>>thank you. You know, haven't been in technology my entire career. Uh, technology and data has really evolved from being the province of a few and an organization to frankly being critical to everyone's business outcomes. Now, every business leader really needs to embrace data analytics and technology. We've been talking about digital transformation. Probably the last 57 years we've all talked about disruptor be disrupted. At the core of that digital transformation is the use of data, data and analytics that we derive insights from and actually improve our decision making by driving a differentiated experience and capability into market. So Data has involved as being, I would say, almost tactical in some sense over my technology career to really being a strategic asset of what we leverage personally in our own careers, but also what we must leverage as companies to drive a differentiated capability to experience and remain relative in the market today. Mhm. >>No. Yeah, I I agree with Lisa. It has definitely become a the lifeblood of every business, right? It used to be that there were a few companies in the business of technology. Every business is now a technology business. Every business is a data business. It is the way that they go to market, shaped the market and serve their clients. Whether you're in construction, whether you're in retail, whether you're in health care doesn't matter. Right? Data is necessary for every business to survive and thrive. And I remember at the beginning my career It was you know, data was always important, but it waas about storing data. It was about giving people individual reports. It was about supplying that data toe one person or one business unit in silos, and it then evolved right over the course of time into integrating data and to saying, Alright, how does one piece of data correlate to the other? And how can I get insights out of that data now? It's gone to the point of how do I use that data to predict the future? How do I use that data toe automate the future? How do I use that data? Not just for humans to make decisions, but for other machines to make decisions right, which is a big leap, Onda big change and how we use data, how we analyze data and how we use it for insights and evolving our businesses. Yeah. >>Yeah. Well, since I'm on the snowflake board, I'll talk a little bit about the snowflake data cloud. You know, we're getting your company's data out of the silos that exist all over your organization. We're bringing third party data into combined with your own data, and we're wrapping a governance structure around it and feeding it out to your employees so that they can get their jobs done. And it's a simple is that, uh I think we've all seen the pandemic accelerate the digitization of our work. And if you ever doubted that the future of work is here, it is here. And companies are scrambling to catch up by providing the right amount of data, uh, collaboration tools, workflow tools for their workers to get their jobs done. You know, it used to be as prior, people have mentioned that in order thio work with data. You have to be a data scientist. But, you know, I was an auditor back in the day, and we used to work on 16 columns, spreadsheets. And now, if you're an accounting major coming out of college, joining an auditing firm, you have to be checked and data savvy because you're going to be extracting, manipulating, analyzing and auditing data that massive amounts of data that sit in your client's I T systems. I'm on the board of Warby Parker, and you might think that their most valuable asset is their amazing frame collection. But it's actually their data. There are 360 degree view of the customer, and so, if you're a merchant or urine strategy or marketing or talent or the co CEO, you're using data every day in your work. And so I think it's going to become a ubiquitous skill that any anyone who's a knowledge worker has to be able to work with. Data. >>Yeah, absolutely. You know, most enterprises today are, I would say, hybrid multi cloud enterprises. What does that mean? That means that we have data sitting on Prem. We have data sitting in public clouds through software. As a service applications. We have a data everywhere. Most enterprises have data everywhere. Certainly those that have owned infrastructure or weren't born on the web. One of the areas that I love that data cloud is addressing is the area around data portability and mobility because I have data sitting in various locations through my enterprise. How doe I aggregate that data to really drive meaningful insights out of that data to drive better business outcomes and a blue shield of California. One of our key initiatives is what we call an experience cube. What does that mean? It means how doe I drive transparency of data between providers, members and payers so that not only do I reduce overhead on providers and provide them a better experience our hospital systems or doctors, But ultimately, how do we have the member have at their power of their fingertips the value of their data holistically so that we're making better decisions about their health care? You know, one of the things Teresa was talking about was the use of this data, and I would drive to data democratization. We got to put the power of data into the hands of everyone, not just data scientists. Yes, we need those data scientists to help us build a I models to really drive and tackle these tough hold, tougher challenges, business problems that we may have in our environments. But everybody in the company, both on the I T side both on the business side really need to understand. Of how do we become a data insights driven enterprise? Put the power of the data into everyone's hands so that we can accelerate capabilities right and leverage that data toe ultimately drive better business results. So as a leader, as a technology leader, part of our responsibility, our leadership, is to help our companies do that. And that's really one of the exciting things that I'm doing in my role now at Blue Shield of California