>> Presenter: theCUBE presents UiPath FORWARD5 brought to you by UiPath. >> Back to theCUBE's coverage of UiPath FORWARD5, 2022. This is theCUBE's 4th UiPath FORWARD. They're mining automation gold here at the conference and in the customer base and we're creating Cube Gold, Dave Vellante and Dave Nicholson. Cheryln Chin is here. She's the vice president of Global Alliances at UIPATH. Sameer Bohra, who's the director of Information Technology at Deloitte. Good to see you guys. >> Great. >> Thank you. >> Now normally we would be talking about, how Deloitte's out, doing its thing with its customers, but this is actually a case study on Deloitte's use of automation and UiPath, so that's cool. You not only partner with the GSIs you actually sell to them as well. Okay. What's that all about? What's your relationship like? Why don't you start there? >> Absolutely. So we're thrilled to be here. Thanks for having us. And really appreciate Sameer being here with us. Deloitte was an early adopter of UiPath not just as a partner, driving innovations and investing in getting skilled and building the capability. They were the first to become the US and certified partner network investing in thousands and thousands of skilling up their consultants and resources to help us address our customer needs together. But it's not just about being a great partner it's being a customer with what they've done and built their own business around UiPath and the automations. We've got an amazing story to tell you about today that we'd love to share. >> All right, Sameer, let's hear it. What's the story? What was the catalyst to bring in automation, UiPath? Where are you applying it? Where'd you start? >> Fantastic, well first of all, thanks for having me here. >> You're welcome. >> I'll start this journey with the predictions that we were making at some point. So, Deloitte, as a company, we are in the business of predicting the technology trends. We have been tracking automation as a trend for quite some time, and we have been following how this industries going to come along. And we then started placing our bets not just on the technology, but on the vendor as well in this case. Right around 2017, 18 is when we started kind of implementing automation with UiPath for our internal purposes. And as it happens, different constituents in our member firms started doing it at the same time without kind of consulting with each other. But the surprising thing is that we all ended up with the same results. We all ended up with UiPath. We all ended up using the same technology set and it was good that we all made the same choice because we would then all get along with it together. So we started our journey kind of disintegrated in a way and then we came along quickly all together. We then have COEs in each of our member firms, or at least the big member firms. And around January last year is when we signed an enterprise license agreement with UiPath that really brought some of our mature COEs together. And now we are kind of utilizing the product quite well. We are exploring the benefits of that ELA brings to us. So that has been our journey so far. Just in terms of some numbers, we are more than 400 millionaires saved for our member firm. We have hundreds of processes that we have automated. I'm kind of losing count of that already. And we have a good 70, 80 member team members across our three mature COEs that are constantly automating day in and day out. So there's a lot in terms of the history and there's a lot that we are looking forward to. >> Can you paint a picture of sort of where you're applying these automations in your business and maybe double click on that a little bit? >> Absolutely. So when we started our journey, there were some candidates right off the bat there were some of our enabling areas where we were looking at for instance, finance our talent which we also called as HR. Those were some of our preliminary areas that we started doing automations for. But another surprising thing is that our first automation use cases were actually contingent solutions that we built to help some of the other big deployments that were happening in the firm. And in absence of any good solution, we said, "Let's bring in RP and let's bridge the gap." And that basically opened the door for us to use automation at a bigger scale. So it's enabling area, talent, finance, business operations. Those are the prominent areas, marketing, chief culture, those are the areas that we are applying it. And then our services on the other hand are using automation as well because we need our services people to be armed with the valuable time to be able to invest on our clients rather than, being stuck in repetitive mundane tasks. So we are pretty much applying it all over the board now. >> So as director of IT at Deloitte, I'm curious about how this process works for you. You've heard the term drinking one's own champagne. >> Yeah. >> When you are looking... >> 'or jog fooding, but okay. >> I was trying to be polite, right? One throat to choke one bat to pat, back to pat. Are you immediately and at all times under a microscope when you're deploying something internally because someone else in Deloitte is thinking, "Okay, let's see how this works for us. Because if it works well, if we gain expertise, we can turn this into a line of business to help our clients." Is that something that starts day one? Or do people come to you six months into a project and say, "Hey, I hear you have something going on. That's