>> Narrator: Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE covering Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of the Grace Hopper conference here in Orlando, Florida. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my cohost, Jeff Frick. We are joined by Yasmine Mustafa. She is the founder of ROAR. Thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you. >> So ROAR is a self-defense wearable technology for women. Tell our viewers a little bit more about the technology and also really where you got the idea. >> Sure, I got the idea about four years ago. I decided to do something a little bit crazy. I got rid of all my possessions. I got rid of my apartment. I put a backpack on, and I booked a solo trip to South America for six months, and I did it for two reasons. The first reason is refugee, and when I came here, even though I was brought here when I was 15 applying for colleges, I actually found out I was undocumented, so I spent about 10 years working under the table trying to become legalized, and it was a very long, hard battle. It was very difficult to go to school and get a real job, and once I became a US citizen which happened five years ago, I was also able to sell my first company. I had a software company before ROAR. And after those two events, I said, "You know what, I'm 30 years old. "I deserve a break. "I've had a long journey. "I'm going to go celebrate." >> Jeff: Start another long journey. (laughs) >> Yeah, exactly. (laughing) I wanted to travel for so long and I couldn't 'cause when you're undocumented, it's really-- >> Hard to get back into the country. >> And you don't have the right credentials and even after I got my Green Card, I could. You can travel after getting your Green Card but I was so worried that I wouldn't be able to come back 'cause I've heard stories that I intentionally didn't, and so I booked this six-month trip as a way to reward myself and as a way to kind of make up for everything that had happened beforehand, and it was amazing trip. It was really life-changing. When I talk about it, I talk about my life in relation to before the trip and after the trip because it was so transformational, and I went to Spanish school for three weeks, did full Spanish immersions, stayed with a Spanish family in Ecuador, and then I went to Colombia and Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru. I spent a month in each country but as incredible as it was, it was also incredibly eye-opening because everywhere that I went and visited, I just kept hearing story after story of a time a woman had been attacked or abused or harassed, and it really opened my eyes to the violence women face every day, and a week after I came back to Philadelphia, it was in a downtown, when my neighbor went out to her car. It's a horrible story. She was grabbed from behind. she was dragged into an alley. She was severely assaulted, brutally assaulted. When I saw the news story the next day, that was when the light bulb moment hit, and I called up my cofounder, my formal adviser of my last company and told him about it, Anthony Gold, and we ended together to start ROAR for Good, and the concept initially was completely different. We thought the problem was that existing self-defense tools, pepper sprays, tasers was that you have to pull them out of your pocket or your purse for them to be useful, and it's not like you could just be like, "Excuse me. "One second," (laughing) and dig it out, so we thought let's make it wearable so that it's readily accessible. This is when Fitbit was huge, and the initial idea was actually called the macelet, mace in a bracelet, and (laughs) exactly, and as clever as that name was, we found out through market research that it was actually a terrible idea, that the number one fear that women had of self-defense tools is, "I'm afraid I'm going to be overpowered, and my own self-defense device used as a weapon against me," and another one, "What if I use it against myself accidentally?" And when we did more research, we found that existing self-defense tools are actually made by men for other men, and when the market opportunity for women came about, they shrunk it, they shrinked it and pinked it, and they didn't really account for women's needs, so we went back to the drawing board, and we said, "All right, we need to make something "that's stylish but discreet, "something that can call for help, "something that can ward off an attack, "and something that cannot be used "against the person wearing it", and that's how we came up with Athena. >> So do you have one that you can show are yours, what it looks like? >> I do, I do, yes. >> This is what it looks like. >> How it works, okay. >> So it has a magnetic band. Initially it was actually a bracelet, and when we were doing self-defense classes with prototypes, we actually found out the worst place to wear a safety device is on your wrist, and can you guess why? >> Somebody grabs your wrist, grabs your arm, right? >> Exactly, or now you only have the opposite hand to activate it, so we said, "No, we need to make something "that's more readily accessible "where both hands can be free," so we designed it with this magnetic strip so that you can clip it on any which way you want. The most popular options we've seen are purse, pocket bra strap, or lapel, and the way it works is if you feel nervous, if you want someone to watch over you, you triple press the button, and it sends your coordinates to your family and friends showing exactly where you are, and if there is danger, if you really need help right away, you press and hold it for three seconds, and it will also sound an alarm, and in about seven rings, you'll also be able to call emergency number, the local PSAP, 911 center in your neighborhood. >> Wow. >> It's such a great concept. As are so many great inventions are, it's really assembling a bunch of components that already exist, your cellphone, an app on your phone, your network of your contacts, the GPS in your phone, and assembling it in a slightly different way for a very specific application. >> Everything