(upbeat music) >> Welcome to theCUBE coverage of women in tech. International Women's Day 2022. I'm your host, Lisa Martin. Karla Wong joins me next. Country Sales Leader for the Commercial Sector in Peru at AWS. Karla, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you so much Lisa and thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be with you today. >> I'm looking forward to chatting with you. You've been in the tech industry for more than 20 years, you've been a leader in tech and sales and customer service, partners, organizations. Talk to me a little bit about your background. >> I am a system engineer. I have some studies from enterprise direction with a university in Savannah, Columbia and I have a digital transformation certified with MIT in Boston. >> Fantastic, were you always interested in technology or STEM or was it something that you pivoted into somewhere during your career? >> Yes, you know what? Since I was little, I was just fascinated with the technology and all the time I was just trying to figure out how to do things and how to build that things and I remember once I was just, of course many time long ago, I was with this BHS, right? An equipment and I tried to do and tried to understand how this works and just figure out I was with many parts of that equipment and then I didn't realize how to join that parts but it was really funny because all the time I was trying to understand what is behind that kind of equipment, how this works and all the time I was asking and my dad said, I was just feeling so curiosity about that and asking many questions and I have uncles that they are engineers. So I was just all the time asking about that and they said, you know what? You are good in math, maybe you can just decide for an engineering career. They were encouraged me for doing that. So I guess that was my first clue that I'm interested in technology. >> Well, you sounds like you have a natural curiosity that you had great role models in your parents and probably others along your educational route and your career route that kind of encouraged that curiosity and being curious is one of the things that's important to being at AWS. Am I right? >> Yes, it's really important because we promote, you know, our, one of the main leadership principles that you read is learn to be curious and they promote that one, right? They're encouraging you to innovate, to learn more, to try to understand more about our solutions, our customers, how to make the things better and you have the space to propose new things, to do the things better. So they encourage you and they empower you to do that and you feel like your curiosity that you have very natural here's improved and they just promote that you continue to do that. >> That curiosity is so important. I mean, when we think about women in technology and we think about bringing in more thought diversity and DEI, it's important to be curious, to be able to bring different thoughts in so that the organization can be more well rounded, it can learn, you also not only do you lead the sales organization, but you are someone that's very active in volunteering. Tell me a little bit about that and how do you balance leading a sales organization and volunteering at the same time? >> You know, when you talk about this is more like work life balance, right? And when we talk about that you can feel like you need it, right? You need to work on that. It's more like an attitude of it's extremely important to think about mental health for everyone because that of course have impact in your physical health and when you talk about this, it not only matters in terms of attitude, it's action and disciplines as well and you have to keep in mind that. The first thing I believe and all the time I do it give the right value for this balance because it's something that a lot of people want more than anything and I have more than some professional decision thinking about this precisely and I have to thinking of me as a person, my family, how to help the community and you cannot imagine the impact when you decide to go for a volunteering activities how can benefit you and not in only the personal way, in your professional way. Even though you didn't start a volunteering, trying to figure out how this help you in your professional life, you receive a lot of benefits from the volunteering activities and it's amazing how that one's impacting your professional life also. When you are a volunteer, you'll receive new and meaningful experiences. Volunteering can be an excellent getaway to find unique and valuable experiences that you are very difficult to find in a day to day basis, right? And you develop your real life skills, openness to criticism, responsibility, humility, commitment, service, attitude, many things that you can proactively include in your job with your team and you can join with them in teamwork and try to figure out how to engage with them in your activities. This is another way to motivate your team, to build your team, right? Talking with this very valuable experiences and also I find out that that improves your health and mood. >> Sounds very-- >> We talk having-- >> Sorry. >> I'm sorry, no don't worry. >> That's very complimentary, that the volunteer work with leading the sales organization that there's so much value that you're bringing into your sales leadership role from the volunteering that you do. I'm just curious, can you describe some of the volunteer organizations that you work with? I think it's pretty impressive. >> Yes, I started my volunteering 14 years ago I guess but I was in the volunteering activities from the school and my dad was a really strong influence for that because I joined, I remember joining with him and go to do some volunteering activities that he led and I start 14 years I went with Operation