>>from Las >>Vegas. It's the cues covering quality security Conference 2019 Bike. Wallace. Hey, welcome back It ready? Geoffrey here with the Cube were at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. It's actually raining outside, which is pretty odd, but through the desert is happy. We're here at the Kuala Security Conference. Been going on for 19 years. It's our first time here. We're excited to be here, but we got a really familiar Gaston. She's been on a number of times that Nutanix next, conferences and girls who code conferences, etcetera. So we're happy to have back Wendy Pfeifer. She's the C I O of Nutanix and as of August, early this year, a board member for quality. So great to see you. >>Nice to see you again, too. So it's raining outside. I'll have to get out. >>I know it's pretty, uh, pretty cool, actually. School coming in on the plane. But let's let's jump into a little bit from your C I, Oh, roll. We're talking a lot about security and in the age old thing came up in the keynote. You know, there's companies that have been hacked, and then there's companies that have been hacked and don't know it yet, but we're introducing 1/3 type of the company. Here is one of the themes which is that you actually can prevent, you know, not necessarily getting hacked, but kind of the damage and destruction and the duration once people get in. I'm just curious from your CEO >>hat. How >>do you look at this problem? That the space is evolving so quickly? How do you kind of organize your your thoughts around it? >>Yeah, for me. First of all, um, it starts with good architecture. So whether it's our own products running or third party products running, we need to ensure that those products are architected for resilience. And that third kind of company, the Resilient company, is one that has built in architecture er and a set of tools and service is that are focused on knowing that we will be hacked. But how can we minimize or even eliminate the damage from those hacks? And in this case, having the ability to detect those hacks when their incoming and to stop them autonomously is the key to HQ Wallace's play and the key to what I do as CEO at Nutanix, >>right? So one of the other things that keeps coming up here is kind of a budget allocation to security within the CEO budget on. And I think Mr Clark said that, you know, if you're doing 3% or less, you're losing, and you gotta be spending at least 8%. But I'm curious, because it to me is kind of like an insurance story. How much do you spend? How much do you allocate? Because potentially the downside is enormous. But you can't spend 100% of your budget just on security. So how do you think about kind of allocating budget as a percentage of spin versus the risk? >>Well, I love that question. That's part of the art of being a C i O A. C. So, you know, first of all, we have ah mixed portfolio of opportunities to spend toe hold to divest at any one time, and I t portfolio management has been around for 30 years, 40 years, almost as long as some of the people that I know. However, um, we always have that choice, right? We're aware of risk, and then we have the ability to spend. Now, of course, perfect security is to not operate at all. But that's about that's, you know, swinging too far the wrong way on Dhe. Then we also have that ability, maybe to not protect against anything and just take out a big old cyber security policy. And where is that policy might help us with lawsuits? It wouldn't necessarily have help us with ongoing operations. And so it's somewhere in the middle, and I liked some of the statistics that they share today. One of the big ones for me was that companies that tend to build resilient worlds of cybersecurity tend to spend about 10% of their total I t operating budgets on cyber security. That makes sense to me, and that reflects my track record at Nutanix and elsewhere, roughly in that amount of spending. Now you know, checking the box and saying, Well, we're spending 10% on cybersecurity doesn't really buy us that much, and also we have to think about how we're defining that spend on cyber security. Part of that spend is in building resilient architectures and building resilient code. And uh, that's sort of a dual purpose spend, because that also makes for performance code it makes for scalable, supportable code, et cetera. So you know, we can do well by doing good in this >>case. So again, just to stay on that beam permit, it went. So when you walk the floor at R S. A. And there's 50,000 people and I don't even know how many vendors and I imagine your even your I T portfolio now around security is probably tens of products, if not hundreds, and certainly tens of vendors again. How do you How do you? You kind of approach it. Do you have trusted advisors around certain point solutions? Are you leveraging? You know, system integrators or other types of specialists to help? You kind of sort through and get some clarity around this just kind of mess. >>Well, all of us actually are looking for that magic discernment algorithm. Wouldn't it be great if >>you could just >>walk up to a vendor and apply the algorithm? And ah ha. There's one who's fantastic. We don't have that, and so we've got a lot of layers of ingest. I try to leave room in my portfolio for stealth and emerging technologies because generally the more modern the technology Is the Mauritz keeping pace with the hackers out there and the bad guys out there? Um, we do have sort of that middle layer that surround the ability for us to operate at scale because