that's commonplace, it's in the device. There's nothing proprietary about it. It's just the way that we put it together. Again, we took existing technology and put it together in a way and tested it to make sure that it's something that can work, and we worked with police officers and self-defense instructors to put it together, which is really eye-opening as well. >> And the other part, if you can explore, it's a different way to interact with 911 so if it is an emergency, you're not picking up the phone, you're not talking but according to your website, it's faster, in a lot of ways, it's more efficient. There's a lot of benefits to a not phone call connection with what traditionally has been the way you ask for help, and how did getting that through, is that a regulatory thing? How did that whole process work? >> That's a great question. It's something that we probably spent about a year working on, and we actually have a partner that does it for us, so this partner, what's really cool about them is that they have a relationship with all 500 PSAPs, so a PSAP is just your local 911 center in your area, and our service is going to be able to to leverage their partnership to be able to connect with all of them. The way their system works is they can actually better track you through their service than your normal cellphone can, which is also really cool, and if you're my emergency contacts and I press this button 'cause I can't call 911 and you're in Orlando, I'm in Philadelphia, it will actually route you to the PSAP in my neighborhood versus your local PSAP so then it saves the time in terms of calling the Orlando PSAP and then having them call the Philadelphia PSAP and then finding me, so we're really, really excited about this opportunity. >> So apart from the technology, I want to talk to you a little bit about funding. Funding is one of the greatest barriers that really, all technologists but in particular, women founders face. Can you describe a little bit about how you went about finding sources of money? You already sold a company by then so you'd already been successful. >> Yes. >> But what about people without the track record? What would you say? >> Sure. I'd love to touch on the social mission aspect at some point too if you don't mind. For funding, I'm very lucky in the sense that my cofounder, he's also founded several companies in the past and fundraising is his thing, so he's been the one to lead it but what we did initially, so we spent about 18 months in product development, and we did a lot of testing, I mean really awkward, we put ourselves in really awkward situations where we went to parks and coffee shops, and showed people this and said, "Why would you not use this? "Tell me why you don't like this," and then we went back to the drawing board and did it again and again, and then we got to the point where people said, "Yeah, I want this. "I want this for my mom. "I want this for my child. "I want this for my college student." But there is a world of difference between, say, yeah, I want it versus buying it, so what we did initially is we actually launched a crowdfunding campaign. We launched an Indiegogo campaign, and for us, it was really a way to test if we really had, we were onto something. We initially had the goal of $40,000. The results really blew us away. We hit that $40,000 goal within the second day, got to 100 by the 10th day, 100,000, and then we ended the campaign with a little bit over 300,000 funding, and that really allowed us to do our seat stage round, and we were lucky from the sense we have a really interesting story. There is a billionaire couple in the UK that found out about us through the campaign after it took off. We had sales in every state in the country, 50 countries worldwide. Ashton Kutcher tweeted about it. It was amazing. It went viral for a little bit, which was incredible, but they learned about it, and then reached out to Indiegogo and said, "We want to meet this team, the company behind this team," and we connected with them, and they immediately put $2 million into the company. We went and met with them in Chicago after they came over, and within three days, we had the money in our bank account, so we got a little bit lucky but having that crowdfunding campaign, the success as validation really helped us to be able to raise that additional funding, and then we went to Ben Franklin Technology Partners, and they put in $250,000, our local economic resource center that does matching, and that's how we raised our initial seed to growth. >> And you mentioned the social mission piece so I want you to tell our viewers a little bit more. >> Yeah, so I, for a long tIme, lived in fear, so being undocumented, not really knowing what could happen, and I'm actually giving a talk tomorrow about my whole journey, and learning about women living in fear in another different way while traveling throughout South America. I didn't want to build a company that just built products and sold them to women that just put the onus on women 'cause it's too common for us to say were you drinking when something happens or don't do, don't wear this, don't go here, and we wanted to change that narrative, hence, the ROAR for Good aspect, and what we found after talking with psychologists and researchers is that violence against women stems from gender discrimination and inequality, and that there is one trait, if taught to young kids when they're most impressionable, can actually reduce violence against women, and that's empathy, and that empathy has actually decreased 40% over the last 20 years, and there is a controversy on whether or not it's something that's learned or innate but wherever you fall in that category, there is no denying that it is falling regardless, so we invest, we have what we call a ROAR Back program, which is we invest a portion of proceeds of every sale to nonprofits that specifically focus on teaching respect and healthy relationships to young kids when it matters most. >> Yasmine, thank you so much for joining us. >> Thank you. >> It's a really exciting technology. Thank you. >> Hopefully we'll see you at Philly. We got to have a Philly show. >> Come to Philly, please. >> So you got Josh as a buddy so-- >> Yes. >> Come on, Josh. We got to have us some Philly. (laughing) >> I'm Rebecca Knight with Jeff Frick. We will have more from Grace Hopper just after this. (light music)