took, >>oh, great question. And I am so passionate about this for ah, lot of reasons, not the least of which is I have two daughters of my own. Andi, I know how important it is for women and young girls. Toe actually start early in their love for technology and data and all things digital, right? So I think it's one very important to start early start in early education, building confidence of young girls that they can do this showing them role models. You know, we have Deloitte just partnered with L. A B engineer toe actually make comic books centered around young girls and boys in the early elementary age to talk about how heroes and text solve everyday problems on DSO, really helping to get people's minds around Tech is not just in the back office coating on a computer. Tech is about solving problems together. That helped us a citizens as customers, right and as humanity s. So I think that's important. I also think we have to expand that definition of tech. As we just said. It's not just about right database design. It's not just about, you know, Java and python coding. It's about design. It's about the human machine interfaces. It's about how do you use it to solve real problems and getting people to think in that kind of mindset makes it more attractive and exciting. And lastly, I'd say, Look, we have a absolute imperative to get a diverse population of people, not just women but minorities. You know, those with other types of backgrounds, disabilities, etcetera involved because this data is being used to drive decision making, and if we're all involved right and how that data makes decisions, it can lead to unnatural biases that no one intended but can happen just because we haven't involved a diverse enough group of people around it. Absolutely. Lisa. Curious about your thoughts on this? >>I agree with everything that she has said. I've been passionate about this area. I think it starts with First. We need more role models way. Need more role models as women, uh, in these leadership roles throughout various sectors, and it really is. It starts with us and helping to pull other women forward. So I think certainly it's part of my responsibility. I think all of us as female executives that if you have exceeded the table toe leverage that seat at the table to drive change, to bring more women forward, more diversity forward into the board room and into our executive suites. I also want to touch on a point that she had made about women were the largest consumer group in the company. Um, yet we're consumers, but we're not builders. This is why it's so important that we start changing that perception of what tech is, and I agree that it starts with their young girls. We know the data shows that we lose our young girls by middle school. Very heavy peer pressure. It's not so cool to be smart to do robotics or be good in math and science. We start losing our girls in middle school, so they're not prepared when they go to high school. And they're not taking those classes in order to major in these stem fields in college. So we have to start the pipeline early, Um, with our girls. And then I also think it's a measure of what your boards air doing. What is the executive leadership in your goals around diversity and inclusion? How do we invite more diverse population to the decision making table? So it's really a combination of effort. One of the things that certainly is concerning to me is during this pandemic. I think we're losing one in four women in the workforce now because of all the demands that our families are having to navigate through through this pandemic. The last statistic I saw in the last four months is we've lost 850,000 women in the workforce. This pipeline is critical to making that change in these leadership positions. What? Yeah, >>um, I'd encourage you to view to become an active sponsor. Research shows that women and minorities are less likely to be sponsored than white men. Sponsorship is a much more active form than mentorship. Sponsorship involves helping someone identify career opportunities and actively advocating for them in those roles. Opening your network, giving very candid feedback. And we need men to participate to. There are not enough women in tech to pull forward and sponsor the high potential women that are in our pipelines. And so we need you to be part of the solution. >>Let's say Look around your teams, see who's on them and make deliberate decisions about diversifying those teams as positions. Open up. Make sure that you have a diverse set of candidates. Make sure that there are women that are part of that team on DNA. Make sure that you are actually hiring and putting people into positions based on potential, not just experience. >>Wow, it's hard Thio with Nishida and with Tricia shared, I think we're very powerful actions. I think it starts with us, uh, taken action at our own table, making sure you're driving diverse panels and hiring um, setting goals for the company. Having your board engaged in holding us accountable and driving to those goals will help us all see a better outcome with more women at the executive table and diverse populations. >>Yeah, but

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

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

