(instrumental electronic music) >> Announcer: Live from Palo Alto, it's The Cube, covering Women Transforming Technology 2017, brought to you by VMware. (crowd) >> Welcome back to the Cube's coverage of Women Transforming Technology. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. And I'm here at VMware, with Sindy Braun. She is the Vice President of Social Impact here at VMware. >> Hey Rebecca! >> Welcome! Thank you so much for taking the time-- >> Thank you. It's great to be here. >> To talk to us. >> So, I first of all want to commend you because this conference is fantastic. And you've really taken a Lot You've put it together. >> We did. Of course, it's a consortium, so we could not do this without the partners that we have, and, of course, the great team that is working on this. So, certainly, can't take credit for it, but it is the team has been tremendous in putting this together. >> Well, some of the feedback that I'm hearing is that this conference has a great mix of technical sessions, but then also professional career-based sessions-- >> Sindy: Um-hmm. Yeah. >> What's the balance that you're try to strike when you're putting it together. >> Sure, so this is actually part of what we were aiming at, is there are other conferences that focus on technical women, that focus on women in a certain industry. And this is where we wanted it to have that conversation, to build a community for women in tech. And I think it's the bit of a uniqueness around that, being able to create the network, the support system, the conversation that is happening and becoming even more important in today's world. And that's what we're trying to do here, is how do you create the conversation, and how do you continue the conversation. And this is our second year of doing it. Obviously, last year was such a success that coming back this year was almost a no-brainer in something that we really wanted to invest in. >> And the theme, breaking barriers-- >> Sindy: Um-hmm. >> Where did you... What was the thought behind that? >> I think it's where we're at from a diversity perspective where most companies, particularly, in Silicon Valley and in tech careers, how do we break those barriers? How do we break through? How do we take other people's stories and tell the story of breaking through, of building momentum? And we've got a lot of work to do, but this is where VMware is focused, is how are we going to pull together and make change? And for us, its always been driving it into the business, of making it a business-led initiative, as opposed to an HR-led initiative, which is where a lot of companies do this. And really making it both top down and bottom up because it's about changing consciousness. It's about changing the conversation, and it's about seeing the movement in both the diversity side, which is the numbers associated with it. And the inclusiveness side, which is how do you bring your whole self to work? How do you feel comfortable? And that's also you can see from where we're... The kind of people that are here. That's what it's about, is how do we change the face of women in technology. >> Gloria Steinem is giving the closing address. What a bold choice to choose a feminist. This is the Women Transforming Technology is the conference, and choosing a feminist icon-- >> Sindy: Um-hmm. >> To close it out-- >> Right. Talk today. We were obviously having discussions who would be the right choice and her name came up. And really it was, Wow, could we get her? (laughing) And she was available, and I think we're going to all be in for a treat this afternoon. We just got to spend some time with her, one-on-one Q and A. And it is... Runs so deep with her. She's actually pretty soft-spoken-- >> Rebecca: Um-hmm. >> But you can see that this is how she lives and breathes her life. And I'm just so excited! I can't wait to get in there and hear the keynote. >> One of your responsibilities here at VMware is being in charge of the foundation. >> Sindy: Um-hmm. >> And VMware has a very unique approach to giving. >> Sindy: Um-hmm. Yeah. >> Tell us more about that? >> So, that the approach that we've had is, again, most of what Vmware's and our culture is about is about choice, and about engaging our people, as opposed to many other sort of giving philosophies, which is really a top down approach. So, what we do is really give our employees the say in where did they want to give? How did they want to engage? And we call this Citizen Philanthropy, and we talk about it that every individual can make a difference and that's the Citizen Philanthropy. But at the end of the day, that's how we get to having a collective impact, right? And it has been phenomenal. We have done some work internally around employee engagement, what does this mean? And we're seeing phenomenal results from just how embedded this is in our culture. How proud people are of being able to give in this way. How much they value this as a culture. And we're seeing more and more of this within all of our employees. Most people talking about millennials really wanting to have their sense of purpose, but I'm seeing it across the spectrum. It's not just millennials, it's people at my age, which is much more than a millennial (laughing), all the way across, which is how do we get that sense of purpose? How do we give back? And that's essentially what the foundation approach is, how do we awaken the philanthropist in everyone? >> So, where are employees giving back? Give me some examples of how Citizen Philanthropy plays out. >> Across the board, so we invite our employees to engage, we invite our employees to... And we very generously offer 40 hours of service learning, right? I think just even that phrase, we don't call it volunteerism because really we're focusing on the being of service, and what do you learn from that, right? And I think that has a profound impact on people, and it's not just about, Oh, I'm going to do two hours here or there. It's seeing the impact this has, and then being able to apply it back to their own selves, and see how this grows them and changes their perspective of the world. When we first launched the foundation, it was under the then CEO, Paul Maritz, and he's made this comment up, Anybody who works here has won the lottery of life, alright. And it's part of who we are. And being able to give back is such a tremendous, just privilege. And people feel that and we see it. We just did a survey and we're working on our employee NPS score, which is would they recommend the company. And we found that those employees that have engaged in our foundation programs are 25% more likely to recommend the company. So, you can see how this is really embedded-- >> So, it has an effect on retention. >> And retention, be the culture, and that, in turn, has an impact on hiring because they'll recommend it to their friends, and who, again, are looking for more in a company than just-- >> Um-hmm. >> How am I going to earn my paycheck? And I think that's part of what the foundation allows us to accomplish for people. >> I think that quote from your former CEO has stayed with me, You've won the lottery of life. Do you think that is part of the culture in Silicon Valley, too? I mean, there's a humility there? Because I got to be honest-- >> I think there is-- >> It doesn't appear that way (laughing). >> There's a lot of privilege out there. And I think that's the opportunity that we have, and I think we're seeing some of this changing, with the Warren Buffet's giving away his money. >> Rebecca: Um-hmm. >> What the Gates' Foundation is doing out there. But I think there's a constant reminder of that sense of privilege that where we are in the world, and how we almost have a responsibility to give back and make a difference for others. >> Rebecca: That's great. >> So. >> Well, Sindy Braun, thank you so much for joining us! >> Thank you, this has been a pleasure. >> I'm Rebecca Knight, your host at The Cube. This is Women Transforming Technology at VMware. We'll be right back. (instrumental electronic music)

>> Commentator: Live from Palo Alto, it's theCUBE, covering Women Transforming Technology 2017, brought to you by VMware. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Women Transforming Technology held at VMware. I'm your host Rebecca Knight. Joining me today is Cornelia Davis. She is the Senior Director of Technology at Pivotal which is the Palo Alto-based company that provides Agile development services on an open source platform. Thank you so much for joining us. >> Thank you for having me. I'm so happy to be here. >> So before the cameras were rolling, you started telling me a little bit about your personal story. You're a woman in tech who loves the tech, but you said for the past three years, you've also become an activist and an evangelist for getting more women into this business. Tell us about that transformation. >> Yes, I'll tell you a little bit about that story. I have the gray hair to prove it. I've been doing this for some time. I actually was a woman studying computer science back in the day where we were getting close to equity. >> Rebecca: There was a time when it was-- >> Yeah, there was so back in the '80s, I was majoring in computer science and I think that we were close to 40% at the time, although I have to say even before I was in college, I was always the girl who was out playing soccer with the boys at lunch time. Gender never really seemed to make much of a difference to me but anyway, I got a degree in computer science and then I spent 25 years in the industry and sure, there were times where I would notice that I was the only woman in the room. Actually I would say maybe three or four years ago, I went to a customer opening where they were catering to the developer community and in the room there were 250 developers, I was the only woman. I mean seriously, I was the only woman of 250 and I was like wow. But other than notice it and chuckle about it and even have some of those experiences where maybe somebody assumed that I was the HR person and not the technologist, those types of things, I never really did anything about it. And then about three years ago, I had the great fortune of meeting Robin Hauser Reynolds and Stacy Hartmann who are the two women behind the movie Code: Debugging the Gender Gap, you've seen it? >> Rebecca: Yes, yes. >> A fantastic film, a fantastic piece and had this opportunity to meet them and got involved in the film and Pivotal became a sponsor. They did some of the filming. They did some interviewing of people at Pivotal and it was through that experience and then I got to go to some of the screenings and participate in panels and so on and it was through that experience that I started to understand that it wasn't just curiosity, that it was actually declining, the numbers were declining and that it was a real serious problem. And so after being in the industry for 25 years and not really doing anything about it, I've become an activist and so I spend a lot of time jabbing on about this. I'll give you another example. Last year in January, Pivotal brought most of the company together here in the Bay Area. We brought about 1,200 people into the Bay Area for worldwide kickoff. And the very first talk that they had after our CEO spoke was a talk on diversity and they actually invited me to come up and speak about gender diversity or lack thereof in technology and talked about the Girls Who Code and some of those great programs out there. >> I want to get back to Girls Who Code because I know that you're passionate about it, but I want to also just get back to the moment that you described where you went from chuckling about being the only woman in the room and saying, "Oh it's not silly," to really feeling, "Hey this isn't right. "I want things to be different." What was that moment? Are you trying to recreate that moment for other women as a wake up call? How would you describe your activism? >> I don't know that it was a moment, but the thing that catalyzes me, the thing that makes me really passionate about doing this is that I have this tremendous opportunity. The way that I came into computing personally was at the end of my sophomore year in high school when we were signing up for classes the following year, I was looking at what might I sign up for and I signed up for a computer programming class and then I went off and I joked around that I went off and had a bitchin' summer. That's the stuff we said in the '80s. I went off and had a bitchin' summer. >> We should bring that word back. Let's do it, Cornelia. >> It's a good word. And I came back and had this computer class on my schedule and I was like, "Uh no, no, no, no. "There is no way I'm doing this." And I skipped class for the first two or three days and then I finally went and curiosity got the better of me. I tried it out and I was hooked. Literally that was the moment, not for my activism, but that was the moment where I had like, "Oh my gosh, this is going to change everything. "This is what want to I do." And that's what brought me to computing and that's what makes me an activist now because I didn't realize for those 25 years that other people didn't have those opportunities, that they were actually systemically being discouraged from having those opportunities and so I think that's at the core of my activism is I want people to have the opportunity because I love what I do so much and I think I was mentioning before before we started rolling the cameras that I've been a technologist my whole career. Occasionally I've branched off and tried to do maybe a little bit more leadership or a little bit more of that, but I love the tech so much and it's such a great wonderful career to be in, self-sustaining and all of those things, I want other people to have that opportunity. That's what gets me going. >> I was reading a bio where you're a self-described propeller head and you can find her knee deep in the code and now you want to inspire the next generation and so you've gotten involved with Girls Who Code. Tell us more. >> Yes so it wasn't actually through the film. I think it was just simply, it was serendipitous, right around the time that I was starting to awaken to what was going on in the industry. Working for Pivotal, Pivotal in our San Francisco office, it's a very cool office. It's very different from what I saw in most of my career which was cube farms. It's a very open floor plan, very hip, just a cool place to be. >> What the rest of us East Coasters envisions Silicon Valley to be. >> Yeah, it's really pretty cool. And so the Girls Who Code, for those of you who might be watching that don't know about the Girls Who Code, it's an organization that really targets high school girls and their flagship program is in the summer they have a seven-week immersion program where they bring girls in and they basically code, they learn to code from nine to five every day for seven weeks. It's a pretty intensive program. Well about three years ago, we weren't sponsoring at that level, but we would be a field trip location. One of our close partners, investors, customers, is General Electric. They hosted a group of these 20 girls in their San Ramon office. They came to us for a couple of summers as a field trip location and of course the girls loved it. They walk off the elevator there's snacks, there's drinks. We parent programmed with them. It's a really cool experience. And then last summer, we actually took the next step and hosted