cool." What's that look like? >> Very interesting question. The way I would like to describe it is we have a symbiotic relationship between our internal COE and our client facing teams that are out in the market selling automation along with UiPath. And the way that symbiotic relationship work for us is when we are doing anything interesting in terms of an automation use case, and we have many that I can talk about, we do have this constant connect with our client facing folks where we tell them about the use case. We tell them about the problem that we are solving and the way in which we are solving that problem. And in many cases, it generates interest. And then we get into conversations where we see, okay is it an asset that we can build out of it? Or is it simply a client use case that we could burn and implement and apply somewhere? So that's one side of the symbolic relationship. The other side is what our client service folks are seeing in the market. So when they see it, they come to us and they tell us, "Look, we see such and such client doing this and we did it for them. We should think about doing this in Deloitte and for ourselves." And then we say, "Fantastic, let's do it." So it's both ways. >> Dave: Both ways. And the fact that it is both ways. There is not that sense of pressure or you know that I'm under a microscope. It's all one big family. >> How do you measure success? >> It's a pretty interesting question again, success is subjective, right? When it comes to automation the typical metrics that people use to define and describe success is how many hours you have saved or how many hours, at least the way we use it how many hours you have reinvested, right? So we started with that as our measure and for some time that was really our measure of success. But lately we are seeing a change in that we are now shifting more over to other matrix like cost avoidance. So for instance, your firm is growing at a certain pace. Do all your enabling areas need to grow at that pace? Maybe not. Maybe we can avoid that cost and maybe we bring in more automation to support that. So cost avoidance is kind of emerging as a bigger matrix for us now, especially given that all low hanging automation fruits have been plucked. That's a big one we are looking at. I think the other matrix which is a bit difficult to measure directly is the employee satisfaction. There's somewhere I read that if you want happy clients you need to have happy employees first, right? And one way of making your employees happy is to give them the task that they really value that they really like to do. Now, again, being a professional services firm are ours are people's, our is our currency, right? So we want to give them as much of their valuable time back so they can invest it in their client facing activities as opposed to, you know doing mundane and ones. So those are some of the matrix and measures we are looking at. >> So I'd like to dig into that a little bit. If I could Sameer. So, aren't hours saved sort of related to cost avoidance? Is that an input to the cost avoidance calculation, if you will? >> So yeah, so yes and no. And the reason I say that is because yes, if you do the math, yes, it makes sense, >> 'not that it's direct. I understand it's not a direct relationship but it's somewhere related. Is it not? >> It is related in the sense that our saved is an immediate measure of automation, right? So if me as a practitioner, if I can hand over a task to the bar, which can take off five hours out of my week, that's an hour saved right away. But cost avoidance is more like, "Hey, I have these 10 engagements that are coming up. Do I need to amp up to meet boost end engagement or I simply amp up my automation, right?" So that's more around the cost avoidance piece. >> Okay. So there's an algorithm there. >> Yeah. >> Which makes sense. Do you find, so in other words, when you save hours at some point it's going to translate it to headcount avoidance. Okay, are you finding that when you run a project if you can automate that project, that the proportion of savings is greater on that automation of the project than it is for those sort of hours saved? I'm just sort of curious as to what the balance looks like. Is it like overwhelmingly speeding up the project? Is the real benefit there? I'm just kind of curious. >> There's absolutely a benefit there. With automation, you can obviously speed up your projects, you can do more with the staff and the team that you have. So that's definitely something that helps us a lot both internally and I believe on the client facing side as well. >> Okay. And just put my CFO hat on. Let's, so are those internal resources or are there sort of out of pocket expenses? In other words, it's the hard dollars that I don't spend or is it resources that I can deploy on another project or both? Or both. >> For the most part it's the resources right? >> So it's okay. >> Yeah, it's the resources that you can now have them do more value work with more clients as opposed to have them do many task at one place. >> Okay, I'm going to just keep going. So that's a productivity measure in my mind anyway, so I just like to keep peeling the onion on the metrics. So I would at some point, so the two things the cost avoidance and the employee satisfaction I would ultimately as the CFO want to see that show up in terms of productivity increases and decreases in turnover. And you probably don't have enough experience yet to measure that. But ultimately, isn't that where