>>From and low park California in the heart of Silicon Valley. It's the cube covering cloud now. Awards 2020 brought to you by Silicon angle media. Now here's Sonya to garden. >>Hi and welcome to the cube. I'm your host Sonia to Gary. And we're on the ground at Facebook headquarters in Menlo park, California covering cloud now's top women entrepreneurs in cloud innovation awards. Joining us today is Shamila Bandler who is the director of production engineering at Facebook. to the cube. Thank you Sonya. So can you tell us a little bit about your background? Absolutely. >> Um, I grew up in India and it was in 2001 I moved to United States. I joined a company in financial sector fidelity investment. That was my first job in the U S it was a very important team I was working on, which was responsible for mission critical applications and trading floor. So if you know a little bit about stocks, you can think about the sense of urgency. That's where I learned early on in my career while I was working there. I also did my part time masters at Howard university. >>Um, that time was very crucial in my growth because it taught me resilience doing two things at the same time. 2005 was a life changing event where for personal reasons, I relocated to a Bay area from East coast and I joined a startup going from a big company to a small company. Again, put me in a situation which I was never used to. The startup taught me again being very resilient moving fast, which got acquired by Dell. That's when I switched to management. I sat on the decision for three months when my director asked me, you should be in management. And it wasn't, I wasn't afraid. I was too naive to like step away from individual contribution to the Tech's role to step into management. They were persistent and I took on the management role and there was never turning back because what I was giving back to the company, to the team and also seeing more women join my team. >>That was something I was truly enjoying. Then I did a couple of small companies transforming their business from a on-prem business to cloud. Um, that was again, growing the team from ground up and building a team in like two years was very, very motivating. And it was about a year and a half ago when I joined Facebook where a opportunity came knocking. I really wanted to work at this keel. And six months into the role I was supporting Facebook's monitoring ecosystem. And then last year my role changed. I started supporting Facebook's revenue generating platforms, which is ads, marketplace, commerce, and payments. And I'm absolutely loving it. >> That's very inspiring. Thank you. See you were a past winner of cloud now and now you're on the cloud now, advisory board. Tell us a little bit about that journey and what's the experience been like? >> Absolutely. I still remember, it was about four years ago. >>I'm the founder of cloud. No, Jocelyn had reached out to me that you should absolutely put the nomination. I had self-doubts, but then I thought, okay, I have done three transformations, let me give it a shot. And I attended that event on Google, Google campus. And the most important thing I took away from that evening was the amazing inspiring speakers. And the other pure winners from that, there was never looking back. It's just not being the award recipient. I think it boosted my confidence that what I have done and then also put more responsibility on me that how can I see more women leaders grow and get more women in the tech. Then last year of when I pitched to my management team that we should host cloud now event on Facebook campus. I got immense support from them. We did it. And this is when I felt that giving back to the community. >>This is what it means. At the same time after the event, Jocelyn said, I think you should be on the advisory board because we can get more of them and join this mission and we can accelerate the missions. A goal which is getting more and more women in tech. We have a lot of work still to do. >> Um, and so today you hosted the welcome and the scholarship, um, presentation. So how has that experience and tell us a little bit more about cloud now is um, STEM scholarship fund opportunity. It was a great experience. I think whole Borton school and Shanti Bhavan. I mean, when I look at the backgrounds of some of the scholars, it's just amazing. I mean, we all are privileged. I feel I'm privileged. Um, whether it's education or from the families. I think our parents took really good care of ourselves. >>But when I look at some of the fascinating stories of the scholars, some of them like absolute poverty, homelessness, there was one story which was like a person was homeless and the social economic statuses they come from, you wouldn't even think like, how can they even like done into like great software engineers at some amazing top companies. When I look back, the whole philanthrophy mission of, um, you know, cloud now is on this international STEM scholarship. It is making sure these underprivileged scholars have a fair chance because they didn't start at the same place where I feel I have started, you know, being a kid, you know, going to a school and it's amazing that we are able to contribute to this mission. Well that's great. And you're giving them an opportunity to share their skills with the world. Absolutely. Um, so what impact do you hope cloud now will have in the future? >>I think we still have a long way to go. I mean if I just look at, um, around me, uh, it's amazing that Facebook is very much into seeing more and more diversity and inclusion. And I know the numbers are changing even in other companies, but they're not changing at the rate where we want. Cloud now has gotten into a place in eight years very well connected with the winners. All of them, all the winners I look at past eight years are in very prominent positions. We have a privilege. At the same time, we also have a huge responsibility if in whatever field, whatever domain, whatever rules V. V, R. N if we can influence and change the equation very, we are making it a fair ground. I think we can see more and more women in tech. And what advice would you give to women who want to