>> 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 here at the Orange County Convention Center, I'm your host Rebecca Knight. We are joined today by Emilia Sherifova, she is the VP of Architecture and Engineering at Northwestern Mutual, thanks so much for joining us Emilia. >> Thank you for having me. >> So I want to start off by talking about how you got to Northwestern Mutual. You came via an acquisition, you were CTO of LearnVest. What is LearnVest? >> LearnVest is a financial planning start up, it's a company that is bringing financial planning to the masses, it's a very mission driven organization. When Northwestern Mutual came as an interest to acquire us, we saw an incredible opportunity to partner with a Fortune 100 company, and tap into its client base of five million people, and bring sort of best in class digital experience and innovation, with best in class financial services products. >> Talk about that problem a little bit, in terms of bringing financial planning to the masses. Why don't the masses have financial planning? What's the disconnect? >> I think it's not easy, often it's a human driven problem. Often humans do not want to deal with their finances, as I know personally for myself, historically when I met with my financial advisor in the past I would get a plan and I wouldn't follow up on that. So building delightful experiences that engage our clients, with the combination of a financial planner that's prodding you, and giving you guidance. >> So there is a human there? >> Absolutely, there's no way to avoid a human. So it was that regional model of LearnVest to have the human help the robot part of it, and we are doing the same thing with Northwestern Mutual, where we're leveraging Northwestern Mutual best in class distribution work force and providing them tools to help them do their work best. >> I love the idea of a delightful experience when dealing with your finances, it seems antithetical. Give me some examples of what you mean by this. >> I think ability to give you a 360 view of your life, and give you a financial wellness score, for instance, after we've gotten a couple of data points about you, but also gathered some of the predictive data points that we know are probably true about you, and give you a score, one score, that gives you an idea what's the probability of you reaching your financial goal, or you retiring, or you going broke. So there is a way to do that in an easy, digestible and kind of delightful way where we're able to leverage technology and predictive capabilities to really push for financial security of our clients. >> And what is the customer response here? >> Customer response, it's been great. Now that we've rolled out a lot of these experiences for the customer base of Northwestern Mutual we have massive engagement with our customers, our traffic has gone dramatically up. >> So people are hungering for this? >> Absolutely, it's a much needed thing, and we're here to help them. >> So you've now been with Northwestern Mutual for a few years now, dividing your time between New York and Milwaukee, you're in both technology and financial services, both male dominated fields, can you describe a little bit about your career path, and how you got into it, and what you've learned along the way. >> Oh, absolutely. I'm originally from Russia, and I come from a family of engineers, so it was a somewhat natural path for me. I got into software engineering in the late 90s. My go to language initially was C programming, and I participated in the Y2K Challenge on Wall Street. >> Which seems so quaint! (laughs) >> And I've spent over a decade on Wall Street, building electronic trading systems, market data feeds. So I feel honored to have been able to pursue and have these possibilities, but I know how not easy it is, given what a male dominated world this is. >> Is it as bad as the headlines make it out to be? I mean, it really does, when you read it, it's sickening. The sexism, the biases, what's your experience been? >> I think I've been lucky enough to work in very supportive places, but I can tell you majority of teams that I've been part of are majority male, and whether my team mates want to be inclusive and engaging, when the majority is someone else that doesn't look like you, act like you, lean on similar defaults as you, it does not make for a very welcome environment. So I recognize that, and a big part of that, I feel, is having proper on boarding practices. Because on boarding often can happen, if you don't have a formal on boarding process, on boarding can happen in informal ways, and when it happens in informal ways, you tend to be attracted to the people who are like you, and you hang out with. So if you look at the technology world, it's dominated by mostly male. If you are in a start up world, it's mostly young males. And so I am determined to bring operational excellence and sustainability and diversity through strong operational practices, like ensuring that there is proper on boarding. Where for instance, a young mother who has a child has the potential to go home at 4 p.m., and cannot hang out with the guys and drink coke or beer at 7 p.m., to really understand the culture of the group that she joined. We want to make sure that she has sustainable, thoughtful on boarding practices, feeling like she's part of the organization. This is just one way of doing it. >> In terms of the on boarding, and I think you're absolutely right in a sense, that we do gravitate towards people who are just like us, look like us, talk like us, think like us, so are you pairing the new people with people who are not like them? >> Absolutely, but also actually I am pairing them with people who also recently just went through on boarding, that just join also fairly recently. That way they can explain the pitfalls that they gone through, and so we're definitely making sure we have these co pilots, but also rigorous processes to get people comfortable, whatever their background is. >> Now how many Grace Hoppers have you been to, Emilia? >> I have to say this is my first one. >> Your first one, you're a newbie! So what is your experience been so far. >> I am incredibly moved by the experience, actually. I have to say I've never seen so much energy before. I am moved by the stories that I have heard, incredibly inspired. I am inspired to keep pushing. I felt I could relate to a lot of presenters' backgrounds, I also came from a small town, that actually is not on the map, because it was a military town in the former Soviet Union, and a lot of stories of overcoming, and persisting, and ending up here, is what I can relate to. So I'm very excited, and very grateful, and I want to be here every year. >> So you'll be back? >> Totally! >> Great! Well, Emilia, thanks so much for joining us, it's been really fun talking to you. >> Thanks for having me. >> We'll be back with more from Grace Hopper just after this.