>> Hey, welcome back everybody Jeff Frick here with theCUBE, we're downtown San Francisco, the Hotel Nikko, it's International Women's Day, March 8th, there's stuff going on all around the world, but we're excited to be here at the Accenture event, about 400 people, a lot of great panels, some familiar faces, some new faces, and one of those familiar faces joins us in the next segment. He's Marc Carrel, from Accenture, great to see you. >> Great to see you too. >> And a new face, Mary Hamilton, managing director also from Accenture Labs. Mary, great to see you. >> Great to see you too. >> So, first things, just kind of impressions of this event. I don't know if you did it last year, we weren't here, you know, there's a lot of energy, kind of, initial takeaways from some of the early panels. >> I mean, the energy is there, I mean, definitely last year we were here, I mean we do that every year for sure, and last year it was amazing as well, but I think this year is even bigger than we had last year. We have a kind of a hub and spokesmen of our organization where we have also our top leadership to go from different cities and then we celebrate all over the world. So this year the hub is here, and that's the reason why there's so much buzz and so much excitement. So that's pretty cool. >> Yeah, all of our leadership is here, and just phenomenal guests, um, from, yeah, we really aim for diversity, even not just gender diversity but diversity across all of our different panelists, you know, kind of thing they're thinking about, the way they're thinking about diversity, um, and you know, for me just some of those takeaways, you know, Vivian Ming, her point was when she showed up um, and, is there a difference between how men and women are treated? When she showed up as herself, as she is today, as a woman, she said she's never been asked a math question since. And that just blew me away that it's so black and white and they're really you know, from someone who's lived on both sides, there really is a difference. >> Right, right. So what are the topics? You guys are involved in Labs, is innovation, right? So there's digital transformation, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah, but really innovation is kind of a more concrete thing that people are trying to achieve. And you guys are a big part of that at Labs, diversity is a big part of being more innovative. >> It's critical. >> So how do you guys see it in your customer base, and how do you see it within the work that you guys do within your own department at the Labs group? >> Well, I'll start, just, you know, you think about innovation that taps diversity is stronger innovation. Right? Our clients are delivering products and services to a diverse audience. And as we serve our clients and try to help them transform and be more digital, we have to reflect, the consumers or the buyers, for their products. And if we don't have that diversity, we're not going to deliver the right kinds of innovation. >> Right. >> I think Mary is absolutely right. And then what's very important to us is that we absolutely demonstrate that through numbers. So, you know, we have like seven labs, two of our leaders are women from those labs, we have five research domains, out of the five research domains, three out of the five are lead by women. >> Right. >> And I think that's pretty amazing. Now you see that from an organization's perspective. But I think if you look at who are the researchers, the most prolific that we have in the labs, from the few hundred people that we have, they're women. Hands down. And I'm going to give you some numbers which is again amazing, we are again publishing about 2,000 patents. I mean from the labs, since we exist. More than thirty eight percent have been driven by women. And then our most prolific labber is a woman. She has many of her, 124 applications and patents. How about that? I mean, she's amazing. >> Well drive is such an important piece, which is one of my favorite quotes. "In God we trust, but everybody else better bring data." Right? So if you don't apply data, if you don't measure the data, and you don't actually put in processes to specifically address the problem, it's just conversation, right? It's just interesting words. >> Absolutely, Jeff. And I think Mary will share with you, I mean also we're putting a process and an approach, a culture that is really changing the mind. >> Yeah. We focus on programs, not just at the junior level of recruiting, we do spend a lot of time and effort on getting out where women are, so we do things like Grace Hopper. We invest a lot to go to Grace Hopper and meet those technical women, we do things with women who code, with girls who code, what's the pipeline going to look like? But then once we have them in, how do we retain them? And so we've created a community and a network where we do a number of things. We mentor them, we create external networks, we create internal networks, we create kind of a social space, a safe social space, where you can bring up questions like "what should I wear to International Women's Day?", without having to feel awkward about asking those kind of things. We create a community that empowers and makes people feel comfortable. >> And do the clients get now that for whatever good, bad or otherwise they just need more good people. I mean we can't just not pull from the greatest population of good people that you can pull from. >> Absolutely, you're absolutely right. And I think another aspect from what I see what's happening in the lab, and I think Mary is a great example of that, we're looking at raw morals. Like, amazing woman like Mary, that is going to be driving, basically striving, and showing our people that you can really have a fantastic capacity as a technology person in the lab and in the Accenture organization overall. And that is very, very important for us. >> Yeah, and for me I'm not just a technologist but I'm also a mother of three small kids and I try to bring that to work, right? I try to show people, you know, I'm not just taking the hardcore path, I'm balancing a family I'm doing all these things that probably the rest of you are trying to do too and I let it show. Right? This is hard, how can I help you, here's what I'm going through, here are the challenges I'm facing, and try to bring others along too. >> So funny I did an interview years ago at an IBM event and there was a great women who was from an HR kind of consultative background, and she said, "You know, we spent all this time trying to find these great people, that have all these great attributes, and then we bring them in and then we just like give them the compliance manual, now you need to not be you, the mom, you've just got to be this little machine." And that's really not the way anymore, not at all. >> And credit to our leadership, to Marc, to Paul, Ellen, all the way up, right? There's true support for being truly human, bringing yourself to the workplace, and they do support it, they encourage it, right? And I