our own groups so we had a group of 20 young women who were here in our Palo Alto office for seven weeks learning to code and I had the wonderful opportunity to spend time with them several times throughout the summer and I actually commute to the Bay Area, not everyday but I commute to the Bay Area and the days that I was coming up here in part to see the girls, I'd wake up at four in the morning for my flight and I'd be like, "I get to spend time with the girls today," and I saw it. I saw the girls who in the first week were clearly there because their parents made them be there and they're sitting there like this and they've got the same attitude that I had when I was in high school the first three days like I am not doing this and the same people are standing up at the graduation ceremony at the end of the seven weeks saying, "This changed my life." And one of those young women I'm spending a little bit more time with is now a computer science major at Northwestern, early decision. It's just fantastic to see that light up. That's what gets me going. >> Now why high school? I get high school in the sense that they're old enough to take on a summer job like internship, but what is it about that age do you think that is so critical? >> Yeah so that age, I'll be honest with you, I think is almost too late for a lot of girls because we are able to reach, I just mentioned, that there were girls in there whose parents forced them into that. They had already self-selected out. Just like I had when I was in high school. I had self-selected out. I was way too cool to be in computing and so in some ways high school is a little bit too late. However, I think you nailed it, is that there's an opportunity there that they're mature enough that you can do something as immersive as a seven-week program and these girls are tremendous. These girls after a seven-week program are going back to their high schools and being the president of their Girls Who Code after school clubs and teaching them and I was just spending some time, we had a hangout with them recently where they said when their friends are asking, "What are you going to do this summer?" And the girls said, "I have no idea, "but you know what you should do "is you should do Girls Who Code." She said, "That's all I want to do. "I just want to do Girls Who Code all over again." And so I think you're right, I think it's opportunistic in that they're ready, but unfortunately I think it, like I said, it self-selects a lot of people out. I think fundamentally the thing that we need to do to reach the younger grades, the younger students, is it needs to be part of the curriculum. It absolutely 100% needs to be part of primary school curriculum so that they can get hooked and understand what it is before they self-select out because they're self-selecting out based on a perception and the image that they have of what it is, the Silicon Valley show, that's a perception. Sure it's satyr but young people see that and they don't see it as that. It just looks like something where there's a whole bunch of misbehaving men treating women poorly. >> So on that actually Cornelia, what do you make of the really distressing news that we're hearing that's not necessarily new, there has been the Uber bombshell of last week, but what we know about the culture here and maybe why there were so many women and it was almost 50/50 and then we started to see a drastic change and lower numbers of women in computer science and a lot of women just saying, "Ew, I don't want to be part of that. "I don't want that for my career." What do you say to them and what do you say to the men who are not even knowingly discouraging them from that kind of career? >> Oh, I love what you just said, not even knowingly. One of the things that I spend a lot of time talking with folks about every chance I get is implicit bias. I think that there's definitely overt sexism and in the last week we've seen that big in the news and that is a huge problem. I think I've heard statistics of whatever 60% of women have some level of relatively overt sexism, 100% of us get the implicit, the non-overt, and people who are well-meaning saying things, when they say for example, I was just chatting with a young lady a couple of weeks ago. She's a sophomore in college and she was telling me that last summer during her internship, within the first week or two, her boss was talking to her about her career plans moving forward and was already encouraging her to go more into management than into technology. This person was not evil, wasn't trying to keep women out of technology or keep women out of the most technical parts of a technology career, but he really genuinely believed that, "Maybe women are better at that and not so good at this," and it's really just our implicit biases. So I think that's a big part of it. And for the last year or two, I've been talking about implicit bias and I've been talking about the compensating mechanisms so first of all recognizing your implicit biases and then being conscious about them and then consciously combating them. I've become in the last several months, I would say six months, I've become more and more interested in the idea of how do we actually change those implicit biases. >> And this is men and women. It's not just the men here. >> No question because when I've had conversations where I've spoken for example on implicit bias, I've had women come up to me afterward and say, "I signed my son up for a coding camp. "I never even thought about signing up my daughter." >> Rebecca: Oh, that hurts. >> And I was like, "So you're signing her up now, right?" She's like, "Oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah." And so I think it's really interesting to start thinking about how do we actually get rid of them? It's one thing to recognize them and then fight them, but it's another thing to get rid of them. I think the only way we can get rid of them goes back to the statistics that we talked about early on which is I am surprised when I see a woman technologist. That's just the way our brains work. We categorize things. >> We have an idea in our head of what that person looks like. >> We put things in buckets. We wouldn't be able to function in this world with so many different inputs unless we put things into buckets and we just put things into buckets largely based on statistics. And so I'm becoming increasingly interested in really amplifying the voice of women in technology because when we hear women's voices in technology, women who are up there not talking about what we're talking about today which is the gender imbalance, but talking about the tech itself, then we start to normalize, then we start to re-categorize things in our brains so that we're not surprised when we hear a woman talking about something deeply technical or somebody who's doing particle physics or something like that, we're not surprised anymore and say, "Wow she's a rocket scientist," it's normal. That's what I'm interested in doing is getting that to be the norm, not the exception. I think the first step what I would say to people, what I do say to men and women across the industry is first of all recognize it and then let's see what we can do to change it. >> Cornelia Davis, thank you so much. That's good advice, that's good advice. And we'll be right back with theCUBE's coverage of Women Transforming Technology here at VMware. (modern techno music)

>> Announcer: Live from Palo Alto. It's the Cube, Covering Women Transforming Technology 2017. Brought to you by VMware. >> Welcome back to the Cube's coverage of Women Transforming Technology here at VMware. I'm Rebecca Knight, your host. I'm joined by Colleen Kapase, she is the vice president of Partner Go to Market Programs and Incentives here at VMware. Colleen thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you for having me, I appreciate it. >> So you are a Channel Chief, that sounds so, it's a great title I love it. (laughs) Can you explain to our viewers a little bit about what you do? >> Absolutely, and maybe my mom will watch this cause she still doesn't quite understand. >> Mom are you listening, okay. >> What I do. Channel Chief is a wonderful opportunity to drive the sales strategy inside a technology vendor through multiple different partners who sell our technology around the world. What many people don't know in the technology industry is trillions and trillions of dollars of our sales go through partners. In fact we even partner with ourselves. VMware partners with Google and Amazon and Dell and everyone else in the industry to help ourselves sell because customers don't buy a technology, they buy a solution. So much like the retail industry, where clothes are made by a brand, it's not necessarily sold by that brand. It's sold Nordstrom's or Bloomingdale's etc. Same thing in technology. So my role as a Channel Chief is to manage those relationships. VMware has about 60,000 partners worldwide, and so our focus as a Channel Chief is how do I get those partners to sell our technology, and not just sell it, but deliver it, and install it, and architect it, and put a whole solution together because VMware is often sold with many other technologies. The server side, the networking side, the storage side, and put a solution together for our customers. So that's what I get up and think about every day, is how do I get these partners to sell VMware. >> So you, it's a sales role. >> Colleen: It is. >> And are there many other, and you're also in corporate. >> Colleen: Yes. >> Channel Chief. Are there many other women in these leadership roles? >> Yeah, not as much as I would like to see today. But I think it's beginning to grow as a career that's well suited, frankly, for women. It is a corporate role, in many cases, and there's different kinds of Channel Chief. There's a field Channel Chief that's out there meeting with all the different partners, putting together the business cases and how can we sell more in the future. My role, and one that's really growing in the industry is a corporate Channel Chief. We think though the incentives. Almost like the comp plan for a sales person, but it's what's the comp plan for a partner. How do we pay them, what behaviors do we want to reward for. What behaviors do we want to stop rewarding for. And how do we want to move the cheese, if you will, on the sales team that happens every year, it's a very natural thing but we're thinking about these for businesses versus individuals. Another piece is what's the legal requirements of working with us, what's the training requirements, which technology do you need to know, how do we need to increase those technologies. The wonderful thing is a Channel Chief, really, we touch the marketing department, the legal department, the finance department, the sales department, most importantly, the business unit department that creates the technology. How do we sell it. You're almost like a mini CEO within the company. But if you do it at a corporate level, it's also a role that doesn't require a lot of travel. And that seems to be one of the main inhibitors for women that I see in sales, is the road warrior piece is something that just doesn't work for a lot of women. So being a corporate Channel Chief you can be involved in the strategy, doing the research, setting the direction. But have a bit more of a stable home life as well, so you can balance work and home. >> Right, and you can get to a certain point of influence in your career without having to be out there as much. >> Absolutely, but I always refer to it again as that mini CEO because you're really that hub and spoke, you touch so many different departments and you're solving so many company problems that are really at the central piece. Hey, it's amazing, we've created networking virtualization, how are we going to sell it? Who do we sell it with? What does it displace, what does it replace? How do we explain it to customers? Who was selling networking already that could help us do this? Really it's the hub of everything. >> And because you're collaborating with all these different business units, as you say, gets your brain working in different ways too which is fun. >> Absolutely. >> And, not to be generic, but having that collaborative spirit that many of us women have, it really works well for you. You have to be able to understand, and put yourself in the position of finance, of the business unit, of the legal team, and be able to communicate with all of 'em, okay this is how we're going to bring this technology to market. >> So for a viewer out there, that sounds like something I'd like to do, how did you get started? How did you become a Channel Chief? >> Yep, not so interesting story but I'll share with you anyways. >> Rebecca: We only want interesting stories Colleen. >> I came from a family that had a doctor, and a teaching background from my parents. So when I said I wanted to go into business I think they wanted to disown me somewhat, and didn't really know how to guide me, so I was really on my own. Went to the University of Washington Business School and really went to the career center and saw consulting. And in my mind I'm like, ah consulting, I can try different things, do different things and learn more about business to find my niche, and it happened to be a channel consulting company based out of Seattle, Washington. So I actually started as an intern. And there are multiple different channel consulting companies that still exist, especially in the Bay area, in Boston are two of the main headquarters of those. I got to see what is a channel strategist do in hardware vendors, software vendors. I worked for Compaq, I worked in HP, I worked in Inktomi. I quickly learned that software had more monies so that seemed like a good direction to go. There's a small group of folks that understand channel. But they're very willing to train the next generation. So it's a very niche, really profession. If you understand it, and if you listen to the partners, and you bring back their voice within your vendor, you can be very well respected in the industry as well. >> Now you're also on the diversity council here at VMware. >> Colleen: Yes. >> What are some of the things you're working on to make this a more inclusive work environment? >> Great question. Some of the things that we're working on within VMware, that I think is very important, especially because VMware has our engineering background is the math behind the problem statement. How are we doing as a company? We have created wonderful dashboards that really sit down with our leaders and really look at diversity. How many women to we have in the company? How many do we have at individual contributors all the way up in to the vice president level. How many come in from a recruitment standpoint, how many do we promote and how many do we lose? What I've found is, sitting down with our leadership, male and female and looking at the math and the dashboards of where we stand as a company gives us a single foundation to start from, and then figure out how are we going to continue to improve that? I'm sure, as you know, VMware's recently come out with our statistics of being 23%, for instance female. And then we're constantly looking at how can we improve upon that. We have educating people in the programs that we have. People of Difference, our PODS for instance. We have a VM inclusion, People of Difference, POD, around women and that's when we get