>> Hey, welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown San Francisco at the Professional BusinessWomen of California Conference. It's the 28th year, Jackie Speier started it a long time ago and now it's grown to 6,000 people. It's a pretty amazing conference, it crosses all indrustries and actually a lot more than California as well. And we're excited to actually have somebody to come talk to us about the conference itself. It's Deepti Srivastava, she's a Project Manager of Google Cloud from Google. Great to see you again, last we saw you, I looked it up was 2014 >> I know. >> at Topcoder Open. >> Indeed. >> And you were doing great work then, you were on a panel with a bunch of high school girls. I remember they'd bust in a couple of busloads of high school girls and you and a couple other mainly young professional women talkin' to 'em about the life of an engineer. So you're still doin' good things. >> I hope so. (laughs) >> Absolutely. >> I hope so, yeah, it's a passion of mine and I'm really happy to bring it to something like PBWC where I'm on the board. And we do a bunch of work across industries and across all levels. PBWC's mission is to work for gender equity and equal pay for women across all industries and in all professional settings. >> Right. >> That includes young professionals, as well as the pipeline of professionals coming in. >> That's terrific. So we could talk about your day job all day long. (Deepti laughs) Google Cloud's kickin' tail, you guys had your big conference a couple weeks back-- >> Here in fact. (chuckles) >> Here in Moscone West, right? >> Yeah. >> But in terms of what you're doing here with PBWC, give us a little bit of the history. So we know it was started by Jackie Speier, I think you said 1988. >> Yeah. >> That's just amazing. >> I know. >> Obviously it's much more than California. >> Yeah. >> But what is the top-level mission and how has the conference evolved over the last several years? >> So Professional BusinessWomen of California, as you said was started by Congresswoman Jackie Speier and Judy Bloom, who's a co-founder. And we still exist and we've been doing this for so long and we really care about our mission, which is to work for basically gender equity and equal pay as I said, for all professional settings for women. And in this particular case, this conference we are talking about inclusion. And we chose this theme because we really think it's pertinent to what's going on right now in the world and in our country. And we, PBWC, believe that the things that unite us, the potentials and aspirations that unite us are greater than our differences and things like that. So we want to make a statement and really address the inclusion work that we do, and the inclusion work that's required for all of us to really move forward as a country and as a people. And if you look at our lineup of speakers today, we really do walk the talk that we're talking about. We have amazing speakers today with Rosario Dawson to Taraji P. Henson and all the way to Secretary Clinton who's closing out our day today, we are so excited to have her. And there's nobody better to represent breaking the glass ceiling than she has so we're very excited to hear. >> And what a get, I think I heard that it's her first public speaking engagement post the election. >> Yeah, I know. And it's very exciting because again, I think we're all about coming together and rallying and being a force for good. The conferences, that's our aim ultimately as an organization. And having her here to give her speech, first public appearance after the election last year, very exciting I think. >> Right, right. >> And we're very excited to hear from her. I'm already inspired by the thought that she's going to be here. >> And really a big part of the theme was kind of the strategy work is done, everybody knows it's good. Now it's really time for the rubber to hit the road. It's about execution and about taking steps and measuring. And a lot of the real concrete, nuts-and-bolts activities that need to happen to really move this thing down the road. >> You mean like gender equity and-- >> Yeah, yeah. >> Yeah, absolutely. I think it's been a topic for awhile and I think, exactly, we need to have the rubber hit the road, we have to get together, we have to have actionable plans and that's what a bunch of our seminars today talk about. How to address those things in your, we really want to empower women and actually people of all backgrounds and ages and all sorts of people to take charge of their own lives. And especially, we are a professional women conference so that's kind of where we focus our messaging. But really we want women to take control of their own lives and we want to give them the tools, the networking opportunities, the inspirations to meet their aspirations in those fields. And so we want them to take charge and move forward by themselves, take away from here and go back to your job, to your work, to your home, to really bring your messaging forward. Take inspiration from here