>> Announcer: TheCUBE presents Ignite '22, brought to you by Palo Alto Networks. >> Welcome back to Las Vegas. It's theCUBE covering Palo Alto Networks '22, from the MGM Grand, Lisa Martin with Dave Vellante. Dave, we are going to unpack in the next few minutes what we heard and saw at day one of Palo Alto Networks, Ignite. A lot of great conversations, some great guests on the program today. >> Yeah last event, CUBE event of the year. Probably last major tech event of the year. It's kind of an interesting choice of timing, two weeks after reInvent. But you know, this crowd is it's a lot of like network engineers, SecOps pros. There's not a lot of suits here. I think they were here yesterday, all the partners. >> Yeah. >> We talked to Carl Sunderland about, Hey, these, these guys want to know how do I grow my business? You know, so it was a lot of C level executives talking about their business, and how they partner with Palo Alto to grow. The crowd today is really, you know hardcore security professionals. >> Yeah. >> So we're hearing a story of consolidation. >> Yes. >> No surprise. We've talked about that and reported on it, you know, quite extensively. The one big takeaway, and I want, I came in, as you know, wanting to understand, okay, can you through m and a maintain, you know, build a suite of great, big portfolio and at the same time maintain best of breed? And the answer was consistent. We heard it from Nikesh, we heard it from Nir Zuk. The answer was you can't be best of breed without having that large portfolio, single data lake, you know? Single version of the truth, of there is such a thing. That was interesting, that in security, you have to have that visibility. I would imagine, that's true for a lot of things. Data, see what Snowflake and Databricks are both trying to do, now AWS. So to join, we heard that last week, so that was one of the big takeaways. What were your, some of your thoughts? >> Just impressed with the level of threat intelligence that Unit 42 has done. I mean, we had Wendy Whitmer on, and she was one of the alumni, great guest. The landscape has changed so dramatically. Every business, in any industry, nobody's safe. They have such great intelligence on what's going on with malware, with ransomware, with Smishing, that they're able to get, help organizations on their way to becoming cyber resilient. You know, we've been talking a lot about cyber resiliency lately. I always want to understand, well what does it mean? How do different organizations and customers define it? Can they actually really get there? And Wendy talked about yes, it is a journey, but organizations can achieve cyber resiliency. But they need to partner with Palo Alto Networks to be able to understand the landscape and ensure that they've got security established across their organization, as it's now growingly Multicloud. >> Yeah, she's a blonde-haired Wonder Woman, superhero. I always ask security pros that question. But you know, when you talk to people like Wendy Whitmore, Kevin Mandy is somebody else. And the people at AWS, or the big cloud companies, who are on the inside, looking at the threat intelligence. They have so much data, and they have so much knowledge. They can, they analyze, they could identify the fingerprints of nation states, different, you know, criminal organizations. And the the one thing, I think it was Wendy who said, maybe it was somebody else, I think it was Wendy, that they're they're tearing down and reforming, right? >> Yes. >> After they're discovered. Okay, they pack up and leave. They're like, you know, Oceans 11. >> Yep. >> Okay. And then they recruit them and bring them back in. So that was really fascinating. Nir Zuk, we'd never had him on theCUBE before. He was tremendous founder and and CTO of Palo Alto Networks, very opinionated. You know, very clear thinker, basically saying, look you're SOC is going to be run by AI >> Yeah. >> within the next five years. And machines are going to do things that humans can't do at scale, is really what he was saying. And then they're going to get better at that, and they're going to do other things that you have done well that they haven't done well, and then they're going to do well. And so, this is an interesting discussion about you know, I remember, you know we had an event with MIT. Eric Brynjolfsson and Andy McAfee, they wrote the book "Second Machine Age." And they made the point, machines have always replaced humans. This is the first time ever that machines are replacing humans in cognitive functions. So what does that mean? That means that humans have to rely on, you know, creativity. There's got to be new training, new thinking. So it's not like you're going to be out of a job, you're just going to be doing a different job. >> Right. I thought Nir Zuk did a great job of explaining that. We often hear people that are concerned with machines taking jobs. He did a great job of, and you did a great recap, of articulating the value that both bring, and the opportunities to the humans that the machines actually deliver as well. >> Yeah so, you know, we didn't, we didn't get deep into the products today. Tomorrow we're going to have a little bit more deep dive on products. We did, we had some partners on, AWS came on, talked about their ecosystem. BJ Jenkins so, you know, BJ Jenkins again I mean super senior executive. And if I were Nikesh, he's doing exactly what I would do. Putting him on a plane and saying, go meet with customers, go make rain, right? And