>> Hi, and welcome to data cloud catalyst women in tech round table panel discussion. I am so excited to have three fantastic female executives with me today who have been driving transformation through data throughout their entire career. With me today is Lisa Davis SVP and CIO of Blue Shield of California. We also have Nishita Henry who is the chief innovation officer at Deloitte and Teresa Briggs, who is on a variety of board of directors, including our very own Snowflake. Welcome, ladies. >> Thank you. So I'm just going to dive right in. You all have really amazing careers and resumes behind you. I'm really curious, throughout your career, how have you seen the use of data evolve throughout your career? And Lisa, I'm going to start with you. >> Thank you. Having been in technology my entire career, technology and data has really evolved from being the province of a few in an organization to frankly being critical to everyone's business outcomes. But now every business leader really needs to embrace data analytics and technology. We've been talking about digital transformation probably the last five, seven years. We've all talked about disrupt or be disrupted. At the core of that digital transformation is the use of data, data, and analytics that we derive insights from and actually improve our decision-making by driving a differentiated experience and capability into market. So data has involved as being, I would say, almost tactical in some sense over my technology career to really being a strategic asset of what we leveraged personally in our own careers, but also what we must leverage as companies to drive a differentiated capability to experience and remain relative in the market today. >> Nishita curious your take on, how you've seen data evolve? >> Yeah, I agree with Lisa, it has definitely become the lifeblood of every business, right? It used to be that there were a few companies in the business of technology. Every business is now a technology business. Every business is a data business. It is the way that they go to market, shape the market and serve their clients. Whether you're in construction, whether you're in retail, whether you're in healthcare doesn't matter, right? Data is necessary for every business to survive and thrive. And I remember at the beginning of my career, data was always important, but it was about storing data. It was about giving people individual reports. It was about supplying that data to one person or one business unit in silos. And it then evolved right over the course of time and to integrating data and to saying, all right, how does one piece of data correlate to the other? And how can I get insights out of that data? Now let's go on to the point of how do I use that data to predict the future? How do I use that data to automate the future? How do I use that data not just for humans to make decisions but for other machines to make decisions, right? Which is a big leap and a big change in how we use data, how we analyze data and how we use it for insights and evolving our businesses. >> Yeah. It's really changed so tremendously, just in the past five years, it's amazing. So Teresa, we've talked a lot about the data cloud, where do you think we're heading with that? And also how can future leaders really guide their careers in data, especially in those jobs where we don't traditionally think of them in the data science space, curious your thoughts on that. >> Yeah. Well, since I'm on the Snowflake board, I'll talk a little bit about the Snowflake data cloud that we're getting your company's data out of the silos that exist all over your organization. We're bringing third party data in to combine with your own data and we're wrapping a governance structure around it and feeding it out to your employees so that they can get their jobs done. And it's as simple as that, I think we've all seen the pandemic accelerated the digitization of our work. And if you ever doubted that the future of work is here, it is here. And companies are scrambling to catch up by providing the right amount of data, collaboration tools, workflow tools for their workers to get their jobs done. Now it used to be, as prior, people have mentioned that in order to work with data, you had to be a data scientist. But I was an auditor back in the day and we used to work on 16 columns spreadsheet. And now if you're an accounting major coming out of college, joining an auditing firm, you have to be tech and data savvy because you're going to be extracting, manipulating, analyzing, and auditing data. That massive amounts of data that sit in your client's IT systems. I'm on the board of Warby Parker. And you might think that their most valuable asset is their amazing frame collection but it's actually their data. There are 360 degree view of the customer. And so if you're a merchant or you're in strategy or marketing or talent or the co-CEO, you're using data every day in your work. And so I think it's going to become a ubiquitous skill that any anyone who's a knowledge worker has to be able to work with data. >> Now, I think it's just going to be organic to every role going forward in the industry. >> So Lisa curious about your thoughts about data cloud, the future of it, and how people can really leverage it in their jobs from future leaders. >> Yeah, absolutely. Most enterprises today are, I would say, hybrid multi-cloud enterprises. What does that mean? That means that we have data sitting on prem. We have data sitting in public clouds through software, as a service applications. We have a data everywhere. Most enterprises have data everywhere. Certainly those that have owned infrastructure or weren't born on the web. One of the areas that I'd love that data cloud is addressing is the area around data portability and mobility. Because I have data sitting in various locations through my enterprise, how do I aggregate that data to really drive meaningful insights out of that data to drive better business outcomes. And at Blue Shield of California, one of our key initiatives is what we call an experience cube. What does that mean? It means how do I drive transparency of data between providers and members and payers so that not only do I reduce overhead on providers and provide them a better experience or hospital systems or doctors, but ultimately how do we have the member have at their power of their fingertips the value of their data holistically so that we're making better decisions about their healthcare? One of the things Teresa was talking about was the use of this data. And I would drive to data democratization. We got to put the power of data into the hands of everyone, not just data scientists. Yes, we need those data scientists to help us build AI models to really drive and tackle these tougher challenges and business problems that we may have in our environments. But everybody in the company, both