and Smile group and then in the last two or three years I start with Project of Love. We are focused on kids with cancer and try to help them to build the last wishes they have because they pass away and at the end of this, this two years ago, I start with local activity that we do for patients with rare diseases and we just try to join two great passion that I have. One is the dance that we have here. The name of our national dance is Marinera Norteña and we are just doing this with a group that they are passion at the same time with this volunteering activities and the dance and we just trying to be the ambassador for and the voice for these patients, try to share with the community, the hard health journey that they have trying to obtain a fair treatment, a fair diagnostic, because they are rare disease and here is very difficult that they investigate about that. So that's why we are just doing this using dance as a way to broadcast our voice and just share happiness and hope and health. >> Happiness and hope. Those are two great things. So as the female leader in the tech industry, what are some of the main challenges that you have found regarding cultural aspects, regarding geographical aspects and LATAM? Talk to me about some of those challenges. >> Let me share with you my personal journey. My challenges started with the moment I decided to start engineering. A career that is traditional considered for men only, although this changes over the time, you will realize that the stereotype remains in many people minds right? It happens not only in Peru I can see it in Latin America. Someone once asked me if I wouldn't like to study something easier for a woman, right? And I just, when I received that question, that helping me to reaffirm that it was taking the right decision and I have the fortune to work with companies that believe in female leadership and the importance of our contribution and empower me to do things differently. Although I must confess that this was not always like this. I experienced the situation when I have to show that I'm so much and more capable and prepared than a man to take a major challenge. So despite the fact in the recent years you have had the great advances in integration of women in the field of science and technology, the gap in equality in equality in this sector still continues and many times the attitude towards women is discriminatory considering that we don't have enough knowledge and we don't have enough strength to overcome challenge without the ability to give the extra mile that is often required, or simply because of a gender issue. And generally speaking, opportunities that they're not equal. Neither in salaries. Several studies have revealed that in the same position since at position level within company, men's salary or benefits are higher than the woman. In addition, sometimes the position for a woman is not necessarily for merit it's just to feel fulfill a gender quota and when it's fulfilled, there's no more opportunities. So it's still a long way to go. We are working in that, we are trying to inspire more women to be part of this world. This is an amazing world and this world needs our leadership, judgment, ambition, as a woman. So that's why we try to inspire and try to be a role model for some young ladies that they are thinking about this career in technology. >> Right, you bring up a great point though about one of the things in terms of hiring for quotas. And as we think about this International Women's Day, this year's theme is Breaking the Bias. Where do you think we are with that? >> I think we have a lot long, long way to go to. Today we don't see that we have more women in some leadership roles in technology. We see more young ladies studying engineering but you know what, when you talk about stereotypes we need to understand, or the bias, the bias is not only what the society it's giving you, it's also your own bias because we need to understand that technology careers is not only for men it's also for a woman. And we need to understand and change the perspective that we see the challenges that we have in our life because sometimes that could be a really stopper in your professional life. And for me, we don't, we really need to understand that it's important. We cannot stop believing in ourself and we can achieve whatever we want. So we never stop pursuing our goals and achieve what you really need to achieve and as I said all the time, get inspired by women with great achievements who have changed this world technology. We have many examples of that for many years. We have Eva Maria Kiesler, the core inventor of Wi-Fi, Radia Joy Perlman, known as the the mother of the internet and Ada Lovelace who became the first female computer programmer. So we have many examples in this story to understand that the limit is on you. So the bias we need to break the first one is the bias that you have of yourself. >> That's a good point. That's a really good point there. I'm curious, what would your recommendation be? You obviously had, you had that natural curiosity that we talked about. You also seems like you had great parents who were very encouraging of all of the different things that you were interested in. What do you recommend for women maybe starting out in the STEM area or in tech in particular? How do they get that courage to just try? >> You know what, the main thing I guess as I mentioned before, is to put aside the stereotypes, right? And get out of your head, the standing out career like science, technology and engineering is only for a man. All the time I have this list for me, that is lesson learned. And my lesson learned is please don't think that you cannot do it. Try it. If you go and the things do not work well, try it again and try it again. So don't feel stopped because you face your first challenge