we also have to operate these technologies. Even the most cutting edge technology sometimes lack some of the abilities for us to ingest them into our operations. And then they're sort of the tried and true bedrock that hopefully is built into products we consume. Everything from public Cloud service is to, uh, you know, hardware and so on. And so there's this range of choices. What we have to dio ultimately is we use that lens of operations and operational capability. And first of all, we also ensure that anything we ingest meets our design standards and our design standards include some things that I think are fascinating. I won't go into too much detail because I know how much you love this detail. But you know, things like are the AP eyes open? What is integration look like? What's the interaction design look like? And so those things matter, right? Ultimately, we have to be able to consume the data from those things, and then they have to work with our automation, our machine learning tools. Today at Nutanix, for example, you know, we weigh like toe. I'm happy to say we catch, you know, most if not all of any of the threats against us, and we deal with well over 95% of them autonomously. And so were a living example of that resilient organization that is, of course, being attacked, but at the same time hopefully responding in a resilient way. We're not perfect knock on wood, but we're actively engaged. >>So shifting gears a little bit a bit a bit now to your board hat, which again, Congratulations. Some curious. You know, your perspective on kind of breaking through the clutter from the from the board seat Cos been doing this for 19 years. Still relatively small company. But, you know, Philippe talked a lot about kind of company. Percy's me industry security initiatives that have to go through what are some of the challenges and opportunities see sitting at the board seat instead of down in the nitty gritty down the CEO. >>Well, first of all, um, quality is financially a well run responsible organization and one of Philippe and the leadership teams. Goals has always been toe operate profitably and tow. Have that hedge on DSO. What that means is that as consumers, we can count on the longevity of the organization and the company's ability to execute on its road map. It's the road map that I think is particularly attractive about Wallace. You know, I am who I am. I'm an operator. I'm a technologist. And so although I'm a board member and I care about all dimensions of the company, the most attractive component is that this this road map in those 19 years of execution are now coming to fruition at exactly the right time. For those of us who need these tools in these technologies to operate, this is a different kind of platform and its instrumented with machine learning with a I. At a time when the Attackers and the attacks are instrumented that way as well as as you mentioned, we have a lot of noise in the market today, and these point solutions, they're gonna be around for a while, right? We operate a messy and complex and wonderful ecosystem. But at the same time, the more that we can streamline, simplify on and sort of raised that bar. And the more we can depend on the collected data. From all of these point tools to instrument are automated responses, the better off we'll be. And so this is, Ah, platform whose whose time has come and as we see all of the road map items sort of coming to fruition. It's really, really exciting. And it's, you know, just speaking for a moment of someone who's been a leader in various technology companies in the security and, you know, technology space for some time. One of the most disappointing things about many technology startups is that they don't build in that that business strength. Thio have enough longevity and have enough of a hedge to execute on that brilliant vision. And so many brilliant ideas have just not seen the light of day because of a failure to execute. In this case, we have a company with a track record of execution that's monetized the build out of the platform, and now also these game changing technologies are coming to fruition. It's it's really, really exciting to be a part of it. >>So Wendy, you've mentioned a I machine learning Probably get checked. The transfer of a number of times 85 times is this interview. So it's really interesting, you know, kind of there's always a lot of chatter in the marketplace, But you talked about so many threats coming in and we heard about Mickey noticed. Not really for somebody sitting in front of a screen anymore to pay attention, this stuff. So when you look at the opportunity of machine learning and artificial intelligence and how that's going to change the role of the CEO and specifically and security when if you can share your thoughts on what that opens up >>absolutely s so there's kind of two streams here I'd love to talk about. The first is that we've had this concern as we've moved to Public Cloud and I t that i t people would be left behind. But in fact, after sort of ah little Dev ops blip where non i t people were writing code that was them consumed by enterprises were now seen the growth of I t. Again and what this relates to is this In the past, when we wanted to deploy something in public cloud. We had to be able Thio compose an express infrastructure as code. And, um, folks who are great at infrastructure are actually pretty lousy at writing code, and so that was a challenge. But today we have low code and know code tools, things like work Otto, for example, that my team