that's what he's doing is, he's an individual who really knows how to interact with the C-suite, has driven value, you know, over the years. So they've got that angle goin', they're driving go to market. They've got the technology piece and they've, they got to build out the ecosystem. That I think is the big opportunity for them. You know, if they're going to double as a company, this ecosystem has to quadruple. >> Yeah, yeah. >> In my opinion. And I, we saw the same thing at CrowdStrike. We said the same thing about Service Now in 2013. And so, what's happened is the GSIs, the global system integrators start to get involved. They start to partner with them and then they get to get that flywheel effect. And then there's a supercloud, I think that, you know I think Nir Zuk said, Hey, we are basically building out that, he didn't use the term supercloud. But, we're building out that cross cloud capability. You don't need another stove pipe for the edge. You know, so they got on-prem, they got AWS, Azure, you said you have to, absolutely have to run on Microsoft. 'Cause I don't believe today, right? Today they run on, I heard somebody say they run on AWS and Google. >> Yeah. >> I haven't heard much about Microsoft. >> Right. >> Both AWS and Google are here. Microsoft, the bigger competitor in security, but Nir Zuk was unequivocal. Yes, of course you have to run, you got to run it on an Alibaba cloud. He didn't say that, but if you want to secure the China cloud, you got to run on Alibaba. >> Absolutely. >> And Oracle he said. Didn't mention IBM, but no reason they can't run on IBM's cloud. But unless IBM doesn't want 'em to. >> Well they're very customer focused and customer first. So it'll be interesting to see if customers take them in that direction. >> Well it's a good point, right? If customers say, Hey we want you running in this cloud, they will. And, but he did call out Oracle, which I thought was interesting. And so, Oracle's all about mission critical data, mission critical apps. So, you know, that's a good sign. You know, I mean there's so much opportunity in cyber, but so much confusion. You know, sneak had a raise today. It was a down round, no surprise there. But you know, these companies are going to start getting tight on cash, and you've seen layoffs, right? And so, I dunno who said it, I think it was Carl at the end said in a downturn, the strongest companies come out stronger. And that's generally, generally been the case. That kind of rich get richer. We see that in the last downturn? Yes and no, to a certain extent. It's still all about execution. I mean I think about EMC coming out of the last downturn. They did come out stronger and then they started to rocket, but then look what happened. They couldn't remain independent. They were just using m and a as a technique to hide the warts. You know so, what Nir Zuk said that was most interesting to me is when we acquire, we acquire with the intent of integrating. ServiceNow has a similar philosophy. I think that's why they've been somewhat successful. And Oracle, for sure, has had a similar philosophy. So, and that idea of shifting labor into vendor R and D has always been a winning formula. >> I think we heard that today. Excited for day two tomorrow. We've got some great conversations. We're going to be able to talk with some customers, the chief product officer is on. So we have more great content coming from our last live show over the year. Dave, it's been great co-hosting day one with you. Look forward to doing it tomorrow. >> Yeah, thanks for doing this. >> All right. >> All right. For Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin. You've been watching theCUBE, the leader in live enterprise and emerging tech coverage. See you tomorrow. (gentle music fades)

>>The Cube presents Ignite 22, brought to you by Palo Alto Networks. >>Welcome back to Vegas. Guys. We're happy that you're here. Lisa Martin here covering with Dave Valante, Palo Alto Networks Ignite 22. We're at MGM Grand. This is our first day, Dave of two days of cube coverage. We've been having great conversations with the ecosystem with Palo Alto executives, with partners. One of the things that they have is unit 42. We're gonna be talking with them next about cyber intelligence. And the threat data that they get is >>Incredible. Yeah. They have all the data, they know what's going on, and of course things are changing. The state of play changes. Hold on a second. I got a text here. Oh, my Netflix account was frozen. Should I click on this link? Yeah. What do you think? Have you had a, it's, have you had a little bit more of that this holiday season? Yeah, definitely. >>Unbelievable, right? A lot of smishing going on. >>Yeah, they're very clever. >>Yeah, we're very pleased to welcome back one of our alumni to the queue. Wendy Whitmore is here, the SVP of Unit 42. Welcome back, Wendy. Great to have >>You. Thanks Lisa. So >>Unit 42 created back in 2014. One of the things that I saw that you said in your keynote this morning or today was everything old is still around and it's co, it's way more prolific than ever. What are some of the things that Unit 42 is seeing these days with, with respect to cyber threats as the landscape has changed so much the last two years alone? >>You know, it, it has. So it's really interesting. I've been responding to these breaches for over two decades now, and I can tell you that there are a lot of new and novel techniques. I love that you already highlighted