and the challenge it's very difficult, because we have the courage to do that and you know what? It is very and interesting to understand that women has resilience, we have the courage to do anything, we are multi tasking all the time they say women can do many things at the same time and we have this particular way to communicate. We are very inclusive. We make empathy. We're just leading with a cohesion concept of a team. So we need to explore more about our strengths and try to encourage from them. And one of the main things for me is don't feel afraid and transform, you know, when you feel like that, transfer that as your power, you're encouraged to continue. So we need to transform our fears in our, I always said our gasoline to continue and then your motive to be successful. So transform your fears. >> I love that. >> That's my main focus. >> Transform your fear. That's great advice there is. And I will say no, don't be afraid to raise your hand and ask a question 'cause I guarantee you, many people in the room whether it's a physical room these days or it's a virtual video conferencing room, probably have the same question. Be the one to raise your hand and ask. But I love how you're saying transform that fear 'cause it's there. Don't be afraid to fail but also we need to have those female role models, mentors and sponsors that we can see that can have help us kind of in that transformation process, that mentorship is really critical to help guide that along. >> Yes, yes, yes, that's correct and I will, I am, I was really fortunate because I have real role models in my life not only, as I mentioned my dad and also one of the things that I recognize in this company that I work for that empower leadership from women and I identify some role models I want to follow and I ask her in each particular company to be my coach and to be my mentor, because of course you are starting in the technology side and you need more from others that they can share with you her wisdom, right? And try to give you advice, how to work on that. And I always said, and I will always repeat because I sometimes I have the opportunity to mentor young ladies that they are very curious about the technology side and I share with them my experience, my lesson learned so they can build their own story to do this and I share all the time don't compete in a male environment in a gray suit. You have your own personality, you have your own strengths, you're a woman and you have your strength as a woman. Show that, be, you know, the black point in the middle of the white environment because you're different, your leadership is different. You have to understand that, value that and explore more about that so you can inspire others and you can inspire yourself and it's fair to say, please identify your achievements and value them because you deserve that, you fight for them and you have to be celebrate for that. >> Right. >> So that's the main, you know, the main idea when I share with these ladies but it's right, it's fair to be recognized for that. It's your effort, it's your way to do the things differently and it's very appreciated. >> Very appreciated and very inspiring. Thank you so much Karla for sharing your story, how you are balancing work life volunteerism, how it's complimentary. I found this conversation very inspiring so thank you so much for joining me today. >> Thank you. No, thank you so much Lisa. It was really a pleasure for me to be with you today. >> Excellent, likewise. For Karla Wong, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's coverage of women in tech, International Women's Day 2022. 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(upbeat music) >> Lisa Martin: Hi, everyone. Welcome to The Cube's coverage of women in tech International Women's Day 2022. I'm your host, Lisa Martin. Nicole Parafita joins me next: head of communications, people and culture at AWS Latin America. Nicole, it's great to have you on the program. >> Nicole: Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. >> Tell me a little bit about your role as head of communications, people and culture. >> Super. So my role is very, very new. I've started in this role like two months ago, so really, really new. And as you said I lead the communications, people and culture team, which is dedicated to understanding people's needs, fostering leadership development, increasing diversity and inclusion, enabling employee recognition, and of course mitigating burnout, which is something we're seeing all across the world due to working from home and all of that. So it's a huge, huge task. And of course it is aligned to Amazon's 15 leadership principle which is striving to be Earth's best employer. So huge challenge. >> Lisa: So tell me a little- so this is a brand new role as you said, just a couple of months. Was the pandemic a factor? And you mentioned burnout. I mean, that's one of the things that I think we've all been struggling with. Was that an influence in creating the role that you're in? >> So there are many many things that led to creating this organization. I think that the first one is this new leadership principle which is striving to be Earth's best employer. There's - people is our top priority and we want to work with them and for them so that we generate engaging content, training materials and we work on enabling them, right? So the first one is striving to be Earth's best employer and that alignment. The second is the priority that our VP in Latin America gives its people. It's the key differentiator that we have at AWS: our culture and it's people and how our people live the culture. And the third thing would be the fact that we're growing, we're growing so fast. We're hiring so many people in the last year so, and we need to make sure we keep this day one culture alive and strong. So