you want to go? >> I think that's essentially where it's going and I think that's the way it'll probably go for pretty much everyone who is in this journey of automation at your CFO will eventually want to look at, okay what after this investment, where is it leading us? So that's definitely the direction we are also heading. >> Yeah and so productivity revenue per employee, is that a good starting point? Maybe you get more sophisticated than that, but... >> Yeah, that's probably a good starting point. >> UiPath revenue employees about 250,000, which is pretty average for software companies. Now, maybe it's because they're investing more, but at some point I'd like to see that tick to 350,000 anyway. >> Yeah. >> I Digress. >> And we are on that journey where we are essentially looking to arm everyone with a bot right? There's a philosophy and UiPath around a bot for everyone. We are pretty close to getting to that stage where everybody should be able to leverage the technology. We shouldn't be limited to a certain business unit or certain pockets within a business unit. >> I want a bot. I do, I want a bot, I'm getting a bot. >> I wish I have a bot. >> I would, yeah, I want to a bot and I want to give that bot a very clever name. That's like you're thinking of naming bots. So are your activities evaluated in completely independently as sort of your own P and L or do you get credit for some of that symbiotic relationship that's developed? Because I can imagine a situation where you deploy something intelligent automation and you get a yield that translates into a practice for your firm that brings in a bunch of revenue with a bunch of satisfied customers. Do you get credit for that? Or is it like, no, no, no, no. I wouldn't >> I would love to get credit for that. But again, it's all in the family. It's all one big family. At this time we are simply focused on bringing the right use cases forward for our client facing folks and the other way around. So we haven't got into that stage as left. >> But you need to deliver standalone value. You're evaluated that way. >> And this COE. That's what we are evaluated upon. The matrix that I talked about earlier around cost avoidance, number of our saved employee satisfaction. Those are some of area that we are being rated upon. And that's across all our COEs. >> Oh, surely congratulations on landing Deloitte as a customer and of course a partner. And I'm sure there's big things in the future. We'll give you the last word, bring it home. >> You know, the takeaway here is we are leveraging partners like this who are going way beyond just automating processes for the sake of process and our save the using this to build their business make their consultants more productive and really driving profitability for the business. So really the automation flywheel going beyond that's really trying to fuel digital transformation by taking this, they make it go faster, more profitable, more agile, and they become an amazing customer and an amazing good market partner. >> Yeah, you guys take this pretty seriously behind us there's this, I don't know what you call it but this clouds floating above it. If you walk through there, there's some really inspiring commentary. And so I encourage you to do that if you're here at the show. All right, thanks guys, appreciate it. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. All keep it right there Dave Vellante and Dave Nicholson will be back at FORWARD5 UiPath customer event from Las Vegas. We're live right back. (soft music)

>> Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE, covering Microsoft Ignite. Brought to you by Cohesity and theCUBE's ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of Microsoft Ignite. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host Stu Miniman. We're joined by Sameer Nori, he is the director of product marketing at Cohesity. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE, Sameer. >> Thanks Rebecca, and thanks Stu, and thanks for having me on theCUBE. I'm exciting to be here. >> So you are a tech veteran you've been in this industry for a long time, you've worked at a lot of kinds of companies, what drew you to Cohesity? >> That's a great question, so when I was at MAPR, and as you are familiar, MAPR sits at the intersection of big data and storage, and what I saw very interesting and fascinating about Cohesity was a similar hypothesis in terms of, having built its own file system but then really applying it to a different realm of the market, in terms of secondary data and applications starting with backup as the foundation. And as you are aware, analytics is a part of our road map and a solution that we enabled. But you know, some starter things there, but that's kind of actually what really drove me and the opportunity to really try and be part of another hybrid company and apply my experience from prior industries into different segments. >> So you lead outbound marketing for Cohesity's Cloud Solutions, tell our viewers a little about what you do, and what your day is like? >> Sure, so my day oscillates and changes between developing value prop and messaging for our solutions, working with customers to understand their pain points and challenges, being able to translate that into tangible benefits for customers to parley off of, and then really enabling and working with our sales teams closely to help them, arm them with the necessary things they need to go succeed in the market. >> Sameer you've got an interesting space, questions