on the IT side, both on the business side, really need to understand of how do we become a data insights driven enterprise, put the power of the data into everyone's hands so that we can accelerate capabilities, right? And leverage that data to ultimately drive better business results. So as a leader, as a technology leader, part of our responsibility, our leadership is to help our companies do that. And that's really one of the exciting things that I'm doing in my role now at Blue Shield of California. >> Yeah. It's really, really exciting time. I want to shift gears a little bit and focus on women in tech. So I think in the past 5 to 10 years there has been a lot of headway in this space but the truth is women are still underrepresented in the tech space. So what can we do to attract more women into technology? Quite honestly. So Nishita curious what your thoughts are on that? >> Great question. And I am so passionate about this for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is I have two daughters of my own and I know how important it is for women and young girls to actually start early in their love for technology and data and all things digital, right? So I think it's one very important to start early, starting early education, building confidence of young girls that they can do this, showing them role models. We at Deloitte just partnered with LOV engineer to actually make comic books centered around young girls and boys in the early elementary age to talk about how heroes in techs solve everyday problems. And so really helping to get people's minds around tech is not just in the back office, coding on a computer, tech is about solving problems together that help us as citizens as customers, right? And as humanity. So I think that's important. I also think we have to expand that definition of tech as we just said, it's not just about database design. It's not just about Java and Python coding. It's about design, it's about the human machine interfaces. It's about how do you use it to solve real problems and getting people to think in that kind of mindset makes it more attractive and exciting. And lastly, I'd say, look we have a absolute imperative to get a diverse population of people, not just women but minorities, those with other types of backgrounds, disabilities, et cetera, involved because this data is being used to drive decision-making, and if we're all involved and how that data makes decisions, it can lead to unnatural biases that no one intended but can happen just 'cause we haven't involved a diverse enough group of people around it. >> Absolutely. Lisa, I'm curious about your thoughts on this. >> Oh, I agree with everything Nishita said. I've been passionate about this area. I think it starts with first, we need more role models. We need more role models as women in these leadership roles throughout various sectors. And it really is, it starts with us and helping to pull other women forward. So I think it certainly it's part of my responsibility. I think all of us as female executives that if you have a seat at the table to leverage that seat at the table to drive change to bring more women forward, more diversity forward into the boardroom and into our executive suites. I also want to touch on a point Nishita made about women. We're the largest consumer group in the company yet we're consumers, but we're not builders. This is why it's so important that we start changing that perception of what tech is. And I agree that it starts with our young girls. We know the data shows that we lose our young girls by middle school, very heavy peer pressure. It's not so cool to be smart or do robotics or be good at math and science. We start losing our girls in middle school. So they're not prepared when they go to high school and they're not taking those classes in order to major in these STEM fields in college. So we have to start the pipeline early with our girls. And then I also think it's a measure of what your boards are doing. What is the executive leadership and your goals around diversity and inclusion? How do we invite more diverse population to the decision-making table? So it's really a combination of efforts. One of the things that certainly is concerning to me is during this pandemic, I think we're losing one in four women in the workforce now because of all the demands that our families are having to navigate through this pandemic. The last statistic I saw in the last four months is we've lost 850,000 women in the workforce. This pipeline is critical to making that change in these leadership positions. >> Yeah, it's really a critical time. And now we're coming to the end of this conversation. I want to ask you Teresa, what would be a call to action to everyone listening, both men and women since it needs to be solved by everyone to address the gender gap in the industry. >> I'd encourage to you to become an active sponsor. Research shows that women and minorities are less likely to be sponsored than white men. Sponsorship is a much more active form than mentorship. Sponsorship involves helping someone identify career opportunities and actively advocating for them in those roles, opening your network, giving very candid feedback. And we need men to participate too. There are not enough women in tech to pull forward and sponsor the high potential women that are in our pipelines. And so we need you to be part of the solution. >> Nishita, real quickly, what would be your call to action to everyone? >> I'd say, look around your teams, see who's on them and make deliberate decisions about diversifying those teams, as positions open up, make sure that you have a diverse set of candidates. Make sure that there are women that are part of that team and make sure that you are actually hiring and putting people into positions based on potential, not just experience. >> And real quickly, Lisa, we'll close it out with you. What would your call to action be? >> Well, it's hard to, but Nishita and what Teresa shared, I think were very powerful actions. I think it starts with us taking