I think that's a little bit of what differentiates us from maybe some of the solutions that are out there, from others. That said, I view this as providing the right mix to our customers, so although, yes, you can say that we're competing with the public cloud, because customers have choice, at the same time part of what we're trying to do also is bring those two together, which I think is unique for us. >> Makes more same philosophy, different approaches. >> Different approaches, and by the way, if you're customer-centric, then what you wanna do is provide customer choice and do the right thing for the customer, and to say where does it make sense to be on the public cloud, or in a private environment, and optimize for the customer benefits that you're going after. >> Well I think it's fair to say that the world has learned a lot from what AWS has done, and said "Hey, we can take that "and we can apply it to our customers' businesses "on-prem or in a hybrid environment." >> And by the way, AWS, especially with our CTP acquisition, they've been a long-term AWS partner and we're having conversations with AWS that say okay, if we're going to really focus on customers, and we're really customer-centric, then how do we work together? Not just AWS, but Microsoft and Google and others, how do we work together and look at where we can optimize our solutions to be able to do the right thing for the customer. >> So our clients are sick and tired of hearing me say this, or us say this, but we believe that where we're going is the cloud experience for your data demands. >> That's right. >> So the way we think about it and I'm wondering if you would agree, is that the first conversation we have with a customer is what's the outcome, what data is required to serve that outcome, how're you gonna package it up as a workload, and where do you naturally need to run that based on latency, other types of issues. Is that kind of how Pointnext is working with customers as well? >> Yeah absolutely right, so we wanna come in, customer in, so you wanna be able to say "What is it that you're trying to do from an outcome?" I described a backup outcome, another outcome might be I'm trying to accelerate my ability to roll out new agile solutions, or microservices-based applications. So we have that conversation with a customer, we then say okay, for that kind of workload, what are you requirements? What are you trying to do? We might also come in and actually, 'cause sometimes what people think they do and what they actually do in their environment is different. So we can come in and say okay, let me actually measure what you're doing and see what you're doing and then bring that information back to them. And then have a conversation about what to do with your workload and what makes sense. So I think it's a very close engagement with the customer, it's based on real data about what the customer's trying to do. And frankly that was one of the reasons that we made the CTP acquisition, as well, because it started to complement our portfolio. A lot of the capabilities that we had were very robust, in particular around private cloud, but just having the public cloud angle there and sort of strengthening that piece was super important to be able to have that conversation and truly enable the right mix. >> Well now that brings up the topic of multi-cloud, which kinda, to use a sports analogy, it's jump ball. It's kind of a free-for-all, everybody wants that business. I guess with the exception of some of the big cloud guys aren't interested. But certainly, Hewlett-Packard >> Peter: Well don't believe it, want to avoid it. >> Yeah well, but that's the reality is there's gonna be multiple clouds, we know this. Particularly with SaaS. So a company like Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, obviously has to play in that space. So I wonder if you could talk about the strategy there, why you feel confident that HPE is in a good position. >> Yeah well a couple things, first of all I think it's really good to be, we're somewhat independent, we're not totally independent because we've got a whole set of products, but we're somewhat independent in the sense that if we wanna be truly hybrid and enable other public and private solutions, we wanna be able to give customers choice in terms of the public domains that they can work with. And so we're sort of in a great position as a large provider and with the relations that we have in the enterprise in particular, with our customer base, to be a little bit of Switzerland and be able to say, okay, let's have that conversation about the right mix and enable these multi-cloud solutions, that's the first thing. The second thing is we have relationships and great partnerships with many of these providers. So take Microsoft, we've got an Azure relationship, an Azure stack opportunity, so we've got the ability and by the way, we do many of their applications as well. So we've got the ability to help have that conversation with our customers to say okay, do you wanna be on-prem or do you wanna be in the cloud? Even with one provider, and to do that, and so we have the opportunity to provide robust solutions even with one private and public provider. And on top of that, we've got a consultancy with our professional services. We wanna be responsive to our customers, we've got now HPE OneSphere. And with HPE OneSphere we can be data-driven and actually provide our customers a view of their