I think we all get in the industry is, things are changing a lot, what do I do with my applications? If you look at the enterprise, most enterprises have hundreds, if not thousands of applications, and it's not a trivial thing to say, oh well, yeah we'll just put everything in the cloud, that'll be real easy, right? You've got SaaS, Microsoft opened the door of the flood gates really pushing everybody to Office 365 to SaaS-ify a lot of what you are doing. Public cloud is a big growth and then private cloud really modernizing the environment, what are you seeing and hearing from customers as to how they deal with the portfolio of their applications mobility of what they're doing? Where does Cohesity play and advise and help with those solutions? >> Sure, that's a great question too. So I think really what we see from customers is a combination of a couple of things. As you said, they've got thousands or probably hundreds of applications, they are not going to take a big chunk of those and just move them to the cloud as is, right? You got to select the right workloads and the right data and do the assessment and the viability fit, in terms of what makes sense. I think where our sweet spot really is is kind of back to what I said earlier. Really sort of using back up as the foundation for what customers can do and our core hypothesis has always been that backup should not be just an insurance policy. You can do a whole lot more with it. So what we see customers doing is taking their backups on premises, which are often times just idle with alternative solutions, reusing them in the cloud for test dev purposes, where it makes sense. So the easy way to convert formats, so if you are in VMDK format to the VHD format in Azure. Spin it up, run your test of processes. At the end when you're done, you can move those things back on premises and really use it in that context. So for us really I think it's a combination of assessing the right use case and the right application of the workload. And then making that, helping customers with understanding that and making that shift in that case. >> So talk a little bit about the biggest customer pain points and how you develop the right solution for them in this customized and tailored way. >> Sure, so I think for us, from our perspective, what we are seeing with challenges, customers their back up data is sitting idle. It's shocking actually sometimes to hear that, if we're talking to IT and storage teams, and the application test and development teams with their peers, they often have to wait weeks, or sometimes even months, to get a copy of data that they need. I think in today's world that shouldn't be the case, right? Our value prop really there is to help eliminate those expensive copies of data that are getting made. And because our platform is so purpose built and agile with the effect of reusing that backup data for test dev, that's actually where we really see the sweet spot coming together. Customers have even asked us, for example in our UI, can you actually provision test dev data and make it more self-service in nature right from that view point. I think that is something we are looking into. Into what makes sense there from a capability. But that's kind of really actually where we see the challenge and how we are enabling customers into solving that. >> Yeah Sameer, I want to go back to something you said at the beginning about the premise of, I've got all my applications, and I'm going to have intelligence, usually called machine learning and the like. How are these going to come together? We hear Microsoft really talking about that's the future. Satya Nadella is well-known, you know AI, AI, AI, is one of the main things that he talks about. How is that similar with the Cohesity division? >> Yeah, so I think when we think about the application world and how we are taking advantage of things, like AI and machine learning. Our recently announced capability and product are on Helios, which is from our perspective the global management piece to manage all your secondary apps. We've injected machine learning and AI capabilities there to help customers with smart assistant type of mode and capability to help them predict their, how much, when they need more capacity. Smart alerts to tell them what's happening in their system. And that's kind of both on premises and in the cloud. For us really, I think where we see specifically AI and machine learning coming together. I think as customers are injecting those in the applications they are using. I think definitely the data side of it and how that effects the underlying data landscape will make a difference, in terms of how we accommodate that. But I think from a core ML and AI perspective, Helios is our focal point in terms of what we are doing to bring those capabilities to bear. >> So what has the customer response been to them? It sounds very cool. Are customers using it? Are they finding that it is being very, that it is helping them a lot, in terms of, as you said, notifying if they need more capacity. >> Yeah, so I think it's early days for us when it comes to Helios, right? It's a pretty new product, but we're working with customers actively, especially our existing base, to get them really on board with a product and really the service. Be able to collect and assimilate all of their data, and help them with the usage of it. I think the more data we collect, as you know with machine learning and AI, the more data you collect the richer sample set you