yes, we need to make sure that all these people that were hired since March 2020 and never set foot in a physical office, in an AWS physical office live the leadership principles, understand them deeply and can apply all these mechanisms from our culture in their day to day basis. Those are the key three things that led to the creation of this org. >> So you mentioned the leadership principles striving to be Earth's best employer. How does that, how is that connected to International Women's Day and what you're doing in terms of really bringing diversity and equality and inclusion into AWS LATAM? >> I love this question. I think, as I said before, culture and people is our top priority. We're learning a lot. We, this new leadership principle which is striving to be Earth's best employer acknowledges that we're not the best, but that we're working very hard to become Earth's best employer. And all the efforts that we're doing are related to feedback, right? We're listening a lot to our, what our employees are saying and what the market is saying to build the best employee experience we can for everybody. And first of all, I'd say that our culture and our mission is to become, or to be, the most customer-centric company in the world. And for that, we need to be super diverse and inclusive. We need to get as many backgrounds and life experiences we can so that we can invent in the name of our customers. So building this diverse team really helps our business but also, as Jeff Bezos says, "it's the right thing to do." It's what we need to do. So what do we mean when we talk about inclusion, diversity and equity? I think it's good to define these three things, these key pillars of our culture. The first one is inclusion, which about belonging, right? It's about giving the physical- the psychological, sorry, safety to people so that they feel represented. This is super important for us. How do we make people feel comfortable where they work at? And some examples of this that I wanted to share with you. First of all, there's a mechanism that we use internally at AWS, that it's called Connections. Connections is a daily live feedback tool. So at AWS, we don't believe in having an annual survey for listening to employees, to what employees have to say. We believe in having real time feedback and this tool is that, exactly that. So every day I would turn on my computer and I would see a question from this Connection system. And one of the things that we're tracking is, the team I'm on helps me feel included at work. So we would say yes, no, or different options that we give the employees. And we would track how they feel. And according to that data we would implement different initiatives. So we're working on real time feedback from the team so that we can act fast and help the team feel better, right? The other thing that I would would say about belonging is that in AWS we have 13 affinity groups. We have 90,000 Amazonians across hundreds of chapters around the world who work towards different initiatives. One of them, for example, if it's Women at Amazon, Women at Amazon is a huge organization within Amazon with more than 80 chapters worldwide. And the objective of this affinity group is attracting, developing, and retaining women in both tech and non-tech roles across all Amazon business. As an example of the kind of initiatives that they drive, we can talk about Break the Bias. I'm not sure if you heard about this, but it's a huge initiative. It's a webinar that we will be hosting in Latin America on International Women Day on the 8th of March and we will have women sharing amazing stories. We will have, for example, Marta Ferero. Marta Ferero is the founder of a startup, a Colombian startup, called Ubits, which is like the Netflix of corporate training in her own words, among others. And we will also have recruiting specialists that will give advice on how to give and accept in our careers. So those are the kind of initiatives that we're trying to do to attract and retain and develop talent. This is more like an attracting talent thing because it's an open webinar that we have that. Yeah. >> Go ahead. >> So that's about inclusion, which is belonging and how do we make people belong to certain groups within Amazon? The second thing is about diversity which is feeling, it's about feeling represented, right? And it's not about only gender. It can be about race. It can be about ethnicity, sexual orientation, age. We want everyone to feel represented. But now, if we're talking about International Women's Day let me talk a little bit about female representation. And I am very proud to share that we finished 2021 with 18% of female representation in the leadership team in the LATAM leadership team, which means people reporting to the LATAM VP, the vice president, Jaime. And we started 2022 with 35% female representation which is a huge improvement from one year to the other. So that are the numbers, right? But it's not just about numbers. It's the fact that these women that are now part of the leadership team have been given very important tasks. And as my boss always says, "don't tell me about your strategy. Tell me about where you're putting your resources and I'll tell you what your strategy is." And I love the fact that he picked very amazing women to lead very important missions within LATAM. For example, let me just give you an example, Carolina Pina, who joined us from the public sector team is leading this massive training organization. And like the name implies, this organization focuses on generating talent at a huge scale. And this is, I don't know, one of the most long term oriented tasks that we have, and it has a huge impact on Latin America, not only AWS business, but on Latin America. It's focused on really transforming our region into something different so that people