(upbeat music) >> Welcome back to The Cubes coverage of WIDS 2023 the eighth Annual Women in Data Science Conference which is held at Stanford University. I'm your host, Lisa Martin. I'm really excited to be having some great co-hosts today. I've got Hannah Freytag with me, who is a data journalism master student at Stanford. We have yet another inspiring woman in technology to bring to you today. Kelly Hoang joins us, data scientist at Gilead. It's so great to have you, Kelly. >> Hi, thank you for having me today. I'm super excited to be here and share my journey with you guys. >> Let's talk about that journey. You recently got your PhD in information sciences, congratulations. >> Thank you. Yes, I just graduated, I completed my PhD in information sciences from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. And right now I moved to Bay Area and started my career as a data scientist at Gilead. >> And you're in better climate. Well, we do get snow here. >> Kelly: That's true. >> We proved that the last... And data science can show us all the climate change that's going on here. >> That's true. That's the topic of the data fund this year, right? To understand the changes in the climate. >> Yeah. Talk a little bit about your background. You were mentioning before we went live that you come from a whole family of STEM students. So you had that kind of in your DNA. >> Well, I consider myself maybe I was a lucky case. I did grew up in a family in the STEM environment. My dad actually was a professor in computer science. So I remember when I was at a very young age, I already see like datas, all of these computer science concepts. So grew up to be a data scientist is always something like in my mind. >> You aspired to be. >> Yes. >> I love that. >> So I consider myself in a lucky place in that way. But also, like during this journey to become a data scientist you need to navigate yourself too, right? Like you have this roots, like this foundation but then you still need to kind of like figure out yourself what is it? Is it really the career that you want to pursue? But I'm happy that I'm end up here today and where I am right now. >> Oh, we're happy to have you. >> Yeah. So you' re with Gilead now after you're completing your PhD. And were you always interested in the intersection of data science and health, or is that something you explored throughout your studies? >> Oh, that's an excellent question. So I did have background in computer science but I only really get into biomedical domain when I did my PhD at school. So my research during my PhD was natural language processing, NLP and machine learning and their applications in biomedical domains. And then when I graduated, I got my first job in Gilead Science. Is super, super close and super relevant to what my research at school. And at Gilead, I am working in the advanced analytics department, and our focus is to bring artificial intelligence and machine learning into supporting clinical decision making. And really the ultimate goal is how to use AI to accelerate the precision medicine. So yes, it's something very like... I'm very lucky to get the first job that which is very close to my research at school. >> That's outstanding. You know, when we talk about AI, we can't not talk about ethics, bias. >> Kelly: Right. >> We know there's (crosstalk) Yes. >> Kelly: In healthcare. >> Exactly. Exactly. Equities in healthcare, equities in so many things. Talk a little bit about what excites you about AI, what you're doing at Gilead to really influence... I mean this, we're talking about something that's influencing life and death situations. >> Kelly: Right. >> How are you using AI in a way that is really maximizing the opportunities that AI can bring and maximizing the value in the data, but helping to dial down some of the challenges that come with AI? >> Yep. So as you may know already with the digitalization of medical records, this is nowaday, we have a tremendous opportunities to fulfill the dream of precision medicine. And what I mean by precision medicines, means now the treatments for people can be really tailored to individual patients depending on their own like characteristic or demographic or whatever. And nature language processing and machine learning, and AI in general really play a key role in that innovation, right? Because like there's a vast amount of information of patients and patient journeys or patient treatment is conducted and recorded in text. So that's why our group was established. Actually our department, advanced analytic department in Gilead is pretty new. We established our department last year. >> Oh wow. >> But really our mission is to bring AI into this field because we see the opportunity now. We have a vast amount of data about patient about their treatments, how we can mine these data how we can understand and tailor the treatment to individuals. And give everyone better care. >> I love that you brought up precision medicine. You know, I always think, if I kind of abstract everything, technology, data, connectivity, we have this expectation in our consumer lives. We can get anything we want. Not only can we get anything we want but we expect whoever we're engaging with, whether it's Amazon or Uber or Netflix to know enough about me to get me that precise next step. I don't think about precision medicine but you bring up such a great point. We expect these tailored experiences in our personal lives. Why not expect that in medicine as well? And have a tailored treatment plan based on whatever you have, based on data, your