environment and help to be a little bit of that Switzerland to say look, here's what would be best for you and help to have workload mobility together with OneSphere. So I think we're well-positioned, I tend to call it my stairway to Heaven. In a sense we start out at the bottom talking about infrastructure and support, and we've got great relationships there with our customers. If I launch the flexible capacity offers, we're starting to deliver outcome-based solutions. When I bring in CTP, we'd go up the stack and we now provide advisory and the consumption solutions. And with OneSphere now you go up the stacks just a little bit more and say not only are we gonna advise you and provide you those executables with consumption models, but we now have capabilities that allow you to sort of optimally choose what's the right thing for you. So I think we're well-positioned, by the way, with CTP we've got sort of a managed, sort of cloud sort of capability as well. We manage compliance and other elements. So we're able to have in our portfolio sort of value-added services above and beyond that help with multi-cloud and making sure that customers can be compliant, secure, and have the right experience on a multi-cloud environment. >> Yeah I think a lot of people that don't know CTP don't understand how deep their expertise is. They're only a few hundred people, if that. But they're rockstars. >> They're over 200 people. >> Serious thought leaders with real deep connections. I've gotta change subjects to the last topic area. As you know, The Cube from day one has always been a fan of having women on, and promoting women in tech. We first met you at the Anita Borg Institute of the Grace Hopper Conference. Meg Whitman is obviously a woman leader in tech and she's leaving HP. We've got Meg and we've got Ginni. And Ginni's coming to the end, I don't know, she's getting to the age where typically IBM retires its CEOs. You've got two prominent women in tech now leaving. Now maybe IMB will replace Ginni with a woman. HPE has chosen Antonio, great choice. But your thoughts on a leader like Meg, obviously has done some great work. But we're losing one. >> I know, and so >> How do you feel about that? >> I mean, you know, I'm very conflicted if I've gotta be honest. One one hand, as I joined HPE I had never worked for a female CEO so I've really enjoyed watching. You know it's always great to have mentors and to have people that are advocating for women, so I really enjoyed being part of Meg's organization, I'm really sorry to see her go. And she's an icon as well, so she does a lot, in fact this afternoon we're gonna be doing a session for women just here at the conference. So very sad to see her go, at the same time I think we as women, and men by the way, have a responsibility to build the next generation of leaders. And I think that's where I focus my energy and I know that I'm gonna be sort of a high profile female in the HPE environment so I feel that sense of responsibility, not just within HPE, but within the industry, to help to cultivate an environment that takes advantage of half of the population and enables innovation through them as well. So I think we've gotta get more women up there. I think part of it is really bringing up the next generation and frankly this next generation, they don't have tolerance for waiting for things, whatever, and they feel like they're super entitled to have the right and the choice >> Peter: They are. >> And they are, right. But that seems like an easy thing to say, but in some sense we come from a generation, many women as well, which have had challenges especially in the tech world, in terms of really breaking that glass ceiling. And I think we've got some amazing women and some amazing leaders as well. I'm part of the Anita Borg Board of Trustees as well, and we were at Grace Hopper and we had Debbie Sterling, some really great women that are coming up the ranks that are CEOs, that are CTOs, that are really leading the way and so I'm very hopeful that the conversation, by the way, about women in tech is really prominent right now. And that I think it'll open up opportunities for women to shine going forward and I think that should happen for HPE as well. In fact right now its me and then Archie Deskus is the CIO for HPE. So we're trying to do our part to sort of make sure that there's other women in leadership as well. >> Well you're a great example of a current and future leader. >> Thank you so much. >> Really appreciate you coming onto The Cube, Ana. >> I appreciate it, thank you. >> Great to see you again. >> Great to see you, great to see you, thank you so much. >> Alright keep it right there everyone. This is The Cube, we're live from HPE Discover Madrid, we'll be right back. 