(bright, upbeat music) >> Hello, brilliant humans and welcome to this special programming on theCUBE featuring Women of the Cloud, brought to you by AWS. My name is Savannah Peterson, and I am very excited to be joined by a brilliant woman both in supply chain as well as digital transformation. Please welcome Jeanette Barlow, VP of Product at Instacart. Jeanette, thank you so much for joining us from Boston today. How you doing? >> Thank you. I'm doing well, thank you. And thank you to the Amazon team for letting me join you. I'm excited to participate in this. I think it's such an important topic to learn all about how as women we're helping shape the future of business, supply chain, consumer experiences. So thank you very much. >> That's fantastic to have you and to be really celebrating women of the cloud properly. To start us off, how long, let's just, let's run with this. How long have you been a woman of the cloud? (Jeanette and Savannah laugh) >> Oh, probably since there, before there was a cloud, actually I have spent my entire career in enterprise technology and I spent nearly 25 years actually with IBM. And, you know, I remember when the internet really took off as far as a highly accessible thing and then the very beginnings of e-commerce where it was really the wild west and it was such a different experience than you get now. And I've been very fortunate throughout that journey to have a variety of roles from sales, marketing, communications. I eventually landed in product management and that's pretty much where I stayed. >> Savannah: At least for now. >> At least for now. >> Sounds like you're very curious. I can tell that you are a very curious person. Since you've been around for what I would consider a, an impressive period of time in an industry, especially when there were not a ton of women to reference or receive mentorship from, what was the initial catalyst or spark or inspiration for you to pursue a career in technology? >> I'll be really honest, getting out of college with college debt, money. (Savannah laughs) The best salary, I'm not going to sugarcoat that but once I landed there, it just was so amazing how technological advance advances were fundamentally changing the way businesses would work or how humans could get things done. And that whole, my whole career trajectory has been very much working at the forefront of new areas whether that be collaboration, software or supply chain which is, obviously we're all well aware, such a deep and important area and even low-code workflow automation before I came to Instacart. >> I love the transparency there. It's a indicator of a great leader and that level of authenticity. Were there any hurdles that you felt you had to overcome in the beginning or was the curiosity enough to power through the initial first few years that are always tough for anyone, no matter their gender or career? >> I think I was a very fortunate person. I do want to say that, sure, there are a lot of long hours and I often felt that I had to be more prepared, maybe than some of my colleagues that were men back, way back in the day. But I had the very good fortune of working for companies throughout my history that really believed in an equitable and respectful workplace. And I had wonderful mentors, both women and men, along the way who really were there to help develop talent. So I never felt that I had sort of a glass ceiling. I definitely felt that I had to to sit there and assert a point of view, at times. >> Savannah: Mm-Hm. >> But, I've seen this whole industry and space change and it's not just gender, but also racial backgrounds educational backgrounds, that neurodiversity I'm now seeing much greater respect for listening to that chorus of voices because we do get better, much better outcomes that way. >> Absolutely. I couldn't agree more and I'm happy to hear that you've been supported along your journey. I think the industry can definitely get a bad rap and there are a lot of people paving the way for us. I want to talk a little bit about supply chain because I don't know about you, but for me I don't think there were as many people talking about the industry and probably what you do, say four years ago, as are now. How did you find your way into supply chain and what is it about helping that be more efficient that excites you? >> Yes. There's nothing like a shortage of toilet paper to get people to. (Savannah laughs) Or to understand what supply chain means. And I, as tough as those times were, especially at the beginning of the pandemic and the uncertainty, it was so exciting for those of us in supply chain because suddenly people got what we did like- >> Savannah: Mm-Hm. >> And they were interested in hearing about it. So I really, I really have, we did enjoy that. I got exposed to that because ultimately I served as the Vice President of Product Management and Strategy for IBM, Sterling Supply Chain which was a very large brand within the IBM portfolio, serving over 10,000 clients worldwide, really focused on their omnichannel order management and their other supply chain processes around order to cash, procure to pay, logistics and things like that. And when you start to learn about the intricacies and that choreography needed across so many players in the value chain, it's an absolutely fascinating puzzle. And- >> Savannah: Yeah. >> Often the further away from the consumer experience you got, the more analog it became. And so the opportunity to start to digitize and transform that was really something that was very, very intriguing. And now here at Instacart, the opportunity to sort of parlay that into one of probably the most complex supply chains that there are, grocery, food just adds another level- >> Yeah. >> Of excitement intrigue to the work. >> I can only imagine there are, I'm just thinking about it right now. I'm not sure there are many supply chains, if any that touch as many lives as food does, as, I mean so is that what brought you, you joined Instacart relatively recently if I'm not mistaken, within the last year. Is that what brought you to them? Was the complexity of that global challenge? >> Absolutely. That was definitely the start of it, was so intriguing to me to see, to, the more I learned about Instacart when they approached me was also they're really changing an industry that's been very static for many, many years, right? And