genetics, and being able to use NLP, machine learning and AI to drive that is really exciting. >> Yeah. You recap it very well, but then you also bring up a good point about the challenges to bring AI into this field right? Definitely this is an emerging field, but also very challenging because we talk about human health. We are doing the work that have direct impact to human health. So everything need to be... Whatever model, machine learning model that you are building, developing you need to be precise. It need to be evaluated properly before like using as a product, apply into the real practice. So it's not like recommendation systems for shopping or anything like that. We're talking about our actual health. So yes, it's challenging that way. >> Yeah. With that, you already answered one of the next questions I had because like medical data and health data is very sensitive. And how you at Gilead, you know, try to protect this data to protect like the human beings, you know, who are the data in the end. >> The security aspect is critical. You bring up a great point about sensitive data. We think of healthcare as sensitive data. Or PII if you're doing a bank transaction. We have to be so careful with that. Where is security, data security, in your everyday work practices within data science? Is it... I imagine it's a fundamental piece. >> Yes, for sure. We at Gilead, for sure, in data science organization we have like intensive trainings for employees about data privacy and security, how you use the data. But then also at the same time, when we work directly with dataset, it's not that we have like direct information about patient at like very granular level. Everything is need to be kind of like anonymized at some points to protect patient privacy. So we do have rules, policies to follow to put that in place in our organization. >> Very much needed. So some of the conversations we heard, were you able to hear the keynote this morning? >> Yes. I did. I attended. Like I listened to all of them. >> Isn't it fantastic? >> Yes, yes. Especially hearing these women from different backgrounds, at different level of their professional life, sharing their journeys. It's really inspiring. >> And Hannah, and I've been talking about, a lot of those journeys look like this. >> I know >> You just kind of go... It's very... Yours is linear, but you're kind of the exception. >> Yeah, this is why I consider my case as I was lucky to grow up in STEM environment. But then again, back to my point at the beginning, sometimes you need to navigate yourself too. Like I did mention about, I did my pa... Sorry, my bachelor degree in Vietnam, in STEM and in computer science. And that time, there's only five girls in a class of 100 students. So I was not the smartest person in the room. And I kept my minority in that areas, right? So at some point I asked myself like, "Huh, I don't know. Is this really my careers." It seems that others, like male people or students, they did better than me. But then you kind of like, I always have this passion of datas. So you just like navigate yourself, keep pushing yourself over those journey. And like being where I am right now. >> And look what you've accomplished. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. That's very inspiring. And yeah, you mentioned how you were in the classroom and you were only one of the few women in the room. And what inspired or motivated you to keep going, even though sometimes you were at these points where you're like, "Okay, is this the right thing?" "Is this the right thing for me?" What motivated you to keep going? >> Well, I think personally for me, as a data scientist or for woman working in data science in general, I always try to find a good story from data. Like it's not, when you have a data set, well it's important for you to come up with methodologies, what are you going to do with the dataset? But I think it's even more important to kind of like getting the context of the dataset. Like think about it like what is the story behind this dataset? What is the thing that you can get out of it and what is the meaning behind? How can we use it to help use it in a useful way. To have in some certain use case. So I always have that like curiosity and encouragement in myself. Like every time someone handed me a data set, I always think about that. So it's helped me to like build up this kind of like passion for me. And then yeah. And then become a data scientist. >> So you had that internal drive. I think it's in your DNA as well. When you were one of five. You were 5% women in your computer science undergrad in Vietnam. Yet as Hannah was asking you, you found a lot of motivation from within. You embrace that, which is so key. When we look at some of the statistics, speaking of data, of women in technical roles. We've seen it hover around 25% the last few years, probably five to 10. I was reading some data from anitab.org over the weekend, and it shows that it's now, in 2022, the number of women in technical roles rose slightly, but it rose, 27.6%. So we're seeing the needle move slowly. But one of the challenges that still remains is attrition. Women who are leaving the role. You've got your PhD. You have a 10 month old, you've got more than one child. What would you advise to women who might be at that crossroads of not knowing should I continue my career in climbing the ladder, or do I just go be with my family or do something else? What's your advice to them in terms of staying the path? >> I think it's really down to that you need to follow your