uses that allow us to express the operational processes that we follow sort of the best practices and the accumulated knowledge of these I t professionals. And then we turn the machine on that inefficient code and the machine improves and refines the code. So now, adding machine learning to the mix enables us to have these I t professionals who know more than you'd ever imagine about storage and compute and scaling and data and cybersecurity and so on. And they're able to transform that knowledge into code that a machine can read, refine and execute against. And so we're seeing this leap forward in terms of the ability of some of these tools. Thio transform how we address the scale and the scope in the complexity of these challenges. And so on the one side, I think there's new opportunity for I T professionals and for those who have that operational expertise to thrive because of these tools on the other side, there's also the opportunity for the bad guys in the in the cyberspace. Um, Thio also engage with the use of thes tools. And so the use of these tools, that sort of a baseline level isn't enough. Now we need to train the systems, and the systems need to be responsive, performance resilient. And also, they need to have the ability to be augmented by to be integrated with these tools. And so suddenly we go from having this utopian. Aye, aye. Future where you know, the good looking male or female robot, you know, is the nanny for our kids, um, to something much more practical that's already in place, which is that the machine itself, the computer itself is refining in augmenting the things that human beings are doing and therefore able to be first of all, more responsive, more performance, but also to do that layer of work that is not unique to human discernment. >>Right? We hear that over and over because the press loved to jump on the general. May I think it's much more fun to show robots than then Really, the applied A I, which is lots of just kind of like Dev ops. Lots of little improvements. Yeah, lots of little places. >>Exactly. Exactly. You know, I mean, I kind of like the stories of our robot overlords, you know, take it over to. But the fact is, at the end of the day, these machine, it's just math. It's just mathematics. That's all it is. It's compute. >>So when you find let you go, I won't touch about women in tech. You know, you're a huge proponent of women in tech. You're very active on lots of boards and cure with Adriaan on the girls and Tech board where we last where we last sat down. Um, and you're making moves now. Obviously, you've already got a C title. Now you're doing more bored work. I just wonder if you can kind of share your thoughts of how this thing's kind of movement is progressing. It seems to have a lot of of weight behind it, but I don't know if the numbers air really reflecting that, but you're you're on the front lines. What can you shares? You know, you're trying to help women. That's much getting detect. But to stay into tech, I think, is what most of the stats talk about. >>Yeah, I've got a lot of thoughts on this. I think I'll try to bring our all the vectors together. So I recently was awarded CEO of the year by the Fisher Center for Data and Analytics and thank you very much. And the focus there is on inclusive analytics and inclusive. Aye, aye. And And I think this this is sort of a story that that makes the point. So if we think about all of the data that is training these technology tools and systems, um, and we think about the people who are creating these systems and the leaders who are our building, these systems and so on, for the most part, the groups of people who are working on these things technologists, particularly in Silicon Valley. They're not a diverse set of people. They're mostly male. They're overwhelmingly male. Many are from just a handful of of, um, you know, countries and groups, right? It's it's It's mainly, you know, Caucasian males, Indian males and Asian males. And and because of that, um, this lack of diverse thinking and diverse development is being reflected in the tools in ways that eventually will build barriers for folks who don't share those characteristics. As an example, Natural language processing tooling is trained by non diverse data sets, and so we have challenges with that. For example, people who are older speak a little bit more slowly and have different inflections in general on how they speak. And the voice recognition tools don't recognize them as often. People who have heavy accents, for example, are just not recognized. Yes, you know, I always have a phone, Um, and this is my iPhone and I have had an iPhone for 10 years. Siri, my, you know, helpful Agent has been on the phone in all those years. And in all of those years, um, I have had a daughter named Holly H O l L Y. And every time that I speak Thio, I dictate to Syria to send a message on. I use my daughter's name. Holly. Syria always responds with the spelling. H o L I. The Hindu holiday. Now, in 10 years, Siri has never learned that. When I say Holly, I'm most likely mean my daughter >>was in the context of the sentence. >>Exactly. Never, ever, ever. Because, you know Siri is an Aye aye, if you will. That was built without allowing for true user input through training at the point of conversation. And so s So that's it. That's bad architecture. There's a lot of other challenges with that architecture that reflect on cybersecurity and so on. One tiny example. But I think that, um now more than ever, we need diverse voices in the mix. We need