from San Francisco it's the queue covering Red Hat summit 2018 brought to you by Red Hat hey welcome back everyone this is the cube live in San Francisco Moscone West for coverage of Red Hat summit 2018 I'm John for the co-host of the cube mykos this week as analyst John Schwarz the co-founder of tech reckoning advisory and Community Development firm our next guest is Craig pizzelles right senior vice president application platforms business and portfolio for Red Hat great to see you welcome back to the cube thank you very much John so big-time executive a company is doing well and you guys are growing adding more people every time being successful again an open source another generations upon us a standing on the shoulders of giants you guys have been a business model for Red Hat for many many years rel certainly successful container madness now mainstream kubernetes clear line of sight on what that's doing as an abstraction layer and standard de-facto standard around orchestration the really good tailwind for you guys and the industry absolutely absolutely congratulations and what's your take I mean obviously you got apps now you're good people gonna be building apps system working OpenStack what's what's going on right well there's a lot going on I mean we've we've been very consistent about our strategy and it's finally starting to pay off and come together and I think the mark is starting to realize that we have been talking about hybrid cloud before it was in vogue and you know well over five years ago and so all those pieces come together we've always talked about a story of there are multiple footprints whether it's physical vert traditional virtual private cloud and public cloud and then companies will want to and customers will want to do more than just the four footprints they want to do multi cloud as well so you know we've been very strong on the infrastructure side having Linux as the base and the operational consistency across those footprints in which to build on and then now containers and kubernetes with OpenShift gives us plus that that last leg together to give us that abstraction layer across these multiple footprints to allow hybrid to happen I wanna get your reaction this because we were talking on our intro package around the dynamic we're seeing in today's business landscape and technical landscape open source clearly the business model for software right check kubernetes provide some interoperability and cloud native growth for new applications cloud we're cloud native what are you gonna call it and then you've got legacy applications for the first time don't have to get thrown away to go to the new world you have the ability to containerize write pre-existing applications while bringing a new functionality new infrastructure new software methodologies development architectures modernizing software yeah while maintaining and preserving the life cycle of pre-existing applications great absolutely this is the dynamic that is really a wonderful thing because takes the pressure off absolutely and I think that's unique to Red Hat which is we've always had not only the hybrid cloud story the multi cloud story but the fact that containers allows you to advanced advanced a movement to you know do digital transformation start using micro services etc but you don't need to start over you can take existing applications you can containerize those applications get them into a cloud environment gain those efficiencies operational efficiencies and development efficiencies and then start to also build new applications based on microservices architectures and bring both together some of the other vendors out there may only have a story about well you have to rewrite everything it right or it's only going to be public cloud and you're tied to those public cloud api's I think you know using containers as a methodology and then using orchestration with kubernetes you can have the best of both worlds and we think that's important I wanted to drill down to the stack a little bit more right I think this year maybe even as opposed to last year the cube was that the OpenStack summit and there was a little bit of confused talk about you know containers you know what on what openshift on OpenStack or vice versa the message this this year very clear you know openshift on OpenStack here's the infrastructure don't get confused so we've got those two layers that you lay down but also there's a lot of application services in the Red Hat stack that you all have built out and I think if people were listening closely right there's a multi-year investment in there in things like you know that originated with an application server like JBoss that now actually in 2018 architectural II look very different now that's a set of services that developers can use so maybe I mean can you talk a little bit about I mean that's an example also I'm not throwing everything out but evolving can talk a little bit about the depth of the stack there and and servicing all those various requirements I mean if you look at the stack we're talking about infrastructure services some of those are in things like OpenStack so you know whether it's compute storage networking etc we demonstrated some ability in through kubernetes to provision and orchestrate VMs and so you saw some of that in the demos that we show today but then once you lay down that foundational layer with containers and kubernetes with openshift then we start to build services on top of that we have been building this portfolio of middleware services for some time and so we can provide messaging as a service we can provide integration and ipad services we have something now called Roar which is packaging together a runtime and frameworks to put together inside