passion. Like in any kind of job, not only like in data science right? If you want to be a baker, or you want to be a chef, or you want to be a software engineer. It's really like you need to ask yourself is it something that you're really passionate about? Because if you really passionate about something, regardless how difficult it is, like regardless like you have so many kids to take care of, you have the whole family to take care of. You have this and that. You still can find your time to spend on it. So it's really like let yourself drive your own passion. Drive the way where you leading to. I guess that's my advice. >> Kind of like following your own North Star, right? Is what you're suggesting. >> Yeah. >> What role have mentors played in your career path, to where you are now? Have you had mentors on the way or people who inspired you? >> Well, I did. I certainly met quite a lot of women who inspired me during my journey. But right now, at this moment, one person, particular person that I just popped into my mind is my current manager. She's also data scientist. She's originally from Caribbean and then came to the US, did her PhDs too, and now led a group, all women. So believe it or not, I am in a group of all women working in data science. So she's really like someone inspire me a lot, like someone I look up to in this career. >> I love that. You went from being one of five females in a class of 100, to now having a PhD in information sciences, and being on an all female data science team. That's pretty cool. >> It's great. Yeah, it's great. And then you see how fascinating that, how things shift right? And now today we are here in a conference that all are women in data science. >> Yeah. >> It's extraordinary. >> So this year we're fortunate to have WIDS coincide this year with the actual International Women's Day, March 8th which is so exciting. Which is always around this time of year, but it's great to have it on the day. The theme of this International Women's Day this year is embrace equity. When you think of that theme, and your career path, and what you're doing now, and who inspires you, how can companies like Gilead benefit from embracing equity? What are your thoughts on that as a theme? >> So I feel like I'm very lucky to get my first job at Gilead. Not only because the work that we are doing here very close to my research at school, but also because of the working environment at Gilead. Inclusion actually is one of the five core values of Gilead. >> Nice. >> So by that, we means we try to create and creating a working environment that all of the differences are valued. Like regardless your background, your gender. So at Gilead, we have women at Gilead which is a global network of female employees, that help us to strengthen our inclusion culture, and also to influence our voices into the company cultural company policy and practice. So yeah, I'm very lucky to work in the environment nowadays. >> It's impressive to not only hear that you're on an all female data science team, but what Gilead is doing and the actions they're taking. It's one thing, we've talked about this Hannah, for companies, and regardless of industry, to say we're going to have 50% women in our workforce by 2030, 2035, 2040. It's a whole other ballgame for companies like Gilead to actually be putting pen to paper. To actually be creating a strategy that they're executing on. That's awesome. And it must feel good to be a part of a company who's really adapting its culture to be more inclusive, because there's so much value that comes from inclusivity, thought diversity, that ultimately will help Gilead produce better products and services. >> Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Actually this here is the first year Gilead is a sponsor of the WIDS Conference. And we are so excited to establish this relationship, and looking forward to like having more collaboration with WIDS in the future. >> Excellent. Kelly we've had such a pleasure having you on the program. Thank you for sharing your linear path. You are definitely a unicorn. We appreciate your insights and your advice to those who might be navigating similar situations. Thank you for being on theCUBE today. >> Thank you so much for having me. >> Oh, it was our pleasure. For our guests, and Hannah Freytag this is Lisa Martin from theCUBE. Coming to you from WIDS 2023, the eighth annual conference. Stick around. Our final guest joins us in just a minute.

(soft upbeat music) >> Hello and welcome to this Cube Conversation I'm Lisa Martin. This is going to be a great conversation about corporate social responsibility, and I'm very pleased to have two great guests here with me today. Karen McCloskey joins us the director of internal communications and corporate philanthropy at NETSCOUT and Professor Sally Eaves is here as well the CEO of Aspirational Futures. She's also a professor of emerging tech and a CTO by background. Ladies welcome to the program it's great to have you on today. >> Thank you. >> Absolute pleasure. Thank you, great to join you both. >> We're going to get some great perspectives here. As I mentioned corporate social responsibility we're seeing that emerge across every industry and every company is really focused on that. Karen I want to start with you where tech companies are concerned we see corporate social responsibility really aligning with STEM and STEAM. Why is that? >> There is probably a couple of reasons, I sort of wrap it up as it's what employees do, it's part of their jobs, so they get excited about it and they want to share