>> Narrator: From the VMware Campus in Palo Alto California, it's The Cube covering Women Transforming Technology. (upbeat music) >> I'm Lisa Martin with the Cube and we are on the ground in Palo Alto with VMware for the third annual, Women Transforming Technology event. Excited to welcome back to the Cube, Lily Chang, VP of strategic transformation here at VMware. Lily it's great to have you back. >> Thank you, it's fantastic to have this event again, for the third time in the history. >> Yes, in fact, I read online that it was sold out within hours and the keynote this morning was... >> Lily: Fantastic >> Fantastic >> And very inspiring. >> Very inspiring. For those of you who don't know, Laila Ali was the keynote this morning. What a great analogy, not just being a sports star, but being someone, a woman, in a very male dominated industry who just had this sort of natural confidence that she just knew what her purpose was. I thought that was a very inspiring message for those of us in tech as well. >> Yeah, and it's also very key that women leaders, such as herself, is willing to come out and share the story, and be the role model and set a path and show the example for the younger generation to follow and to look up to. That is incredible. >> I love for one of the things she said, Lily, when she said she still sometimes kind of loses sight and has to reignite that inner warrior. I thought that was a really important and empowering message too that even really strong women who are naturally confident still have times where they have to kind of remind themselves of what their purpose is. I just thought that was a very impactful statement and I think regardless of any industry you're in. >> That is absolutely true. I mean, we're only human, right? So every one of us experiences challenges in life so there are times even all genders, you're going to bump into road blocks, you're going to bump into challenges and then you need to self motivating and lift yourself up and rise to the ocassions of the challenge. A lot of times these changes, and I'm sure it's true for her as well, that actually make her a better leader. >> Definitely. So you are one of the board members of Women Who Code. This is something that's very near and dear to VMwear's heart. VMwear got involved in 2016 when it was about a 10,000 person organization. >> Actually, a little bit less than that. >> A little less than 10,000? And now it's? >> We were very young. >> And now how large is it? >> It's 137,000 members globally, 20 counties, 60 cities. >> So what's the mission of Women Who Code? >> The mission is very simple. Basically we want to basically help all women that inspire and excel in their technical career journey and in their career development. So that's basically the simple mission statement and for that a very critical thrust that Women Who Code has and kind of coincide with VMware's community vision, is basically technical woman community. So they were very young but we saw the passion, we saw the commitment, and we believed that this is a great mutual opportunity because we want to be a global company. We want to not only view leadership within U.S., we wanted it to be in NIA, to be in APJ, We have R & D research offices everywhere and so we basically collaborated with Women Who Code and that has been a very successful leadership program which only work with them. And they basically blossomed under the collaboration and we're not the only company but we are the one of two founding partner in sponsor for Women Who Code. >> It's grown dramatically as you said. >> Lily: Dramatically. >> Yeah, just a couple of years since you've been involved with VMware. What are a some of things that have surprised you about, not just the growth, but about some of the lesson that maybe you've learned by watching some of these other women come into this organization and be inspired and impact their careers? >> So I see the story, both in VMware woman leadership, and also in outside community woman leadership. Right? So what I see is all these woman basically have the passion but they were a little bit worried about let it come out but when you're actually in a community you're supporting one and other and you have that platform where they feel very comfortable to communicate, network, share, and learn, and so basically that is a very powerful thing and I see the growth and the booster of the potential, it's kind of like we lift them up all of a sudden. Right? One of the stories recently is that, for example, on the external side, We have basically a Canada city director is all volunteer positions. Right. And within a year, she actually moved from a line management position to basically to a director position because the city director role basically expose you to basically get the community view out and that encourage you and challenge you to basically has hands on soft leadership skill and so a lot of the technical woman have a lot of technology and a lot of the technologist mentality but you need to accompany that with a lot of the soft skill. And then the combination of the two that makes a perfect combination. And we see a lot of that in our VMware women as well. So we set out to do basically cities in China, we actually opened China for Women Who Code. It was zero member, and now it has like 3,000-4,000 members. It's actually