diverse training data. We need, you know, folks who have different perspectives and who understand different interaction design to be not only as a tech entrepreneurs, builders and leaders of country of companies like, you know, girls in tech Support's educating women supporting women entrepreneurs. I'm I'm also on the board of another group called Tech Wald. That's all about bringing US combat veterans into the technology workforce. There's another diverse group of people who again can have a voice in this technology space. There are organizations that I work with that go into the refugee that the permanent refugee camps and find technically qualified folks who can actually build some of this training data for, ah, you know, analytics and a I We need much, much more of that. So, you know, my heart is full of the opportunity for this. My my head's on on fire, you know, and just trying to figure out how can we get the attention of technology companies of government leaders and and before it's too late, are training data sets are growing exponentially year over year, and they're being built in a way that doesn't reflect the potential usage. I was actually thinking about this the other day. I had an elderly neighbor who ah, spoke with me about how excited he waas that he he no longer could drive. He wasn't excited about that. He no longer could drive. He couldn't see very well and couldn't operate a car. And he was looking forward to autonomous vehicles because he was gonna have a mobility and freedom again. Right? Um, but he had asked me to help him to set up something that he had on his computer, and it was actually on his phone. But he there was their voice commands, but But it didn't understand him. He was frustrated. So he said, Could you help me. And I thought, man, if his mobile phone doesn't understand him, how's the autonomous vehicle going to understand him so that the very population who needs these technologies the most will will be left out another digital divide? And and, um, now is the moment while these tools and technologies are being developed, a word about Wallace. You know, when I was recruited for the board, um, you know, they already had 50 50 gender parity on the board. It wasn't even a thing in my interviews. We didn't talk about the fact that I am female at all. We talked about the fact that I'm an operator, that I'm a technologist. And so, um, you know that divide? It was already conquered on HK. Wallace's board that's so not true for many, many other organizations and leadership teams is particularly in California Silicon Valley. And so I think there's a great opportunity for us to make a difference. First of all, people like me who have made it, you know, by representing ourselves and then people of every gender, every color, every ethnicity, immigrants, et cetera, um, need to I'm begging you guys stick with it, stay engaged don't let the mean people. The naysayers force you to drop out. Um, you know, reconnect with your original values and stay strong because that's what it's gonna take. >>It's a great message. And thank you for your passion and all your hard work in the space. And the today it drives better outcomes is not only the right thing to do and a good thing to do that it actually drives better outcomes. >>We see that. >>All right, Wendy, again. Always great to catch up. And congratulations on the award and the board seat and look forward to seeing you next time. Thank you. All right, She's windy. I'm Jeff. You're watching the Cube with a quality security conference at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

(upbeat music) >> From San Francisco, it's The Cube, covering Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference. Brought to you by Girls in Tech. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here, with The Cube. We're at Downtown San Francisco, Girls in Tech Catalyst. Great event. We've been coming for a couple of years. About 700 professionals, mainly women, a few men, and I think they brought in a busload of kids to get inspired, talking about their stories, and really, it's a series. It's a one-track conference, two days, about 20 minute talks and really good stuff. Really great content. Check it out online if you didn't register this year. Make sure you come next year, and we're excited to have our next guest, Cube alum, really from one of the hottest companies in tech right now, she's Wendy Pfeifer, the CIO of Nutanix. Wendy, great to see you again. >> Hey, nice to see you, Jeff. >> Absolutely, so we see you at Nutanix Next all the time, but we haven't seen you at Girls in Tech. >> Yeah. >> So how long have you been involved in Girls in Tech? >> So, I've been involved since the very first meet up, more than 10 years ago. Girls in Tech was very inspiring to me, and I was here at the Catalyst Conference last year, and I'm a member of the board of Girls in Tech as well, so I'm able to give back and provide some leadership at that level. >> So we just had Adriana on, and she was going through-- >> Yeah. >> Some of the numbers, I mean, the growth of this organization, second to Nutanix, is off the chart. >> Yeah. >> I mean, really amazing. >> It really is amazing, you know. In some ways our time has come. Adriana's had this big vision for a really long time. Really focused on educating women, helping them to understand the potential of careers in tech, and technology knowledge, and that's a global message, and a message that resonates at every age level, and in lots of different sectors of society, so it's juts a