and bring it back to your life. >> Right, and I think Bev Crair, in the keynotes said, "Fill your well today." >> Yeah. >> 'Cause as soon as you leave here it's back to the grind and you're going to need that energy. So while you're here surrounded by this energy and your peers, take it all in and load up. >> Absolutely. And I also want to say that we started out as a conference, an annual conference, and that's definitely our marquee thing that we do every year. But we actually have a lot more offerings that people can continue to engage over the year. So we have webinars and seminars that people can attend, there's community events that happen here. And you can go to the PBWC website and see what all offerings we have. But we want people to engage and we want to be able to provide them with the means to engage throughout the year, not just here but take this, everything you get today and then take it along the rest of the year and recharge yourself. >> It's kind of this whole 365 concept which we talk about on theCUBE a lot too, 'cause we go to so many shows. And there's a huge investment of time and energy and money on those two or three days, but how do you extend that out beyond the show? How do you build the excitement leading into the show so it's not just a one time kind of a shot, then everything goes back to normal? >> Yeah exactly, I think that's exactly the point, that this is not just a one day, you go there, you get inspired and then what next, right? >> Right. >> There's something you can go back to with our various offerings and continue your learning journey if that's what you want, or networking journey if that's what you want to do. Wherever you are in your career, we actually have a Young Women's Professional Summit that I have the honor of chairing, that we have every year and it's meant to help young professional women navigate their way from being in college and high school and those entering a professional life so as I said, we want to cater to all levels and all ages and all sorts of challenges that people face as they're going through their professional careers. >> So that's a separate event? >> It is, it is an annual conference. >> And when is that? Give a plug. Or do you have a date? (Deepti chuckles) >> Yeah, we don't have a date yet but it's going to be in the summer. >> In the summer, okay great. Well I think when we met last, I thought that was such an important piece of that Topcoder Open because it wasn't the Sheryl Sandbergs or the Hillary Clintons or these super mega top-of-the-pyramid people. It was a bunch of young professionals, one of the gals was still in school, hadn't finished graduating, to make it so much real for those high schoolers. They didn't have to look so far to say, "I could see myself, I kind of look like that person, "I kind of see things touch." >> And I think that's very important, Jeff. Exactly. It's very important and that's what we try to do here at PBWC as well. We want to go from catering to the Millennials and how we interact with them and all the way up to C-suite, we had a Senior Leadership Summit yesterday leading up to the conference today where we have a bunch of C-suites and CDOs, Chief Diversity Officers, come together and talk about trending topics and how to solve them. So we really are trying to move the needle forward on many fronts here, but our aim is all of that to culminate into moving women and people of all backgrounds forward. >> Right. And then there's this whole entrepreneurial bit which you can't see behind the camera, but there's booths all over for Intel and LinkedIn and Microsoft and the names that you would expect, Google of course, but there's also all the little boutiques, clothing stores and jewelry stores and crafty things. There's even of course women-focused snacks with the Luna Bars and I forget the other one. (chuckles) So it's kind of a cool entrepreneurial spirit kind of on top of everything else. >> Absolutely. And you know Jackie Speier, Congresswoman, started this conference to help women who were in the SMB, sort of SME market, basically women who ran small businesses. And we want to continue to do that as well but now of course the world is changing and we have a much more of a corporate presence and we want to help there too. But yeah, we pay homage to that by having women who are women entrepreneurs running women-focused businesses, and we have them here in the expo area if you can get a shot of that later. >> Right. >> The energy is palpable, the excitement is there and it's so great to be here and harness that, and take it back, I mean the first time I was here many years ago when I was not even on the board, I was just like, oh my gosh, there's so many women here who are like me or who are, they're people I could look up to all the way up to the C-suite who are making their presence felt here. And also all the people around me and like-minded, like me. So it's a really inspiring event. And I've been here for many years but I'm still inspired by it. So I'm so excited that we do this and