Smishing, right? In the opening gate. Right. Because that is something that a year ago, no one knew what that word was. I mean, we, it's probably gonna be invented this year, right? But that said, so many of the tactics that we have previously seen, when it comes to just general espionage techniques, right? Data act filtration, intellectual property theft, those are going on now more than ever. And you're not hearing about them as much in the news because there are so many other things, right? We're under the landscape of a major war going on between Russia and Ukraine of ransomware attacks, you know, occurring on a weekly basis. And so we keep hearing about those, but ultimately these nations aid actors are using that top cover, if you will, as a great distraction. It's almost like a perfect storm for them to continue conducting so much cyber espionage work that like we may not be feeling that today, but years down the road, they're, the work that they're doing today is gonna have really significant impact. >>Ransomware has become a household word in the last couple of years. I think even my mom knows what it is, to some degree. Yeah. But the threat actors are far more sophisticated than they've ever written. They're very motivated. They're very well funded. I think I've read a stat recently in the last year that there's a ransomware attack once every 11 seconds. And of course we only hear about the big ones. But that is a concern that goes all the way up to the board. >>Yeah. You know, we have a stat in our ransomware threat report that talks about how often victims are posted on leak sites. And I think it's once every seven minutes at this point that a new victim is posted. Meaning a victim has had their data, a victim organization had their data stolen and posted on some leak site in the attempt to be extorted. So that has become so common. One of the shifts that we've seen this year in particular and in recent months, you know, a year ago when I was at Ignite, which was virtual, we talked about quadruple extortion, meaning four different ways that these ransomware actors would go out and try to make money from these attacks in what they're doing now is often going to just one, which is, I don't even wanna bother with encrypting your data now, because that means that in order to get paid, I probably have to decrypt it. Right? That's a lot of work. It's time consuming. It's kind of painstaking. And so what they've really looked to do now is do the extortion where they simply steal the data and then threaten to post it on these leak sites, you know, release it other parts of the web and, and go from there. And so that's really a blending of these techniques of traditional cyber espionage with intellectual property theft. Wow. >>How trustworthy are those guys in terms of, I mean, these are hackers, right? In terms of it's really the, the hacker honor system, isn't it? I mean, if you get compromised like that, you really beholden to criminals. And so, you >>Know, so that's one of the key reasons why having the threat intelligence is so important, right? Understanding which group that you're dealing with and what their likelihood of paying is, what's their modus operandi. It's become even more important now because these groups switch teams more frequently than NFL trades, you know, free agents during the regular season, right? Or players become free agents. And that's because their infrastructure. So the, you know, infrastructure, the servers, the systems that they're using to conduct these attacks from is actually largely being disrupted more from law enforcement, international intelligence agencies working together with public private partnerships. So what they're doing is saying, okay, great. All that infrastructure that I just had now is, is burned, right? It's no longer effective. So then they'll disband a team and then they'll recruit a new team and it's constant like mixing and matching in players. >>All that said, even though that's highly dynamic, one of the other areas that they pride themselves on is customer service. So, and I think it's interesting because, you know, when I said they're not wanting to like do all the decryption? Yeah. Cuz that's like painful techni technical slow work. But on the customer service side, they will create these customer service portals immediately stand one up, say, you know, hey it's, it's like an Amazon, you know, if you've ever had to return a package on Amazon for example, and you need to click through and like explain, you know, Hey, I didn't receive this package. A portal window pops up, you start talking to either a bot or a live agent on the backend. In this case they're hu what appeared to be very much humans who are explaining to you exactly what happened, what they're asking for, super pleasant, getting back within minutes of a response. And they know that in order for them to get paid, they need to have good customer service because otherwise they're not going to, you know, have a business. How, >>So what's the state of play look like from between nation states, criminals and how, how difficult or not so difficult is it for you to identify? Do you have clear signatures? My understanding in with Solar Winds it was a little harder, but maybe help us understand and help our audience understand what the state of play is right now. >>One of the interesting things that I think is occurring, and I highlighted this this morning, is this idea of convergence. And so I'll break it down for one example