together and talk about how can we support each other, what are some tactics that we can come with to support each other even just in a meeting. You know you can sit in a meeting, and you know that old adage of you can say something and then possibly a male repeats it and you weren't listened the first time. But what's amazing to watch in VMware, now other women are trained to stop in that meeting, say, ah, actually I think Colleen just said that, so nice of you to repeat that. Handled in a nice almost fun kind of way. >> That's not always easy to do though. >> No it's not. >> I mean, that takes a deft touch. So are you also in those training sessions? Are you, is there sort of an EQ component to it? >> Absolutely, and we practice. So we literally have groups of ourselves, that we go through the training and we practice, and we hold each other accountable, and say in two weeks find one example where that happened to a colleague or yourself and how did you correct the situation or not correct the situation. Let's talk about it, why did you or didn't you. Holding each other accountable seems to be a big, big piece of, I think, the success at VMware. Cause you can discuss the problem and have a support group of agreeing on what the issue is, but not take action to fix it. And so those support groups, and coming together, and saying here's the issue, and here's how I addressed it in my small way, in my one meeting, and those death by a thousand cuts starts to stop, and you find you have alliances with other women who are supporting women, and we're all trying to come together to further the cause, which is a great feeling. >> So, I mean, this sounds as though things are, that VMware is aware of this and is trying to improve the culture. But Silicon Valley gets a lot of bad press, particularly lately, particularly this last week. >> Colleen: Yes. >> Of being an intolerant place, or being sexist. Is it as bad as we're hearing? >> I've certainly heard some of the stories at some of the other tech vendors recently. I'd hate to think it's that way at every single company. I know that Uber's story is recently come up, that's pretty serious, I think. Do I think everyone experiences it as a female at some level, whether it's the joke or the football talk, or not feeling included, or the cigar lounge. I think that happens to some extent everywhere. Did the seriousness of what we're hearing come out in the press happen everywhere, I hope not. I haven't had those types of experience. But I think almost everyone has had it. You know, just a mispositioning of a statement that did offend, or hey, how was maternity leave handled by male leadership. And there's something I'm pretty, pretty passionate about, that we're beginning discussion at VMware, which is a reverse mentor. So we're really asking some of our male leaders to look at having a female or diverse candidate reverse mentor. So someone lower than you, honestly, in the pecking order, telling you, or being there as someone you can bounce something off of. Hey I was thinking of doing this, would this bother you as a woman? Or when they see you say something or do something, or hey did you notice you, you know, leader, you had a panel and it was all men. Really having a relationship where they can have those conversations, cause sometimes what we're finding is the men just really aren't aware. And you want to think that they are, and I think we're so super aware and more vigilant of it that they would be more aware, but I think having the ability as a leader to learn from your team or someone specifically on you team that you have trust. >> But the people who have the reverse mentors, aren't they already a self selecting group in the sense of their already the ones who are aware that there are problems. I mean, I'm just thinking about it, >> Yeah >> It sounds like a great idea, but how do you get that leader who maybe is a little more bullheaded or just unaware, oblivious, to say you need this, you need someone of, who has a different perspective than you, telling you how it is, or telling you what his or her experiences. >> I think that's a great question. Something we're pretty focused on is diversity. We're not necessarily doing it to be nice. We're doing it for business outcomes. I think the hope is, you have, maybe the leaders who are self selecting who come and do the reverse mentoring, are aware of their organization and how they need to improve. But what we can show is, if they work on it over time, they get better business outcomes. And in sales business outcomes is very clear and easy to see. (Rebecca laughing) So the teams that have the more diverse teams, and lean in to the issue, even if they were more self selecting, if they have the better business outcomes, if they have the better sales over time, it becomes less of a, hey the person who is bullish who doesn't want to, he needs you to do this to be nice, it's more, this person got better sales results than you did, so why don't we take a page out of what they did and try some of these things. And I think if we can keep in on business outcomes, that's part of the way we can win. In sales, that's a little easier than on the technical side. >> There's a clear ROI >> Colleen: Absolutely. When you look at it. No, and I think that's a really good point because you do think of diversity training as kind of this squishy thing, that you can't necessarily always quantify. >> Colleen: Yeah. >> What are you, what are you seeing, and what are you hearing from your colleagues, your other Channel Chiefs in terms of what's happening? (sighs) >> Great question. There's not enough of us, so I actually just met with four of them yesterday from Brocade, and Riverbed, and Sungard, and we had a discussion of what's working or what's not working. I think we're seeing a better understanding from all of our peers on male and female, of there's an issue, we're not diverse. The statistics are being published now. We're seeing companies come out, VMware published, where are we at. And you can just kind of look at the numbers and say we have a ways to go. >> So you're benchmarking yourself, but then you're also benchmarking yourself against, >> Against others. >> Yes. >> I think more people are coming out and, you know, I think Facebook, and Apple sort of started some of that trend, but Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle, they're all publishing now their percent of leadership that is women. So I think we have an agreement on, we've got an issue, we could see mathematically we have a problem. We need to improve that. I don't think some of the smaller companies have the assets and the resources to solve the problem yet. And they're looking at some of the larger companies, what are you doing, and what tools are you developing and how can we learn from you. Cause when you talk to some of those smaller companies that maybe are more likely to have some of the female leaderships in those positions, they still don't know how they are going to solve this problem completely. >> Thinking about the top women in Silicon Valley, or top women in the technology industry, the names we know that are in the press all the time, the Sheryl Sanberg's, and Jenny Remedy's, who do you think are some of the unsung heroes? >> Oh, unsung heroes. You know, I, in my world, in the channel world I see a much smaller community of women. I see the women in VMware frankly. I think Betsy and what she's done at VMware as our chief people officer, and really taking the issue on, pretty head on, and even, you know, to the point of having the Women Transforming Technology event here at VMware and sponsoring it, and getting Dell to sponsor it, and Pivotal and the other sponsors. I think that's been huge, and that's been a journey watching her on as well. Cause she's been at VMware 12 to 14 years, I think. And having a female founder of VMware wasn't an issue, you didn't think of it, that was actually one of the things used to recruit me here, that i was very excited about at VMware. But over time we saw things change and maybe the dynamics as we grew fast, diversity didn't necessarily grow. And she was the one who said we need to stop, if we need to be thoughtful about this, we need to think. This isn't going to get VMware the best business outcomes, and she's really been pushing the issue quite strongly at VMware. I'm in awe of her. I don't see her discussed as much as Sheryl Sanberg and the luminaries out there, but I've been seeing her battles within VMware and she's been making a huge difference. >> Colleen Kapase, thank you so much for joining us. >> Yeah, thank you for having me, I appreciate it. >> We're at Women Transforming Technology here at VMware. I'm Rebecca Knight, we'll be right back. (techno music) (techno music)

>> Announcer: From Palo Alto, it's theCube, covering Women Transforming Technology 2017. Brought to you by VMware. >> Welcome back to theCube's coverage of Women Transforming Technology here at VMware in beautiful, sunny Palo Alto, California. I'm Rebecca Knight, your host, and I'm joined by Lori MacKenzie. She is the executive director of the Clayman Institute for Research at Stanford University. Lori, thank you so much for joining us here today. >> So happy to be here. >> So, we were talking before the cameras were rolling about your research and one of the things you were talking about is the frozen middle and I really like that terminology because there's so much research about the subtle biases that women face in the workplace and how management can make all the difference. So, tell us a little bit about this frozen middle and about the strategies you're using to help middle managers become better managers. >> You know, people often say employees leave managers, they don't leave companies, and so, the manager really is setting the experience of every employee and so, our question is this: Can you help managers be more inclusive in a way it makes them feel like they're both better managers and better business leaders? So, what we do is we do experiments with them. We say, "Try this" or "Try that," that will block bias and make you more effective. For example, do you know what you're evaluating people on? Do you have a toolkit for that? What kind of dashboard might you create to make yourself more effective? It turns out, when managers create something themselves, based on gender research, and it helps them be more effective. They'll even fight new HR people trying to change them back to a different process because they know it works. And for me, that's the win-win. Managers co-design it, it's based on gender research, and because it makes them more effective, they're more likely to redo these processes themselves, even if they don't have any HR support. >> So, part of it is training, but it also, it sounds like a lot of it is also ownership, too. >> Yes, absolutely. What we found is sometimes inclusion or diversity training is decoupled from what people do everyday at work. What if we put them together and talk about you creating something using the gender knowledge and thinking about what you do every day at work? When you couple those back together, that's when it really matters to managers and makes them feel more effective. >> So often, diversity and gender issues is part of the HR function of a company. >> Lori: Absolutely. >> But your approach is really different. Tell us a little bit about what how you recommend companies think about gender and diversity. >> So, you need diversity inclusion to live somewhere. You need an owner of it and it makes sense that it's owned by the HR function. And we think that's essential. >> Rebecca: And it makes sense because it starts with hiring? Or because? >> And with people 'cause it starts with people. These are all people and people crosses every single function, from marketing to technology, to law, and that makes sense. It's necessary, but not sufficient to motivate change. Change happens because each function and each person believes that it improves what they're doing. So, for example, the rollout of something like Agile software development, software developers use it because they were told it makes them develop better software. What if we approached diversity like that? Managers start to be curious about it and engage in it because they thought made them better developing software that was unbiased, their team meetings went better, more voices were included, people weren't leaving. When you embed it in what people do every day, that's when it's not something that disappears when the HR person disappears. It's embedded in what people do every day and we think that's really important. >> And you were also talking about, you were talking about thinking about this in terms of product rollout, but also, in terms of how people are introduced and how they interact. >> So, we've discovered language matters. And often, if we don't think strategically about language, stereotypes will guide how we call people, regardless of who they are. So, we might tend to say, "I love working with Lori. "She's so great. "She's my best friend." And "I appreciate working with," let's say, "Brian, because he's a strong leader and very strategic." And even though I think they're both really great and really strategic, the audience takes a very different perspective of what people's contribution is. So, language matters, how we introduce people. I always tell people look closely at your LinkedIn profile. Look at how you're endorsing people and try to use language that reflects your values, which are both very driving, strategic, and collaborative teamworking. Combine them, don't default to one or the other, based on stereotypes. >> So, can you, let's unpack that a little bit more. In terms of the stereotypes and the way you described Lori on the one hand and Brian on the other, how is it different and what would you say is typically done and what should we be thinking about to do better? >> Well, it turns out that men and women leaders behave very similarly, that we describe their successes and failures very differently in language, based on stereotypes. So, for not thinking about what do I want to say and then instead, think about what I happen to say, we'll wind up describing them very differently for the exact same outcome. Some descriptions are more aligned with getting promoted and some are more aligned with kind of that helper, supporter-type person. And over time, you could start to see someone gaining an advantage, based on how we perceive them, not their actual contribution. So, one of our recommendations is to think strategically about language to prevent that kind of perception difference from being replicated in how we introduce people, how we describe them, how we talk about them. >> In terms of diversity programs, we were talking a little bit about this before the show started. Does it matter where you start? Do you start with thinking about being more inclusive of women or minorities or people of different sexual orientations? I mean, where do you start and does it matter? >> That's such a great question. It's something I grapple with all the time and in all my years of working in this field, my new line is, "There is no trickle down diversity." And what I mean by that is, by working on the kind of the broadest segment, for example, women, does not mean that Black women, Latino women, and Asian women will benefit for their fair share of these efforts and it might be harder to design for