can have a better quality of life. So those are the things that really amaze me. We've been given very important tasks, like this one, to really move forward in terms of cloud transformation and the transformation of the countries we operate in, which is amazing, I think. >> It is amazing. >> The last - >> Go ahead. >> The last topic, I'm sorry, I'm speaking too much, but just to close. The last thing that I want to say is equity, which is one of the key things that we have in our culture and equity is about fairness. It's about generating or giving the same amount of opportunities to everybody. The fact that we're massively training people in Latin America is about fairness about generating the skills. And the other thing that we're doing that is super important is that we're changing our interview process so that we make sure we have diverse, a diverse set of interviewers participating in the processes, right? So that people feel represented from the moment they start their journey with AWS with the first phone screen, right? So those things for me are really transformative and talk about what we're trying to do. And of course it has an impact on gender, but it also has an impact on a broader scale from a diversity, equity and inclusion perspective which I think talks about the humanity of AWS. It's not just about the technology it's about transforming people's lives and helping Latin America, or the countries we operate in, to be better, right? For the good. >> Right. That's a great focus. Is that kind of a shift in AWS' culture in terms of really focusing on diversity? Or is that something that's really kind of been there from the beginning? >> So I think it's been here from the beginning, but now, for example, in Latin America, we're growing a lot. So we have more resources that we can allocate to really focus on this initiative. So aligning to these new leadership principal that was launched in July, or published in July, we always were very committed to diversity, equity and inclusion, but now we have more resources so that we can double down on this huge bet. And I feel very proud about that. >> Lisa: Tell me a little bit about, in the few remaining minutes that we have, I'm curious about your background. Were you always interested in tech or STEM? Was that something that you gravitated towards from when you were young, or was it something that you got into a little bit later? >> So my background is communications. I studied advertising, so no. I'm not a science or engineer-focused person, but from at early age I started working in tech companies, so I learned a lot. I had the chance to live in different countries like Mexico or the UK or the US where I always had the chance to interact with many amazing men and women that were focused on technology. So, no, I'm not a technology expert but I've always been related to people who know a lot about this. And I learned a lot in that process. And, you know, I've always seen like this, I don't how to explain, but this initiative or this will to make everyone feel comfortable where they work. I've seen this at AWS. And as I said before, we started the interview I'm eight months pregnant at this point. I'm about to take a five month leave which is a lot more than what the law gives me in Argentina, for example, where I'm located. So those are the kind of things that really make me feel comfortable where I work with and really proud of where I work with. And I want everybody to have the chance to get this type of job so that they can feel the way I feel, right? And I'm talking about men, women, people with disabilities, and many other type of affinity people, right? >> Right. It's so important to be able to have that comfort because your productivity is better, your performance is better, and ultimately the company benefits as those employees feel comfortable in the environment in which they're working and that they have the freedoms to be curious. Talk to me a little bit about some of the things, you mentioned the stat of 2020 to - 2021, excuse me, to 2022, almost doubling the number of women. >> Yep. >> Talk to me about some of the things that you're looking forward to as 2022 progresses. >> Wow, I'm the, you know, every time we have a performance review at AWS you get asked this question, what are you most excited about? Right. And this year I was excited about so many things that the list, I mean I didn't have enough characters to write about that. I think we are always trying to just confirm our beliefs at AWS. And this is the, what I like the most about working here. AWS or Amazon really values people who are curious, are always learning, and always trying to listen to other opinions. And this is key for our culture. I'm very excited about the fact that we're putting, we're turning on mechanisms to have even more feedback than we used to have, not just from customers and partners, but also from our employees. So the fact that we're having real time feedback will really make us better as an organization and always with this day-one culture in mind, which is very fast, right? We're making decisions very fast. We're very dynamic, we're learning on the go. We fail, sometimes. We fail, but we learn very fast. We fail fast. We used to say that we learn, we fail fast. And failure is part of our culture of innovation. So we're learning, we're failing, at some point we're implementing changes. And it's like a very interesting flywheel, right. Of growth. And it's very fast. So my job is very dynamic and I'm very excited about this. I'm hiring a team. I have a team of four people. I already hired two people and I need one more. So I'm very excited about that. I'm very excited to see what our employees are capable of. I mean, they're always inventing on behalf of our customers and partners. And it's always amazing to see the results from the year end, right. You get to tell stories from customers and partners that you never imagined you were going to tell. So I'm very excited about all those things. >> Lisa: Excellent. Well, good luck with the baby. Thank you so much for sharing. What your role is doing and how it's really helping to drive that diversity and inclusion and equity within Amazon. It's such an important cultural element and it's exciting to hear this strategic focus that AWS has. Nicole, we appreciate your time. >> Thank you very much, Lisa, for having me. >> My pleasure. For Nicole Parafita, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching women in tech International Women's Day, 2022. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Hey everyone. Welcome to theCUBE's coverage of Women In Tech, International Women's Day 2022. I'm your host, Lisa Martin. I have two guests from AWS here with me. Carolina Pina joins us, the head of Enterprise Enablement for LATAM and Laura Alvarez Modernel is here as well, Public Sector Programs Manager at AWS. Ladies, it's great to have you on theCUBE. >> Nice to meet you. >> Thank you for having us. >> Carolina, let's start with you. Talk to me a little bit about your role, what it is that you're doing there. >> So my role in AWS is to actually create mechanisms of massive training to try to close the talent gap that we have in the region. And when I mentioned talent gap, I'm talking about obviously digital and cloud-computing skills. So that's, that's, in a nutshell what my role entails. >> Lisa: Got it. How long have you been in that role? Just curious. >> So I've been at AWS a little bit over, over two years. I was actually in the public sector team when I joined, leading the education vertical for Latin American Canada. And I recently joined the commercial sector now leading these massive training efforts for the region for LATAM. >> And Laura, you're in public sector. Talk to me a little bit about your role. >> Yes, I'm in public sector. I'm also based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. So yeah, I'm from Latin America, and I lead educational and community impact programs in the Southern cone of Latin America. I also lead diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and I'm part of the Women at Amazon global board. That's our affinity group to make sure we make efforts towards building a more equal world. And on a personal note I'm really passionate about the topic of gender equality because I truly think it affects us all as women and as Latins. So that's something that I'm always interested in collaborating with. >> Lisa: Excellent. Carolina back to you. If we think about from an enablement perspective how is AWS partnering with its customers and its partners to train and employ women particularly in technology? >> Oh, sure. Lisa, so it's not a surprise. We, like I mentioned, you know we have a big cloud skills, talent gap in the region. In fact, you know, 69% of companies have reported talent shortages and difficulty hiring. So, and this represents a 15 year high. So, many of these companies are actually, you know, our own commercial customers. So they approach us saying, you know, asking for for support training and developing their talent. So like I mentioned, in my role I create massive training efforts and initiatives. So we always take into consideration women, minorities, underrepresented community, and not just for the current talent, meaning like the people that are currently employed, but also to ensure that we are proactively implementing initiatives to develop a talent of younger you know, a younger generation and a talent. So we can, you know, to inspire them and, and ensure that they, that we're seeing them represented in companies like AWS, you know and our customers, and in our partners. And obviously we, when we sit down with customers to craft these massive trainings you know, leveraging their ecosystems and communities, we actually try to use all our AWS training and certification portfolio which includes, you know, in live in class with live in structures, in classroom trainings. We also have our AWS Skill Builder platform which is the platform that allows us to, you know to reach a broader audience because it has, you know over 500 free and on-demand classes. And we also have a lot of different other programs that touches in different audiences. You know, we have AWS re/Start for underrepresented, and underemployed minorities. We also have AWS Academy, which is the program that we have for higher education institutions. And we have AWS, you know, Educate which also touches, you know, cloud beginners. So in every single of these programs, we ensure that we are encompassing and really speaking to women and developing training and developing women. >> Lisa: That's a great focus there. Laura, talk to me about upskilling. I know AWS is very much about promoting from within. What are some of the things that it's doing to help women in Latin America develop those tech skills and upskill from where, maybe where they are now? >> Well, Lisa, I think that is super interesting because there's definitely a skills gap problem, right? We have all heard about. And what's funny is also that we have this huge opportunity in Latin America to train people and to help further develop the countries. And we have the companies that need the talent. So why is there still a gap, right? And I think that's because there's no magic solution to solving this problem. No, like epic Hollywood movie scene that it's going to show how we close the gap. And it takes stepping out of our comfort zone. And as Carolina mentioned, collaborating. So, we at AWS have a commitment to help 29 million people globally to grow their technical skills with free cloud-computing skills training by 2025. I know that sounds a lot through