what they do with the next generation. And the other aspect that helps it align with tech is it involves the educational aspect. So we're teaching and we need up and coming students and employees and entrepreneurs with those skills. And the other part about STEM is when you think of it, it's typically K to 12 and then it rolls into college and it's working with students and the next generation. So the education and the pipeline or the education and the students speak to the pipeline aspect and then you add in people getting excited about their job and what they do and that's the employee engagement aspect so it really brings the two pieces together. >> I want to dig into that employee engagement in a minute but Sally I would like to get your perspective. Tell us a little bit about Aspirational Futures and then let's talk about the alignment between that and STEM and STEAM. >> Absolutely, so yeah, Aspirational Futures, is a non-profit kind of working across tech education and social impact and really looking at kind of opening up opportunities to the industry to a diversity of experience and using tech and data as a force for good. We do projects locally and across the world I'm kind of breaking down those barriers. It's going to be all about democratization of opportunity I would say. And in terms of STEM to STEAM that's where I see the journey going at the moment and effectively with that STEAM focus you're bringing the arts to an equal stage to the tech skills as well. So for me that's really important because it comes down to curiosity, encouraging people to get into the sector, showing what you can do, building creative confidence, emotional intelligence, those types of skills alongside the tech skills to actually build it. So it's that combination There's complimentary factors that come together. So for me STEAM is a great way to get holistic learning for life With the rate of change we've got at the moment kind of gives you that tool set to work from to be empowered and confident for the future. >> That confidence is so critical. >> Its really. >> For anybody of any age, right? But one of the things that we've seen that is in the inaugural ESG report that NETSCOUT just published is this digital divide. We've seen it for quite a while now but we also saw it grow during the pandemic, Sally from your perspective, what is that and how can tech companies help to fill that gap? >> It's a great point. I think one other thing that the pandemic did was made it more visible as well. So I think particularly we're working in certain spaces we've seen it more, but I think for everybody it's affected our daily lives in education from home, for example for the first time it's made gaps more visible. So absolutely huge to focus on that. And I think we're seeing it from the organizational perspective as well. We're seeing gaps around certain types of roles. We're seeing higher churn because of a lack of data literacy skills. So it's becoming something that's becoming a CUBE Conversation, you know, in day-to-day family life but in organizations across the world as well. And also it's about challenging assumptions. And it just a few weeks ago there was some research that came out at the University of Reading in the UK in conglomerate with other universities as well. And it was kind of showing that actually you can't make the assumption, for example, that teenagers that kind of call digital natures all the time actually have full confidence in using data either, It was actually showing there were gaps there too. So we've got to challenge assumptions. So literacy in all its forms whether it's data, whether it's financial is absolutely key and we've got to start earlier. So what I'm seeing more of is better outreach from tech companies and other organizations in the primary schools through to universities as well kind of internships and placements, but also another really interesting area that we do with the nonprofit is looking at data waste as well. You know, 90% of data there's archive isn't touched again after kind of three months, you think about the amount of data we're producing at the moment how can we reuse that as a force for good as a training opportunity? So let's think creatively let's be pragmatic address some of these data literacy gaps, but we have to do it at all levels of the community and also for adult learners too. That's usually important. >> Right, there's no, it knows no age and you're right that the visibility on it I think it can be a very good thing shining that light finally going we've got to do something. Karen talked to us about what NETSCOUT is doing. The digital divide is there you guys are really focused on helping to mitigate that. >> That's right. That's right. So as guardians of the connected world, that's our job with our customers and our products, but also with our people in our communities is getting people connected and how can we do that? And in what ways are we able to do that? And recently we engaged with Tech Goes Home which is based in Boston and they provide those first three pillars that everybody needs access to a device, access to the internet and skills to use that. And they work with families and students and they say their programs go from nine to 90. So they've got everybody covered. And what's exciting for us is it kind of falls from a volunteer perspective right in our wheelhouse. So they had to transition from in-person to distance learning with the pandemic and suddenly their program materials needed to be online and they needed to get people up and running without