they're fundamentally reshaping that industry. One that's, as you said, is crucial to the everyday lives of pretty much everyone. And I was intrigued by that. But I was also intrigued by the breadth at which they're approaching this, not just the marketplace, but how we are helping retailers through our Instacart platform actually reach their consumers in ways that they like to shop whether it's online or in the store. We are also very, very committed to not just serving from a convenience standpoint, but actually improving access to healthy and nutritious food for as many people as might need that. So it just, core to the complexity of the problem the criticality of it, but also just frankly speaking to the core of who Instacart is as a company, I, it just felt like it was like a culmination of a lot of things to have this opportunity to work here. >> Sounds like a fantastic opportunity. I want to dive a little bit deeper into the technology side there. How is Instacart's technology helping grocers with varying levels of scale and geographical challenges and I'm sure a variety of other things and even a digital skillset. How are you helping them navigate their digital transformation? >> You know, this is probably one of the sectors that lags behind other retail sectors as far as digital transformation. And when the progress that's been made over the last four years is tremendous. And the road ahead is still before us is still a long way to go. I mean Instacart built the world's largest grocery marketplace, if you want to think about that. And so we have more than 10 years of experience in understanding the complexity of that. With, again a supply chain that is very, very complex. So last spring we announced the Instacart platform as a way of really putting a name to a lot of work we were already doing. And it's all about opening up the capability and the technology that we have to help grocers reach their customers directly as well as through our marketplace. So we help grocers like Publix, Wegmans, The Fresh Market just hundreds of grocers build out their own storefronts, their own mobile apps and that we are actually powering for them. We help them create some very unique fulfillment models that might serve customers or be new market opportunities. Certainly we have the traditional full service shop, but we also have virtual convenience that can enable delivery in minutes. And in certain geographies and demographics, that's, you know, really important. We are even going in the store with our connected stores technologies that we announced earlier this year, and that is everything from smart cards to scan and pay to wayfinding that it just, it's a lot of very interesting work we're doing and we're very, very fortunate to be able to partner with some of the best and brightest grocery retailers out there as well as retailers and other verticals as well. But grocery store is sort of our core. >> Yeah, I can only imagine some of the conversations that you have and the user behaviors that you get to learn about as people are on their food journey. You teased a little bit there about what's coming next. What else do you think is in our food future? >> Well, I think, you know, the pandemic pushed the grocery industry to get online to start to digitally transform itself, but we believe it's not an either or. There are virtually no one that's exclusively online and we know more and more there's no one that's exclusively you know, only in the store. We really expect to have that blend and I think as long as we're very, very savvy about understanding the, our retailers' needs as well as their customers' needs on how they can really traverse seamlessly between whether they're online or in store, how they can have an engaging experience that's consistent to the brand of the retailer. >> Savannah: Mm-Hm. >> How they can be rewarded for their loyalty. How they can be encouraged to try new things and just have a much more engaging experience with that grocer because food is a very emotional sort of buy, right? I mean, it's a very sensory rich. And so how- >> Sort of? I think you can go ahead and just make that claim. Just for a lot of people, yeah, yeah. We'll endorse that. >> You're right, yeah, it is. Right, we're passionate about our brand of this or that or we want to touch or smell or do things like that. So there's a tremendous amount of innovation you get online, like personalization and other things that you don't get when you get, you walk into the store, everybody's got the same end cap like I see the same end cap as you see and we might be very different. And then vice versa. I get a very much a sensory experience when I'm in the store, right? That I don't have, how do we blend that? And so there's some really interesting things that we're working on with our retail partners to embrace that omnichannel approach. So we create that flywheel of experience and innovation between the two. So I think you're going to see a lot more focus on an omnichannel experience that traverses between the on and the in, online and the in-store. >> Yeah, I, so I love this because you know, we, there's a continued debate around remote and in-person, working remote and in-person events, but it sounds like hybrid is here to stay when it comes to food and and how we eat, which is very exciting. Last question for you, Jeanette. What would you say to someone, a woman of any age who is looking at this video or maybe dreaming about a career in cloud technology? What's your moment of inspiration? >> You know, I think my best advice is all, you know, stay curious. Just be in love with not even just the technology for technology's sake, but what the technology can unlock as far as an experience and focus on building those experiences. Not only for your direct customer in my case, retailers, grocers, but for their customer. Trying to understand that. And I think if you can connect those dots, you know the cloud is the limit, let's put it that way. (Jeanette and Savannah laugh) >> I'll take it upon that. I love that. Jeanette Barlow, thank you so much for joining us. The team at Instacart is lucky to have you. And thank you to our audience for joining us for this special program on theCUBE featuring Women of the Cloud. My name is Savannah Peterson and I look forward to celebrating more brilliant women like Jeanette with you all soon. (upbeat, happy music)