educational programs but we do have as Carolina mentioned, a Skill Builder you can go into the website for free, enter, choose your path, get trained. We have Academy that we implement with universities. Re/Start that is a program that's already available in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Costa Rica. So there are a lot of opportunities, but you also mentioned something else that I would like to dive a bit deeper that is Latin American women. And yesterday we had the opportunity to record a panel about intersectionality with three amazing Latin women. And what we have to learn from that is that these are two minorities that intersect, right. We're talking about females that are minority. Latinas are minority. And in tech, that is also something that is even bigger minority. So there are more difficulties there and we need to make sure that we are meeting that talent that is there that is in Latin America, that exists. We know for sure we have unicorns in Latin America that are even AWS customers like Mercado Libre, and we have to meet them with the opportunities. And that's why we created a program that came from identifying how this problem evolves in Latin America, that there is a lack of confidence in women also that they don't feel prepared or equipped. There is a cultural component why we don't choose tech careers. And we partner with universities, more than 12 universities in Latin America with the International American Development Bank as well to create tech skills that's a free five weeks program in order to get students and get female in Latin America, into the tech world. And we also have them with mentorship. So I think that is an opportunity to truly collaborate because we as AWS are not going to solve these by ourselves, right? We need everyone pitching in on that. >> Lisa: Right. It's absolutely a team effort. You mentioned something important in terms of helping women, and especially minorities get out of their comfort zone. Carolina, I'm curious when you're talking with women and getting them into the program and sharing with them all of the enablement programs that you have, how do you help them be confident to get out of that comfort zone? That's a hard thing to do. >> Yeah, no, for sure. For sure, Lisa, well, I, you know, a lot of times actually I use myself as an example because, you know, I studied engineering and industrial systems engineering many years ago. And you know, a lot of my career has been in in higher education and innovation and startups. And as I mentioned in the intro I've been at AWS for a little bit over two years. So I, my career has not been in cloud and I recently joined the cloud. So I actually had to go through our own trainings and get our own certifications. So I, that's, you know a lot of times I actually, I use my own example, so people understand that you don't have to come from tech, you don't have to come, you can actually be a non-tech person and, and also see the the benefits of the cloud. And you don't have to only, you know, learn cloud if you're in the IT department or in an IT team. So sometimes, I also emphasize that the cloud and the future is absolutely the cloud. In fact, the world economic foreign, you know teaches us that cloud-computing is that the technology that's going to be mostly adopted by 2025. So that's why we need to ensure that every single person, women and others are really knowledgeable in the cloud. So that's why, you know, technical and untechnical. But I, you know, I use myself as an example for them to say, you know, you can actually do it. And obviously also I collaborate with Laura and a lot of the women at Amazon Latin America Group to also you know, ensure that we're doing webinars and panels. So we show them ourselves as role model like, Laura is an incredible role model for our community. And so it's also to to show examples of what the possibilities are. And that's what we do. >> Lisa: I love that you're sharing >> And can I make a note there also? >> Please, yes. >> To add to that. I think it also requires the companies and the, and the private sector to get out of their comfort zone, right? Because we are not going to find solutions doing what we are already doing. We truly need to go and get near these persons with a new message. Their interest is there in these programs we have reached more than 3,000 women already in Latin America with tech skills. So it's not that women are not interested. It's like, how do we reach them with a message that resounds with them, right? Like how we can explain the power of technology to transform the world and to actually improve their communities. I think there's something there also that we need to think further of. >> It's so important. You know, we say often when we're talking about women in tech, that she needs to see what she can be or if she can't see it, she can't be it. So having those role models and those mentors and sponsors is absolutely critical for women to get, I call it getting comfortably uncomfortable out of that comfort zone and recognizing there's so many opportunities. Carolina, to your point, you know, these days every company is a tech company, a data company whether you're talking about a car dealer, a grocery market. So your point about, you know, and obviously the future being cloud there's so much opportunity that that opens up, for everybody really, but that's an important thing for people to recognize how they can be a part of that get out of their comfort zone and try something that they maybe hadn't considered before. >> Yes. And, actually, Lisa I would love to share an example. So we have a group, O Boticário, which is one of our customers one of the, the lead retails in Brazil. And they've been a customer of AWS since 2013 when they realized that, you know the urgency and the importance of embracing