everyone, men of color, sexually diverse people, people with disabilities, but if we don't start there, it seems like we never get there. So, my new perspective is, we really have to start with the hard questions and in the end, whatever we develop will benefit far more people than starting somewhere and having them make up for the fact that we didn't include everybody equally in our programs. >> As the executive director of the Clayman Institute at Stanford, what do you make of what's happening right now in Uber, in Silicon Valley? We've seen so much really depressing, horrible news coming out and this is just a couple of years after the Ellen Pao lawsuit. Why aren't things better and what's your take? >> So, the mechanism of what's behind all the news today is the same. It's privilege. That someone's story is believed and someone's story is not believed and we act on the stories that more align with our cultural norms of expectation, high performance, and that perpetuates itself. And to tell you the truth, there are many days when I just can't look at the newsfeed, but then, I hope that every day I get a little bolder. I found I've spoken a little more strongly, I've pushed a little harder, I've tried not to be complacent myself, but more importantly, I'm trying to support the men and women who are trying to make a difference because we're all feeling a little bit beat down by some of the news and I think now, more than ever, we need to support the well-intentioned people who are trying to do good and know that it's a long view and we're in it for the long run, so let's not get distracted by anything but keep pushing forward, even down to making sure our daughters know that they matter, that if something happens to them, it matters, and that our sons, it matters that they're good men, that they grow up not to have locker talk. I think all of that matters. >> And are you working on anything in particular right now that is directly, I mean of course it directly, it all addresses it, but that really is about what you're hearing women's tales from Silicon Valley? >> You know, what's really exciting about being at an institute that's over 40 years old is that we have a range of topics that we work on and at the Clayman Institute, we've been working on breaking the culture of sexual assault for two years now and we're looking at what are the cultural configurations that enable these actions to be kind of, happen frequently and what can we do to address the culture in which assault and harassment happens. So, we've been studying things like how do you announce, how does a company make an announcement about their findings about sexual assault? Does it matter that you announce with a big statistic? Does it matter that you say these things are unacceptable? Or to just say it's part of, kind of every day life? So we're studying the language of these announcements. We're studying the frequency of them and it's something we've been working on for years because I think when you think about gender equality, it's complex and it's got a lot of dimensions and if we only go in one direction, we're going to miss something. So, I think it's always keeping your eye on all the barriers that women face from harassment to language, to promotions, to access and figuring out what are common ways that we can address and attack all of those issues and find workable solutions. >> What is your best advice to a, let's say a male executive in Silicon Valley who says, "Lori, I want my company to be different. "I want it to be a more welcoming, inclusive, "nurturing culture for everyone." What would you say to him? >> I would say, "Start with the assumption "that everything might have bias in it." Then-- >> Because we're human or-- >> Because we're human. >> Okay, okay. >> And just like software, you always assume there's something you can debug and you're looking for ways that it might be broken and we're often complacent about how people are treated in team meetings, how we hire, who gets promoted. And if we assume that there could be a bug in any one of those processes and we're vigilant about getting better and better over time at tracking them and proving them and then, getting ahead of 'em, that's where a company can take real traction. But the moment we become complacent, we actually open the door to more bias 'cause then we stop looking and the bias is always going to be there. >> But I like what you said too about assume that there's something you can debug. I mean, that's real software, but that's, (laughs) you're talking their language. >> Right, right, and I talk to a lot of male executives. Very well intended, who really want solutions, so part of my optimism is there are a lot of well intentioned people in all of these companies. Let's get them the tools and perspectives to be effective and I think we will continue to see positive momentum, even though the environment right now is a little hostile. I think keep driving forward with the long view, make your cultures as inclusive and safe for all your employees as possible, and take a good hard look at where there might be bias and let's not be afraid to tackle it together. >> And now, let's give advice to that young woman who's starting out at a company in Silicon Valley, who maybe is freshly graduated from college and has never experienced the workforce before. What would you say to her? >> I'd say, "You're awesome." And you know, there are challenges for everyone. Even CEOs get coached about their presence and everything else and there probably will be more barriers as a woman or a woman of color that you're going to have to get better at, but I'm like Gloria Steinem. I'm a hopeaholic. I believe we can all develop the skills. I think we should work together, break the barriers, and develop the skills. But in the end of the day, your voice matters and having you develop the future of technology matters so, let's work on that together. >> Lori MacKenzie, thank you so much for joining us. >> Yeah, thank you. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for theCube. This is Women Transforming Technology. We'll be right back. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: From Palo Alto, it's the CUBE covering Women Transforming Technology 2017. Brought to you by VMWare. (funky music) >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with the CUBE. We're wrapping up a full day here at the VMWare headquarters. I always want to say VM World and not VMWare for the Women Transforming Technology Conference. Been a fantastic day. Kicked off by Kara Swisher, wrapped up by Gloria Steinem, and a whole lot of interesting sessions and topics in between, and really happy to have Rebecca Knight hosting all day. Thank you Rebecca for carrying the freight. >> It's been great. It's been a lot of fun. >> So I want to kind of turn the table. You've been doing all the interviews all day, and interview you, kind of. You know, you live in Boston, so you're not out here all the time. Kind of what is your perspective? A lot of conversation of kind of the Silicon Valley bubble and the Silicon Valley point of view, but it doesn't necessarily represent every place. It's a unique little spot on the world. So what's been your take on that piece of the interviews today? >> I think that that is exactly what I've been thinking about. As an east coaster, I mean I live in Boston. I don't live in Nowheresville, I mean, but it's also a center of innovation and technological change. >> Jeff: Right. >> Particularly Cambridge, but there is a real special magic about Silicon Valley, and yet, Silicon Valley also believes, it drinks it's own Kool-Aid, and so has it's own feeling of specialness too. So it's interesting to be here and watch it all happen. >> Right. Other areas that you cover when you're not hosting the CUBE is management and leadership, and obviously, Boston is a hotbed of acadeem. I think, what Harvard was the first college set up in the United States. >> It was indeed. >> So when you look at some of the issues, there's a lot of topic today on Uber, what's going on at Uber, and some of the kind of overt sexism if you will. When you look at the kind of leadership, and the study of leadership and management, what are some of the things that you're seeing that are kind of new and innovative? You would think it's 2017 for God sake. You'd think we'd be past some of these sophomoric issues, but we're not, and not by a long shot. >> It is very depressing, I'm going to be honest. And I think particularly with leadership right now, I write a column for Harvard Business Review, and Harvard Business School is teaching the next generation how to be leaders, how to be responsible and be the next captains of industry, and yet in Washington, we have this real example of how not to do it in the sense of not listen to experts, not take other people's perspectives, not be willing to collaborate and listen really. >> Right, right, but by the same token, I mean one of Kara's themes was, you know, many of the great entrepreneurs that are driving innovation, we heard from, you know the stories of jobs all the time. They don't collaborate, and they don't kind of tow the line, and they do break glass and break barriers 'cause they think differently, not to steal directly from that line. >> Rebecca: Yeah, yeah. >> But so, it's an interesting kind of juxtaposition of you know, maintaining individuality. >> Rebecca: Right. >> Yet you also have to, have to operate in the world in which we live. >> Yes, and I think that that, exactly yes. Those are very successful people tend to have that kind of driving personality, and yet, an other part of Kara's speech was talking about the virtues of graciousness. >> Jeff: Right, right. >> And, and how that really can also be a powerful part of leadership. >> Right, so as the study of management evolves, kind of how do you see that changing over time? You've been at it for a while, I mean, is it kind of more of the same? Is it fundamentally different what they're teaching in schools or as we study leadership? I'm always struck by, you know, we don't spend more time studying, you know, the Marines at Parris Island. I mean, they teach young kids that are 18 years old, 19 years old to turn into 23 year old leaders, that are, you know, sending people to their deaths for the cause of the greater good that they're objectives, they're trying to achieve. It's fascinating to me that, you know, we don't draw kind of more leadership studies from a broader range of perspectives or am I just missing the bell? >> No and I think you're absolutely right in talking about the military and talking about wartime, I mean, those are high pressurized situations where it's not just, oh, we're not going to make our numbers this quarter. It's my... >> Jeff: Right, right. >> My platoon is going, I'm sending them into their death. >> Jeff: Right. >> If this doesn't work out they way I'd like I've strategized. So, no, I think that they're, I think that increasingly business schools are trying to take lessons from other parts of the military for example, and also using philosophy and art. Design thinking is another hot thing at business schools right now. Trying to take other disciplines and finding the best bits, and what they can apply in terms of how you run your business. >> It's interesting, the whole design thinking 'cause that's getting a rebirth at Stanford. >> Rebecca: At Stanford. >> I know too. >> Exactly the D school, yeah. >> It funny, we interviewed Dan Gordon from Gordon Biersch Brewery who is introducing a new apple, a malted apple beverage, and he had this gal that worked at or was from Stanford, played softball at Stanford and they were doing this design thinking, and they decided white label, and apparently you just go out, and you go meet people and you show 'em the white the label, and you see how the whole thing shapes out. So, there does continue to be this kind of evolution. >> No, it's absolutely true. >> So, biggest surprises of the day? >> Biggest surprises of the day? I mean, I first of all just want to congratulate VMWare of choosing Gloria Steinem to be the keynote close. Like I said, I think that that was such a bold choice, an unexpected choice. Yes, it's a women's conference, but she is a real feminist icon, so I think it was, I just, I'm so proud to be here. >> Oh good. >> And listen to Gloria. >> And how 'about some of your favorite moments from a few of the interviews? >> Oh, so many great interviews. Yanbin Li really an energetic presence. >> Jeff: Yes. >> And she just had a lot of interesting things to say about mixing sort of her personality, her role as a mother and her role as a leader and technologist. >> Jeff: Right. >> I think that was great. I loved listening to Nicola Icott talk about how she uses design thinking to devise a sustainability strategy here at VMWare, and Lily Chang talking about her childhood in Taiwan. The daughter of a mother who had to fight for everything including an education for Lily. And now what she does here in the office of the CTO at VMWare. So so many great women. >> Yeah, it's, you know, it's really my favorite part of the CUBE is we get to talk to so many people. I just, for whatever reason, there just isn't necessarily a format for them to sit down and really tell their story. >> To tell their story. >> Jeff: They're all terrific stories. >> Yeah. >> Well Rebecca, I want to thank you again for making the big trip west. >> It was great, it was great. I love it, I love this place. >> And we look forward to many more events with you. >> Yes. >> As we get deeper into 2017 conference season which is going to be crazy by the way. All right, well thanks again Rebecca. >> Thank you. >> She's Rebecca Knight, I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching the CUBE from VMWare headquarters at the Women Transforming Technology conference. Thanks for watching. (funky music) (intense music)