action at our own table, making sure you're driving diverse panels and hiring, setting goals for the company, having your board engaged and holding us accountable and driving to those goals will help us all see a better outcome with more women at the executive table and diverse populations. >> So I want to talk to you all about a pivotal moment in your career. It could have been a mentorship. It could have been maybe a setback in your career or maybe a time that you really took a risk and it paid off big, something that really helped define your career going forward. Curious what those moments were for you all in your career. Teresa, we'll start with you. >> Sure. I had a great sponsor and he was a white male by the way. He identified some potential in me when I was early in my career about five years in and he really helped pave the way for a number of decisions I made along the way to take different roles in the firm. I was at Deloitte, he's still in my life today. We get together a couple of times a year. And even though we're both retired from Deloitte, we still have that relationship and what that tell me was how to be a great sponsor. And so one of the most satisfying things I did in my career was when I finally got to the place where I was no longer reaching for the next rank of the ladder for myself, I got to turn around and pull through all of these amazing future leaders into roles that were going to help them accelerate their careers. >> What about you, Lisa? >> I think there's been many of those moments. One I'll speak about is having spin 20, 25 years in technology, I had spent my first career in department of defense, moved over to academia and then went to a high-tech firm on their IT side, really in hopes of getting the CIO role having been a CIO, I did not get the CIO role, and really had a decision to make. One of the opportunities that was presented to me was to move to the business side to run a $9 billion P&L on one of the core business units within the company. And of course, I was terrified. It was a very risky decision having never run a P&L before and not starting small going right to the billion dollar mark in terms of (laughs) what that would look like. And frankly decided to seize that opportunity and I've certainly learned in my career that those opportunities that really push you out of your comfort zone that take you down a really completely different path or where the greatest opportunities for growth and learning occur. So I did that role for three and a half years before coming into my current role back to a CIO role at Blue Shield of California in healthcare, and just a tremendous amount of learning, having been on the business side and managing a P&L that I now apply to how I engage with my partners at Blue Shield. >> I couldn't agree more. I think forcing yourself out of that comfort zone is so critical for learning and driving your career for sure. Nishita, what about you? >> Yeah, I agree. Lots of pivotal moments, but I'll talk about one very early in my career, actually was an intern and one of my responsibilities was to help research back then facial recognition technology. And I had to go out there and evaluate vendors and take meetings with vendors and figure out, all right, which ones do we want to actually test? And I remember I was leading a meeting, two of my kind of supervisors were with us. And I know I went through the list of questions and then the meeting kind of ended. And I didn't speak up at that point in time to kind of say here are the next steps or here's what I recommend. I kind of looked at my supervisors to do that. Just assuming they should be wrapping it up and they should be the ones to make a final decision or choice. And after that meeting, he came to me and he's like you know Nishita you did a really nice job in bringing these technologies forward but I wish you would have spoken up because you're the one who've done the most research. And you're the one who has the most background on what we should do next. Next time don't stand by and let someone else be your voice. And it was so powerful for me and I realized, wow, I should have more confidence in myself to be able to actually use my voice and do what I was asked to do versus leave it to someone else because I assumed that I was too junior or I assumed I didn't have enough experience. So that was really pivotal for me early in my career to learn how to use my voice. >> I'm really curious for you, Nishita. What drew you to the industry of data? What was something when you were young that drew you into that space? >> Yeah. So my background is actually in engineering and it's actually funny. It's an electrical engineering and I probably couldn't do another thermal dynamics equation to save my life anymore (laughs). But what drew me to technology was problem solving, right? It was all about how do I take a bunch of data and information and create a new solution, right? Whether it was, how do I create a device? I remember in college, right? Creating a device to go down stadium steps and clean, right? How do I take data for how this machine will interact with the environment in order to create it? So I always viewed it as problem solving and that's what has always attracted me into the field. >> That's great. So, Teresa, I'm curious, at what point did you feel that you really found your voice in your career, in yourself as a part of your professional life? >> Yeah. About 12 years into my career I started working as an M&A partner and I was working with a private equity firm along with their lawyers and other advisors, bankers and so forth. And what I realized in that situation was that I was the expert in what I did. And so, I mean, I found my voice before that in many other ways but that was sort of a moment where I felt like, "I'm here to deliver an expertise to this group of people. And none of them have the expertise that I have. And so I need to just stand firm in my shoes and deliver that expertise with confidence." So that was my example. >> That's great. Well, Lisa, what about