privilege to be able to partner with her and others on the board, to enable the vision, and Nutanix as well, you know, is donating, is present here at these conferences, and partnering at Catalyst and Amplify, and other parts of the organization. >> Right, because it's not only the right thing to do, it's also good business, which has been proven time and time again. >> Absolutely, and you know, it's kind of taken on this passion, mission, just excitement thing, but it is practical as well and you know, all the studies, I'm sure so many folks have talked with you about this. There's so many studies, there's so much research that says diversity brings better decision-making, better product development. >> Right. >> And better satisfaction in our work environments as well. >> Right. The other thing that struck me talking to Adriana, and I guess I just didn't know, kind of the breadth of types of activities that Girls in Tech's put on. So we've been to Catalyst before. We've been to-- the Pitch Night, Amplify-- >> Amplify, yeah. >> But I didn't know, she's running, you know, there's all kinds of different-- types of things. >> Absolutely. I think the underlying passion is for education. If you think about, particularly people in underserved communities, there is a real opportunity, you know coding, and learning to code, learning to interact with computers; that's a language that transcends geographic boundaries, ethnic boundaries, age, and religious boundaries, and it's something that, you know ever since my days at Yahoo, I really felt like technology could bring the world together, and today in particular, there is so much disparity between women and men and their access to technology education and technology careers. >> Right. >> That this is, you know, more than just creating a level playing field. I think we're making our own playing field. We're not going to their playing field, anymore. We're creating our own at locations like this. >> Right, and clearly a bunch of founders are here today, who've-- >> Yeah. >> Started their own companies. But the other thing I think is interesting, is culture keeps coming up time and time again in all these conversations, and Adriana's built a culture starting, always from the top down, with the board. It's a phenomenal board of professional women-- >> Yes. >> That she's pulled together of this organization. >> Yeah, there are a couple of males on the board, too. I want to make sure I point out. >> Yep. >> Because we're a diverse board as well, but she has. She has brought together people who are leaders in the technology space, but also folks who are passionate about building a healthy nonprofit organization; one that's global, one that can scale, and so we also look at the fundamentals, and the business fundamentals as well, so we are expanding from 60 to 100 countries, and from 100,000 members to 200,000 members, I mean, who would think, right? >> Right, right, right. >> It's extraordinary. Even then, though, those 200,000 women are a drop in the bucket, compared to the 50% of the global population-- >> Right. >> Who are female. >> Right. And then you work at Nutanix. Super hot-- >> Yeah. >> I don't want to say startup anymore. You guys have IPO'd. >> Right, right. >> But, you know, but you're livin' it in terms of trying to get enough, good, qualified talent-- >> Yes. >> Just to feed the one engine that I Nutanix, so it's a real-- >> Yeah. >> Demand in the market place. >> Definitely, that's the case, you know, we sort of struggle with the thought, you know, are there just not enough women candidates in these fields, but what we learn at conferences like this is, that there are enough women candidates, but we don't necessarily recognize those women, and we don't know where to find them, and they may not find the sort of work that we represent to be attractive. And so we're sort of trying to change how we speak and think. Culture is a good word, but it's a revolution. It's a cultural revolution in terms of identifying talent where it sits. We spoke a lot in the last day and a half around blended careers, the bringing together of art and technology, or communication and technology, and the fact is that technology just underscores everything we do-- >> Right. >> Nowadays. >> Right. >> And so, you know, having people who can blend those things, is a real advantage, and women have this ability to take a multi-faceted approach to the work that we do and the way that we live our lives. We multi-task as a sport. >> Right, right. It's interesting, too, as the machines get better and as A.I. gets better, machine learning, the softer skills applied with the context become so much more important than necessarily just the super hard-core coding skills. >> You know, I have a story around that. So, we've just deployed, my IT department has deployed a machine-learning tool at Nutanix, to replace a lot of the interactions that happen on our help desk, and we found we just couldn't scale as the company was scaling, so we've been training A.I. from a company called Moveworks, and you know, we've been training it uniquely with our voice, and I think a little bit with my voice, and I just had one of our employees write back to me and say, "Not only is this thing", we call it Xbot, "Not only is Xbot solving my problems, but", he said, "she is pretty sassy, too." And I'm like, yay, he knows it's a she! >> Right, right. >> Right, and she's sassy too, so yeah, that unique voice-- >> Right. >> Is infusing even the machine-learning training that we're doing-- >> Right. >> And