>> Announcer: Life from Palo Alto. It's theCUBE, covering Women Transforming Technology 2017. Brought to you by VMware. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of the Women Transforming Technology Conference held at VMware here in beautiful Palo Alto, California. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. I'm joined by Lily Chang. She is the VP R&D/Office of CTO VMware. Thanks so much for joining us, Lily. >> Thank you for having me. >> You're also a board member. You started out on the advisory board, but now you're a board member on Women Who Code. >> Lily: Yes, recently. >> What is the organization? I mean, it's such a powerful and important organization. Can you tell us a little bit more about it? >> Women Who Code has a mission, which is very similar like today's conference you were seeing. It's to propel the technical women and R&D women across the globe. Basically no boundary of region, cities, or countries. So they're spanning about 50 plus countries and many cities, and we being a founding partner ... We, VMware, have been a founding partner since middle of 2015. They have gone through a rapid growth. I think we bet on the right horse ... (both laugh) Using the business term, and interestingly, they have gone through, in the past 18 months, a tremendous growth of the membership, and because it resonates with a lot of the technical women across the countries over the world, in China, in India, in eastern Europe, based in United States and Europe as well. Basically, right now their membership is about 87,000. They started with 10,000 members back about 18 months ago. >> So it's propelling the women who are already in the industry, but also bringing in new people, new young women into the industry, too. >> It's more than that. We focus on very much mid-range ... >> Okay. >> And early-stage career as well, but the professional bell curve, that golden bell curve, where in the middle of your career, or you're in the career for about two, three years, you're thinking about expanding your career horizon to be a different technical area. You just need that technical skills, and you need a way to be in a non-intimidating environment in a very gender-friendly environment and a very supporting and sponsoring setting where you're learning from each other and sharing all the knowledge, like different programming language, big data, algorithms, mobile technology, how that's involved. And that's really the key value proposition from Women Who Code, and that's what we subscribe to as well. >> Well, Lily, you talked about that sweet spot of a woman's career ... >> Lily: Right. >> And that also happens to be when a lot of women get stuck, or they leave ... >> Lily: Exactly. >> Or they have children, or they pull back and work part-time ... What will it take ... What are you doing with Women Who Code to get them over that, and as you said, help them gain those next skills to help them move up? >> So we basically establish a strategic partnership with Women Who Code, and we offer together with them a monthly meetup or sometimes bi-weekly meetup. We actually opened to several countries in the world. That's where we believe R&D, innovation, are also key. For example, we opened to China. We basically expanded to India and elevated it. In fact, Women Who Code has a annual technology conference for tech women in that particular region, like US is coming in April. We, VMware, are working with Women Who Code later this week to actually launch the first international Connect conference in India. And basically we got huge support and passion and commitment, and we also find it's a very good thing for women to basically learn about leadership and basically be able not to share just their technology with one another, about what they're good at. It's also a way for them to do networking, to learn how to communicate more effectively, and how to basically build the team, sustain the team. So we work out a global leadership initiative through this collaboration with Women Who Code. So we're driving China, we're driving India, we're driving Sofia. We collaborated on the Silicon Valley as well. >> And are the issues the same across the board? >> Yes, we have found the issue is very similar globally. It's where a woman needs encouragement, and a woman needs a very specific setting about how they learn from one another. These technical meetups and these chat over the woman technology community basically are helping that, and then we're also, in a non-profit way, sponsoring Women Who Code through their job board, and that's a non-profit way of helping, opening opportunities and possibility for technical women that basically want to expand their career or finding different avenue in their progression as well. So, basically, for ... You early on talked about, this is age where you're choosing between, do I want to have kids? Do I want to focus more on that? >> These are real things, yes! >> There's a sense of guilt, right. >> Right, right. >> Like, am I going to be so selfish, not to be a working mother? And what we found is that these technical meetings or conferences is not only just a way for women in the appropriate setting to learn about new technology without a very unnecessary peer competition, and they also can basically start sharing what they know, and they can learn together and grow together, and so for example, we offer all this with no charge. If you're a mom, I still remember, with young kids, basically, you will probably want that one or two hours to just spend ... (Rebecca laughs) >> In a bath. >> Yeah, not that you don't love your kids, right? >> Yes. >> But it's just you need that one or two hours. Your brain needs that kind of a chemistry balance as well. >> Yes, yes. >> And you're more rejuvenated, and then when you go back to work, you don't feel like, God, I am missing so many months of work, right? >> Right. >> Reality is you're spending a lot of time rejuvenating your knowledge, and you're keeping pace with the industry growth. We find a lot of other companies that are basically sharing the same vision as we are. >> And that is exactly what this conference is doing. >> Lily: Yes. >> There is a mix of technical breakout sessions, the hard skills, mixed in with the professional tips ... >> Lily: Exactly. >> Of how to give a better presentation and things like that. >> Exactly. So in some of the meetups, for example, if you're a woman that has an upcoming conference and usually there's the stage fright, right, and I kid you not ... >> Rebecca: But men face it too! >> Yeah, exactly. >> It's not ... But then how can we create a more nurturing environment to help the woman to curate her contents without fear and without intimidation. So that's basically the ... Sometimes the meetup is devoted to do things like that, or to just do a programming hackathon, but you're basically collaborating across the genders and the age group ... And your career span as well. Basically, it created a lot of this more collaborative and nurturing environment. >> One of the stereotypes about women in the workplace is that they are very competitive and don't help each other, and there's a real queen bee syndrome, a bitchiness that takes place. >> Lily: Yes, I'm aware of that. >> Yeah, well, what's your experience? Because it's ... There are some women, sure, but what's your experience? >> My experience is it's a matter of perspective and how you actually set up the environment. If you set up the environment where women can actually collaborate, I believe that is actually one of the gender's strength. A lot of the women leaders are into details, and some of the women are into strategic thinking and orientation. We found that if you can blend that together, especially in the global sense, that helps not only learning technology and advancing technology ... Like, one of the most popular thread of technical discussion is the algorithms. When you're talking about innovation, and when you talk about creativity, when you talk about the science, and that's where things has no boundary. >> Yes. >> And it's only yourself that's imposing that kind of thing. So we believe the sponsorship of this, or like the conference today, is breaking down a lot of those barriers. >> That's the theme of the day! >> Bringing the more kind side of the gender onto the table. >> And a camaraderie, too, around solving problems. >> Yeah, exactly. >> So let's actually talk about what you're doing at VMware. You're leading a joint venture in China. Can you tell us more about it? >> Yeah, China is full of myth. >> Rebecca: It's full of ...? >> It's a very mythical country, and so there's a lot of talk about how Chinese does business. I was born and raised in one part of the greater China, and so I was very fortunate to be brought up by a very loving father and a mother. My mom, in those days... In those days, women have to really fight for anything, even education. There wasn't really good career for any technical women that graduated from the best university in the island. So the job I was kind of really encouraged to look for was like a secretary job or an airline stewardess job. My mom is not one of those types. She believed I need to come overseas and study and propel myself. She believes in lifelong learning. She's a career woman, and she coached my dad, who owns his own business, and he cultivated me a lot about this business best practice. How do you do business in China, and how do you work through the generation gaps and communicate more effectively? So I'm very blessed that I'm bilingual, and logically, I can debate and think basically in both language and both cultural mode, and so that helps a lot, in terms of doing a successful job in China. And the joint venture is really VMware's way to do it the right way in China, and we're not trying to brag about, we're a multinational company. We're trying to basically say, this is a good economy and a good part of the world that we want to be able to have our technology to make a difference. So we collaborated with a local China company called Qù Guàng and formed a private joint venture that's focusing on basically cloud management system, and we're bringing a lot of the virtualization and combining the technology and innovation from both cultures together. So that's really the mission of this company. >> And would you say that the Chinese customers are similar to the western customers in terms of what their needs are and where they want their businesses to go? >> At the very high level, absolutely. Relatively speaking, how do you get to that end target, that's where culture difference and social difference and how you orient your habits of doing business is where that difference comes in. But we focus on ... We were very fortunate to have this company that works with us. We have the same mission, same vision, and the same strategy. So we're basically co-founding this and marrying the best technology from both sides of the region together to basically offer to advance the data centers for all of China. For example, China has a very major initiative to revamp a lot of their data center across all provinces. That includes your very rich town like the Beijing and very, very far away regions, and we're very proud that the software can make anything happen. We believe this is a magical combination to basically help the economy and the society. >> And do you think ... Because this is so important, this joint venture, and as you said, we're coming in and doing this the right way in China ... >> Lily: Yes. >> Will this be the blueprint from now on for how VMware sets up its joint ventures? >> Well, this will be the first joint venture we do in greater China, and so far, it's been pretty successful. We are basically writing the blueprint as we go. So one of the key things I love about VMware is just we love creativity and we choose and bet on the right innovation, and we propel and drive and push for that, and we inspire all the country and the regions and the people and the teams around us to do it. So I think this is showing that spirit, meaning that, regardless what the policymaker may say, we believe business and technology, when you marry them in the right way, it's going to make a difference, and will make a revolutionary difference. So we're writing the blueprint as to how to do that. >> How would you describe the differences in the technology cultures of China and the US? Kara Swisher, in her keynote, took Silicon Valley to task a little bit and made fun the buzzy words about how people brag and failing and disruptor and other kind of buzzy things. Innovation, pivot. How would you describe the way the Chinese business culture thinks about creativity and innovation? >> So there is some similarity with western culture, or what you see in Silicon Valley, like what she was talking about. Young generation. They don't understand there is any limit. In fact, that is across genders. I notice a lot of the technology women actually are leading companies and starting companies, and basically, for example, in November, we did a pitch competition with Women Who Code in Beijing, and we focused only on women C-level in the China startup, and we're basically collaborating with local venture company and the VC company to basically choose the most innovative woman leaders in the startup industry, because the country is so entrepreneur, and to some extent, China is growing, and they're basically learning how to basically be really big, and scalability it a big thing. And this is where our technology can come in and our culture, working with them. To basically together make it a better place also comes in as well. So that portion, entrepreneurship is the same. The desire and aspiration, that undying commitment to basically propel the society, those are all the same. I do see a lot of young people, but I also see a lot of the generation, like in my age, basically are coming in with very much a mentoring and a sponsoring attitude to basically help cultivate a younger generation, and very forgiving on that, and so that is something I see, and it does remind me a lot about the focus on the family and the focus on this team working together. >> And is that having an impact on your western colleagues, seeing ... >> Yes, I think it's a little bit of a culture difference, a lot less about yourself. A lot more about, how do I make this work? There's a little bit of a pride in some of these young startup, or even in the age group like me, saying, I am going to help this country to be stronger. I'm going to help the people to be stronger. So they take pride in that as well. And that reminds me a little bit about ... I heard about made in USA, so China talk about made in China, but in essence, it's all the same. You want to take pride with your family. >> A national pride, yes. >> Yeah, you want to take pride with your family, with your national pride, but it doesn't mean you don't want to do business internationally. You still value your international collaboration. Then the key is, how do you go across that culture boundary and focus on the right business problem and the right social phenomenon to solve the problem and the challenges, and just propel the society and the people altogether. >> But that is a good point, that the pride that you feel in your country, someone else from another country feels that same degree of pride for their country, and that's the ... >> Exactly. And sometimes I feel doing this job is not just a technologist job or an R&D job. It's almost like blending the DNA between the two countries and the two cultures together, and how to figure out working together. I know it sounds like a cliche. But when you go ... >> Rebecca: Or a great campaign slogan. >> Yeah, but it's really something that's actually a big challenge, especially with some of the political environment nowadays. But what I notice is when we work together as a group of engineers, we don't talk about those kinds of things. We talk about technology, and we talk about products. We talk about innovation. We talk about customer problems. We talk about how to make the place better. And that's basically what we focus on. Day in, day out. >> Well, Lily Chang, thank you so much for talking to us today. It's been great. >> Thank you very much for having me. >> I'm Rebecca Knight, and we'll be right back with theCUBE's coverage of Women Transforming Technology. (upbeat techno music)