you? What was that moment that you felt that you just found your voice kind of in your groove and that confidence kicked in? >> No, I don't know if it was exactly a moment but it was certainly a realization. Right out of college, I was working for the federal government in department of defense and certainly male dominated. And through that realized that to be heard, I had to become very good at what I do. So I built that confidence, frankly, by delivering results and capability and becoming an expert in the work, essentially the services that I provide. And when you become very good at what you do, regardless of what you look like, then people will start to listen. So I think it starts with delivering results. I think you have to build your confidence and through that you find to use your voice so that you are being heard, having worked in department of defense and academia and high tech, I've had to leverage that throughout my entire career ultimately for my voice to be heard, and to be represented within the roles that I was playing. >> That's great. I know one of the things that we've also talked about is just the value, the business value, the importance of having a diverse workforce and a diverse team and the value that that brings to the outcomes. What are some of your strategies to create those types of teams? What, as leaders in your company, you manage a team and what is your advice to them, your strategies to get a diverse pool of candidates and a diverse team. Nishita, what about you? >> I think it's looking beyond what the individual role is, right? So a lot of times we have a role description and you want these certain skills and so (indistinct), or you get a certain set of candidates. I think it's taking a step back and saying, "What are the objectives of my team? What am I trying to accomplish? What types of business acumen do I need on that team? What types of tech acumen, what types of personalities? Do I want people who know how to work with others and therefore bring them together? Do I need people who are also drivers and know how to get things done, right?" It's finding the right chemistry. We have a business chemistry, talk track around. We don't need all different kinds to make a really good team. So I think it's taking a step back and understanding what you need the makeup of your team to be, understanding the hard skills and the soft skills. And then thinking about what are all the sources you could really go to for them and being a little bit non-traditional and saying, "Do I need a full-time person all the time to do this job that's sitting here? Can I be more diverse in finding people from the crowd? Can I have part-time resources? Can I use different pieces and parts of the ecosystem to actually bring together the full team that represents the diversity?" It's just expanding our mind and stop thinking about a role to person, start thinking about it as the makeup of a team, to the outcome you desire. >> It's really about being creative and just thinking in new ways. Teresa, I'm super curious, since you sit on a bunch of different boards, what kind of strategies do you see companies taking to attract different talent? >> So I can address that from the board lens, for sure. And boards are probably one of the least diverse bodies in business right now, but that is changing, and for the better, obviously they were traditionally kind of white male dominated. And then we've had this wave of women joining boards. And now we're starting to see a wave of diverse individuals join boards. And with each person who's diverse that joins a board that I'm on, the dynamic of the discussion changes because they bring a different perspective. They bring a different way of thinking. They came from a different background or a different functional skillset or a different geography or you name, whatever element of diversity you want to see. We just added the head of Apple music to the service in our board. And so you might scratch your head and say, "Wow, the head of Apple music and an enterprise software company that is a B2B software company." But he thinks deeply about how the end user consumes in his case content and in our case software. And so he's able to bring just a completely different perspective to the discussion we have at the board table. And I think at the end of the day, that's what diversity is all about, is improving the outcome of whatever it is. If you're producing something or making important decisions like we do in board rooms. >> That's amazing. Lisa, real quickly, what are some of your strategies? >> Yeah. Well, we know diverse teams actually produce better business results. So there's no reason, there's absolutely no reason why we shouldn't think in that lens. I think it starts with our hiring and the makeup of our teams. I think it requires more than creativity though. You have to be very purposeful. I'm in the process of hiring four leadership positions on my team. And it's really to me, almost like a puzzle piece of diverse perspectives and knowledge and capabilities that come together that ultimately create a high performing team. But I can't tell you how many times I got to go back to HR and say, "I need to see more diverse talent. Are there any more women in the pool?" One of the things we've struggled, we have to get more women into the roles is, and we heard this from Sheryl Sandberg, as women, we feel we need to meet every qualification on an application. Whereas men, "I got a couple I'm good to go." And they throw their name in the hat. They take much more risk than we do as women. So we need to encourage our women to get out of your comfort zone. You don't need to meet every qualification. What Nishita was saying of thinking more broadly about what this role requires and the type of individual that we're looking for, but be purposeful in terms of driving to diversity as our end result. >> That is so true. What you just said. Thank you so much for sharing your insights. It's really interesting to hear all your strategies and thanks for sharing. >> And you're clear.