of OpenShift we have process management and orchestration technologies business process management so all those services are something that developers need and you start adding those now as cloud services and so the other one of the other things that we've also done beginning about two years ago we began a journey for automating the application lifecycle of building application the pipeline capability we did an acquisition of a company called codenvy which is the founders of eclipse CheY the cloud native ide and workspace environment and so now we've now begun shipping openshift i/o to give you that end-to-end capability from beginning your project to writing the code to doing CI CD and managing the full lifecycle so it's all starting to come together for us a big big talk here at the show about kubernetes being kind of dun dun gnu/linux right the new platform that's going to enable a huge amount of innovation but I love that openshift is more than kubernetes a and also that you know as part of this it's it's a it's you know the role of Linux was a bunch of device drivers right and you're and you're organizing on one machine the clap now that we're in cloud right kubernetes is is about operations like you just said about the code lifecycle about all this stuff and all of a sudden yes it yes it's a it's an analogy but but it's much broader than that it's much broader than that one analogy I mean you made the analogy about Linux I mean Linux basically abstracted a number of hardware architectures and gave you a common operating environment in which to run on x86 or even run on a mainframe or run on power now running on arm you know we have looked at and said well there's a similar analogy now having and taking place with containers in kubernetes where you can create an orchestration layer and an abstraction layer across multiple infrastructures and then building app dev services on top of that so that's what's coming together right now so you know we think it's important also to build out the ecosystem so we're providing application development services on top of this you know this abstraction layer we're building tooling and application lifecycle management but we're also bringing in partners so our announcements today with or yesterday with IBM and even Microsoft they're container izing sequel server they're putting it into our container catalog there will be a distribution of that the the the IBM products and the IBM middleware products and so we'd right now in our ecosystem development program we have about 60 is v's already certified already in a container catalog we grade them in terms of their security so you have some confidence we have another pipeline of another two hundred is BS coming in and then also our service broker so bringing in services we made announcements last year with with AWS to bring in some of their services like lambda and other services into the service broker so you see this hybrid world where you have a lot of different application development capabilities both from us and from our on the ecosystem and the service broker technology to help you bridge you know the best of breed services from all these multiple clouds okay I talked about the ecosystem evolution because you're creating an enabling technology capability and new new growth is coming we see that already kind of on the radar how is that gonna change the ecosystem makeup for you guys actually the the container catalog and ISPs what's it gonna look like is V is gonna be developer I mean what how do you guys envision the ecosystem evolving over the ecosystem it obviously is involved most of these you know most of the traditional the ISPs will begin to offer their own services you know they might be hosting them on AWS but they're gonna provide cloud services so they're gonna be exposing api's to use those services so I see that the evolution isn't there will be a lot of code that you still containerize and offer but there will be many services that are hosted somewhere else posted in a cloud hosting but you want to bring those services to bear I'm creating in an application maybe on Prem with openshift but I need to use a machine learning service from perhaps Google or from Watson and IBM so how do i and those are hosted services so how do I use those services even though my cloud native environment is inside inside the inside the firewall front I'm an integration or two critical pieces you guys got a layout across that right yeah yeah yes and so there's a distributed computer it sounds like an operating system out but it's spread all over the place it's spread all over the place your thoughts on your current portfolio how's it kind of all you talk about some of the services you're enabling within your own portfolio for your customers out there now rel very stable operationally everybody knows that how is the portfolio within Red Hat gonna continue to evolve at what's their vision there yeah so we are beginning to do more of you know integrating infrastructure services in from kubernetes so what you saw you know cnv containerized virtualization allows you to orchestrate VMS we've done the same thing with storage and storage virtualization you'll see more on the infrastructure side probably things like networking are next some of the API is within OpenStack but then up stack we're looking at other capabilities we do have a project going on right now with server list it's in tech preview it was demoed yesterday so you'll see a server list offering from us we have been experimenting with machine learning and AI and we're using it inside of our own capabilities like insights which is a management a hosted management tool but providing machine learning capabilities and offering those inside natively with inside of open ship these are all futures and part of the roadmap that we have going forward for application developers out there are potential partners of Red Hat what's the mandate in your mind to make kubernetes a first-class citizen so if I'm watching I want it I want a vector into this you know skate to where the puck is going kind