be in tech but maybe feel a little intimidated by the male dominated industry? >>I think sometimes we are owed our own enemies. Um, it's easier said than done. Um, I think believing in yourself. So when I was put in drawers, absolutely there were moments I was not comfortable at all and I started doing things not worrying about the outcome. Whatever I felt was right at that time I never thought, uh, this problem is some other team's problem and I'll wait for it. I just went ahead and whatever I could do in my capacity. And that was seen and I think women are really, really good in collaboration and soft skills. I would say use your strengths and use it well because that's what the companies need today. And are you personally seeing a rise in women in tech? Like um, in your team or at Facebook? Are you seeing that there are more women? Absolutely. When I joined the production engineering monetization team last year we had 13 women. >>We have 26 women in the team now. So that's my team is about hundred plus. So about 26% is great. I had no women managers in the team. I can proudly say I have two women managers in the T team. As I say, we still have a long way to go. My hope is in the organization, Ironman. If we can see more women in production engineering, then I would say like, yes, it's, it's getting there. And last question. Um, uh, there are a lot of shifts in the tech industry and new companies, new emerging tech. What's the opportunity now for women? I think AI is, um, you know, machine learning and AI is on the top because it's not just associated with one domain. AI can be applied anywhere. I feel women lik whether it's healthcare, whether it's in technology, it's, it's going to be applied, you know, everywhere. The other is cloud computing. Again, with the public and private clouds on the rise, more and more companies moving into hybrid cloud model. A, I feel for women, you know, going into these fields will like, just open up more opportunities for them. Shana, thank you so much. This is really inspiring and thank you for being part of cloud now. Thank you so much for having me here. I'm Sonya. Thanks for watching the cube. Um, stay tuned for more.

>> From the heart of Silicon Valley, it's the Cube, covering CloudNOW's seventh annual Top Women Entrepreneurs in Cloud Innovation Awards. (upbeat music) >> Lisa Martin on the ground with the Cube at Facebook headquarters. We are at the seventh annual CloudNOW Top Women Entrepreneurs in Cloud Innovations Awards event. Joined by one of the 2016 winners welcoming you back to the Cube Syamala Bandla you are now at Facebook, a Director of Production Engineering. Welcome back to the Cube. >> Thank you Lisa. >> So we are at Facebook Headquarters, and we were talking with Jocelyn DeGance Graham a little bit ago who is the founder of CloudNOW. Their 7th annual event, first time at Facebook, and you a past winner are largely responsible for getting Facebook to say yes. Tell us a little bit about how you are paying it forward as a winner and enabling this years awards to have such a boost up. >> So I attended the CloudNOW event at the Google campus in 2016, and when I walked out of the event just not being the award recipient, but just meeting the other award winners, as well as the speakers, I was completely pumped up and charged. When I joined Facebook last year I saw how much deeply Facebook actually cares about diversity and inclusion. And I know that cloud computing and conversion technologies as an area where women are under represented. So when I pitched to my leadership team that when we care so much about, we should be hosting this years event and they jumped on board immediately. >> So it was an easy sell, but something also that's pretty remarkable that you should know about is that this year one of the keynote speakers is the COO of Facebook Sheryl Sandberg, and again Syamala you were instrumental in securing Sheryl who has a crazy busy schedule. That's huge for everybody here, and the ground swell of women in technology. Tell us a little bit about that coup. >> So when we decided finally to host it and as we were planning and all the line up of, great line up of speakers and the winners. We couldn't have thought about anybody else to do the opening remarks than Sheryl Sandberg. I know we had, she had, a very very tough schedule but my leadership team and I, we were persistent, and it's an honor to have her here to do the opening remarks. >> Absolutely yes. So talk to us a little bit about your tenure here at Facebook, you mentioned joining about eight or nine months or so ago and being a culture that fosters diversity, gender diversity, thought diversity. Tell us a little bit about your team in production engineering and how that culture, how are you helping to grow that? >> That's a great question. So definitely I'll be very honest, we have a lot more to do. Production engineering predominately in the industry is male-dominated. But just this year, just in the teams around me, we have hired quite a bit of female managers as well as individual contributors. And the support we get from our peers, the open thoughts, the collaboration, it's just great to be in an environment where we can foster that culture. >> And one of the things too, tell me about your background. Is your education background in a STEM field? Your engineering background? >> Yes. >> Yes, so talk to us about one of the things that's also challenging that we're all very familiar with, with women in technical roles, is the under representation, but it's also being able to retain women. You are establishing a great tech career yourself, what's your advice for inspiring your generation, and then the younger generation that you're helping to hire here at Facebook, to stay in technology. >> So cloud computing or technology, I mean we all have to pay it forward. I think we as women who are in influential positions and can make an impact on the younger generation I think need to absolutely do a lot more to pay it forward. It is not only with awareness but also wherever, whenever you get opportunities try to mentor students. Early on in their career encourage them to believe in themselves, to reach out