relates to the type of malware or tools that these attackers use. So traditionally, if we looked at a nation state actor like China or Russia, they were very, very specific and very strategic about the types of victims that they were going to go after when they had zero day. So, you know, new, new malware out there, new vulnerabilities that could be exploited only by them because the rest of the world didn't know about it. They might have one organization that they would target that at, at most, a handful and all very strategic for their objective. They wanted to keep that a secret as long as possible. Now what we're seeing actually is those same attackers going towards one, a much larger supply chain. >>So, so lorenzen is a great example of that. The Hafnia attacks towards Microsoft Exchange server last year. All great examples of that. But what they're also doing is instead of using zero days as much, or you know, because those are expensive to build, they take a lot of time, a lot of funding, a lot of patience and research. What they're doing is using commercially available tools. And so there's a tool that our team identified earlier this year called Brute Rael, C4 or BRC four for short. And that's a tool that we now know that nation state actors are using. But just two weeks ago we invested a ransomware attack where the ransomware actor was using that same piece of tooling. So to your point, yak can get difficult for defenders when you're looking through and saying, well wait, they're all using some of the same tools right now and some of the same approaches when it comes to nation states, that's great for them because they can blend into the noise and it makes it harder to identify as >>Quickly. And, and is that an example of living off the land or is that B BRC four sort of a homegrown hacker tool? Is it, is it a, is it a commercial >>Off the shelf? So it's a tool that was actually, so you can purchase it, I believe it's about 2,500 US dollars for a license. It was actually created by a former Red teamer from a couple well-known companies in the industry who then decided, well hey, I built this tool for work, I'm gonna sell this. Well great for Red teamers that are, you know, legitimately doing good work, but not great now because they're, they built a, a strong tool that has the ability to hide amongst a, a lot of protocols. It can actually hide within Slack and teams to where you can't even see the data is being exfiltrated. And so there's a lot of concern. And then now the reality that it gets into the wrong hands of nation state actors in ransomware actors, one of the really interesting things about that piece of malware is it has a setting where you can change wallpaper. And I don't know if you know offhand, you know what that means, but you know, if that comes to mind, what you would do with it. Well certainly a nation state actor is never gonna do something like that, right? But who likes to do that are ransomware actors who can go in and change the background wallpaper on a desktop that says you've been hacked by XYZ organization and let you know what's going on. So pretty interesting, obviously the developer doing some work there for different parts of the, you know, nefarious community. >>Tremendous amount of sophistication that's gone on the last couple of years alone. I was just reading that Unit 42 is now a founding member of the Cyber Threat Alliance includes now more than 35 organizations. So you guys are getting a very broad picture of today's threat landscape. How can customers actually achieve cyber resilience? Is it achievable and how do you help? >>So I, I think it is achievable. So let me kind of parse out the question, right. So the Cyber Threat Alliance, the J C D C, the Cyber Safety Review Board, which I'm a member of, right? I think one of the really cool things about Palo Alto Networks is just our partnerships. So those are just a handful. We've got partnerships with over 200 organizations. We work closely with the Ukrainian cert, for example, sharing information, incredible information about like what's going on in the war, sharing technical details. We do that with Interpol on a daily basis where, you know, we're sharing information. Just last week the Africa cyber surge operation was announced where millions of nodes were taken down that were part of these larger, you know, system of C2 channels that attackers are using to conduct exploits and attacks throughout the world. So super exciting in that regard and it's something that we're really passionate about at Palo Alto Networks in terms of resilience, a few things, you know, one is visibility, so really having a, an understanding of in a real, as much of real time as possible, right? What's happening. And then it goes into how you, how can we decrease operational impact. So that's everything from network segmentation to wanna add the terms and phrases I like to use a lot is the win is really increasing the time it takes for the attackers to get their work done and decreasing the amount of time it takes for the defenders to get their work done, right? >>Yeah. I I call it increasing the denominator, right? And the ROI equation benefit over or value, right? Equals equals or benefit equals value over cost if you can increase the cost to go go elsewhere, right? Absolutely. And that's the, that's the game. Yeah. You mentioned Ukraine before, what have we learned from Ukraine? I, I remember I was talking to Robert Gates years ago, 2016 I think, and I was asking