>> Narrator: Live from Manhattan, It's theCUBE. Covering AWS Summit, New York City, 2017. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Welcome back to Midtown. We're at the Javits Center here. (sound cuts out) 2017, along with Stu Miniman, I'm John Walls and you're watching The Cube as we continue with what's happening here. About five thousand people on the show floor and they said some twenty thousand registrants. Right Stew? That people came in and wanted to watch the keynotes live. >> It could be ten thousand that walked through before the days-- >> Right, it's hard to tell. >> Yeah. >> And right now half of them are outside looking for a cab I think. That's the way it works here. Ryan Kroonenburg is also here. He's the founder of a company called A Cloud Guru. >> Yes. >> I like Ryan already. I liked him as soon as we met him because he said, "like the beer, Kroonenburg." So you resonated with the two of us, Ryan. >> Ryan like the airline and Kroonenburg like the beer. >> We appreciate that. Alright, so you're a cloud education company. >> Yes. >> And you bill yourself or at least in the conversation as you want to be the Netflix of cloud education. That's what you're doing. Tell us a little bit about the founding of the company. It began with your brother? >> Yes, yeah. >> Just two years ago and now you've grown to some 40 employees. >> Yeah, so I used to be a solutions architect and I was desperate to get a job at AWS so I became obsessed with getting trained in AWS. And at the time, a company I worked for had a training freeze. So we couldn't go out and do in-classroom training. If I had to do that myself, I'd have to pay for it myself. And I found that there wasn't a lot of good on-line training companies two years ago. I didn't get the job with AWS and turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. And so I decided to create my own course on AWS. Launched that, started going viral and that was the birth of A Cloud Guru. >> Ryan, bring is in a little inside of building the company, so you're not only teaching cloud, but you're built on cloud and not just any cloud, but using the LAN to server list from pretty early on that. >> Exactly, so we practice what we preach. You know, we are real AWS engineers. We built the entire platform serverlessly. We think we're the world's first serverless start-up. We're certainly the world's first serverless learning management system. So we don't pay for any servers whatsoever. There's no virtual/physical servers. And we're basically, purely AWS native. We do use a bunch of third party services like Xero and PayPal and things like that. But most of our platforms are AWS. >> Yeah, in the keynote this morning, Adrian Cockroft talked about Bustle, A New York based start-up that uses a lot of serverless, but you built the company before you even had funding and now you've got a little bit of funding. Can you give any insight? Do the investors looks at that and say, wow, this is a great model? >> Yeah, so we raised a decent series A. One of the founders of Warby Parker is on our board now so that's really exciting. A guy called Andy and he's helping us scale. One of the reasons we took funding was helping to scale. So our infrastructure scales automatically with AWS because it's built on Lambda and API Gateway. But we as a company are struggling to scale in like finding the right employees and all of that sort of thing, so that's where we're getting some help. >> Alright, what are you hearing from people taking your courses? What new things are they asking for? How are you expanding the scope of your offerings? >> Everyone is obviously very interested in AWS, but they also want to learn other cloud-computing platforms now, especially Azure, so we are expanding the scope of our content to do Azure as well as Guru. The other problem people are having is, AWS innovates so quickly. You know, there's like a thousand updates last year. There's 19 new updates last week. So there having trouble keeping up so we run just a weekly TV show called, AWS This Week, and we basically just tell people what's new this week. And the great thing about New York Summit is there's been like five or six announcements here so I'm going to be busy on Friday, filming. >> Is there any one particular area of training that you see more people drifting toward or following toward? >> I think serverless and big data are the hot topics. Big data, by that I mean AI, machine learning. That's just exploding right now. And just serverless architectures because the future of cloud is serverless. Why pay for virtual, physical machines by the hour or by the minute and have system administrators, network administrators, database administrators when all you actually want to focus on is your code and your end customers and serverless allows you to do that. >> So what's your process then? In terms of you staying on top of it, right? Because now you have to. >> Ryan: Yeah. >> I mean, you, you're it, right? You're the point of expertise. So how do you ... I guess, remain in that kind of relationship with AWS that you're the cusp? >> So, I obviously read all the blogs. Our students, We've got 300,000 