for mentors and sponsors, do networking, which I think in general girls and women they shy away from it. I would say networking, meeting with people in the industry, they would be learning a lot more early on in their career. >> Great advice. One of the things that's also fantastic, and a first for this 7th annual CloudNOW event, is its, not only is it sold out, they're expecting over 300 attendees here tonight, both men and women, but also there was no advertising for the selling of tickets, so this was all word of mouth from the sponsors, Facebook, Google, Intel, past winners like yourself. So Jocelyn talked about that ground swell, that momentum that we're all feeling, what are your expectations for the event tonight? >> First of all we are super thrilled and excited. Like when I look at the list of the guest list, when I look at the speakers, when I look at the winners. I mean it was just the word of mouth as we started telling who will be the speakers and we will have a VC panel, and the winners. I think the word of mouth really paid it forward and we're super thrilled to have about close to 300 people attending the evening tonight. >> And there's a really nice diverse set of winners you mentioned. I was chatting with Jocelyn earlier and this is the first year that they've been able to recognize female, technical founders who are venture backed. And there's a variety of technologies, we're going to be speaking with all the winners tonight from the smart homes, the smart apartments technology, to blockchain, intelligence on blockchain, so the diversity there, and also not just the technologies but also the background of some of these entrepreneurs who, one of them is a lawyer who was a practicing attorney for 17 years founding Digitory Legal. Just really interesting backgrounds, what are your thoughts on that? >> So I think when we looked we had more than 100 nominees. It was very very hard, and I was also part of the committee as we were going through the winner, choosing the winners. It was very hard. But one of the things we really wanted to make sure was that we had a diverse set of winners. Not only from their backgrounds, but also the technology domain they were representing, which is very very important. And as we were going through the planning deck, and looking at the presentations, I can't wait to hear what they have to present. It is so thrilling to see the accomplishments and what they have achieved in their respective fields. >> And we're excited as well. Syamala thanks for taking time to stop by and join us on the program tonight, and it was good to see you again. >> Thank you so much Lisa, it's been a pleasure being here. Thank You >> Excellent. We want to thank you for watching Lisa Martin on the ground at Facebook for the Cube. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

hi welcome to the cube I'm your host Lisa Martin and we are on the ground at Google with cloud now which is a nonprofit organization for women in cloud computing and converging technologies tonight cloud now is celebrating their fifth annual top women in cloud innovation and we are very excited to be joined by one of the winners of the award tonight Shambhala Bangla who's the vice president global cloud operations and DevOps at Paulus welcome to the cube thank you so you're an award winner tonight tell us about the project that garnered you this prestigious honor I'm happy to share that and actually I'm very thrilled and excited to be here and participating with the other accomplished leaders there were actually two key projects which got me one is the scale in the big data and the complexity dealing with the clouds and it's not one cloud Qualis being the cloud provider for security we manage security products for different customers we are talking about big scale we do three billion scans annually we do about hundred billion detections annually and we do about one trillion security endpoints or data points so how do you manage the scale and bringing new features to the market at her lightning speed is the key so I had three key strategies which got me to the award one is agility visibility and security and being a service provider for security Security's in the forefront all the time for the platforms we also believe in sipping our own champagne we use our own products to make sure our platforms are secure visibility you know things break and when things break at scale Qualis is no different and the strategy I had evolved and the team had executed on was a single pane of glass for you know knowing when things break and how do you quickly fix it an agility how do you deploy regardless whether in you're in Amazon as your or Google cloud platform or software or even your own private cloud on VMware we should be able to deploy our platforms quickly so I had initiated a new DevOps strategy where regardless of your underlying infrastructure how do you quickly deploy your workloads that is the KP how do you fail fast and to top it off the culture is very important transforming the entire operations team being just not a support organization but being that innovation driving organization was the key Wow fantastic you are obviously you're in a very accomplished technologist you're an award winner give us a quick overview of some of the things that are the most influential or have been the most influential to get you to be where you are now this successful female leader in technology two things come to mind first is believe in yourself never think anything is impossible everything is possible always believe in making an impact be that problem solver whether it is within Europe your own organization or whether it is in a cross-functional whether it's a technology problem whether it's a process always believe you can make an impact I love that believe in yourself believe you can make an impact chalma thank you so much for joining my graduations thank youing one of the top women in cloud innovation we're thrilled to have you thank you so much you've been watching the cube I'm your host Lisa Martin and if you know a female that should be featured on our program tweet us at the cube hashtag women in tech and we'll see you next time