continue to do this. >> So, little harder to question. So, and you've been doing this for awhile, what surprises you on the negative that still you know, you're still fighting that battle that you wouldn't have expected to still be doing? And then conversely what has surprised you on the positive, in terms of what's moved maybe further than you might've thought or faster than you might've thought? >> That's a good question. I think you already nailed it, right. The fact that we are still here talking about this is interesting to me, and as I got more involved in this kind of work I realized that people have been doing this for a long time. Congresswoman herself has been doing this for so long and a fearless advocate for women's rights and equal pay and diversity and inclusion. And the fact that we are still here, it is indicative of the fact that we need to have a groundswell movement in order to change policy. We can talk about it all we want but unless there's actionable things you can take away and really have that grassroots-level work to push the envelope forward, it's not going to happen. I think the positive is, as I've seen this conference over the years, it's grown. And it's gotten a lot more young people involved and it's not just the senior leadership that is trying to pull people forward, it's the people starting out early in their careers or mid-level in their careers that are looking at taking charge of their own destiny and pushing their agenda forward in this sense. They want, they're asking for equal pay. They're really engaged and aware. And conferences like PBWC actually help with that, getting those minds together and making things move forward. So I think from a positive side I'm really excited to see so many more people engaged in this fight. And the more people we have, the more we can actually make real progress and real inroads. >> And if you look back, as someone who's never been here and then they see this interview and they say, "This looks awesome, I'm going to sign up," what do you think the biggest surprise when they come for the first-timer? >> I'll tell you what I was surprised by, is seeing so many women together across industries, across ages, across backgrounds. Everybody together, really wanting to move forward. They're really wanting to engage, to connect with each other and to actually make a difference. People are here to make a difference, right? >> Right, right. >> And that's, to say that 6,000 people come together and really all of them have that same sort of mentality of like yes, I'm empowered to make a difference, is electrifying. >> Deepti, I love the energy. >> (laughs) Thank you. >> I love the energy, absolutely. >> It's all these people. >> It is. >> Trust me, I'm sleep deprived (Jeff laughs) with my very young son. So yeah, this is all the energy that I need to feed off of. >> No, it's good. And there is something special here. >> Mm-hmm. >> And you can feel it. 'Cause we go to a lot of shows, you go to a lot of shows. And again, it's not an exclusive tech show which is kind of nice 'cause we cross a lot of industries. But there's definitely, there's an energy, there's a vibe that comes from the little entrepreneurial outlets, it just comes from the, that room was packed. The keynote room was... >> I know. >> Was not fire marshal friendly. (Deepti laughs) Hopefully the fire marshal was not close by-- >> Yes, we had some discussion on that too. But to your point, this is one of the conferences that I've seen where we really, perhaps the only conference I've seen where we really cut across all industries. Because there's tech-focused, there's business-focused, there's all sorts of focused conferences trying to do either their professional work on technology or whatnot, or they're trying to solve the problem on the gender and diversity and inclusion piece in their own silos. And we try to cut across so that we can actually have a coming together of all of these various industries and their leaders, thought leaders, sharing ideas and sharing best practices so that we can actually all move forward together, I think that's again our Senior Leadership Summit which happened last night and the VIP reception which happened last night is all about getting those thought leaders together and getting them to share their best practices and ideas so that again, they can take it back to their companies and really move forward with DNI initiatives. >> It's action right, it's all about the action. >> Absolutely. >> So I promise next time that we talk, we'll talk about Google Cloud. >> Oh, sure. >> 'Cause that's hoppin'. (Deepti laughs) But it was great to see you and congratulations on all your work with the board and with your event >> Thank you. >> in the summer. People should go to the website, keep an eye out. >> Absolutely. >> It'll be comin' out. >> Yeah. >> So thank you. >> Thank you so much, it was great to see you too, Jeff. >> Absolutely. Alright she's Deepti, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE. We're at the Professional BusinessWomen of California Conference. The 28th year, pretty amazing, 6,000 people. Here at Moscone West, thanks for watchin'. (upbeat techno music)