in China. It's a little bit of a difficult mysterious place. Right? But we made it happen in Beijing. We made it happen in Shanghai. And it's basically participate by a lot of the local company, not just multi-national company. And in India we actually open it up, and in India now is blossomed like crazy so there are like since VMware's opening up in Bangalore basically there are three other cities that joined in. India is like basically a rose in blossoming peak point right now. And we also opened up a Sophia, so basically we work with women who go to do a corporate leadership program. And within the first year, where we appointed some of the city directors from our women, basically we have experience about a 50% promotion rate and pretty much 100% retention rate. >> Lisa: Wow. >> Yeah. >> 50% promotion and 100% retention is incredible. >> It is incredible, so I see that miracle happening and then I become very convinced after year one and then I've also learned that I'm not the only leader in the world that believes in this. That's the reason why they blossom like crazy. >> I imagine growing up in China, I was reading a little bit about your story, that the expansion in China must mean something a bit personal for you as well. It sounds like you were a bit fortunate though, with your parents saying "hey," you had two choices when you graduated from college, flight attendant, or secretary and your parents thought "she should have more options that that." So maybe kind of full circle, how was that for you when those two in Shanghai and Beijing opened? >> To me, I feel like, that is what is 21st century supposed to be. I wish it were true in the 19th century and but bottom line is, minor correction, actually I did interview for those two positions. I was rejected. I was not qualified. >> Lisa: Lucky VMware. >> Yeah. (laughing) Actually lucky United State. >> There you go. >> So basically my dad and my mom, they basically raised me up very differently in that era. They basically feel that they give me kind of almost a virtual space where I do not feel there is any difference between genders. They always made me feel like I'm a equal citizen in the family. I have the same speaking right, my dad, my mom both foster me that so when they learned that I could not get those two possible jobs and I was very well educated, graduated from the best university in the island, quoting my dad, he basically "invested on me," right? So he basically said "well" what he needs to do is "continue to invest in me." So that's the reason why he exported me to United States and then basically I went to the graduate school here and then since then I been very blessed. So this is almost like the Beijing and Shanghai success of the Women Who Code. It's almost like I'm giving it back to my origin. Right? And I'm bringing a lot of the blend between the western and eastern culture together. Right? To open that up which is fantastic and basically in the global environment to make it very diverse and inclusive at the same time. >> So you had really strong parents who instilled this belief in you that you could do anything. When we look at some of the statistics that show that less than 25% of technical roles are held by women and then we also look at the retention, the attrition is so high in tech. What were some of the things that kept you kind of focused on your dreams? How did you kind of foster that persistence? And I'm wondering what your advice is for women who are in tech and might be thinking of leaving. >> Well, very interesting, so first advice I have is, basically believe in yourself and dream very big. Because that, and the second this is never afraid of change. Change is always a good thing and that has been throughout my growth in a foreign country as well as here. Right? And I remember when I was in the university, even thought it was the best university, and I actually changed department and major twice and the third time I attempted to do it, because at that time I told my dad, say "hey, I heard there's this cool computer science thing I really want to go do" he did some calculation and said "look, if you transfer again, the third time, it will take you five to six years to graduate" so he said "no, just stick with it and then later on you want to move, go ahead." Right? So in grad school I changed again and I was very blessed that there are a lot of sponsors and mentors. Not just my parents. Throughout my growth and throughout my journey in the career basically really foster and help me, supported me, give me a lot of advice, so I'm a big believer in mentorship and sponsorship and that's what I believe the technical woman community will offer. It's kind of a genetically built it within that philosophy in the community. Right? It doesn't matter which forum. It is basically bringing in the common belief and the vision together and it's basically peer to peer mentorship and because there are different walks and different levels of women and technologist in that community then you actually could do the tiering and peering and basically help people to either inspire, basically move into new career journey, or elevating themselves. So I'm a very big believer in mentorship and sponsorship. >> Speaking of change, we talked about the changes you've made previously. You've made a big change from R & D to financier. >> Lily: That's correct. >> The very first at VMware to do that? >> Lily: Yes, very first... >> Tell us about kind of the impetus and what excited you and what you are benefiting from. >> Well, I'd been in the R & D career for a couple decades and so every ten years I look at my resume and then I kind of try to have an out of body experience to basically advise myself and say, what would you do differently, so that you actually are setup for the growth for the next ten years. Right? So when I look at my career about a year ago I basically said to myself and said "well, you've got enough R & D experience, you made enough investment. For you to be in the next journey you really need to have the business experience." And even though I have basically with VMware's support and sponsorship I did go back to the business school and got kind of the Berkeley business certificate and I got lots of great executives supporting me. But the reality is if you don't do that role, day in and day out, and really experience it blended into your DNA, it's not going to come natural. Right? And I don't want to be an imposter, so essentially I made a fairly major determination that I want to basically switch into business world. So I'm kind of a unique case in the sense that I'm both over-qualified and under-qualified at the same time. I'm very lucky that I have a lot of the executive sponsorship that I was able to find a perfect role that allowed me to learn and excel and basically be inspired basically in my role today and that is something fantastic. Only after I transfer that's where I learn that I'm actually the first employee in VMware's history that moved from R & D to finance and I still remain as the only one so far and I hope that my success can actually inspire more R & D people because I truly believe that a lot of times when you can actually can look at from the other lens it would just simply make you be able to do your original job better. Like right now, I would tell my old R & D self that some of the decision I made I would have debated and petitioned and argued and thought about it in a completely different way because my thinking has shift which I think is a very healthy shift. >> I agree, and you know, one of the things that Laila Ali said this morning was basically encouraging people to get uncomfortable, to be comfortable and that's, you talked about change, absolutely there's so many opportunities and we know that on one level but it can be pretty intimidating to change something. But I love also what you said. I think there's a parallel with saying now that you have this business experience looking through that other lens at R & D, you would have made decisions differently and I think that is very reflective and an opportunity for organizations to invest in creating a more diverse executive team. When you bring in that though diversity. >> Lily: Exactly. >> And it just opens the door, not just seeing things through different lenses and perspectives whether we're talking about gender or what not, but the profitability that can come from that alone is tremendous. >> Yeah, so for example one of the things that there is a statistics actually based on McKinsey for company that basically has reasonable percentage blend of woman leadership actually grows better and makes much sounder decision and so the experience I have moving from R & D to business and then now I work still very closely with R & D community and the product business unit, basically that's kind of a testemonial for that because the decision making all of a sudden is multi facet. And you always will be able to make a better decision and a sound decision. Now, you will be able to see a different risk at a different level, and we will be communicating in a more common language, like I used to not be able to speak the business tone and the business language, now I actually can be that effective communication bridge, which I find it very powerful and very exciting and very illuminating in terms of just the whole shift, make it a very worth while actually. It's just a very fantastic personal and professional experiences so far. >> You studied that Mckinsey report and that was actually mentioned this morning that the press release that VMwear did with the Stanford Institute investing 15 million in building a womens innovation lab to study the barriers, identify how to remove those barriers, but in that press release McKinsey report found that, and this is shocking, that companies that have more diversity at the executive level, are 21% more profitable. >> Lily: Exactly. >> That's a huge number. >> That's because you actually, for business, right? The technology moves so fast and there are so many different factors will be coming in hitting the business, giving business decision, you just go down a unique lane and not basically bringing all the different facets of perspective, you tend to basically gradually work yourself into a corner or you may just believe what you want to believe. Right? So that's where the other genders perspective or even the inclusive culture will bring you, basically. So this is my firm belief. Right? It's just in a different dimension basically. >> And I think that's great advice for all walks of life Lily. Thank you so much for stopping by The Cube and sharing with us what you're doing with Women Who Code and