have. You can do a whole lot more with it. I think when it comes to the application side of it, the discussion we had earlier on application mobility and making that. I think the University of Pennsylvania is an interesting example of a customer we have where they have about forty different websites internally and externally. They had a planned power, building shutdown for like a day. They had a problem where they couldn't get to recreate those sites easily from their prior infrastructure. So our CloudSpin capability, which is what really helps customers take their on premises VMs and reuse them in the cloud, really came to their rescue with helping them very easily make these websites quickly operational. For them it's been a few simple clicks, and then when they are done with that, when the disaster, in this case, a planned disaster was done, they both go back to their operational on premises. So that's I think a great example of our capabilities coming to light, and really shining in the app mobility arena. But also actually spill over in a sort of disaster recovery. >> Sameer, I'm curious. One of the other things in the application space is a lot of the new appplications, call them cloud native apps if you will, what are you hearing from customers, and does Cohesity, is there something different about new type of architectures and how that ties into Cohesity's solutions? >> Yeah, absolutely so I think what we are seeing from customers is when it comes to everything that's our applications born in the cloud. Often times I think what we see as backup is kind of actually a rear guard, it's not even thought of in the context of cloud native. I think we see that being a challenge because customers, I think what they've with backup in the cloud today, they've got either a combination of manual scripts, they've got some, you know, processes they're running there. There is a lack of automation. So we have actually integrated with the snapshot API of Azure, for instance, and Azure disks. We bring through a combination of what we do on the platform side and that integration we're actually able to bring enterprise class backup capabilities to that cloud native app. The backup they can experience there. So that's kind of I think where we are looking actually to do more, in terms of that. I think we are starting to see more demand, in terms of more cloud native backup as it relates to applications that are more born in the cloud. I think with us the beauty is it's a single platform that's going to work on premises and in the cloud. And not have a separate solution that's quote unquote, just for the cloud versus one that's for on premises. >> One of the biggest challenges that so many companies have regardless of their industry is getting employees to adopt new technologies. I'm wondering how closely you work with your customers to make sure that there is a wide spread adoption and a real embrace of the Cohesity solutions. >> Sure, I think to me what's fascinating is a big value prop and message for our customers with us is the simplicity. That ranges all the way from the way they can do their upgrades with us. The way actually our interface presents itself. So in most cases, actually I think what we've heard from customers is with little to minimal training they're able to actually get up and going with Cohesity. That actually speaks volumes, to the fact, in terms of how the product and the UI and everything else was designed. We definitely have a support and services team that is, as we are starting to grow more enterprise and work with larger customers, it's starting to have those programs in place to enable customers to get up to speed quickly. But actually, in often times, more often than not, it's more the case of, I could just set it up get it up and going and I'm off to the races. >> Sameer, it's our first time here at Microsoft Ignite, over 30,000 people are here, 5,000 organizations, what takeaways do you have for people that haven't been able to attend this show? What have you seen so far? >> Sure, no, I think what I've seen is that from our viewpoint, we've seen lot of customers. We've had some great sessions with customers. We've got a couple more coming up. I think the hybrid cloud message is definitely mainstream, right? I think for customers who are not taking advantage of the services that A, Microsoft has to offer, and then B, others ISVs like us plug into that ecosystem very closely. I think customers definitely should be embracing that in full steam and moving forward with their hybrid cloud initiatives. >> Great, well Sameer, thank you so much for coming on theCUBE, it was great having you. >> Thanks, Rebecca. Thanks, Stu, I appreciate it. >> I'm Rebecca Knight, for Stu Miniman We will have more from Microsoft Ignite in just a little bit. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Narrator: From our studios in the heart of Silicon Valley, Hallowell to California, this is a CUBE conversation. >> Hi and welcome to theCUBE. I'm your host Sonia Tagare and we're here at the Palo Alto Cube studios for an amazing conversation about women in tech and bringing men to the conversation. With us today is our guest, Eva Helen, who is the CEO and founder of EQ Inspiration and the Board Director of PrinterLogic. Welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you so much for having me. >> So let's get started, so give us a brief overview of your background. >> So, I was actually in tech for close to two decades. I came from Sweden in the mid-90's and joined a hardware company here in Silicon Valley and started selling hardware. One thing led to the next and then I was part of starting two software companies, both with good exits. The last one we exited in 2015 when it was acquired by Citrix. And the name of that company was Sanbolic. So I was deep in the trenches of tech for many, many years. >> That's very inspiring. And from tech, you went to being an advocate for women in tech, so tell us a little about that. >> Well, it was interesting, I mean, I was a woman the whole time myself but I didn't take the time to reflect over a lot of what the other women were experiencing. When you run a business, your head is down and you work really, really hard all the time so, I didn't come up for air very often. But as we had been transitioned, we were on the East Coast and we were transitioned back to Silicon Valley, I started to really network as much as I could and met a lot of women, enjoyed a lot of organizations and went to tons of events. And I thought they were fantastic, and it was great energy and women sharing things and stories with each other and supporting each other, but I couldn't figure out where the guys were. And I'd been working in this industry for so long, I knew that all the decisions were made by men and I didn't understand why they weren't part of the discussion. So I went to a couple of guys and I said, well, if I start something called Women in Tech events for guys, will you come? And they're like, absolutely, we would love that. So, said and done, a couple of years ago, I did my first EQ Inspiration. Which is an event where 50% of the audience is men, 50% are women and in a typical format, I will have experts, or in the beginning, I wasn't en expert myself at all. So I would have experts come in and speak and then eventually I could take over some of those pieces, talking about equality, good things to do for women and so on. And then, I would always have a panel of men that I would ask, what are you actively and actually doing for women in the workplace? Your peers or your colleagues, your staff, how are you helping them? And all these amazing stories were coming out. So I thought how can I get more of those stories and make them available to a broader audience? So that's kind of where I was in the beginning of last winter. >> And what spurred you to become a part of this movement? Was it an experience you had in your workplace or just something you saw in the larger women in tech community? >> Well, I think I'd had my own experiences, obviously, since I'd been in the industry for so long. And every woman has a way to tackle being the only women in the room, the only one in the meeting, the only one at dinner and so on. We all have ways to tackle and deal with that but, like I said, I hadn't really reflected much over what other women were experiencing. So, just by hearing what all these other women were dealing with, I thought I kind of need to help here. Because, I'm not saying that my ways of dealing with it were the best or the way that I would recommend for others to be. I can be super pushy, very assertive and a lot of women are not like that. So, my model didn't necessarily work for them. So I had to try to figure out how can I actually help them. And because there are so many ways that women are supporting each other already, that are functioning really, really well, forums for talking about delicate things and, you know, more open things, I wanted to bring the men into the conversation because they're ultimately 50% of the population and a lot more than that in the workplace. So I just we needed to engage them to make them feel more safe in how they are supporting us. >> And do you find that the men who do come to these events, are they more at the leadership level or are they varied? Who generally shows up? >> So it varies a lot but if I could take a step back just to what I did when I said, okay let me find out more of these stories. Because that will answer your question. I did 60-hour long interviews with men in tech. At all levels of the organization. From CEO to individual contributors. And then I took all of that scripted material and I broke these people down into seven characters of men. And I say generously because we, as women, have been categorized into two categories by most men, for thousands of years. Seven characters, with different names. And at the top of what I call my matrix, we have Mark, James, Sameer, that are advocates for women. Then we have Memo, Al and Chris, that are allies of women. And at the bottom of the matrix, we have Richard, who is opposed to change and concerned that women will take over men's positions in the workplace. But by doing that categorization, I can see that it doesn't matter if it's a leader or if it's an individual contributor, it's a range of men that come to my events but typically, they're sitting at the higher end of the matrix. Not the lower part. Because they're still a little hesitant to thinking, well, what can I do? How can I help? >> Right, so it doesn't matter exactly what their exact position is, but how far up the matrix they are or how far low the matrix they are. >> Yes, exactly. Exactly. >> So can you tell us a little bit more about the different categories in the matrix and why you found those seven categories? >> Yeah sure. So, if we start from the top, the top character is called Mark and Mark is, he's really an expert. He has been working in HR or he's a diversity consultant or he can be a man who