(upbeat music) >> Narrator: Live from Palo Alto. It's theCUBE, covering Women Transforming Technology 2017. Brought to you by VMware. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of the Woman Transforming Technology conference held at VMware here in beautiful Palo Alto, California. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. I am joined by Nicola Acutt, she is the vice president of sustainability strategy here at VMware. Nicola, thanks so much for joining us. >> My pleasure, Rebecca, it's great to be with you. >> So I want to start out by talking to you about how VMware is thinking differently about sustainability and devising its strategy. >> Yeah, great. Well, you know, sustainability is something that's not really new at VMware. We've been doing sustainability for many many years, but what is new is we've rethought our strategy and we've rethought how we frame and think about it. And that starts with the business and what we actually do in the world. This is what's really exciting to me, you know. We've done a lot of very responsible things, from the design of the campus here in Palo Alto, which you've seen, our LEED certified buildings and the work that we do in philanthropy and community. And now what we're doing is pulling it all together under this concept of collective impact, and for us, that's about the sum of the parts, and really about ultimately how we leave a legacy and impact as a business, but starting with what we do. >> And I think that that's... What you're saying is so important in this sense of, for corporate social responsibility, that has to start with a business case of why you're doing this, but then there's also this legacy part to it too. So talk a little bit about what you're thinking there. >> Yeah, well, glad you asked, it's a large part of why we have, as we rethought sustainability, we put this role in our office of the CTO. And for that exact reason, because it's about, you know, what is the legacy we create? Not just in our industry, but for the world. So we talk about, you know, my role, in the office of the CTO, it's very much about helping to inspire engineering for impact, so that we, you know, our mission is about creating not just the most innovative software in the world, but for the world. So we think about the impact, the legacy impact VMware has had in the data center, which is one thing I can talk about, you know, the environmental impact of that. But then also looking forward at how we enable access to technology, the platforms really to change the world, whether it's providing solutions for farmers in rural parts of India of Africa or down the street. It's this view of how does VMware's technology help create a better place, a better world. >> Well, just the fact that you were in the office of the CTO is such a dramatic change from so many companies. I mean, when you think about the bad rap that sustainability gets, corporate green washing and things like that, but to put it at the core of VMware's business, that is a very dramatic difference. What was the impetus for that? >> That's a great question. You know, I think before we were talking about, I've been at VMware for several years, and been on a journey myself and what we do, and started working in the foundation. And I've moved into this role in the CTO office. And part of that was about how we came to this perspective of what is the impact that we want to create, and how do we want to go beyond sustainability to collective impact, and that was about this idea of net positive. How do we create a legacy where the sum of the parts are greater than the pieces. And I'll tell you a little story, you know, when I first joined VMware, I remember people describing the impact from an efficiency point of view in the data center, and I was always fascinated by that question. And finally last year we did a piece of work together with IDC to actually quantify that impact, and so for the first time, we were able to get the data and look at the legacy impact that we've had, and the numbers are astounding. When you look at what VMware and our customers have done over the last 13 years, it's the equivalent of avoiding 340 million metric tons of CO2 going into the atmosphere. That's a pretty astounding number, right? So what does that mean? It's the equivalent, we worked it out, it's the equivalent of powering 43 million homes, which is about 43% of US households for a year. >> Rebecca: A year? >> For a year. Isn't that incredible? >> Yes. >> And it was that, so that piece of work was really what helped shift this perspective and our collective realization that, yes, we can do all these great things, from social responsibility, environmental responsibility, in terms of how we run our business and how we treat our people in communities, but probably the most important and powerful impact that we can have is how we use our technology, and the impact that we have on the lives that we change as a result through our technology. >> You are in a panel here at the Women Transforming Technology conference that's all about design thinking. And it's about design thinking in terms of leadership, and your approach to management. But also, your approach to your job and devising, in your case, a sustainability strategy. Talk about design thinking and how it's changed the way you go about things. >> Right, I'm personally a big fan of design thinking, and it's one of those methodologies or experiences, where when you experience it, you really see the power of it. And when we were working in the foundation, the beginning of this work, we pulled in some design thinking experts to help us just frame a problem that we were trying to solve. And that experience really resonated with me, and it stuck with me, and these ideas of how you go from brainstorm big picture thinking to actually impact and outcome. >> So just break it down for our viewers, design thinking, elevator pitch, what is it? >> Sure. So it starts with sort of four key principles. It's about empathy, starting with empathy. Thinking about the problem that you're trying to solve. Thirdly, implementing, so rapid prototyping and then testing again, so lots of testing, before you come to the impact and the outcome. And it's this iterative process, kind of building something, testing it, going back and building it again. But I think the biggest takeaway for me and what I learned about it that I applied to leadership is this idea of empathy. And I think we often think of empathy as feeling sorry for, but it's not, it's really to me, empathy is radical questioning and radically asking yourself, challenging your assumptions and trying to see what others see, and I think it's that, that shift of mindset that's so powerful, and for me, applying that to my work shows up all the time, whether I'm in a meeting, whether I am running a team, whether we were doing the strategy for sustainability, it's constantly asking the questions, asking why. I think that for me is the thing that I really appreciate about design thinking and I try to bring it to everything that I do. >> From a product standpoint, the empathy is for the end user, for the customer, the person who is going to be using the product. But when it comes to creating a sustainability strategy, who are you empathizing with? >> Yeah, that's a... So, you know, again, that this word empathy, I think, is-- >> Rebecca: It trips people up! >> Yeah, because we think it means feeling sorry for, right? But no, it's about seeing the other. Because what we were doing is taking this much wider angle view on sustainability, in other words, it's not about the real estate organization or about turning off the lights in our operations, it's about the whole business. So for me, empathy is about trying to step into other people's shoes, and working with stakeholders across the business, so not just in our real estate operations, but in the business, in HR, in legal, across all of the functions. And asking questions and listening to stakeholders, and really trying to understand their point of view on the business so that I can connect what they care about to, ultimately, the sustainability strategy. >> Talk about design thinking in an approach to leadership. Particularly in light of why we're here, Women Transforming Technology. How does it work when you're on a team? >> Yeah. >> You know, I think it starts with that individual, it starts with empathy always, and the why, and really trying to understand others, the people that you're working with. When I say empathy, I think about trying to see others. And part of seeing others is knowing what their strengths are and knowing what they're uniquely placed to do. So in working with the team, I think that is a great leadership skill, is to really know and understand your team, to build a team that functions really well together. That skill, I think, is irreplaceable in leadership. >> And what about for the person who's being led? So the person who's not quite the manager yet, maybe earlier in her career. How can she use design thinking and empathize both with her colleagues and her customers, but also perhaps her manager too, in terms of not only moving the product forward, but also moving her career forward? >> Yeah, you know, the speaker in the panel we just listened to, Lynn Christensen, talked about the importance of understanding the needs of others and how powerful that can be when you're trying to get work done and have an influence. So she gave an example which I loved about, often where we're trying to prove ourselves, right, especially as young women in the workforce. And there is an important element of confidence and all of those good things that we're talking about here, but I think the other element of what she was getting at is understanding when you're giving a presentation or you're talking about a product or an idea, to think about who you're talking to. And to make sure that, when you think about your message and your presentation, to be designing your talk, to use design thinking, designing your talk with that person in mind, and that can be a really powerful way to have yourself seen as a potential or as a future leader. >> In terms of how you are thinking about VMware sustainability strategy and the way other companies are, what, and I don't want this to turn into a school where other companies should follow VMware's lead, but at the same time, what would your advice be to other companies that are seeing what you're doing and, for example, putting sustainability in the office of the CTO? What other differences in terms of how you approach sustainability could other companies mimic, for the good of all of us? >> For the good of all, absolutely. I think that's a really important question because, you know, I think there's a role for corporate social responsibility and philanthropy and sustainability, and I think every company is unique, depending on their market and their industry, but ultimately, when we think about trying to create a positive impact on the world, and frankly, to address some of the world's most pressing challenges, it really does require the combination of what I talk about, this collective impact, and the skills and competencies a business can bring to that really are in what they offer to the world, and often that isn't necessarily just philanthropy, it could be a combination of those things. My perspective on this is really thinking about where your unique competencies as a company and a business overlap with the world's great needs? And finding that sweet spot is where I believe companies can have the biggest impact. >> One of the other elements of sustainability strategy is making sure that companies are committed to diversity and inclusion, and is there a way that you're working on that here at VMware as part of the sustainability strategy, or is that more of an HR function? I mean, how does it all work together? >> Yeah, you know, the work that we're doing at VMware on diversity and inclusion is very much part of this ethos of collective impact, because it's really pulling and connecting these elements of the work that we're doing inside the company, in different departments, into this legacy of what I call net positive, the net positive impact. So diversity and inclusion is part of that in a really important way, and this is what this conference today is really all about, bringing a community of women together who are passionate and committed to making an impact in technology, and leaving that positive legacy. And so for me personally, today's really quite poignant, actually. I'm a mom, and I'm also the daughter of a farmer, and I'm going to get choked up. (laughter) And a school teacher. >> And you're going to meet Gloria Steinem later today, Nicola. I don't know if I can pile on, but-- >> Well, this is what's so poignant for me, is I grew up in the shadow of apartheid, and I think, and a very patriarchal society by my mom, was very influenced by Gloria Steinem. And her fierceness about education for girls was really ultimately, I think, had an impact on me not only finishing high school, but going on to get a four year degree and a PhD, and ultimately, you know, South African woman finding herself in Silicon Valley today. >> Right. >> Is a testament to Gloria and to my mom, and all the women who have forged this path for us. And so today is an opportunity, I think, in some ways to say thank you, me personally to say thank you to Gloria and those women who have forged the path, but I think today's also important in the recognition that there is this community that is growing, a community of women who are having an impact in technology. But I think the other element is that we realize that our work is not done. And that's what today is all about, is this community of women who are carrying the torch because our work isn't done. >> So yes, I mean, there is that balance. There's this gratitude, on one hand, of our forebears and what they've sacrificed for us to be where we are. But then at the other hand, particularly as you said, you grew up in the shadow of apartheid, and now you have Donald Trump as president, and we're hearing a lot of... (laughs) Of scary notions coming from the White House right now. So there is also this other side to it, which is feeling anger and a real mobilization to rise up. >> Yeah, Kara was really eloquent about that this morning, and I think it's complex, right? This is multiple facets and multiple forces at play. But at the end of the day, I think it is really really important to be clear about our values, and to be clear about the impact that we want to leave in the world, and finding a community of people around which to focus our energies. >> Perfect words to end on. Nicola Acutt, thank you so much for joining us. >> My pleasure! >> I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, we'll return with theCUBE's coverage of Women Transforming Technology here at VMware. (upbeat music) (ominous music)