(click) >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown San Francisco at Moscone West at the Professional BusinessWomen of California Conference. 6,000 women, this thing's been going on for 28 years. It's a pretty amazing show. We see a lot of big women in tech conferences, but this is certainly one of the biggest and it's all about diversity, not just women. And of course, if there's a women in tech event, who are we going to see? Sandy Carter. >> Woo hoo! (laughs) >> Sandy, so great to see you. CEO of Silicon Blitz and been involved with PBWC for a while. >> I had suggested to Congresswoman Jackie when I saw her about three or four years ago about doing something special for the senior women. I proposed this leadership summit, and you know what they always say, if you suggest something, be prepared to execute it. She said, "Would you help us get this going?" Three years ago, I started the Senior Leaders Forum here, and yesterday we had that forum. We had 75 amazing women from all the great companies of California Chevron, Clorox, IBM, Microsoft Intel, Amazon, you name it all the great companies here in the Bay. Oh, Salesforce, Airbnb, all goes on. >> That was like a little conference in the conference? >> It was for C-Suite only and it was about 75 women. We do three TED Talks. We pick out talks that are hot but that are very actionable for companies. So yesterday, Jeff, we talked about millennials how to have inclusion of millennials in your workforce. 50% of the workforce by 2020 will be millennials. >> Is that a harder challenge than just straight-up diversity? >> This is really important. (laughs) It may be. But I had Allison Erwiener and Erby Foster from Clorox come and speak and they did a TED talk. Then we actually do little workshops to action. What would a millennial program look like? Our second topic was around innovation. How do you link diversity to innovation? There are so many studies, Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley, Harvard, DeLoy that shows there is a linkage but how do you get the linkage? For all these amazing diverse- >> The linkage between better business outcomes, correct? >> That's right. >> Better outcomes. >> That's right. In fact, the latest study from Harvard came out at the end of 2016 that showed not only with diverse teams do you get more innovation but more profitable innovation which is everybody's bailiwick today. We had Jeremiah Owyang of Crowd Companies who's a innovation expert come and really do that session for us. Then last but not least we talked about diversity and inclusion, primarily inclusion in the next century. What is that going to look like? We saw some facts about what's going on in changes in population, changes in diversity and then how we as companies should manage programs in order to tap into those changes. It was an awesome, awesome session. Then of course we had Pat Waters from Linkedin. She is chief talent officer there. She came and closed it out with her definition of inclusion. It was powerful. >> You won an award. >> I won an award, yes. >> Congratulations, what did you win? >> Game Changer for PBWC, and I'm really proud of it because last year we had Serena Williams speak and she was the first recipient so I guess you'd say I'm in great company because it's now Serena and I with this great award. >> Absolutely. Before we went on air we were talking about some of this next-gen diversity and thinking about getting that into programming languages and you brought up, there was some conversation around bots and obviously chat bots are all the rage and AI and ML is driving a lot of this but ultimately someone's got to write the software to teach these things how to behave so you're going to run into the same types of issues if you don't have a diversity of the thinking of the way the rules and those bots work as you have in any other situation where you have singular thinking. >> I think Jeff, you're right on. In fact, I think it's really going to accelerate the desire for diverse teams. If you think about artificial intelligence machine learning, and bots you have to train the computer. The computer's not naturally smart. There is a team that actually uses a corpus of knowledge and trains the bot. If the data that goes in my dad always said, "Garbage in, garbage out." If the data that goes in is biased then the output is biased and we're seeing that now. For instance, I was just looking at some VR headsets and people are now looking at virtual reality. You know you get a little nauseous. They've been tweaking it with artificial intelligence so that you don't get as nauseous but it was done by all men. As a result, it greatly improved the nauseousness of men but not women. That's just one example. You want your product to go for 100% of the world. >> That's weird, you'd think that would be pretty biological and not so much gender-specific. >> You would, but there