>> Hi, and welcome to Data Cloud Catalyst, Women in Tech Round Table Panel Discussion. I am so excited to have three fantastic female executives with me today who have been driving transformation through data throughout their entire career. With me today is Lisa Davis, SVP and CIO of Blue Shield of California. We also have Nishita Henry, who is the Chief Innovation Officer at Deloitte and Theresa Briggs, who is on a variety of board of directors, including our own very own Snowflake. Welcome, ladies. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> So I'm just going to dive right in. You all have really amazing careers and resumes behind you. I'm really curious, throughout your career, how have you seen the use of data evolve throughout your career? And, Lisa, I'm going to start with you. >> Thank you. Having been in technology my entire career, technology and data has really evolved from being the province of a few in an organization to frankly being critical to everyone's business outcomes. Now every business leader really needs to embrace data analytics and technology. We've been talking about digital transformation probably the last five, seven years, we've all talked about disrupt or be disrupted. At the core of that digital transformation is the use of data. Data and analytics that we derive insights from and actually improve our decision making by driving a differentiated experience and capability into market. So data has involved as being, I would say, almost tactical in some sense over my technology career, to really being a strategic asset of what we leverage personally in our own careers, but also what we must leverage as companies to drive a differentiated capability to experience and remain relative in the market today. >> Nishita, curious your take on how you've seen data evolve? >> Yeah, I agree with Lisa. It has definitely become the lifeblood of every business, right? It used to be that there were a few companies in the business of technology, every business is now a technology business. Every business is a data business. It is the way that they go to market, shape the market and serve their clients. Whether you're in construction, whether you're in retail, whether you're in healthcare it doesn't matter, right? Data is necessary for every business to survive and thrive. And I remember at the beginning of my career, data was always important but it was about storing data. It was about giving people individual reports, it was about supplying that data to one person or one business unit in silos. And it then evolved right over the course of time into integrating data and to saying, all right, how does one piece of data correlate to the other and how can I get insights out of that data? Now, let's go on to the point of how do I use that data to predict the future? How do I use that data to automate the future? How do I use that data not just for humans to make decisions, but for other machines to make decisions, right? Which is a big leap. And a big change in how we use data, how we analyze data and how we use it for insights in evolving our businesses. >> Yeah, it's really changed so tremendously just in the past five years. It's amazing. So Teresa, we've talked a lot about the Data Cloud, where do you think we're heading with that? And also, how can future leaders really guide their careers in data, especially in those jobs where we don't traditionally think of them in the data science space? Curious your thoughts on that? >> Yeah, well, since I'm on the Snowflake board, I'll talk a little bit about the Snowflake Data Cloud. Now we're getting your company's data out of the silos that exists all over your organization, we're bringing third party data in to combine with your own data, and we're wrapping a governance structure around it and feeding it out to your employees so that they can get their jobs done. And is as simple as that. I think we've all seen the pandemic accelerate the digitization of our work. And if you ever doubted the future of work is here, it is here. And companies are scrambling to catch up by providing the right amount of data, collaboration tools, workflow tools for their workers to get their jobs done. Now, it used to be as prior people have mentioned that in order to work with data you had to be a data scientist. But I was an auditor back in the day and we used to work on 16 columns spreadsheet. And now if you're an accounting major coming out of college joining an auditing firm, you have to be tech and data savvy because you're going to be extracting, manipulating, analyzing and auditing data, that massive amounts of data that sit in your client's IT systems. I'm on the board of Warby Parker, and you might think that their most valuable asset is their amazing frame collection, but it's actually their data, their 360 degree view of the customer. And so if you're a merchant or you're in strategy, or marketing or talent or the co-CEO, you're using data every day in your work. And so I think it's going to become a ubiquitous skill that anyone who's a knowledge worker has to be able to work with data. >> Yeah, I think it's just going to be organic to every role going forward in the industry. So Lisa, curious about your thoughts about Data Cloud, the future of it, and how people can really leverage it in their jobs from future leaders? >> Yeah, absolutely. Most enterprises today are, I would say, hybrid multi cloud enterprises. What does that mean? That means that we have data sitting on prem, we have data sitting in public clouds through software as a service applications, we have a data everywhere, most enterprises have data everywhere. Certainly those that have owned infrastructure or weren't born on the web. One of the areas that I love that Data Cloud is addressing is the area around data portability and mobility. Because I have data sitting in various locations through my enterprise, how do I aggregate that data to really drive meaningful insights out of that data to drive better business outcomes? And at Blue Shield of California, one of our key initiatives is what we call an experienced cube. What does that mean? It means how do I drive transparency of data between providers, members and payers? So that not only do I reduce overhead on providers and provide them a better experience, or hospital systems or doctors, but ultimately, how do we have the member have it their power of their fingertips the value of their data holistically, so that we're making better decisions about their health care? One of the things Teresa was talking about was the use of this data, and I would drive to data democratization. We got to put the power of data into the hands of everyone, not just data scientists. Yes, we need those data scientists to