of mindset what do I need to do what is an enterprise and a business or developer or startup right need to do two cunning connect into the growth is it a playbook do you see something involving that stick and maybe a clear line one of the things I mean from is just a technical basis if you if a partner has software well get a containerized figure out how that works in containers how many how do you structure that if a partner has a service then make that available through the service broker we will work with those partners to you know look at business models that might be appropriate in a cloud native environment that spans across cloud to help them market so those are some of the things I think you know a partner or an ecosystem provider would you should think about what's the feedback of the show here after the hallway conversations Dobbs a lot a lot of openshift conversations it's a centerpiece what are you hearing what are you seeing what's what's going on for you at the show here I think the breadth of what Red Hat has become I you know when we'd go to shows five six years ago we had you know started to build out the portfolio but you know people would still come to the show and you know it's the Linux show but it's no longer the Linux show it's it's a much bigger it's it's about computing open-source computing in the enterprise and cloud-based computing and so the breadth of the portfolio I think is a surprise for many people and how many things we do offer when you look at some of the customer testimonials and the demos we're showing everything from you know infrastructure and private cloud infrastructure out to very sophisticated application development use cases so I think that's a big difference than what you might have seen six broad you're broadening your portfolio from standalone Linux to include management applicate more applications this is a bigger market it's a much bigger market I think we you know we view our we we view our opportunity as becoming the computing platform both at an infrastructure level and helping the developers for the next you know for the next 50 years so hopefully right and it's a shift in the marketplace - and a shift in skill set of the people who are here right that's another thing that to be able to pull those two people into the future like yeah absolutely I mean the skill set used to be again you know a primary linux show a lot of linux systems administrators and and data center executives and data center managers and now you have a much more senior levels many c-suite people coming here to to understand how they transform their business how open-source can help how this broad hybrid cloud platform can help and then a large set of architects and developers so the mix is really interesting now it's not just the infrastructure and data center guys but it's the executives that make those decisions as well as the application develop you have more community members that are users inside the open source projects making things happen oh absolutely you guys now it helps everyone else oh I was just approached by a large bank this week and on openshift i/o which is this tool chain this pipeline capability now an open shift they want to participate they asked how do we get involved in the projects in the upstream projects we would like to build this out so that's just one example I think of and we get asked all the time about hey can you teach us how to be an open company how to be how does open source work how could we facilitate that in our culture to be a little bit more creative collaborative and move faster so I mean open source model is definitely real what are the customer feedback can you share because we're hearing the same thing the customers saying okay it's easier to recruit it's easier to just make everything open just from an operational standpoint right what are some of your top customers that have been with red head for a while what are they saying to you when they say wow this the benefits are are well well the benefits I think are are that they are much faster to market they can leverage skills and capabilities that may not be inherent in their own company beyond their walls they could you know get build ecosystems that have affinity to the to themselves all because they're just you know reaching out there they're participating in open source communities and trying to create a culture of open source and then you get better products out of a certain link wray thanks for coming on the cube and sharing your insights congratulations on all your success great to have you on we're here at the Red Hat summit 28 teens the cubes live covers stay with us for more work day two of three days of wall-to-wall coverage we'll be right back after this short break I'm John four with John Troy here stay with us

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

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

>> Announcer: Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE, covering Grace Hopper's Celebration of Women in Computing, brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. >> Welcome to day one of the Grace Hopper Conference here in Orlando, Florida. Welcome back to theCUBE, I should say. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, Jeff Frick. We have just seen some really great keynote addresses. We had Faith Ilee from Stanford University. Melinda Gates, obviously the co-founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. We also had Diane Green, the founder of VMware. Jeff, what are your first impressions? >> You know, I love comin' to this show. It's great to be workin' with you again, Rebecca. I thought the keynotes were really good. I've seen Diane Green speak a lot and she's a super smart lady, super qualified, changed the world of VMware. She's not always the greatest public speaker, but she was so comfortable up there. She so felt in her element. It was actually the best I'd ever seen. For me, I'm not a woman, but I'm a dad of two daughters. It was really fun to hear the lessons that some of these ladies learned from their father that they took forward. So, I was really hap-- I admit, I'm feelin' the pressure to make sure I do a good job on my daughters. >> Make sure those formative experiences are the right ones, yes. >> It's just interesting though how people's early foundation sets the stage for where they go. I thought Dr. Sue Black, who talked about the morning she woke up and her husband threatened to kill her. So, she just got out of the house with her two kids and started her journey then. Not in her teens, not in her twenties, not in college. Obviously well after that, to get into computer science and to start her tech journey and become what she's done now. Now she's saving the estate where the codebreakers were in World War II, so phenomenal story. Melinda Gates, I've never seen her speak. Then Megan Smith, always just a ton of energy. Before she was a CTO for the United States, that was with the Obama administration. I don't think she hung around as part of the Trump Administration. She brings such energy, and now, kind of released from the shackles of her public service and her own thing. Great to see her up there. It's just a terrific event. The energy that comes from, I think, a third of the people here are young women. Really young, either still in college or just out of college. Really makes for an atmosphere that I think is unique in all the tech shows that we cover. >> I completely agree. I think the energy really is what sets the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing apart from all the other conferences. First of all, there's just many more women who come to this. The age, as you noted, it's a lot lower than your typical tech conference. But, I also just think what is so exciting about this conference is that it is this incredible mix of positivity. let's get more women in here, let's figure out ways to get more women interested in computer science and really working on their journey as tech leaders. But, also really understanding what we're up against in this industry. Understanding the bro-grammar culture, the biases that are really creating barriers for women to get ahead, and actually to even enter into the industry itself. Then, also there's the tech itself, so we have these women who are talking about these cool products that they're making and different pathways into artificial intelligence and machine-learning, and what they're doing. So, it's a really incredible conference that has a lot of different layers to it. >> It's interesting, Dr. Fei-Fei Li was talking a lot about artificial intelligence, and the programming that goes into artificial intelligence, and kind of the classic Google story where you use crowdsourcing and run a bunch of photographs through an algorithm to teach it. But, she made a really interesting point in all this discussion about, is it the dark future of AI, where they take over the world and kill us all? Or, is it a positive future, where it frees us up to do more important things and more enlightened things. She really made a good point that it's, how do you write the algorithms? How are we training the computers to do what we do? Women bring a different perspective. Diversity brings a different perspective. To bake that into the algorithms up front is so, so important to shape the way the AI shapes the evolution of our world. So, I found that to be a really interesting point that she brought up that I don't think is talked about enough. People have to write the algorithms. People have to write the stuff that trains the machines, so it's really important to have a broad perspective. You are absolutely right, and I think she actually made the point even broader than that in the sense of is if AI is going to shape our life and our economy going forward-- >> Which it will, right? >> Which it will. Then, the fact that there are so few women in technology, this is a crisis. Because, if the people who are the end-users and who are going to either benefit or be disadvantaged by AI aren't showing up and aren't helping create it, then yes, it is a crisis. >> Right. And I think the other point that came up was to bake more computer science into other fields, whether it's biology, whether it's law, education. The application of AI, the application of computer science in all those fields, it's much more powerful than just computing for the sake of computing. I think that's another way hopefully to keep more women engaged. 'Cause a big part of the issue is, not only the pipeline at the lead, but there's a lot of droppage as they go through the process. So, how do you keep more of 'em involved? Obviously, if you open it up across a broader set of academic disciplines, by rule you should get more retention. The other thing that's interesting here, Rebecca. This is our fourth year theCUBE's been at Grace Hopper's since way back in Phoenix in 2014, ironically, when there was also a big Microsoft moment at that show that we won't delve back into. But, it's a time of change. We have Brenda Darden Wilkerson, the brand new president of the Anita Borg organization. Telle Whitney's stepping down and she's passing the baton. We'll have them both on. So, again, Telle's done a great job. Look what she's created in the team. But, always fun to have fresh blood. Always fun to bring in new energy, new point of view, and I'm really excited to meet Brenda. She's done some amazing things in the Chicago Public School System, and if you've ever worked in a public school district, not a really easy place to innovate and bring change. >> Right, no, of course. Yeah, so our lineup of guests is incredible this week. We've got Sarah Clatterbuck, who is a CUBE alum. We have a woman who is the founder of Roar, which is a self-defense wearable technology. We're going to be looking at a broad array of the women technologists who are leading change in the industry, but then also leading it from a recruitment and retention point of-- >> So, should be a great three days, looking forward to it. >> I am as well. Excellent. Okay, so please keep joining us. Keep your channel tuned in here to theCUBE"s coverage of the Grace Hopper Conference here in Orlando, Florida. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, Jeff Frick. We will see you back here shortly. (light, electronic music)