has lots of friends and he's very comfortable speaking up on behalf of women in front of these men. But he doesn't just address women or mixed groups, he actually talks directly to groups of men. The next category is James. James is a change agent. He's a leader. He has a very visible presence in the organization and he will take on things like culture change. If he notices in his organization that the culture is not exactly what it should be to promote equality, he will actually get to the bottom of it and dig deep to figure things out and solve them. Maybe by hiring an external consultant like a Mark. The next level is Sameer, he's the sponsor. And there are lots of women out there that have had great sponsors and often at the EQ Inspiration event, I'll bring up a women who talks about a sponsorship story. The sponsors make women visible and they also put their own name on the line. They're very comfortable promoting women. And often, they have experienced being an outsider themselves at some point, so they're very empathetic. The next level, now we get into the allies, and the allies are Memo, Al and Chris. Memo is the mentor. Mentorship is a very interesting thing because it's a big step up from the level below. It really is not necessarily promoting, but really asking a woman what can I do to help? How can I help you? And there's a lot of informal mentorships that are going on and there are lots of formal mentorship programs out there. It's really important to formalize mentorship programs in organizations where there's a greater fear among men to do something that's not right. And I think that a lot of the informal mentorships are suffering because of the Me Too movement and all the negative press that we have out there. The next to allies are Al and Chris. And these two categories have the greatest potential to actually grow into something bigger, because the objective, of course, is to climb from one step to the next on the matrix. And Al is a happy-go-lucky guy. He says I love working with women, I think it's fantastic, just tell me what to do, I would love to help. But he's not necessarily sure what to do. And Chris, the guy below him, he gets uncomfortable more easily. So, if a situation gets a little sticky in the office, when they start talking about equality or something like that, he might actually withdraw and close his door and say, no I don't want to be part of this discussion. But if you talk to Chris, he's already helping somebody who's close to him. Maybe his sister, maybe his partner, his wife or his daughter. And it's really interesting when you get to the point where they understand and they realize, they go oh, I am actually doing something. Maybe it's not helping somebody in the workplace but maybe it's somebody who's close to me. And then Richard at the bottom of the matrix, he's the chauvinist and he's there and there's lots of them and they're opposed to the change. And in the beginning, I was thinking maybe I just leave him out of the discussion. But he's a really important reference point for the rest of the characters. >> And so, as I liked that how you said that we want to have men go up the levels, to essentially become a Mark or James or Sameer, but suppose you have a Richard in your workplace, is there any hope for him ever becoming a Mark or is it even likely? >> Well, so the important thing is here, you know, I'm not a big fan of the kinds of workshops where you throw all men into the same room and you give them the same message. Because you'll lose 70% of the audience right away. So the key thing here is to make them understand that you can climb one step on the ladder and that may be enough. And if you choose to stay where you are, but as long as you're getting a little bit more awareness of what you're doing, that's okay too. But we're not trying to get Al or Chris, the people who are towards the bottom, to become Marks. We just want them to climb one step. And Richard, he's absolutely not a hopeless case. The thing with him is you can't tell him what to do, but you need to find his motivator. What is it that motivates him to start thinking outside of the little comfort zone that he is in right now? And so, maybe that motivator is maybe he does have a sister who's experienced a difficult situation. And so, how does that relate to what's going on? Maybe his team is not coming up with any new ideas. So having the discussion of diversifying the team, he might be ready for that one. But just finding his motivator is how we get him to, at least, get up to the level of Chris. >> And you mentioned that by the year 2030, you want 50-50 gender equality. Now, for people who are at leadership positions, who are Richards, who maybe do have some hope that they might change into even a Chris, but they still aren't on board with 50-50 gender equality, what do you say to those men and how can women deal with those men in their workplace? >> Well, it's that, you know, is the pie this big or is there two pies or is the pie growing? 