I think that makes for a more delightful experience-- >> Right. >> For all of us. >> It's funny, the voice thing, 'cause you know, Google had their very famous, the restaurant reservation call-in demo-- >> Yes! >> They got capped on a little bit-- >> Right. >> For, you know, was it real or not, but what made it so, so dramatic was the human-like elements in the conversation of the machine-- with ums, and ahs-- >> Absolutely. >> And uhs, and pauses, which we laugh about, 'cause we can shoot Cube interviews, everybody wants to cut those parts out, and we're like no, that's what makes people, people. >> Right, exactly, I agree with you. And at the same time, you know, there are, you know, things that are uniquely female stereotypes. We're more wordy. We have more things to say. >> Right. >> You know, we're more multi-dimensional. We can hold two thoughts at the same time, and so that's part of the richness of communication and our interaction too, but to the extent to which we can embed that in our technologies and our interactions, those are the extent to which they'll be more delightful-- >> Right. >> It's no coincidence that Siri and Cortana and all of those A.I.s sort of have this female persona, and I don't know if you know this, the, you know, Cortana, who's the Microsoft, you know, A.I., you know, she's voiced by the same character that's Cortana in one of their video games-- >> Oh, really? >> And she's sort of this like, badass fighter gal, too, so check it out. >> Well, we know what happened to Bob, right? >> Right. >> I know, poor Bob. >> Which, ironically, was Melinda Gates's project. Which, I don't know if you knew-- that story. >> I did not know that. >> So yeah, Melinda Gates's introduction to Bill was as product manager for Bob, which, if you don't know that story, check it out. It's old history. >> Oh, that's-- fantastic! >> But it's very good. Alright, before I let you go, one last thing. >> Yes. >> So you spoke, and they've got these great posters all around the room with little highlights from people's-- >> Yes. >> Conversations and yours was, I described it off the wall, "It's okay to be bad." >> Yes. >> I'd love, for the people that missed it, what's the message there? It's an important message. >> Yeah. >> Especially for women. >> Yeah, I think as women, you know, we don't have a lot of role models and when I get up as a role model, I'm one of the few CIO's who's female and Silicon Valley. You know, we give these speeches, and they sort of make us like Mother Teresa, you know. First you hae your mission in mind, and you lean in, and you do all these awesome things. But the fact is, it is actually okay, to be yourself. It's okay to be bitchy. It's okay to be cranky. It's okay for anger to fuel you. It's okay to be aggressive, and even if your male counterparts tell you otherwise, or say, "Wow, that's "unseemly.", I think it's just okay. We don't have to be pure and perfect in order to be successful. I can be those things all at the same time. And I also say, it's also okay to be good, to be merciful, to be soft-spoken, to be wordy, to be studious; that combination of things. We're allowed to be our genuine selves, and we don't have to be perfect to be successful and I feel like I embody that-- in particular. >> Yes, you certainly do. You certainly do! >> What, I'm not perfect? >> Yes, I mean the Nutanix story is a phenomenal story. >> It is. We are fortunate, we've been there since the beginning-- >> Absolutely. >> Watching it grow, and so no-- >> Helping us to frame the story, so thanks to The Cube. I appreciate that. >> Well, and you're super successful, and the company's successful so the fact that are Wendy, you know, you are who you are. You're a big personality, and it comes through, and it's great, and it works, and you're successful, so, if they need someone to look up to, you're certainly a fantastic role model. >> Thank you so much. Well I appreciate that. It's funny, 'cause I have never tried to be a role model, and now, just by accident, I've survived long enough. Here I am. (both laughing) >> Well that's a whole different conversation-- >> Right, right. >> You just look around like, I am the oldest guy in the room. But that's a different thing. >> I know. You're actually the only guy, just sayin'. >> Alright, well Wendy thanks for takin' a few minutes, and I guess we'll see you next at Nutanix next, if not sooner. >> I look forward to it, thanks. >> Alright, thanks. She's Wendy, I'm Jeff, you're watching The Cube from women, or Girls in Tech Catalyst 2018. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> From San Francisco, it's The Cube, covering Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference. Brought to you by Girls in Tech. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here, with The Cube. We're at Downtown San Francisco, Girls in Tech Catalyst. Great event. We've been coming for a couple of years. About 700 professionals, mainly women, a few men, and I think they brought in a busload of kids to get inspired, talking about their stories, and really, it's a series. It's a one-track conference, two days, about 20 minute talks and really good stuff. Really great content. Check it out online if you didn't register this year. Make sure you come next year, and we're excited to have our next guest, Cube alum, really from one of the hottest companies in tech right now, she's Wendy Pfeifer, the CIO of Nutanix. Wendy, great to see you again. >> Hey, nice to see you, Jeff. >> Absolutely, so we see you at Nutanix Next all the time, but we haven't seen you at Girls in Tech. >> Yeah. >> So how long have you been involved in Girls in Tech? >> So, I've been involved since the very first meet up, more than 10 years ago. Girls in Tech was very inspiring to me, and I was here at the Catalyst Conference last year, and I'm a member of the board of Girls in Tech as well, so I'm able to give back and provide some leadership at that level. >> So we just had Adriana on, and she was going through-- >> Yeah. >> Some of the numbers, I mean, the growth of this organization, second to Nutanix, is off the chart. >> Yeah. >> I mean, really amazing. >> It really is amazing, you know. In some ways our time has come. Adriana's had this big vision for a really long time. Really focused on educating women, helping them to understand the potential of careers in tech, and technology knowledge, and that's a global message, and a message that resonates at every age level, and in lots of different sectors of society, so it's juts a privilege to be able to partner with her and others on the board, to enable the vision, and Nutanix as well, you know, is donating, is present here at these conferences, and partnering at Catalyst and Amplify, and other parts of the organization. >> Right, because it's not only the right thing to do, it's also good business, which has been proven time and time again. >> Absolutely, and you know, it's kind of taken on this passion, mission, just excitement thing, but it is practical as well and you know, all the studies, I'm sure so many folks have talked with you about this. There's so many studies, there's so much research that says diversity brings better decision-making, better product development. >> Right. >> And better satisfaction in our work environments as well. >> Right. The other thing that struck me talking to Adriana, and I guess I just didn't know, kind of the breadth of types of activities that Girls in Tech's put on. So we've been to Catalyst before. We've been to-- the Pitch Night, Amplify-- >> Amplify, yeah. >> But I didn't know, she's running, you know, there's all kinds of different-- types of things. >> Absolutely. I think the underlying passion is for education. If you think about, particularly people in underserved communities, there is a real opportunity, you know coding, and learning to code, learning to interact with computers; that's a language that transcends geographic boundaries, ethnic boundaries, age, and religious boundaries, and it's something that, you know ever since my days at Yahoo, I really felt like technology could bring the world together, and today in particular, there is so much disparity between women and men and their access to technology education and technology careers. >> Right. >> That this is, you know, more than just creating a level playing field. I think we're making our own playing field. We're not going to their playing field, anymore. We're creating our own at locations like this. >> Right, and clearly a bunch of founders are here today, who've-- >> Yeah. >> Started their own companies. But the other thing I think is interesting, is culture keeps coming up time and time again in all these conversations, and Adriana's built a culture starting, always from the top down, with the board. It's a phenomenal board of professional women-- >> Yes. >> That she's pulled together of this organization. >> Yeah, there are a couple of males on the board, too. I want to make sure I point out. >> Yep. >> Because we're a diverse board as well, but she has. She has brought together people who are leaders in the technology space, but also folks who are passionate about building a healthy nonprofit organization; one that's global, one that can scale, and so we also look at the fundamentals, and the business fundamentals as well, so we are expanding from 60 to 100 countries, and from 100,000 members to 200,000 members, I mean, who would think, right? >> Right, right, right. >> It's extraordinary. Even then, though, those 200,000 women are a drop in the bucket, compared to the 50% of the global population-- >> Right. >> Who are female. >> Right. And then you work at Nutanix. Super hot-- >> Yeah. >> I don't want to say startup anymore. You guys have IPO'd. >> Right, right. >> But, you know, but you're livin' it in terms of trying to get enough, good, qualified talent-- >> Yes. >> Just to feed the one engine that I Nutanix, so it's a real-- >> Yeah. >> Demand in the market place. >> Definitely, that's the case, you know, we sort of struggle with the thought, you know, are there just not enough women candidates in these fields, but what we learn at conferences like this is, that there are enough women candidates, but we don't necessarily recognize those women, and we don't know where to find them, and they may not find the sort of work that we represent to be attractive. And so we're sort of trying to change how we speak and think. Culture is a good word, but it's a revolution. It's a cultural revolution in terms of identifying talent where it sits. We spoke a lot in the last day and a half around blended careers, the bringing together of art and technology, or communication and technology, and the fact is that technology just underscores everything we do-- >> Right. >> Nowadays. >> Right. >> And so, you know, having people who can blend those things, is a real advantage, and women have this ability to take a multi-faceted approach to the work that we do and the way that we live our lives. We multi-task as a sport. >> Right, right. It's interesting, too, as the machines get better