think that that culturally seeps in to how we bring diversity to innovation too, right? It's bring your whole self to how you think about innovation. When we're hiring, I mean, I have a great example, I had a client come visit us, and he's been a strong supporter of us within his client space, and he came in and we were talking about you know, his work, and then I took him out to meet the team that was building the proof of concept for him, some tangential areas, and he met people from not just men and women, you know, diverse, but also different backgrounds, engineers, researchers, businessfolks, he met people from all kinds of backgrounds around the world. And he was able to have conversations about sports science, cricket, extended reality, and bring all those conversations back and at the end of his meeting he said "I was just floored at how many engaged conversations I was able to have with different people and the diversity of your workforce." And it's not just male female, right? You need that broad spectrum diversity to fuel innovation. >> Right. >> So -- >> Go ahead. >> Go ahead, Mark. Oh, I was just going to say, so, you know obviously it's a feel-good day today, it's feel-good place right here, but what are some of the significant, is it just execution or are there still some big hurdles that we have to overcome? Let's see, Mary, from your perspective. Marc's got it all figured out so we don't have to worry about him. >> Well, yeah, I mean there absolutely are, right? There is a pipeline problem, there is pipeline problem both from girls in STEM, coming up, right, what culturally we're telling girls and then there's a pipeline problem for, you know, we need to hire today. And I'm actually on the board of Women Who Code because I'm so passionate about their mission is, let's get women to understand that technology is approachable. That it is for all of us. >> Right. >> There's so many, the spectrum of what you can do with technology is so broad and so really if you think about it it's so appealing to so many women if you hit the right focus for them, then I think we can bring more women into tech even now, right? We don't have to wait for the pipe, we have to work on the pipeline, but we don't have to wait for it. We can start now. >> It's great, we do stuff with girls in tech and girls who code and obviously your Grace Hopper too. So you saw, just basing on her name, the gal that got the keynote, from uh, from the UK, who was basically, you know, at her last nickel with her kids, the poorest, homeless, and she learned how to code. And I dunno how old she was but she wasn't -- >> And we have so many stories of women who code. It turns their life around. And maybe the Tech For Good. >> Yeah, I think that's interesting, I mean also the nature of some of the projects we're doing also are driving women to be involved in this project. Do you know what is Tech For Good? I think I discussed that with you for some of these interviews. >> Yes. >> Where we're using technology and innovation to bring change to the world and the society and everything. We really believe, and we're not the only ones who believe that, you know, I mean, there are CEOs from other organizations that believe that, like, women are really on track today to build solutions or projects, with meaningful projects that really have purpose. That are meaningful to the society. And so Tech For Good, that we have launched, first of all got an incredible success, not only within the firm but outside of the firm, and the second thing is that it attracted tons of women talents. They love these kind of things. And then because they loved that, they want to stick with Accenture, and they, you couldn't describe it. >> Yeah, I mean, you get both sides of the coin. You're doing things that are empowering women in many cases, a lot of the projects we're doing. >> Right, right. And then that's also attracting women because we're excited about betterment of society and humanity and -- >> It's interesting, you know I got to give a lot of credit to kind of the younger generation coming up in terms of the prioritization of purpose within their hierarchy in deciding what to do, what companies to work for, how to spend their time, you know, it's very different than when we were, we didn't think about purpose, was trying to get a good job. Pay off the mortgage and then get a car. They don't want a car, they don't want a mortgage, they just want to do good. >> Absolutely, and I'll tell you something Jeff, I mean it's just like the Tech For Good I was just discussing with Mike Sutcliff before that, our chief officer of Accenture, and I was telling him that Tech For Good, the reason why we decided to do the Tech For Good and lab, talking to my leaders and everything is just like because my kids come to me and say "Hey Dad, you have the best job in the firm now, I mean, you need to do something with it." And so obviously we had to do some Tech For Good things. That's it. >> I love it. Alright, we're running out of time so I'll give you the last word, if when we come back a year from now, I'll probably see you in a month since I see you all the time. But a year from now at International Women's Day what are you working on, what are your priorities, how does this integrate into what you guys are doing at Labs, in your brand new space, by the way. >> Yeah, yeah. I mean part of the mission in that brand new space is to create these accidental collisions, right? >> Accidental collisions? >> Collaborative collisions I should say. (laughter) >> I was like, I love that term. >> No, we're not just colliding with each other. We're collaborating in these collisions. >> When atoms collide big things happen, right? >> Exactly. >> I'm sorry, knocked your train of thought. >> No, no, no, that's perfect. Um, and I think that whole mission is about how to create that diversity of thought. How do we bring people together that wouldn't have collaborated in the past? So my mission as we're moving into that new space, is to get my labbers, who are, you know, we're on our own little floor doing our own little thing, to expand our horizons, right? To think about diversity across the spectrum, how are we going to work with other groups, how are we going to bring different pieces to the innovation? So I hope we can reflect than even as we come back next year to this program. >> Great, alright. >> And my job is really to, I mean, as a, to pile on what Mary says, like, I'm going to continue stretching the limit of others' research. Because I think that there's nothing better than to do that hard research to solve that hard problem to elevate our people. And to be honest whether it's woman or man, they're all labbers, they're all part of our family, and there's no better, basically, reward for you to see these people, basically shining and explaining their passion to our clients, changes society and everything. That's what we got to do. >> Love the passion Marc, Mary, it's always great to catch up. >> It's great to see you. (soft music)