state of the art technology, to your point, like, you know this is a retail company that understands that needs to be, you know embrace digital transformation, especially because, you know they get very busy during mother's days and other holidays during the year. So they realized that they, instead of outsourcing their IT requirements to technology experts they decided to actually start developing and bringing the talent, you know within itself, within, you know, technology in-house. So they decided to start training within. And that's when we, obviously we partnered with them to also create a very comprehensive training and certification plan that started with, you know a lot of the infrastructure and security teams but then it was actually then implemented in the rest of the company. So going back to the point like everybody really needs to know. And what we also love about O Boticário is they they really care about the diversion and inclusion aspect of this equation. And we actually collaborated with them as well through this program called Desenvolve with the Brazilian government. And Desenvolve means developing Portuguese and they this program really ensures that we are also closing that gender and that race gap and ensuring that they're actually, you know, developing talent in cloud for Brazil. So we, you know, obviously have been very successful with them and we will continue to do even more things with them particular for this topic. >> Lisa: I've always known how customer focused AWS is every time we get to go to re:Invent or some of the events but it's so nice to hear these the educational programs that you're doing with customers to help them improve DEI to help them enable their own women in their organizations to learn skills. I didn't realize that. I think that's fantastic very much a symbiotic part of AWS. If we think about the theme for this year's International Women's Day, Breaking The Bias I want to get both of your opinions and Laura we'll start with you, what that means to you, and where do you think we are in Latin America with breaking the bias? >> Well, I think breaking the bias is the first step to truly being who we are every day and being able to bring that to our work as well. I think we are in a learning curve of that. The companies are changing culturally, as Carolina mentioned we have customers that are aware of the importance of having women. And as we say at AWS not only because there is a good business reason because there is, because there are studies that show that we can increase the country's CPD, but also because it's important and it's the right thing to do. So in terms of breaking the bias I think we are learning and we have a long way to go. I talked a bit earlier about intersectionality and that is something that is also important to highlight, right? Because we are talking about females but we are also talking about another minorities. We're talking about underrepresented communities, Indigenous People, Latins. So when these overlap, we face even bigger challenges to get where we want to get, right? And to get to decision making places because technology is transforming the ways we take decisions, we live, and we need someone like us taking those decisions. So I think it's important at first to be aware and to see that you can get there and eventually to start the conversation going and to build the conversation, not to just leave it but to make sure we hear people and their input and what they're going through. >> Lisa: Yes. We definitely need to hear them. Carolina, what's your take on breaking the bias and where do you from your experience, where do you think we are with it? >> Yeah, no, I'm as passionate as Laura on this topic. And that's why we, you know we're collaborating in the Women at Amazon Latin America Chapter, because we're both very, I think breaking the bias starts with us and ourselves. And we are very proactive within AWS and externally. And I feel it's also, I mean, Lisa, what we've been doing is not only, obviously gathering you know, the troops and really making sure that, that we have very aggressive goals internally, but also bringing you know, bringing our male counterparts, and other, you know, other members of the other communities, because the change, we're not going to make it alone. Like the change where it is not women only talking to women is going to make the change. We actually need to make sure the male and other groups are represented. And the dialogue that they're that we're very conscious about that. And I feel like we're seeing more and more that the topic is becoming more of a priority not only within AWS and Amazon but we also see it because now that I meet with when I meet with customers around the region they really want to see how we can collaborate in these diversion and inclusion initiatives. So I think we are breaking the bias because now this topic is more top of mind. And then we are being more proactively addressing it and and training people and educating people. And I feel we're really in a pivoted point where the change that we've really been wanting to we will see in the next you know, few years which is very exciting. >> Lisa: Excellent, and we'll see that with the help of women like you guys. Thank you so much for joining me today, talking about what you're doing, how you're helping organizations across AWS's ecosystem, customers, partners, and helping, of course, folks from within you, right. It's a holistic effort, but we are on our way to breaking that bias and again, I thank you both for your insights. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, Lisa, for the opportunity. >> My pleasure. For Carolina Pina and Laura Alvarez Modernel, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's coverage of Women in Tech, International Women's Day 2022. (upbeat music)