and as A.I. gets better, machine learning, the softer skills applied with the context become so much more important than necessarily just the super hard-core coding skills. >> You know, I have a story around that. So, we've just deployed, my IT department has deployed a machine-learning tool at Nutanix, to replace a lot of the interactions that happen on our help desk, and we found we just couldn't scale as the company was scaling, so we've been training A.I. from a company called Moveworks, and you know, we've been training it uniquely with our voice, and I think a little bit with my voice, and I just had one of our employees write back to me and say, "Not only is this thing", we call it Xbot, "Not only is Xbot solving my problems, but", he said, "she is pretty sassy, too." And I'm like, yay, he knows it's a she! >> Right, right. >> Right, and she's sassy too, so yeah, that unique voice-- >> Right. >> Is infusing even the machine-learning training that we're doing-- >> Right. >> And I think that makes for a more delightful experience-- >> Right. >> For all of us. >> It's funny, the voice thing, 'cause you know, Google had their very famous, the restaurant reservation call-in demo-- >> Yes! >> They got capped on a little bit-- >> Right. >> For, you know, was it real or not, but what made it so, so dramatic was the human-like elements in the conversation of the machine-- with ums, and ahs-- >> Absolutely. >> And uhs, and pauses, which we laugh about, 'cause we can shoot Cube interviews, everybody wants to cut those parts out, and we're like no, that's what makes people, people. >> Right, exactly, I agree with you. And at the same time, you know, there are, you know, things that are uniquely female stereotypes. We're more wordy. We have more things to say. >> Right. >> You know, we're more multi-dimensional. We can hold two thoughts at the same time, and so that's part of the richness of communication and our interaction too, but to the extent to which we can embed that in our technologies and our interactions, those are the extent to which they'll be more delightful-- >> Right. >> It's no coincidence that Siri and Cortana and all of those A.I.s sort of have this female persona, and I don't know if you know this, the, you know, Cortana, who's the Microsoft, you know, A.I., you know, she's voiced by the same character that's Cortana in one of their video games-- >> Oh, really? >> And she's sort of this like, badass fighter gal, too, so check it out. >> Well, we know what happened to Bob, right? >> Right. >> I know, poor Bob. >> Which, ironically, was Melinda Gates's project. Which, I don't know if you knew-- that story. >> I did not know that. >> So yeah, Melinda Gates's introduction to Bill was as product manager for Bob, which, if you don't know that story, check it out. It's old history. >> Oh, that's-- fantastic! >> But it's very good. Alright, before I let you go, one last thing. >> Yes. >> So you spoke, and they've got these great posters all around the room with little highlights from people's-- >> Yes. >> Conversations and yours was, I described it off the wall, "It's okay to be bad." >> Yes. >> I'd love, for the people that missed it, what's the message there? It's an important message. >> Yeah. >> Especially for women. >> Yeah, I think as women, you know, we don't have a lot of role models and when I get up as a role model, I'm one of the few CIO's who's female and Silicon Valley. You know, we give these speeches, and they sort of make us like Mother Teresa, you know. First you hae your mission in mind, and you lean in, and you do all these awesome things. But the fact is, it is actually okay, to be yourself. It's okay to be bitchy. It's okay to be cranky. It's okay for anger to fuel you. It's okay to be aggressive, and even if your male counterparts tell you otherwise, or say, "Wow, that's "unseemly.", I think it's just okay. We don't have to be pure and perfect in order to be successful. I can be those things all at the same time. And I also say, it's also okay to be good, to be merciful, to be soft-spoken, to be wordy, to be studious; that combination of things. We're allowed to be our genuine selves, and we don't have to be perfect to be successful and I feel like I embody that-- in particular. >> Yes, you certainly do. You certainly do! >> What, I'm not perfect? >> Yes, I mean the Nutanix story is a phenomenal story. >> It is. We are fortunate, we've been there since the beginning-- >> Absolutely. >> Watching it grow, and so no-- >> Helping us to frame the story, so thanks to The Cube. I appreciate that. >> Well, and you're super successful, and the company's successful so the fact that are Wendy, you know, you are who you are. You're a big personality, and it comes through, and it's great, and it works, and you're successful, so, if they need someone to look up to, you're certainly a fantastic role model. >> Thank you so much. Well I appreciate that. It's funny, 'cause I have never tried to be a role model, and now, just by accident, I've survived long enough. Here I am. (both laughing) >> Well that's a whole different conversation-- >> Right, right. >> You just look around like, I am the oldest guy in the room. But that's a different thing. >> I know. You're actually the only guy, just sayin'. >> Alright, well Wendy thanks for takin' a few minutes, and I guess we'll see you next at Nutanix next, if not sooner. >> I look forward to it, thanks. >> Alright, thanks. She's Wendy, I'm Jeff, you're watching The Cube from women, or Girls in Tech Catalyst 2018. (upbeat music)