congratulations on being the first VMware to successfully transition from R & D to finance. >> Yeah, I actually hit my one year anniversary. >> Oh congratulations and thanks so much for your time. >> Thank you. >> We want to thank you for watching the cube. I'm Lisa Martin, on the ground at Women Transforming Technology VMware. Thanks for watching. (digital music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's The Cube, covering IBM Think 2018, brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome back to The Cube. We are live in sunny Las Vegas at the inaugural IBM Think 2018 event. I'm Lisa Martin with Dave Vellante. Dave, this weather has got to beat Boston hands down, right? >> It was beautiful yesterday, about 15 degrees in Boston, snowy. >> So you thawed out since you've gotten here? >> I took the snowshoes out, actually. Life makes lemons. >> Exactly, and we have another cold-weather guest who's probably thawing out as well, Ranjana Young, the senior vice president of Enterprise Data Services from Northern Trust, welcome. >> Thank you, thanks for having me. >> We're excited to chat with you. You have a role at Northern Trust, and your mission is all-around data, five-core competencies, including data governance and stewardship, data quality, master data management, enterprise integration with data platforms. Tell us a little bit about your role, how long you've been doing that, and really what this focus on data is enabling for Northern Trust. >> Sure, I want to talk first about our mission as you had mentioned. I think it was critical to establish a broad mission for Northern Trust. We wanted to make sure that we establishing an enterprise data program that enabled our customer needs and overall our customer experience, but also truly helped support our regulatory needs that we had, and it was critical to establish those two as the main goals, not just one or the other. And then the role, I call myself a change agent because establishing capabilities that you talked about, it is difficult to do, with a lot of legacy that we have. The firm has been in existence for 128 years To establish a data-driven culture was very different. I think we were known to do provide good business solutions, but a lot with the gut, given that we were good at it, but how do you make sure that you change that culture and have a relationship managers and others really think differently and use data to provide those solutions to our clients. >> I remember when I met Inderpal Bhandari, I'm sure you know him, and he said that he has a framework for a data leader, and he said there are five things a data leader has to do to get started, and three are in parallel, or sorry, three are linear, two are in parallel. I don't know if you've heard this rap, but I'd like to sort of explore them and see how your three are generally. He said you start with understanding how the organization monetizes data, not directly, maybe selling data, but how it contributes, and then the next one was sort of data access and then data quality. Those are the sort of sequential activities, and then the parallel ones were form relationships with a line of business and then re-skill. So those are his five. How did you approach it, what was different, what was similar, what were some of the challenges that you had in doing that? >> Sure. If I had to think about kind of, to correlate some of the components of the strategy, skills is an important thing. When I started establishing the team three years ago, it was critical that we had to bring some of the core skills within the firm because they had the business capabilities, they understood the systems, they understood kind of the skeletons that were in the closets and knew the culture and also embraced the challenges and still could find solutions. And then you had to bring external folks that really had the capability to drive that change, had the mastery of management skills to really support and set up an account domain and a party domain, a reference data domain, especially an asset domain, et cetera. So we had to look at kind of a conglomerate of individuals to do that. And then if you look at kind of where was the starting point in terms of really establishing the program was, we were going through a transformation to really re-platform a lot of our legacy, whether it was our valuation system or our cash platform, others, and data was a thread throughout all of those programs, so it was critical to establish and think and take bite-sized chunks, it was important to think about, okay, throughout all the programs, what is the important data that we could kind of understand, so we focused quite a bit on initially looking at critical data and looking at critical data from a master data perspective, so asset data, which is very critical to the work that we do on the institutional side. As you know, we had a management asset servicing company. Data is an asset for us, we enrich the data. We provide services around that today, and have been, and so embedding data governance through that process was important, and also our clients were really looking for the enriched data but also were looking for clean information but also were looking for where did that data come from? Where does the definition of this data? So kind of giving them that external catalog of here's the data, but