him, yeah, but don't we have the best cyber technology? Can't we attack? He said, we got the most to lose too. Yeah. And so what have we learned from, from Ukraine? >>Well, I, I think that's part of the key point there, right? Is you know, a great offense essentially can also be for us, you know, deterrent. So in that aspect we have as an, as a company and or excuse me, as a country, as a company as well, but then as partners throughout all parts of the world have really focused on increasing the intelligence sharing and specifically, you know, I mentioned Ukrainian cert. There are so many different agencies and other sorts throughout the world that are doing everything they can to share information to help protect human life there. And so what we've really been concerned with, with is, you know, what cyber warfare elements are going to be used there, not only how does that impact Ukraine, but how does it potentially spread out to other parts of the world critical infrastructure. So you've seen that, you know, I mentioned CS rrb, but cisa, right? >>CISA has done a tremendous job of continuously getting out information and doing everything they can to make sure that we are collaborating at a commercial level. You know, we are sharing information and intelligence more than ever before. So partners like Mania and CrowdStrike, our Intel teams are working together on a daily basis to make sure that we're able to protect not only our clients, but certainly if we've got any information relevant that we can share that as well. And I think if there's any silver lining to an otherwise very awful situation, I think the fact that is has accelerated intelligence sharing is really positive. >>I was gonna ask you about this cause I think, you know, 10 or so years ago, there was a lot of talk about that, but the industry, you know, kind of kept things to themselves, you know, a a actually tried to monetize some of that private data. So that's changing is what I'm hearing from you >>More so than ever more, you know, I've, I mentioned I've been in the field for 20 years. You know, it, it's tough when you have a commercial business that relies on, you know, information to, in order to pay people's salaries, right? I think that has changed quite a lot. We see the benefit of just that continuous sharing. There are, you know, so many more walls broken down between these commercial competitors, but also the work on the public private partnership side has really increased some of those relationships. Made it easier. And you know, I have to give a whole lot of credit and mention sisa, like the fact that during log four J, like they had GitHub repositories, they were using Slack, they were using Twitter. So the government has really started pushing forward with a lot of the newer leadership that's in place to say, Hey, we're gonna use tools and technology that works to share and disseminate information as quickly as we can. Right? That's fantastic. That's helping everybody. >>We knew that every industry, no, nobody's spared of this. But did you notice in the last couple of years, any industries in particular that are more vulnerable? Like I think of healthcare with personal health information or financial services, any industries kind of jump out as being more susceptible than others? >>So I think those two are always gonna be at the forefront, right? Financial services and healthcare. But what's been really top of mind is critical infrastructure, just making sure right? That our water, our power, our fuel, so many other parts of right, the ecosystem that go into making sure that, you know, we're keeping, you know, houses heated during the winter, for example, that people have fresh water. Those are extremely critical. And so that is really a massive area of focus for the industry right now. >>Can I come back to public-private partnerships? My question is relates to regulations because the public policy tends to be behind tech, the technology industry as an understatement. So when you take something like GDPR is the obvious example, but there are many, many others, data sovereignty, you can't move the data. Are are, are, is there tension between your desire as our desire as an industry to share data and government's desire to keep data private and restrict that data sharing? How is that playing out? How do you resolve that? >>Well I think there have been great strides right in each of those areas. So in terms of regulation when it comes to breaches there, you know, has been a tendency in the past to do victim shaming, right? And for organizations to not want to come forward because they're concerned about the monetary funds, right? I think there's been tremendous acceleration. You're seeing that everywhere from the fbi, from cisa, to really working very closely with organizations to, to have a true impact. So one example would be a ransomware attack that occurred. This was for a client of ours within the United States and we had a very close relationship with the FBI at that local field office and made a phone call. This was 7:00 AM Eastern time. And this was an organization that had this breach gone public, would've made worldwide news. There would've been a very big impact because it would've taken a lot of their systems offline. >>Within the 30 minutes that local FBI office was on site said, we just saw this piece of malware last week, we have a decryptor for it from another organization who shared it with us. Here you go. And within 60 minutes, every system