help us build AI models to really drive and tackle these tougher challenges and business problems that we may have in our environments. But everybody in the company, both on the IT side, both on the business side, really need to understand of how do we become a data insights driven enterprise. Put the power of the data into everyone's hands so that we can accelerate capabilities, right? And leverage that data to ultimately drive better business results. So as a leader, as a technology leader, part of our responsibility, our leadership is to help our companies do that. And that's really one of the exciting things that I'm doing in my role now at Blue Shield of California. >> Yeah, it's really, really exciting time. I want to shift gears a little bit and focus on women in tech. So I think in the past five to 10 years, there has been a lot of headway in this space. But the truth is women are still underrepresented in the tech space. So what can we do to attract more women into technology quite honestly. So Nishita, curious, what your thoughts are on that? >> Great question. And I am so passionate about this for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is I have two daughters of my own. And I know how important it is for women and young girls to actually start early in their love for technology, and data and all things digital, right? So I think it's one very important to start early, start an early education, building confidence of young girls that they can do this, showing them role models. We at Deloitte just partnered with Ella the Engineer to actually make comic books centered around young girls and boys in the early elementary age to talk about how heroes and tech solve everyday problems. And so really helping to get people's minds around tech is not just in the back office coding on a computer, tech is about solving problems together that help us as citizens, as customers, right? And as humanity. So I think that's important. I also think we have to expand that definition of tech, as we just said. It's not just about, right? Database design. It's not just about Java and Python coding, it's about design. It's about the human machine interfaces. It's about how do you use it to solve real problems and getting people to think in that kind of mindset makes it more attractive and exciting. And lastly, I'd say look, we have absolute imperative to get a diverse population of people, not just women, but minorities, those with other types of backgrounds, disabilities, etc involved. Because this data is being used to drive decision making, and if we are not all involved, right? In how that data makes decisions, it can lead to unnatural biases that no one intended but can happen just 'cause we haven't involved a diverse enough group of people around it. >> Absolutely. Lisa, curious about your thoughts on this. >> I agree with everything Nishita said. I've been passionate about this area, I think it starts with first we need more role models. We need more role models as women in these leadership roles throughout various sectors. And it really is it starts with us and helping to pull other women forward. So I think certainly, it's part of my responsibility, I think all of us as female executives that if you have a seat at the table to leverage that seat at the table to drive change, to bring more women forward, more diversity forward into the boardroom and into our executive suites. I also want to touch on a point Nishita made about women, we're the largest consumer group in the company yet we're consumers, but we're not builders. This is why it's so important that we start changing that perception of what tech is. And I agree that it starts with our young girls. We know the data shows that we lose our young girls by middle school. Very heavy peer pressure, it's not so cool to be smart, or do robotics, or be good at math and science. We start losing our girls in middle school. So they're not prepared when they go to high school and they're not taking those classes in order to major in the STEM fields in college. So we have to start the pipeline early with our girls. And then I also think it's a measure of what your boards are doing. What is the executive leadership and your goals around diversity and inclusion? How do we invite more diverse population to the decision making table? So it's really a combination of efforts. One of the things that certainly is concerning to me is during this pandemic, I think we're losing one in four women in the workforce now, because of all the demands that our families are having to navigate through this pandemic. The last statistic I saw in the last four months is we've lost 850,000 women in the workforce. This pipeline is critical to making that change in these leadership positions. >> Yeah, it's really a critical time. And now we're coming to the end of this conversation, I want to ask you Teresa, what would be a call to action to everyone listening, both men and women since its needs to be solved by everyone, to address the gender gap in the industry? >> I'd encourage each of you to become an active sponsor. Research shows that women and minorities are less likely to be sponsored than white men. Sponsorship is a much more active form than mentorship. Sponsorship involves helping someone identify career opportunities and actively advocating for them in those roles, opening your network, giving very candid feedback. And we need men to participate too. There are not enough women in tech to pull forward and sponsor the high potential women that are in our pipelines. And so we need you to be part of the solution. >> Nishita real quickly, what would be your call to action to everyone? >> I'd say look around your teams, see who's on them and make deliberate decisions about diversifying those teams. As positions open up, make sure that you have a diverse set of candidates, and make sure that there are women that are part of that team. And make sure that you are actually hiring and putting people into positions based on potential not just experience. >> And real quickly Lisa, will close it out with you, what would your call to action be? >> Well, it's hard to... What Nishita and what Teresa shared I think were very powerful actions. I think it starts with us. Taking action at our own table, making sure you're driving diverse panels and hiring, setting goals for the company. Having your board engaged and holding us accountable and driving to those goals, will help us all see a better outcome but with more women at the executive table and diverse populations. >> Great advice and great action for all of us to take. Thank you all so much for spending time with me today and talking about this really important issue. I really appreciate it. Stay with us.