here's the enriched data and here's the metrics for data quality around it, and then here's the definitions for it. So to some extent, that drove change because of customers were looking for it, and a lot of the capabilities that were foundational to the firm, we're starting to externalize, especially the meta-data catalog, et cetera. >> So if I could play that back, so you started the team, all right, you said, okay, I need to build a team. I think I heard that, and then the data quality, and then presumably, okay, who has access to this data? Is that about right? >> So I started with the mission to say, we have to do this for both arms, the left arm being our customer experience and making sure that we change the way we're doing our work there, or enhance the work so that our customer experience was better, and then obviously the regulatory, make sure that we need the regulatory. So for that, we needed five core competencies. We knew that we had to establish a role of the steward, a role of the custodian, so the team started to become very critical then, and then we knew that we had some gaps in our master data management capability, a complete gap in having integrated data platforms. I notice I've talked a little bit about we established a whole strategy and architecture for ING. I totally relate to how we had to do the same. Each silo did their own particular thing. The management did their own thing. >> David: By data. >> The institutional side did their own thing. Asset management was, I would say, a lot more mature. So I would say if you were to think about it, it's establishing the mission and establishing the team. >> And then, just one last follow-up. The services that you're providing, data services, those are delivered through your organization, the IT organization, what's the practice? >> We have a partnership, a very collaborative partnership that we work together. The technology team does all the build for the work, we work collaboratively to kind of build a strategy of what solutions need to be first versus later, given the client priorities and our institutional side, our business unit priorities, so that's a collaborative effort, working together. >> So speaking of collaboration, you mentioned earlier that it was really key to have both the veterans within Northern Trust and their expertise that you said kind of the skeletons, that they know where things are buried, as well as that maybe external, you might say more fresh perspective. You also talked about, we chatted before we went live, about governance. Seems like what you guys have done is kind of flipped governance from being viewed as potentially an inhibitor to really empowering, being an empowering capability. Can you tell us how you've leveraged data governance to empower a data-driven culture within a business that is 128, I think, years old, you said? >> Yes, that's right. So, for us, I think that while we were establishing the program, it was very critical to understand kind of the challenges on the institutional side first because they had the maximum number of challenges with data. Again, because we're an asset servicing company, a data is an asset, we enrich that information and provide that information, but what was happening was it was taking us so much longer to provide these solutions to our clients, so we've embedded, now, the data governance framework as a part of that solution, and our clients are seeing the value, so if you look at one of the customers that we're working with, we actually have externalized our catalog where they understand now what data that they're receiving, and you're speaking the same language, and that was not the case before. But again, as I said, if we didn't do the foundational work of cataloging the information, understanding what the data is, where the data is, what the data assets are, we just couldn't have done that, so it's really paying off because of that. >> How has that affected your ability to be prepared for GDPR, which obviously went into effect last year, the fines go into effect in May of this year? What was the relationship there? >> So we have worked very, very closely with our chief privacy officer, and we've really done a phenomenal job of identifying where our highly sensitive data assets are. We're in the process of cataloging all of them through the unified governance framework that we've established, so we leverage IBM's IGC NIA to do all that work, and the lineage all the way to the authentic source, which is something the regulators definitely are looking for, so are we fully, completely done yet? No, so we're in that journey, and with unstructured data, we're looking at discovery tools to kind of provide that. We have a solution that's a little manual at this point, but we hope to kind of make more progress on that side. >> I got to ask you, so around 17%, the data suggests, 17% of the IT, technology industry is women, but I was at an IBM, it was a Data Divas breakfast that I crashed, I snuck in, one of the few guys there. >> Oh, very cool. And there was a stat that around 30% of data leaders are women, I don't know, it was a sort of a small sample, who knows? Sounded a little high. Somebody said it's because it's a thankless job and women have to take it on, so thoughts on women in tech, women in this role, perspectives. >> So I am excited to meet a