are apparently differences. We talked to a doctor yesterday. There's apparently differences in motion-sickness between the two and if you only have one set of data you don't have the other. >> But then there's this other kind of interesting danger with machine learning and I think we see it a lot in what's going on in the news and causing a lot of diversion within the country in that the algorithms are going to keep feeding you more of that which you already have demonstrated an affinity to. It's almost like you have to purposefully break the things or specifically tell it, either through active action or programming that no, please send me stuff that I'm not necessarily seeing all the time. Please give me stuff that's going to give me a diversity of points of view and opinion and sources because it feels like with your basic recommendation engine it's going to keep sending you more of the same and rat hole you down one little track. >> That is true, and that's why today we have a panel and we're going to be talking about especially for AI and bots you must have diverse teams. From the session this morning I really loved one of the speakers, Kim Rivera, from HP and she said, "It's hard, but we just said 'Look, we've got to have 50% women on the board. We've got to do this.'" I think the same thing's going to be true for AI or bots Jeff, if you don't have a diverse team, you will not get the right answer from a bot. Bots are so powerful, and I was just with a group of nine year old girls and we had a coding camp and I asked them, "What do you want to do?" All of them wanted to do bots. >> Really. >> They had all played with- >> What kind of bots- >> The Zootopia- >> Did they want to do? >> They all had played with a Zootopia bot from Disney. I don't know, did you see Zootopia? >> I did not see it. I heard it was a great movie. >> It's a great movie, animated movie of the year. >> Bunnies, bunnies, bunnies as cops, right? >> That's right. In fact, the bunny is what they made into a chat bot. 10 million kids use that chat bot to get a little badge. Now all the kids are into bots. They used bots to remind them to brush their teeth to do their homework. In fact, there was a chat bot written by a 14 year old boy in Canada that's a homework reminder. It's actually really quite good. >> Also I'm thinking of is the Microsoft little kid that didn't, I guess timing is everything. >> Timing is everything, that's right. >> That one didn't work so well. >> But I guess what I would just leave with people is that when you're looking at this great, great new technology for AI and bots in particular, you must have a diverse team. You must look at your data. Your data's got to be unbiased. Like you said, if you just keep doing the same old thing you're going to get the same old answer. You've got to do something different. >> You're doing all kinds of stuff. You're working with Girls in Tech on the board there. I think you're doing some stuff with the Athena Alliance who's driving to get more women on >> Boards. >> Boards. You're really putting your toes in all kinds of puddles to really help move this thing because it also came up in the keynote. It's not a strategy problem. It's an execution problem. >> That's right, and because I'm so passionate about tech I love tech and I see this linkage today that is been never really been there that strong before but now it's almost like if you don't have diversity your AI and bots are going to fail. Forester just said that AI and bots is the future so companies have to pay attention to this now. I really think it's the moment of time. >> We're running out of time. I'm going to give you the last word. What are one or two concrete things that you've seen in your experience that leaders can do, like came up today in the keynote tomorrow to really help move the ball down the field? >> I think one is to make sure you have a diverse team and make sure that it represents diversity of thought and that could be age, it could be gender it could be sexual orientation, race you got to look at that diversity of team, that's one. Secondly, just by having a diverse team doesn't mean you're going to get great output. You've got to be inclusive. You've got to give these folks great projects. Like millennials, give them a passion project. Let them go and do something that can really make a difference. Then third, I think you have to test and make sure what you're delivering out there represents that cognitive diversity of thought so make sure that you're not just putting stuff out there just to get it out there but really double-checking it. I think those are three actionable things that you can do tomorrow. >> That's great, Sandy. Thank you very much. >> Thanks, Jeff. >> Thanks for stopping by. We just checked Sandy's calendar and there we know where to take theCUBE because she's all over the place. She's Sandy Carter, I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE from the Professional BusinessWomen of California conference in San Francisco. Thanks for watching. (synth music)