was back up and running. Our teams were able to respond and get that disseminated quickly. So efforts like that, I think the government has made a tremendous amount of headway into improving relationships. Is there always gonna be some tension between, you know, competing, you know, organizations? Sure. But I think that we're doing a whole lot to progress it, >>But governments will make exceptions in that case. Especially for something as critical as the example that you just gave and be able to, you know, do a reach around, if you will, on, on onerous regulations that, that ne aren't helpful in that situation, but certainly do a lot of good in terms of protecting privacy. >>Well, and I think there used to be exceptions made typically only for national security elements, right? And now you're seeing that expanding much more so, which I think is also positive. Right. >>Last question for you as we are wrapping up time here. What can organizations really do to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to, to threat actors? We've got internal external threats. What can they really do to just be ahead of that curve? Is that possible? >>Well, it is now, it's not an easy task so I'm not gonna, you know, trivialize it. But I think that one, having relationships with right organizations in advance always a good thing. That's a, everything from certainly a commercial relationships, but also your peers, right? There's all kinds of fantastic industry spec specific information sharing organizations. I think the biggest thing that impacts is having education across your executive team and testing regularly, right? Having a plan in place, testing it. And it's not just the security pieces of it, right? As security responders, we live these attacks every day, but it's making sure that your general counsel and your head of operations and your CEO knows what to do. Your board of directors, do they know what to do when they receive a phone call from Bloomberg, for example? Are they supposed supposed to answer? Do your employees know that those kind of communications in advance and training can be really critical and make or break a difference in an attack. >>That's a great point about the testing but also the communication that it really needs to be company wide. Everyone at every level needs to know how to react. Wendy, it's been so great having, >>Wait one last question. Sure. Do you have a favorite superhero growing up? >>Ooh, it's gotta be Wonder Woman. Yeah, >>Yeah, okay. Yeah, so cuz I'm always curious, there's not a lot of women in, in security in cyber. How'd you get into it? And many cyber pros like wanna save the world? >>Yeah, no, that's a great question. So I joined the Air Force, you know, I, I was a special agent doing computer crime investigations and that was a great job. And I learned about that from, we had an alumni day and all these alumni came in from the university and they were in flight suits and combat gear. And there was one woman who had long blonde flowing hair and a black suit and high heels and she was carrying a gun. What did she do? Because that's what I wanted do. >>Awesome. Love it. We >>Blonde >>Wonder Woman. >>Exactly. Wonder Woman. Wendy, it's been so great having you on the program. We, we will definitely be following unit 42 and all the great stuff that you guys are doing. Keep up the good >>Work. Thanks so much Lisa. Thank >>You. Day our pleasure. For our guest and Dave Valante, I'm Lisa Martin, live in Las Vegas at MGM Grand for Palo Alto Ignite, 22. You're watching the Cube, the leader in live enterprise and emerging tech coverage.

>> Announcer: Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE covering Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. Brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of the Grace Hopper Conference in Orlando, Florida. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We're joined by Morgan Berman. She is the founder and CEO of MilkCrate, a platform that measures and grows social and environmental impact. Thanks so much for joining us. >> Thanks for having me. >> So I want to, start off by telling us a little bit about MilkCrate. >> Sure. So we're a tech company. We got our start about four years ago. We've grown and changed a lot in that time, but what we really focus on doing is helping big organizations either for- or non-profit, engage people in social and environmental impact in a game app. And we build custom versions of this app based on the goals of each client. So whether it's a big company that wants to engage employees in volunteering and riding a bike to work, or a nonprofit that has kids that they're trying to get to go to art museums, and encourage them to go more often, we can gamify both of those behaviors in unique apps and then those clients have their own engagement experience for hitting those goals. >> Well, that's a really neat idea. Tell me how you came up with it. >> Well, like I said, it's changed and grown over time. Originally it was my own personal desire to grow my impact in the world. I grew up in this kind of crunchy, kind of wonderful bubble, I guess, where my mom would only buy food from the farmer's market, she was actually a farm-to-table chef, one of the first female chefs in Philly. She wrote books rating and reviewing thrift shopping, so I grew up with like fresh local food, thrift shopping, there was a community garden behind us. >> She was a hipster before her time. >> Exactly, my mom's like the original hipster. And