>> Announcer: Live, from Orlando, Florida, it's theCube, covering Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. Brought to you by SiliconAngle Media. >> Welcome back to theCube's coverage of Grace Hopper Conference here in Orlando, Florida, I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We have a great panel here today, we have three guests. We have Hilary Burns and Caroline Lester, both Reporting Fellows for the GroundTruth Project, and Tori Bedford, who is a Field Producer for the GroundTruth Project. It's great to have you guys on here. >> Thank you for having us. >> Thank you. >> So, I'll start with you, Tori, since you were a reporting fellow last year at the Grace Hopper Conference, tell our viewers what the GroundTruth Project is, and what your mission is. >> So, the GroundTruth Project is a non-profit based in Boston and it hopes to encourage young journalists and earlier-career journalists all around the world. So there is a series of fellowships going on, pretty much at all times. Different projects, there's one going across America right now that's looking at, it's called Crossing the Divide, it's looking at divides in America. It's a very divisive time for American politics so they're doing stories about that. And, obviously, we are re-upping our women in tech, women in leadership fellowship this year which we're really excited about. >> And so, each of you are working on your own, individual stories and then you will get back to Boston and produce. So, Hilary, let's hear from you, what are you working on here, what's your topic? >> Sure, so most of my time spend at the Grace Hopper Celebration so far has been spent talking with student about their career aspirations, any barriers they foresee, coming across any concerns they have about entering a male-dominated industry. And it's really been fascinating hearing their stories, some of them are international students, others are from universities all over the world and including Canada and the U.S. So, it's been very inspirational to hear. >> So, but here the ones that are aspiring to careers in technology and they're here at Grace Hopper, but there must be other ones who are too discouraged so they're not here. Are you also getting that angle, too? >> Well, I think it's important for that group of women to see these women who do feel empowered and are, a lot of them use phrases like, "We are making a difference in the gender gap "and if I don't do it, who else will do it?" So, I think it's important for all aspiring technologists to hear these women's stories. >> Are they discouraged, though? Because the headlines are bleak, I mean, we know that it's the numbers, but it's also the Google manifesto, it's the shenanigans of Travis Kalanick and people like him in Silicon Valley. What do they make of that? >> It's interesting, all of them are very intelligent, very aware of what's going on in the world. I've heard a mixed bag of responses from, "I try not to "read too much because I don't want to go in expecting "and having my own biases, I want to see for myself." Others are saying, "Yeah, I am nervous and I want to see "more women creating a path that I can then follow." So, I think there are a lot of people that are optimistically optimistic about their future. >> Cautiously optimistic. >> Thank you. Thank you for correcting me. (laughs) But, it's been interesting to hear all the different perspectives. >> Great, Caroline, how about you, what are you working on? >> Yeah, so, I am personally interested in the more personal stories of some of these women speaking at the conference. I've talked to the four really, wonderful, inspirational women. So, one of my favorites, I've just published a story on her, Chieko Asakawa, who is an IBM Fellow which is the highest honor you can receive at IBM. And she went blind at the age of 11, and has spent her life programming and creating programs and tools to help the blind access the world that is pretty hard to navigate if you don't have eyesight. So, she is super inspirational, super smart, super funny. So, it was a pleasure talking with her. And then I'm talking with three other women, Yasmine Mustafa, who started something called Roar for Good. >> Rebecca: We've had her on the show. >> Oh, you did? >> Yeah. >> Wonderful, great. So, she's fantastic, I'm really glad you covered her. And then another woman named Sarah Echohawk, who, sort of, is an advocate, an activist and is getting more and young, native women involved in STEM. And then, finally, I'll be talking with Stephanie Lampkin of Blendoor, who started this wonderful app to try and overcome the implicit bias, and unconscious bias that happens when people are hiring women or people of color in recruiting for them. >> So she's starting this app that she will then sell to companies, or sell to other recruiters? >> So, she's already started it and she has a lot of major tech companies involved. I think Airbnb uses it, I want to say SalesForce uses it, you're going to have to check me on that one. But she's got about 5,000 people on it right now. >> Wow, so the goal of these stories is to inspire other women by their success. >> Exactly, so these are four radically different women coming into tech in radically different ways and it's just really incredible to see how they've managed to overcome all sorts of obstacles in their way. And not only overcome them, but, sort of, utilize them to their advantage and stake out a place for themselves in this industry. >> Great, Tori, what are the projects that you are working on here? >> So, we've been hearing a lot about diversity, diversity is so important, and we've been hearing about how increasing diversity in a company makes your company better. It just brings in more perspectives, and it also, what's really interesting is that, in tech, it can catch people who have a diverse range of perspectives, can catch problems with products, or with