>> Narrator: Live from Palo Alto, it's theCUBE, covering Women Transforming Technology 2017, brought to you by VMware. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of the Women Transforming Technology conference held at VMware here in beautiful Palo Alto, California. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. I'm joined by Yanbing Li, who is the senior vice president and general manager for storage and availability here at VMware. Thank you so much for joining us. >> Thank you for having me, Rebecca. I'm so excited to meet you actually. I've done quite a few CUBE interviews. >> You're a CUBE veteran, yes, I know. >> But you're the first female host I got to talk to, so really excited meeting you. >> Well, the pleasure's all mine. >> Thank you. >> So Business Insider calls you one of the most powerful women engineers in the world, in Silicon Valley. It's exciting to be talking to you. VMware is committed to diversity and inclusion. We're here at a Women Transforming Technology conference. You're hosting the conference. Talk a little bit about your experience and what you're involved in, in terms of that emphasis on diversity and inclusion here. >> Yes, certainly being a part of VMware and certainly being a female engineering leader myself, this is very near and dear to my heart. My experience, actually involvement in women leadership initiative started many years ago when I was actually based in China. My career at VMware, I've been here for nine years. >> You led the Chinese operation for a while. >> Yeah, I was leading the China engineering operation in China for a few years, and when I was based in China, I started a series of women technology conferences in Beijing. So we started in 2011, and that quickly turned into an industry event, kind of very similar to what's going on here at Women Transforming Technology. So this has been certainly close to my heart, and I've been involved in starting the initiative in China. And when I moved back to Palo Alto, I have been part of the VM Women initiative. I was part of a dialogue circle, and this year, we expanded the initiative, or since last year, from just the women focus to now a much broader diversity focus and certainly being Chinese myself, I'm also representing the Chinese community at VMware. We have a Chinese VMware circle that create that community feeling for all the Chinese and Chinese Americans working at VMware. >> Can you talk a little bit about what you've observed with the women in China and the women here in Silicon Valley? Are the issues the same? Is the culture similar? What are your experiences? >> I think there is a lot more similarity than differences. China, there has been a stronger emphasis of women contributing to the society for the past 50, 60 years, so you see a higher percentage of women working. You see a slightly higher percentage of women in tech. But the issues are still the same. You know, how we deal with stereotype of women, especially how we overcome unconscious bias and how we overcome the lack of women in technology and lack of women in leadership. I think these issues definitely transcend culture and community. It was interesting, we hosted an APJ discussion on diversity. >> In China? >> In Sydney. >> Okay. >> So this was part of our APJ initiative. And there were tables of people from different countries talking about the women issue, the gender issue. And the simple question was, is there a glass ceiling in your country? And I guess every country's answer was yes, except for the country, the table of Japan because their answer was they didn't have a glass ceiling, they had a steel ceiling. >> Yeah. (laughs) >> But you get the point is, yeah, this is a issue that's everywhere. >> And did you find that your Chinese colleagues in China were as mobilized to work on them and to make changes? >> Yeah, I think definitely, you see that coming down from the leadership level. I think when you have initiatives like this, often sometimes, you have grassroot initiatives, but it's much more important to up-level that to a business focus. And I think that is what VMware is doing by starting VM Women several years ago and now extending that to VM Inclusion. At VMware, the leadership team definitely see this as a business imperative rather than just something we want to do good to the society. So there is a balance of trying to do good but also trying to do smart. You know, how we move the needle from a business outcome point of view. You know, we've been very open about our diversity data. We've been tracking them as part of leadership MBOs, so I'm excited to see the levels of investment and emphasis that VM as a company is putting on. >> As a leader, you are a senior vice president here. How do you make sure that you are, you're a woman, you're a Chinese woman, but we also know that we're not immune just because we're women to subtle biases, to discrimination. How do you work on yourself in your day-to-day practice as a leader and a manager? >> Yeah, I think it's... Along our career, we've seen a lot of things like sexism or how people apply unconscious bias toward women and certain stereotyped view of women. I think we've all experienced that. And just the, I can think of lots of examples on a daily basis. I was having dinner with a male coworker, which is a very important way for us to build strong relationships. >> Relationships, yeah. >> And as we were eating, we were mistaken as on a date. There's all these subtle things that reminds you somehow people see women not necessarily, even if you're having a business setting, they tend to not assume the same. So I think that's happening all the time. So my approach towards this has been recognizing that it happens and have a good way to defuse it because most people are doing it in a very unconscious way. And when you have a way to defuse it, you help have a positive impact on that person. Give you an example. I think for women, we are constantly introduced as a woman something. One year, I was speaking at an event, and when we were doing the rehearsal, a senior leader was introducing me as a woman engineering leader. So I just gently said, "Hey, look. "People can tell I'm a woman. "You don't have to say it." >> The dress gives it away. >> Yeah, and that made him become aware. Yeah, that's, the merit you're standing on that stage is not because of your gender or shouldn't be limited by your gender, rather than because of the message or the business or the technology that you're bringing to the audience. >> But that's not always easy for people to do, to use humor to defuse the situation. We just heard from Kara Swisher, the founder of Recode, and one of her pieces of advice was to be authentic, be genuine, be an original. Your Twitter handle is ybhighheels. I love it. I love it. >> Yeah. Thank you. >> But it is this mix of professionalism and femininity. Is that hard to do? Is it hard to pull off? >> It is hard, and I have debated over and over. Where I got my Twitter handle actually, one of my coworkers, my team members from many years ago said to me, "Yanbing, you're the high tech girl "in high heels." And I kind of liked it. It felt like very me. But there's been lots of people telling me, Oh, is that really good? Is that insulting? Or is that demeaning of the levels of the position, the type of job you have? And I actually felt otherwise. First of all, it is fairly authentic of me. If people who, I remember when I was leaving one job and my male boss was commenting, saying, "Yanbing, you didn't leave very big shoes to fill. "You leave very high shoes." >> Very tall shoes. (laughs) >> To fill. So I'm known to like high heels. And people, and I've also learned that once you establish your competence, this does not become something that is negative. And I've seen increasingly your colleagues or coworkers, people around you, want to embrace who you are rather than penalize for who you are, as long as you're confident about who you are. So I find that, yeah, having lots of fun with my Twitter handle. >> Right. Right, right. But as you said, as a woman, you have to also have proved yourself and that you are smart and just 'cause you wear high heels and you like high shoes, you also can get the job done. >> Yeah, and it's not just high shoes or whatever shoes of choice that people have. Yeah, and we are most comfortable and most successful when we are truly authentic to ourselves. >> Being who you are at work, at home, and in your private life. >> Yeah, yeah. >> So talk a little bit. The last time you were on the show, you talked about the hyper-converged world. Can you give us a little bit of an overview of what's going on in the software space and what you're working on now? >> Yeah, it's a very exciting time. Certainly as part of the storage business unit, a key initiative that we're working on is vSAN. This is VMware's leading product in a hyper-converging infrastructure. And what we're seeing certainly is this fundamental disruption that's going on in storage and data centers and infrastructure in general. And if you think about what is one of the highest gross market segment that's happening in a data center and infrastructure today is actually hyper-converge. As a market, this is quickly disrupting the traditional way of delivering storage, and it's growing at 60% for the next few years. And we as a business has been growing triple digits. Last year, we almost tripled our the size of the business, and we're seeing tremendous customer momentum and tremendous customer adoption and seeing hyper-converged is really becoming a mainstream way of delivering infrastructure to our customers. So a very exciting time. >> It is exciting, and yet, it's hard to think beyond hyper-converged because if everything then becomes one, what's next? What do you see down the pipeline two, three years from now, in terms of how businesses deal with their storage? >> Yeah, so certainly VMware are, being a leading infrastructure software vendor, we're going through a fundamental transformations of providing not just the best in class software for your data center, you know, how we modernize it, how we provide higher levels of automation in the private cloud but increasingly, there is a shift towards service-based consumption and cloud-based delivery of infrastructure. And I think the same thing is happening in the storage space. You know, certainly, with a hyper-converged infrastructure, not only we see a highly, high degrees of integration, automation, but we're also seeing the same architecture is extending into the cloud. And as we look at the cloud, we also constantly think about how do we take the value prop of just building the best infrastructure, the best storage, take that infrastructure plate now to an application plate or a data plate. And certainly, from a storage side, we're increasingly focusing on how we make data better managed, better governed, how we provide more insights through data. So taking that storage levels of innovation to focus on data. >> Understanding what the data is telling you and making that data work for customers. What are you hearing from customers in terms of what is keeping them up at night? >> Keeping our customers are all facing the challenge of how they keep up with their business demand. As we look at it, every company is now being transformed but into a digital business, and suddenly, the role of IT becomes so much more interesting and exciting and it's really about enabling business. And so, that put demand on how you deliver things in a much more agile fashion, how you keep costs down so that you can invest for really where the business value at is, and how you can ready yourself to adopt a new way of building your application for the future. So these are the typical challenges that we hear from our customer, is really to keep up with their business demand. And we are certainly excited to see VMware is playing a very vital role in helping solving our customers' digital transformation challenges. >> So the role of Silicon Valley looms large in our business world and also just in our imagination. What do you think the media get wrong about Silicon Valley? Or just, what do you think is the line out there that you wish you could dispel in the sense of this is not right, this is not the way it happens? >> Yeah, so I have lived in Silicon Valley for the past 20 years, except for a few years where I was back in Beijing. I decided to move back because I just feel for being someone in tech, this is really just an amazing place to live in. >> To be at the center, yeah. >> And it's definitely the epicenter. I have three children, and I just see how privileged they're growing up, being exposed in this very dynamic, innovative, vibrant environment. So this is what I absolutely love about Silicon Valley. But on the other hand, when you go outside the world, I do think it feels like it's almost like a little ivory tower. You know, there's so much technology, so much access, so much wealth being created here. Sometimes, we tend to forget life is different outside Silicon Valley. And so, I think having that perspective is very, very important. >> In terms of, you mentioned you're a mom, what do you wish for your children? I don't even know if you've got daughters or sons, but in terms of just getting back to why we're here, breaking barriers is a theme of this year's conference, Women Transforming Technology, what barriers do you want to see broken for your kids, for the next generation? >> Right, I'm excited. My kids, certainly being a part of Silicon Valley and being in this very dynamic environment right now, I think there is incredible levels of awareness in them about what's going on in the world. It was funny, I was just talking to my son. He's got a new shirt, and he's 13 years old. And I didn't know where the shirt had come from because I didn't buy it. That turned out, it's the first shirt he bought using his own money, and he bought a pink shirt. And he told me that he wanted to get a pink shirt because he wanted to break the gender stereotype. And I certainly wasn't thinking anything like that when I was 13 years old. And this is just being exposed to certainly what's going on in Silicon Valley, being exposed to working parents and being exposed to what's happening in the political arena, that led him to make a very interesting choice. And I have two 11-year-old girls, and I wish they can grow up, they love technology to begin with. Their Christmas wish was to build all of their Christmas cards using some online language. And so, we all got these electronic animated things from my girls, and they want to write video games. And so, I wish they grow up in an environment feeling when they have that social awareness, being female does not create a barrier for them to pursue what they love because they genuinely are excited and interested in technology. And I'm hoping that's the environment we're going to help create for them, but I'm also very excited to see, at a very young age, they have demonstrated levels of awareness that I certainly didn't experience when I was young. >> And just speaking about that level of awareness and you brought up politics and sort of what's happening on the national stage, so much about this administration really does go against what are core values of Silicon Valley and particularly in terms of immigration, in terms of gender issues, transgender rights, gay rights. Do you feel that Silicon Valley will take a leadership stance on these things and stand up? >> I think we should. We should because Silicon Valley has benefited tremendously from the success of our technology and success of our businesses. And so, with that, we have incredible power, incredible platform that's being. >> And a voice. >> And a voice, being created out of Silicon Valley. I think, yeah, we should play a role in advocating for what we believe in, just like VMware and other partner companies are taking a leadership position to advocating women transforming technology, the role women play in Silicon Valley and in technology at large. I wish all of the companies here have the willingness and you know, to really stand up for what we believe in. Yeah, so given the power that we have and given the influence that we have, not just in this country but all over the world. >> Yanbing Li, thank you so much for joining us. This has been a pleasure talking to you. >> Thank you, Rebecca. I'm so glad to have spoken to you. Thank you for having me back at theCUBE. >> Thank you. I'm Rebecca Knight. We'll be back with theCUBE's coverage of Women Transforming Technology here in Palo Alto.