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>> Announcer: Live from Orlando, Florida. It's the Cube. Covering, Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing brought to you by Silicon Angle Media. >> Welcome back to the Cube's coverage of the Grace Hopper Conference here in Orlando, Florida. I'm your host Rebecca Knight. We're joined by Jarvis Sam, he is the manager of global diversity issues at Snap Inc. Welcome. >> Thank you so much for having me. I'm really happy to be here. >> So, I've gotta--first of all, you're wearing a Rosie the Riveter shirt, we've got these tchotchkes here, can you explain to our viewers a little bit about them? We got to, we got to talk about these first. >> Of course, so, the shirt was actually inspired by our Lady Chilla, that's our local women employee resource group at Snap. The idea was take the ghost, a representative mascot of Snap Inc. and parlay that with the idea of Rosie the Riveter, of course powerful in her own right. >> Rebecca: Alright, I love it, and then these spectacles are...? >> Yeah, so spectacles are Snap Inc.'s first ever hardware product released earlier this year. They allow for you to take an in-the-moment Snap, to be featured on your phone, using Bluetooth technology for iPhones and then WiFi technology for Android. They allow individual users to record Snaps on their phone, while of course not distorting the experience of being able to use their hands in the moment. >> Rebecca: So, I love it, these are the recruiting tactics: your own products. >> Exactly >> Want to play with these toys? Come work for us? >> Yes! >> So, tell us a little bit about what you do, Jarvis. Before you were at Snap, you were at Google. You were interested in really engaging in these diversity issues. So what do you at Snap? >> Yeah, so, at Snap, I manage our global diversity effort. What that includes is analyzing the diversity framework across three key verticals; first on the pipeline layer. So, what are we doing by way of K-12 education to ensure communities of color as well as women-- >> Rebecca: K-12? Wow. >> Exactly. >> Have specific opportunities in the space to be impactful. We often create this framework or archetype for what we think is ineffective software engineer for example or account manager. Reframing that by providing access and opportunity is showcase to people that the image that we have is not always the image that we want to portray, is critical. Next then we focus heavily on the idea of the candidate, so candidate experience. Deep diving into understanding key talent acquisition measures as well as key HR practices that will allow for us to create the best experience, moves us forward in that regard. But then finally, and this is where we get to the whole global perspective. Is the idea of the employee. Creating a nurturing community where the idea of psychological safety is not only bolstered but ensuring that your community feels empowered to the idea of inclusion. Making sure inclusion is not just a seat at the table but rather a voice in the conversation that can be actioned upon. >> So I want to dig into that a little bit, this voice in the conversation. Before the cameras were rolling you were talking about these very difficult candid conversations that employees at same have. Tell our viewers a little bit more about that. >> Yeah, so I think one of the greatest challenges across the tech industry and at Snap as well is the idea of referral networks. The tech industry on its own right has grown so greatly out of referral networks. People that you have worked with perviously, people that have the same academic or pedagogical experience as you. The problem with that is, the traditional network analysis would seem to let us know that you often refer people who look like you, or come from a similar internal dimension background as yourself. In a community that's largely rooted in a dominated discourse by white or Asian males. That means that we're continuing to perpetuate that exact same type of rhetoric. >> Rebecca: That's who you're recruiting. >> Exactly. And so then idea of getting more women or communities of color involved in that space can often be distorted. So that remains a challenge that we as a company as well as the tech industry need to overcome is understanding; one, how do we encourage more diverse referrals over time. But then two, creating an ecosystem where this seems natural and not like an artificial standard. >> Okay, so how do you do it? I mean that we've pinpointed the problem and it absolutely is a problem, but what are the kinds of things that Snap is doing to improve the referral process? >> So it's the idea of being innovative by design. One thing that's unique about Snap in particular is that we are an LA-based company. >> So based out of Venice Beach and Santa Monica, California. We don't face a lot of the core challenges that we see in Silicon Valley. And as a result have the opportunity to be more innovative in our approach. As a result when we look to referral networks in particular. One thing that Snap has focused on is the idea of diversity recruiting as a core pillar or tenant of all of our employee research groups. Not only do they join us to attend conferences like Grace Hopper, like the National Society of Black Engineers. But we actually do sourcing jams. Where we sit down with them and mine their networks. Either on LinkedIn-- >> Rebecca: Sourcing jams? >> Yes >> Rebecca: I love it. >> Yes Either on LinkedIn or GitHub or any of the various professional networking sites that they work on. Or technical networking sites to find out who are great talents that they've worked with before. >> Who do you know? Who can join us? >> Exactly. And what's more significant than that, is creating a sense of empowerment where we actually having them reach out to their network as opposed to a recruiter. This creates more of a warm and welcoming environment for the candidate. Where the idea of being a simple passive candidate is further explored by activating them to showcase how your experience has been great. >> And how are you also ensuring that the experience at Snap is great, particularly for