my dad was also an entrepreneur. So when I moved to West Philadelphia, which is like the crunchiest part of the city by far, I was trying to figure out how to ride a bike in the city for the first time, and how do you compost with worms when you live in an apartment and you don't have a backyard. Where's my nearest food co-op so I can start feeding myself this way? And my interest grew and grew as I started learning about things like climate change. And I went to a Bill McKibben talk about fossil fuel divestment, and there were these children in Haiti holding a sign that said Connect The Dots Your Actions Affect Me. And it really hit home how my privilege as this western world person with this degree and all of these things that most people don't have that every choice I made about my life was having a direct impact on someone on the other side of the world, or often not even that far from me. And so I wanted to figure out how to live my life in a way that my values weren't conflicting with my actions. So I applied for graduate school in sustainable design to originally, the idea was to help design sustainable buildings but I quickly learned that even though I had this degree, architects weren't going to take me seriously. And so I pivoted and took all my extra-curriculars in Industrial Design and Interactive Media. And I had the head of the department for Interactive Media actually helping me with the first mock-ups of MilkCrate, which was all about designing an app to help people live their values, particularly around sustainability. And then, after a few years of learning and growing, we actually, Forbes picked us to be one of the five companies on the Forbes Under 30 stage and that catapulted us onto this path of suddenly going from a school project to a startup company that needed to raise money and have a business model. And I was like, what's a business model? So after about two years of learning and growing, we realized that there's this opportunity with big corporations to engage employees in sustainability and that there was a pain point on this enterprise level that we could solve, and yeah. >> And what was this pain point? I mean, I think that's the thing is we can all say it's great for companies to get their employees to ride more bikes and to start a recycling program-- >> But why do they care? >> Yeah! >> And that's what investors would always ask, and I'd be like, ugh! And I had to learn the answer! And the answer is 75% of the S&P 500 issues a CSR Sustainability Report every year, and that has grown exponentially over the last few years. And the reason they do that is because employees want to work for a company that's making a difference. 45% of millennials would take a 15% cut or more in their salary to work for a company that makes a difference in the world. The reason that B Corps are growing exponentially around the world, all of these things, of business is a force for good in the world, it's the norm now. Whether you realize it or not, that's what's driving people to work for a company, to stay for a company, for customers to buy a product from a company. That's how people are starting to make their important life choices. And so now companies invest in having a Corporate Social Responsibility, not only a director, but a whole department. And they're, what we learned when we were researching how to figure out this whole business model was that CSR directors, their top three pain points are engaging employees, tracking and analytics, and having a scalable, cost-effective program across the whole company. So we realized our product could do all three of those things, and I was like, oh, I think that's a business model, when you solve the major pain points for an important corporate role in the world. So that's how we started moving in that direction and we started getting validation, and then we realized we also could work with nonprofits when they started reaching out. And so now we're kind of filling both of those needs that are a little bit different. >> So you're gamifying, making it into a game, making it fun for employees, or clients or customers or whoever the target audience is. So what kind of rewards are they getting for this? How do you light up their bulbs? >> I'm actually giving a lecture on this at Warden on Monday, so it's top of mind. You've got intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, right? There are the things that you do because they make you feel like you're being your authentic self, where you're expressing your values and that lights up your brain in a way that nothing else ever will. Then you have your external, extrinsic motivations, things like prizes, but also social acknowledgement. Seeing that you are functioning the way your peers are, that sense of I am not alone, or I am normal, that's a really important validation as a human. So seeing that you're in the top 10 or that you're above average, that feels good. So we have things like your rank and how you're doing on your team and how your team's doing in comparison to other teams in your MilkCrate community. And then there's the actual rewards. So university clients of ours have given tickets to sporting events, or credit to the bookstore. Corporate clients, gift certificates to local, sustainable restaurants and coffee shops near the headquarters. We're actually now partnering with an amazing B Corp company, United By Blue, that has ethically made and environmentally thoughtful products like mugs and candles and things