>> Commentator: Live from Palo Alto, it's theCUBE, covering Women Transforming Technology 2017, brought to you by VMware. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Women Transforming Technology here in sunny Palo Alto at the VMware conference. I am Rebecca Knight, your host. I'm joined by Josie Gillan. She is the Senior Director of Engineering at Cloudera and a passionate advocate for getting more women into technology. Josie, thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you very much for inviting me. Pleasure to be here. >> So I want to start out by asking a question that should be obvious but it may not be. Why do we need more women in technology? >> Right, so that's the classic question and I think I probably would have the classic answer which is just so many studies have shown that diversity results in much better products, much better ideas and we've found numerous stories where products were developed by mostly white males and they just have actually alienated many, many of their customers, right? So it's definitely that we need to have that diversity and I think 50%, 51% I think actually, of the population is women, right? So let's not disregard half of them. I just think women have a lot to offer and a lot to add. It's a generalization, but women generally are more collaborative and supportive so it's the right thing to do and obviously the numbers in tech are just so far skewed off what the actual numbers and population are that it's time to continue to do something about it, but it's hard. >> I want to talk to you about what you just said about women in their approach to work, their approach to being on a team. You said they're more collaborative. You were talking a little bit earlier about EQ and the importance of EQ. Can you comment on the perspective that women bring and the approach that they take to being on a team that is different in your experience? >> It's just that women are generally probably, again I'm really generalizing here, but the way that women network with each other and support each other and generally want to touch and connect, I think that's a lot of what it is about networking. So for example, again this is not all women, but in 101s and meeting with your fellow peers, I think connection is really important and building the relationships and probably being a little more vulnerable I think is really important rather than the stoic I'm here to get what I need. I think women generally tend to say, "Okay, what can we get together?" And I think that's a natural trait that women have, but again purely generalizing. >> In terms of Silicon Valley, you've been around at a lot of different companies. You built your career here. Is it better? Now also particularly now at a time where we are hearing so many horrible stories about overt sexism, everything from subtle biases to overt sexism and sexual harassment. What's it like? Tell us the tales from the trenches. Do you have? >> Well, first of all, I think you were going to start to say, "Is it getting better?" >> Rebecca: Yeah. (laughs) >> Unfortunately it's not and there's a lot of studies to show that. What I think is changing though is that we are talking about it more and more starting with I guess it was two years ago and there was this grassroots effort after one of the Grace Hopper Conferences to get companies to actually publicize their diversity data so I think that's number one, right? That we're actually getting companies to say what their numbers are, both for gender and people of color, right? >> Rebecca: So the first step is really awareness that there could be a problem. >> Exactly. And then that there's a lot of companies investing in and obviously hiring a diversity inclusion leader. I've been at Atlassian before I came to Cloudera and Atlassian is a great company, got some really good two CEOs who really believed in diversity but again like other companies, the numbers were pretty, pretty bad. And it was in Australia too, probably you knew that. I actually moved to Australia for a year and I think it was very young. It was not only not so diverse on the gender but also very young which is again very common in tech companies, but they've gone and hired a diversity inclusion leader and she's doing an amazing job at bringing in more programs, getting awareness out there and trying to make a difference, but it's not an easy job. I think she's doing amazing. I think our folks at Cloudera are doing amazing. Salesforce is doing amazing. There's awareness but it's a very difficult issue. >> So that's the hiring part of it, it's bringing more women in. What about the culture too? We were talking earlier too about the supportive environment and supportive leadership. What will it take for a big cultural shift in the technology industry? >> So when I came back, basically this is my story, is I'm from New Zealand originally but I've lived over here, I moved to America in '98 and worked for several different companies, Oracle, Salesforce and thought always hey I wouldn't mind going back home and being closer to my family so we actually moved to Sydney for a year and that's where I worked for Atlassian which was a really interesting experience, but it made me realize that the bay area was home and I think the culture of Silicon Valley is something that you can't get outside of Silicon Valley. >> For better or for worse. >> For better or for worse but again, back to that collaboration, in Sydney there's not that many tech companies, right? So I didn't find that collaboration. These kinds of events were very, very rare and especially in engineering, right? I could meet people who worked for the Google office in Sydney, but they're more in nontechnical roles. I mean, there were some. So when I came back, it was really important for me to find a company that again, as you mentioned, had that high EQ and a really good culture and what I mean by that is not it's got a free lunch. Cloudera has free lunches, but that's not what attracted me to Cloudera. What attracted me to Cloudera was talking to my manager is the SVP of Engineering and my peers are all VPs of Engineering and it was the conversation in the interviews that really were conversations and just very, very respectful and it wasn't all about this is what I do and this is what you must do. It was about a collaborative conversation. And one thing I really got from talking with both my manager and my peers was that they really were out to support each other. And one thing I think is amazing about the culture we have at Cloudera is that what will happen is I'm leading quality, performance, build and infrastructure and quality is at the top of our list at the moment. We can always improve on quality and we had an extraordinary developer in one of my peer's teams who wanted to come and help with quality problems. Now normally what would happen is the development VP might say, "I don't want to leave him." >> Yes, there are silos. >> But he was like, the development VP was, "Well, really sad to lose him, "but this is a much bigger problem and I'm going to help him. "I'm going to help him move." And I think that is a really interesting leaderships style that isn't prevalent throughout Silicon Valley which is I'm going to do what's good for the company and the overall good of the company and just what's right rather than particularly my own. >> Rebecca: My department, my unit. >> My own turf, yeah. And what we want to do at Cloudera is bring that further through the chains because as a company, as it's growing, we've got many different product teams and we want to make sure that that collaboration goes across the development managers, the quality engineering managers to really learn from each other and support each other. Your question is how do we, that to me is very, very important and I think we need to start talking about it and we need to showcase companies that do it well. We've actually gone through one of those personality tests or it wasn't actually a personality test, what drives you whether it's more strategic or problem solving, people are into the process, and I think those are really good things to do so that you can all work to communicate with each other and work with each other. >> You mentioned earlier that one of the things about working in Sydney that struck you is that conferences like this one, the Women Transforming Technology, are rare. Why are they so important do you think? >> Oh right. I've been to the Grace Hopper Conference four times. You're so used to being the minority. You're so used to being the minority and it's fantastic to come to a conference like that where you're not the minority anymore. And I think one thing that's extraordinary, have you been to the Grace Hopper Conference? >> Rebecca: I have, I was there in Houston in October. >> One thing that I find extraordinary about the Grace Hopper is the camaraderie. And you'll be lining up to get a coffee and just the people that you'll start a conversation and I've actually made some really, really great friends from Grace Hopper that I still keep in contact with and it's the networking and oh hang on a minute, she's having the same problem I'm having. >> Are these professional problems that you're facing or are these strategic? >> A bit of both. It could be technical problems. A lot of it's how do I get a team to collaborate on something. It's how do I overcome my imposter syndrome? How do I be a good leader? And the connections you make. I really feel that you can truly be yourself and I love what Cara was just saying before about being authentic and being genuine. I think something like Grace Hopper is somewhere where you can truly, truly feel authentic and genuine. The thing for me is it always gives me a great big confidence. I just feel great after these conferences and I'm inspired to just go back and really continue to move the needle. >> This is a women's conference. It's mostly women attending. If you could send a message to the men of Silicon Valley, what would it be? If you could just gather all of them in a room and say give them some advice about either helping a young woman in her career or just hey fellas know this. >> I think the big advice is listen, right? Were you at the Grace Hopper Conference two years ago? >> Rebecca: No I wasn't, I missed that one. >> I'm not sure if you heard about the male allies panel, but it was interesting because basically there's a male allies panel which was done with all good intention, but it got a lot of flak because why the hell am I flaking about the space and what the people who were on the panel did which was really interesting is they actually created a second panel the next day and said, "Okay, we're going to shut up. "We're going to listen." And it's really quite hard. For all of us in technology, we're all used to solving problems and we want to have our say and to get them to be quiet and listen is so important and not try and solve the problem, just try and understand and Cara was just saying that before, right, about some of the stuff that's going on with Uber and everything is some of the males she talks to say, "But I don't see it." Well of course you don't see it because you're not experiencing it, right? So listen, talk to women and make it very clear that it's a safe space and that you're just here to listen and you're not going to try and solve the problem, but try and get an understanding because they're in a very, very different space than we are. >> The story that's going on with Uber, it is depressing as a woman, as a woman in technology in Silicon Valley particularly just a couple of years after the Ellen Pao lawsuit. Are you hopeful that things will get better? >> I'm hopeful things will get better. It's brave women like Susan who are they telling their stories. We need to support each other and really support people like Susan who were brave enough to say that and obviously now because she's done it, a lot of other people are coming forward and Uber has to take some responsibility and has to do something so I'm hopeful it's getting better because we're talking about it a lot more, but it's a very, very difficult situation and the more we talk about it and there's people who are a lot smarter than me and a lot different, who are very experienced in this kind of social issue to be able to figure out how the hell we address this, but a lot of it is to get the conversation going and as I said to listen. >> If you could give a piece of advice to the younger version of you, that young girl in New Zealand dreaming of a career in technology, you mentioned imposter syndrome, what would you say? >> Getting back to Cara's talk, she talked about don't worry so much about what people think of you. >> Oh that's so hard though, it's so hard. >> And I remember gosh in my early days in my career, I was sitting there and I can't say anything. I really want to say something but I'm going to look stupid and it's like be curious. I think that's my best advice. What I love when I'm interviewing, I've done a lot interviewing of college grads and what I'll do is see what questions they ask so I think you don't have to have all the answers and you don't have to show I'm the best Java programmer there is, but oh tell me about this and I really love that your company does this and how do you approach this kind of problem? And just their thirst for knowledge and that curiosity and their eagerness to learn, I think it's really important to ask questions. And I think that's a good way to get over the imposter syndrome because you're not necessarily coming up as like I'm trying to be an expert on something, it's like I'm trying to contribute to conversation and help me understand and I think it's a really good way to get people out there and getting people talking. >> So be curious, don't care so much what people think of you. >> Josie: Right, right. >> You don't have to be the smartest person at the table. >> And build your network and especially if you see somebody in a meeting that handled a particular situation very well, I think it's really great to be able to go up to them afterwards and say, "Look, I loved how you said that. "Can you maybe chat to me about how you came up with that? "'Cause I'd love to learn from you." There's a lot of this talk about mentorship and I think it's really true that Sheryl Sandberg says it's not really the best way to say, "Could you be my mentor please?" But to actually just say, "I love this." >> Ask for advice. >> Ask for advice and very few women would say, "I don't want to talk about that." Most women are like, "Wow that's great," and want to be able to help out the younger generation. >> Josie Gillan, thank you so much for joining us. It's been a pleasure talking to you. >> Thank you so much. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for theCUBE in our coverage of Women Transforming Technology. We'll be right back. (modern techno music)

>> Narrator: Live from Palo Alto, it's theCUBE, covering Women Transforming Technology 2017, brought to you by VMware. >> theCUBE's coverage of Women Transforming Technology, held at VMware's campus here in Palo Alto, California. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, joined by Jeff Frick. We are here at the conference. It starts today. It's a one-day event. >> Right. >> And we just heard Kara Swisher, who is a journalistic hero of mine, and she gave a great, rousing, funny, timely, topical, political keynote. What'd you think? >> Well, she's been covering for so long. I read aol.com way back when, and I actually did an internship at AOL, I think in '96, back in the days when they were shipping, shipping CDs, so it's so fun to put her together with kind of that. >> Right. >> Seminal moment in time. >> She's a veteran. Exactly. >> She's terrific. She followed the characteristics that she outlined in her keynote, which is be true to yourself and don't be an asshole but don't really care what other people think. Be true to yourself. And she was that through and through. It's the first time I've actually ever seen her speak. It was a lot of fun. >> She's a great, really dynamic, funny, self-deprecating but also a bit of an ego herself. >> Oh, absolutely. >> I enjoyed particularly, as a fellow journalist, how she took Silicon Valley to task a few times, just talking a little bit about the naval gazing the Silicon Valley does, how badly they want to talk about the products and the process when really, the end users pretty much just care about, does it work, what's it going to do? >> Right, and two, it's kind of good news, bad news. With Trump, it's a never-ending source of good content for journalists, never have to wake up in the morning and think of a hard story to cover. And now, what's going on unfortunately with Uber, which as she said, is like somebody falling down a flight of stairs and they just keep falling and falling and falling. Big post that came out last week on LinkedIn, it got pretty viral, widespread, and then apparently another one and lord knows, I'm sure there's plenty more to go. And she really called out that she's trying to make people take a stand publicly against things that are not right and to really take a position, use your position of power to try to, as she said, help people with afflictions and afflict people that don't need the help. >> Yeah, comfort. >> Yeah, comfort those with afflictions. >> And afflict the comfortable. Yeah, no, I think it's a great point, in terms of here you Silicon Valley captains of industry, you are powerful people, you run powerful companies, act like it. >> Right. >> Act like it. And take up these causes that Trump is certainly taking up and particularly since they are so core to the values of Silicon Valley. These are gender issues, immigration, gay, transgender, and start taking a stance and stand up. >> Right. And so, we're excited to be here. This is, I guess, the second time they've had the Women Transforming Technology conference. We actually covered a VM women at a VMware show a couple years ago, and the Clayman Institute was there. So we're excited to be back. A full day of interviews, really glad to have you out and again, welcome to California from the East Coast. >> Thank you so much. I'm thrilled to be here. >> But it's a full line-up. We're going wall to wall and ending the day with I know someone that you're really looking forward to. >> A feminist icon, Gloria Steinem. And I also think that kudos to VMware and to the other sponsors of this conference for choosing her. She's not an obvious choice for a Women Transforming Technology conference closing address, but she really is going to take on so many of these important issues of the day. >> Okay, so any particular guests that you're most excited about today? >> I mean, there's so many. I am excited to talk to the women at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research. >> Yeah, Lori's fantastic. >> Yeah, Lori's going to be fantastic. Yanbing Li, she looks really interesting and a dynamic speaker, I know she's been on theCUBE before. >> Right, right, many times. >> Yeah. >> Alright, super. Well, I think they are just about ready to get out of the keynote, so we should probably. >> Excellent. >> Get ready for our first guest. >> Thank you so much. Great. >> Alright. >> We'll see you back here soon.