few here at the conference. That statistic is pretty high that you're stating. I don't see that. >> David: It's outside that. >> In the industry, I do find myself sometimes as a lone warrior, at least in the industry forums, but I think it's growing. I think especially women in technology, women in leadership on the line of business side is growing, and Northern Trust, I'm very proud to say, is big around diversity and providing opportunities to women, so from that perspective, I think I'm excited that women are taking interest in data, yes, it is a very hard job, so I think, I feel like we are organized, we get a lot done at the same time, so I think it's really helped. >> Other than it's the right thing to do, are there other sort of business dimensions? Is it Mars versus Venus? Are there sort of enrichments that a woman leader brings to the equation, or is it just because it's the right thing to do? >> I've seen tenacity women have. No offense to anyone, I think the higher tenacity to be persistent. >> I don't take offense. >> To be methodical, to be methodical, and also to have the hard discussions in a very factual way sometimes, but also in, yes, this is the right thing to do, but is there ways we could make this change happen in a systematic, bite-size chunk way. Sometimes I think those coercive conversations help a lot more than the others, and I think, to me, I would say tenacity, tenacity. >> I love that word. I have to say, that's a word that's oftentimes associated with males. A lot of times a tenacious woman, it's a different adjective, right? It's a term, I don't know, Lisa, what your experience has been, so that's good, a good choice of words in my view. >> I've heard pushy before, and I think what they really meant >> David: There you go, okay. >> Is persistence. (laughs) >> That's right. >> A man is tenacious, a woman is pushy. You hear that a lot. >> Right, I think it's persistence. So last question for you. Here we are at the inaugural IBM Think 2018. You guys are an IBM Analytics Global Elite Partner. Can you talk to us a little bit about that strategic partnership and what it means for Northern Trust? >> This partnership has really helped us tremendously in the last three years while we were putting the strategy to action while operationalizing data governance, while operationalizing a lot of the capabilities we thought we would have but really kind of bringing that to life. We're also really excited because lot of the feedback that we've provided has gone into kind of redoing some of the products within IBM, so we've definitely partnered and done lot of testing for some of the ones, the beta versions, and it's also helped us, I think, sometimes it's been like a marriage. We've had hard times getting through certain hurdles, but it really has paid off, and I think the other thing is we've really operationalized governance to the core at Northern Trust. I think IBM is also seeing value in sharing that our story with others because others have started the journey but may have taken certain different approaches to making that happen, so all in all, I think that the unified governance framework has really helped us, and I think we really love the partnership. >> As a client, what's on their to-do list? What's on IBM's to-do list for you? >> So I think one of the things that we've been talking quite a bit is we have a new CIO, and he's really interested in the cloud strategy, I know you've been talking about that. Again, we're a bank, so due to regulation there's strategies in terms of private versus public cloud. That's one conversation we'll definitely want to take further. We want more integrated tooling within the unified governance platform. That's something that's been a topic that we've discussed quite a bit with them. AI, machine learning, robotics is huge for us, so how do we leverage Watson much more? We've done a few POCs, how do we really operationalize and make sure that that's something that we do more of, so I think I would say those three. >> So sounds like a very symbiotic relationship. >> Ranjana: It is. >> Slash marriage that you have. Ranjana, we want to thank you for joining us and sharing how really kind of you're exhibiting the term change agent in a tenacious way. >> Okay, thank you. >> I feel like I want to say I'm flanked between two data divas, you don't take offense at that, do you? >> No, not at all. It's a compliment. >> You crashed an event. I'm seeing a new >> I like that. >> Twitter handle come up here. We want to thank you so much again for stopping by and sharing. Congrats on your success, and we hope you have a great time here. Enjoy the sunshine! Maybe bring some back to Chicago. >> Will do, will do, yeah. Thanks again, very much. >> And for Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin. We want to encourage you to check out thecube.net to watch all of the videos that we have done so far and will be doing at IBM Think 2018, and of course on all of the shows that we do. Also, head over to siliconangle.com. That's our media site where you're going to find pretty much in near real time synopsis and stories on not just what we're doing here but everything around the globe. Again, for Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin, live from IBM Think 2018 in Vegas. We'll be right back after a short break with our next guest.