women and people of color? >> Yes, so one area is our employee resource group. So we have a couple, so Lady Chilla is of course what I am wearing today. But Snap Noir for the black community. Snap Pride for the LGTBQ plus community and Low Snaps for the Latin X community. >> Rebecca: How big is Snap, we should just-- >> Yeah, about 3,000 people globally. >> Okay, 3,000. Okay, wow. >> And so one of the exciting things that we do is ERG that. So it's where we bring all of our employee resource groups together and they hold massive events every single quarter. To encourage other communities that are either allies or individuals of the sociological out group to understand what they do. But this deploys in so many different ways. In June, for Pride for example, we held drag bingo. Where our LGTBQ plus community participated. In March, we did a whole series of events celebrating women in engineering, women in sales, and women in media that resulted in a large expanse of events allowing for people to come in and learn about, not only the female experience more broadly, but particularly at Snap and some of the great endeavors that they're working on. >> And I know you are also working with other organizations like Girls Who Code, Women Who Code, Made with Code. Can you tell the viewers a little bit more about Snap's involvement. >> 100% Made with Code is one of the most exciting projects that I've had the opportunity to work on. It was for me personally this great combination of working with my previous employer Google, and Snap. So Google's Made with Code project is an idea that started to empower teen girls to code, ages 13 to 18 primarily. What they found is was that's exactly the same demographic that primarily uses our product. And so about three months ago, we decided to come together to launch an imitative where we'd have teen girls make geofilters, one of Snap's core products. The project actually launched one week ago, and teen girls are using Blocky technology to actually go about creating their own geofilters. And then writing a 100 word personal statement defining what their vision for the future of technology is. I'm personally exciting to say after checking the numbers this morning, more than 22,000 girls have already submitted responses to participate. And they will culminate in an event, November 1 through 3. Where we will take the top five finalists to TED Women in New Orleans. To not only showcase women who have done incredible things in the past and present. But also showcase their work at participating in this competition, as the women of technology for the future. >> Rebecca: And the next generation. >> Exactly. >> So we're running out of time here, but I want to just talk finally about the headlines. It's very depressing, you know the Google Manifesto, the sexism that we've seen against women. The racism in the industry. These are are-- we don't want to talk about it at this celebration of computing because we want to focus on the positives. And yet, where do you feel, particularly because you have worked at large tech companies, on these issues for a while now? >> Not facing challenges head on is going to be the greatest threat to the tech industry. The idea of avoiding conversation and avoiding sheer communication of these challenging issues will continue to raise-- >> Rebecca: And ignoring the bad behavior. >> Exactly, and it results in negative rhetoric that inherently put these communities out of wanting to work in this specific industry. But arguably given that technology not only represents the face of the future but how every single product and entity is made for the future, we have to include individuals. Everyone often wants to highlight the McKinsey study from Diversity Matters. Highlighting all of these great ways of diversity impacting business, but we need to look at it in addition from an ethic standpoint. The idea that technology represents how we are building our future. Leaving entire communities out of that primarily focusing on people of color and women, will result in a space where these communities will never have access, opportunity and thus employment to exist in this space. Being able to attack these issues head on, address the bad behavior, highlight what the potential implication is step one. Step two though is being proactive in everything that we're doing, to attempt to ameliorate that from the beginning. You'll notice one thing that's very different about Snap's diversity strategy is we seek to build infrastructure first, then focus on talent acquisition. Once we can ensure that communities of color and women are entering a space that is psychologically safe, open, and inviting. Then we can focus on how we're bringing in talent effectively so that the idea of retention and advancement is not an afterthought but rather top of mind. >> Right, because you can't recruit them if they haven't had the opportunities to begin with. >> Exactly, and that's what Snap often upholds the value of the idea that diversity is our determination, while inclusion is our imperative. >> Jarvis, I love it. >> Thank you so much. >> This has been really fun talking to you. >> Thank you. >> We will have more from Orlando, Florida at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing just after this. (upbeat music)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

>> 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'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)