students right now and our discussion forums are very very active so if they have announced something that I've missed, the students tell me, like, we'll know within a few hours. So, that's it really. It's just forever learning, but I love learning anyway so it's fun to get paid to learn. >> John: Sure. You bet. >> Ryan, how many people have gone through the training so far? Do you know how many of them get certified after they do that? And how many are kind of repeat customers? >> We've got 300,00 have gone through the training so far. We do track our pass rates. Our pass rates vary from anywhere between, normally 80 to 90%. Not everyone will pass on the first go because the exams are tough and it's also quite stressful. Sitting these exams can be quite stressful. In terms of the number of students that actually go on to get certified, that's not something we track just yet, but we're looking to change that as well. But yeah, we have a very good pass rate. >> So how does it work? I want to learn, you know, whatever. I want to dive into AI, whatever it is. I come to you, you've got something for me there right? You've got, I don't know how many hours of work I have to do, but take us through how it really works. >> Yeah so, it's video training. Online video training. So say you want to learn DynamoDB. We have a 19 hour course on that. And we go right into the very depths of DynamoDB. So you watch the videos. we'll show you what we're doing in the labs. We'll give you all the sample code if we're using code and then you can go and do it yourself. We very much believe in, the only way to learn Cloud is by getting your hands dirty. To actually go and do it yourself. So people watch the labs, do the stuff themselves and then complete the course. If it's a certification course, then at the end what they'll do is go and book the exam and hopefully, they'll pass the exam as well. >> So Ryan, you're in there looking at all this stuff, especially things like server lists. What are you looking for, for kind of the maturation? Is there anything that do you give feedback to Amazon? The community give you feedback? I have to imagine that there's some good feedback loops there? >> Yeah, I'm lucky enough to be an AWS community hero. So we get get briefed by Amazon on things that are coming out. You know, under MDA of course. We give a lot of feedback on that. No, I think serverless is the next big revolution. I hate hype and buzz words and things like that, but the thing about serverless is that, now you don't have to worry about servers. You can just focus on your code and you don't need to worry about any of the normal administration behind it and it's like ridiculously cheap. You get a million lambda implications a month for free. That's just part of Free Tier. We actually only just came off of Lambda Free Tier a couple of months ago and we've got 300,000 students. So, it's very very very cheap so its amazing. It's driving new revolution. >> What advice would you give to someone if they were looking to start a business and using serverless as a platform? >> Yeah, definitely check out AWS of course, we build our entire business off AWS. Design, try if you can, architect everything in a serverless fashion because like I keep saying, you don't have to worry about management of operating systems, virus patching, security, any of that. AWS, they take all... They take care of all of the heavy lifting for you. >> So I know you are a big fan of Lambda, but have you looked at some of the other serverless options out there? Is there any concern around, there's open source options out there. >> Ryan: Yeah. >> How do we get compatibility and not be just locked into Amazon? >> Azure Functions looks really good. See, this thing about vendor lock-in, I mean, you've got the serverless framework as well. If you build your applications on the serverless framework, you can move between platforms quite easily. That is coming so you could build it out on AWS and then move over to Azure if you wanted. The founder of serverless frameworks is a good friend of mine. So I definitely recommended checking it out. And that would be my advice. If you are going to go serverless use the serverless framework so then you don't have to worry about vendor lock in. But at the same time, Amazon, they reduce their prices all the time. So it is a good vendor to be with. >> I just think your story is great. I think that the best "no" you ever got in your life was from AWS. And now you're giving them a big "yes". >> Yeah, absolutely, I love AWS. They're such amazing people as well. They've all become my-- through my business and people I used to work with have all become really good friends of mine as well. It's been a great journey in last two years. >> You've done well for them, they've done well for you. It's a good relationship. >> Exactly. >> Ryan, thanks for being with us. >> Thank you. >> And continued success. >> Right, thanks guys. >> Good for you. You bet, Ryan Kroonenburg. The founder of A Cloud Guru. Along with his brother, Sam, making a pretty good business out of things on the AWS platform right now. 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