50-50 is sort of something that a lot of people that ae working towards equality are saying. Now, I'm really trying to support women in the workplace to get to higher levels. And we are, more than 50%, at the very bottom level of most industries and most working positions. And we know that, I think it's 53% of all graduates today are women. So, it's not so much a we need to be 50-50, it's just that we need to change the parameters a little bit and change the format and change the expectations of how we lead our organizations so that it's not always done in a man's way. But rather, something that's more accepting towards not just women, but all minorities that haven't had a place there before. And would you say to somebody who's a Richard? Well if he's open to having the discussion and conversation, try to meet him where he is and say, we're not taking your job away from you, but we will give a woman the opportunity to apply for the job at the next level, alongside with you. And it's the most qualified that will win. But the way that the criteria are set right now and the qualifications and expectations are set right now, are really created very much so for men. So they end up winning that battle every single time. And Chris can't or Richard can't change that. That needs to be changed from a higher level. >> And also, alongside with them worrying that we're going to take their jobs, also because of the Me Too movement, they might be worried, oh I don't even want to work with women because I'm worried they're going to say I harass them or do something to them so I'd rather just not even bother with it. So with those kind of people, how would you try to convince them that they're safe with women or that that it's okay for them to be a part of this discussion? >> So, Chris, who is just above Richard on the matrix, he supports women who are very close to him. So, like I said, family members or maybe it's somebody, a woman on his team, that he's worked with for a long time. And by making him aware that he's already supporting people that are very close to him and he's super comfortable in those relationships and that kind of support that he's providing, I'm saying, what if you were to take that support to somebody you don't know as well? Maybe there's a woman in the extended team or next to you and you say to her, what can I do to help you? Is there anything I can do to help? And then treat that relationship the same way that you're treating the relationship that you have with that family member or whatnot. You know, make sure that it's completely transparent. Let the door be open. Make sure that you're inviting other people to the meetings. Sit in an open area. Do things that are completely transparent. That way nobody will ever question what your motives are, why you're doing this or if you're suggesting or saying something that's inappropriate. >> Right, right. And do you feel that more men are coming to these events or do you think that there's still a lot of progress to be made? >> So, when I started this a couple years ago, I said, okay, within a year, most of the women's organizations here in the Bay Area will have a track for men. And it's starting to happen so I'm so excited about that. I'm really, really happy that EQ Inspiration is not the only place to go, but that there's other organizations that are doing the same thing. And I will continue to, beyond the EQ Inspiration format, my objective is to go and speak at as many tech events as possible. Where I know that the majority of the audience will continue to be mostly men, for, at least, the near future. Hopefully that will change quickly. But now that I have material and I have a method and I know that there is a way to move men and make them individual contributors and make them excited about this. I want to bring that message directly to the core audience while all of the women's organizations that are sitting here in Silicon Valley will continue to build their tracks for men. >> That's amazing and you also mentioned that your material's coming out in Spring, so what's next for you? >> Well, I mean, so writing a book is a difficult thing and for all the men who are listening to this, it will be a very accessible, easy book. Not a lot of words, some pictures, images. Hopefully it's going to be, you know, a nice feel to it so people will be happy to have it lying around. And, really, for me, it's trying to create a language that both men and women are comfortable with. Having names on these characters. Jokingly being able to talk about it. De-dramatizing the whole conversation around this. There is a big seriousness to it, don't get me wrong. But for what I'm trying to do, I really want to lighten it up a little bit and make sure that people don't feel intimidated, threatened, judged or anything like that by it. And so, once the book becomes available in the Spring, I'm hoping that tech organizations will pick it up and use it as conversational material. Both for women's work groups, for mixed groups. One woman called me and said, I found a great use case. She specializes in going into organizations that already have programs and processes set up to move the needle, but not enough is happening. And then she can use this material to actually plug in and engage the men more deeply. So, I think, the book will have its life and with the book, I will make sure that it gets in front of as many people in tech as possible, both men and women. And then I'm hoping to be able to speak about it in as many difficult places as possible, because that's how I grow. >> Well, that's very heroic. It's such a great support for the women in tech community to have someone who's willing to kind of go out of their comfort zone and talk to men about women in tech issues and that's really not happening. So, we really appreciate all the work you're doing and thank you so much for coming in today. >> Thank you so much for having me. >> She's Eva, I'm Sonia, thanks so much for watching theCUBE, til next time. (upbeat music)