a code, or with something, and how it would be implemented out into the world. I caught this really interesting panel yesterday about disability and looking at how people with disabilities can make companies, specifically tech companies, can help to improve them. This woman, Jennifer Jong, who is an Accessibility Program Manager at Microsoft, she was really interesting. She was talking about how, I wrote a piece on this yesterday, she's talking about how, when you bring people in with a disability, how they can catch things that other people just don't see or wouldn't normally notice. And also how, when we create things for those with disabilities, you know, a lot of things that have been implemented by the Americans with Disabilities Act. She talked about the button that you press to go through the door, how it can also be used by people who don't have disabilities and how it's important to create things that can be used by everybody, but that have inclusion in mind. >> So, why is that true? What is her perspective on why people with disabilities have this special ways to detect blind spots? >> So, if you're creating something, there's no way that you can know how many users are going to be interacting with it, there's no way that you can predict that a person with a disability won't be using it, and so it's diversity, it's really important to bring in different perspectives. So, they had talked about a video, a really beautiful, promotional video that showed a range of visuals, it was very effective but it had no sound and a blind person wouldn't get anything out of it. And so, it's like looking at a product, you need somebody to be in the room, just like you want women and people of color and a range of ethnicities, you want diversity, you want someone to be able to say, "This isn't going to work for me, this isn't going "to work for my child, this isn't going to work "for a range of people." And that's a really effective and important thing that ultimately saves your company's bottom line, because then, you won't have to go back and change your product in the future. >> And fix it, fix it as a problem. >> Right, you'll spend more money fixing your product than you would if you had just talked about, had inclusion and diversity, if you'd just considered that from the get-go, you'll ultimately save your company more money. >> So, the question for the three of you, really, is that as you said, we hear so much about the importance of diversity and of getting a variety of perspectives, and having people of different genders, and races, and cultures feel included and having a voice at the table, I just want to know, I mean, do companies really feel this way or is that what they say at Grace Hopper because this is what makes sense to say to their target audience? >> It's totally possible that it's just a marketing ploy, it's totally possible that they're realizing that half the population makes money and can do things, and that makes more money. I mean, a lot of tech is driven by the bottom line, it's driven by financials, but in the case of the disability thing, it's like, it almost doesn't matter. It is not only the right thing to do, if you need a financial incentive, that's not good. Obviously, it's the right thing to do so you should be doing it for that reason, but if you do also have a financial incentive, that's not bad. And if we're, sort of, driving more towards empowering women and giving women a voice and allowing women to do things and taking them seriously, ultimately that's not a bad thing. >> And just to add to that, I think there is a lot of research out there today, for example, having more women on corporate boards, that that does impact the bottom line and, obviously, that's what companies are most concerned about. So, I think that companies are starting to realize that having that diversity and inclusion is good for business as well as a marketing ploy. >> And I think, I mean, just to add, I also think that, you know, whether or not this is a good thing, I think companies do realize that that is important. And they're realizing that it's necessary, I don't know, it's necessary to impact the bottom line and that is something that, whether or not we like it, it is the most convincing factor for many of these companies. >> I think it's also, when you have women moving up to positions of power, to the C-Suite, to positions of leadership, they understand that women are people with skills and they are the ones who are, you know, hiring more women, and that ultimately helps the bottom line. So, as you have more and more women moving higher and higher to the top, that's when, like when we talk about the companies changing, that's because women are changing. And they're changing the perspectives of men and everybody else in between that works at the company. >> Are women changing? I mean, I think that's a question, too, is that we're all as collectively as a society, becoming more aware that these biases exist in hiring and recruitment practices. But, I think that's the question, are women starting to change, too, the way they behave in the workplace, the way they go about managing their careers? >> I know it's changing minds, like other peoples' minds. >> That's a really interesting question, though. One student I talked to who was from India, talked about the gender discrimination she has faced. And she said she did change how she acted, she shut down all emotions, she took any emotion out of her responses because her colleagues would say, "Oh, you're a woman, "you're so emotional," and she was tired of that. So, it's an interesting question to look at. I don't know, I don't have the data in front of me but it would be interesting to look into that. >> Yeah, great, that's the next GroundTruth project. Excellent, well Hilary, Caroline, Tori, thanks so much for being on theCube, we've had great fun talking to you. >> Yes, thanks for having us. >> Thank you. >> We will have more from the Orange County Convention Center, the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, just after this. (upbeat music)