like that. So, it depends on the client what their goals are, what their budget is, what motivates those people. But it really, the beginning part, when you first download the app, the first couple of challenges are things like answer this question about how important is to you to live your values? So you get them thinking in that mindset about why they're using this app. >> Priming them to-- >> Priming them, exactly! Getting them in that headspace. That's the most important thing you can do in the beginning is just to help them understand why they're using this, and then the rewards are almost, they're a distant second. >> Okay, okay. So you've also, you are a B Corp, and are there many other B Corps here at Grace Hopper? I mean, what's your experience there? As you said, it is now the norm that the business is functioning this way. But B Corps are still a minority, relatively speaking. >> Right, there's a lot of room for growth there, yeah. I think having the CSR report is the norm, but doing everything you possibly can, there's still a lot of room in that department. One thing I saw that I loved was that instead of giving out swag, Facebook was actually donating money to nonprofits that help women code. I was like, that's great! So I haven't seen any B Corps here that I've, yeah, I don't think I've seen other than ROAR For Good-- >> Which we had on the show earlier. >> Yes, so Yasmine and I are definitely two Philly B Corps. I would love to see more tech companies go in that direction but yeah, there's a lot more growth that needs to happen. There are about, I think, I actually just got to meet one of the other founders of B Lab that does B Corp certification. He gave a great presentation answering in more detail why do companies do this? It was amazing how many stats he had. It was like yes! But 2,300 for B Corps and I think something like 16,000 benefit corporations. So they're slightly different things, but it's a growing movement for sure. >> So talk a little bit about your experience at this Grace Hopper Conference. It's day one, we're near the end of day one. How would you describe the energy, the atmosphere, what's your feeling about being here in Orlando? >> So I've heard over and over again people saying it's just so good to be in a room full of women who are all doing awesome things. And it keeps reminding me of when I went and saw Wonder Woman with my parents. And I remember sitting in the theater and going like this and being like oh, my cheeks are wet. Oh, I think I'm crying. Oh, I think I'm having feelings. I think it's because I've literally never seen on a screen several dozen, or hundreds of women just being powerful, physical beings with like, aggression and skill, and it having nothing to do with sexuality or being attractive. And it was just the first time I'd seen that in my 32 years of existence. And to just, there's something so powerful about having that icon, that image reflected back at you to see, oh, if you can do that, I can do that. And actually, over the last 13 months, I've been training in Brazilian jujitsu and competing, and to see women being physical, strong warriors, and only women, and it not being sexualized, it was like oh, that's the feeling I get when I compete, and when I'm with my teammates, my female teammates. Anyways, I think that's kind of what's happening here is that sense of like, these are my people, and we are doing amazing things, and to just see each other when historically, you never got to see a room like this. I think it's an unfortunately necessary experience to be reminded that we are out there, we are doing this, and it's growing. >> And there is a sisterhood and the belonging that we talked about earlier, too. >> I mean, you see men who don't seem particularly uncomfortable here. They can kind of, they're like okay with this. And they get to kind of know what it's like to be in the minority. And I kind of want to ask them, how are you feeling? What's this like for you? But like, to see everyone flipping the ratio and we're all good, so that means if we could get somewhere more like parity I think that could be pretty magical. >> So as a female founder, a female technologist, what is your advice for the younger versions of you who maybe are just graduating from college, or maybe even younger than that and sort of wondering, can I even do that? Can I aspire to be that? >> You absolutely can. And I gave some advice at the end of my session earlier. And my two bits of advice were detach yourself from any negative association with the word Failure. Try and come up with a new word for yourself if you need to because learning and growing is what you're going to do your whole life, and so taking risks, that's what you need to be doing every single day. And so pushing against those things that scare you. And the second thing was to find a mentor, because no one piece of advice I can give is ever going to fill the role that having a mentor can give you over the course of a career, or even just for a few years. The amount that I've grown in just the last four years of building my company with some of my mentors, it's incredible. So, find someone who reminds you of who you want to be, and then latch on to them and get them to help kind of carry you along. >> Great. Well, Morgan, it's been so fun talking to you. >> Thank you, this has been great. >> Thanks for joining us. >> I'm Rebecca Knight, we'll have more from the Grace Hopper Conference in Orlando just after this. (rippling music)