the benefit of an in-person class. What NETSCOUT volunteers were able to do was create those tutorials and those programs that they needed and we also have people all over the world and then we translated them into a bunch of different languages and they were able to then move forward with their programs. So Tech Goes Home and programs like that are really that first step in bridging the digital divide. And then once you've got the basics, the toolkit and the skills what else can you do? And Sally mentioned visibility it's what are the opportunities? What can I do now? I didn't realize there was a career path here, I need these skills to build a business help me learn more. So then there's that whole other aspect of furthering what they can do now that they have those skills and the learning and something like a hackathon might be a fun way to engage kids in those skills and help them go a little further with the tools they have. >> And NETSCOUT has done a number of hackathon programs last year I know you had an All-Girls Hackathon virtually in 2020. Talk to me about some of that and then I want to get Sally I'm going to get your perspectives on what you're doing as well. So our hackathons and I'll try and keep this brief because we've done a lot. There were actually brought forward as an employee idea. So that also speaks to our culture. It's like, hey, we should do more of this. We have partner with Shooting Star Foundation and one of our employees is one of their, or is their board chair. And the hackathons what they do and these are beginners hackathons. So we're talking middle high school and the theme is civic. So something good for society. And what we do is over a course of 12 hours not to mention all the pre-planning. When we had the in-person ones they were in our office they got to see employees up close run around the building to the extent that they could and build their project. And Sally I think you had also mentioned that creativity in that confidence. I mean what those kids did in a day was amazing. You know, they came in and they're all kind of looking around and they don't really know what to do. And at the end of the they had made new friends, they were standing up in front of executive judges, presenting their idea, and they all felt really good about it and they had fun. So I think it can be a fun impactful way to both engage employees because it's a heck of a team building experience and sort of bring students in and give them that visibility to what's possible in their tech career. >> And that confidence. Sally talked to me about hackathons from your perspective and what you're involved in? >> Absolutely, funny now I've just come from one. So I'm a Cop 26 at the moment and I've been involved in one with a university again, using that talent and building that empowerment around STG challenges. So in this particular case around sustainability, so absolutely love that and really echo Karen's thoughts there about how this is a reciprocal relationship, it's also super rewarding for all the employees as well, we're all learning and learning from each other's, which I think is a fantastic thing. And also another point about visibility. Now seeing someone in a role that you might want to do in the future, I think is hugely important as well. So as part of the nonprofit I run a series called 365 and that's all about putting visibility on role models in tech every single day of the year. So not for example just like International Women's Day or Girls in ICT Day, but every single day and for a diversity of experience, because I think it's really important to interview people for C-suite level. But equally I just did an interview with a 14 year old. He did an amazing project in their community to support a local hospital using a 3D printer. It makes it relatable, you can see yourself in that particular role in the future, and you can also show how tech can be used for good business, but also for good for society at the same time. I think that can challenge assumptions and show there's lots of different roles, there's lots of different skills that make a difference in a tech career. So coding could be really important but so is empathy, and so is communication skills. So again, going back to that STEAM focus there's something for everyone. I think that's really important to kind of knock down those boundaries, challenge assumptions, and drop the the STEM drop off we say make it a little bit more STEAM focused I think that can help challenge those assumptions and get more people curious, creative, confident about tech. >> I couldn't agree more, curious, creative and confident. The three Cs that will help anyone and also to sell it to your point showing the breadth and diversity of roles within tech coding is one of them. >> Sally: Absolutely. >> As might be the one of the ones that's the most known but there's so many opportunities to allow these kids to be able to see what they can be is game-changing, especially in today's climate. Karen talk to me about you mentioned in the beginning of our interview Karen, the employee engagement, I know that that environmental social governance is core to NETSCOUT's DNA but we're talking over 2,400 employees in 35 countries. Your folks really want to be engaged and have a purpose. Talk to me about how you got the employees together, it sounds like it was maybe from within. >> That's absolutely right. We have a to support employees when they bring forth these good ideas and the hackathon was one example of that. And the cool thing about the hackathons is that it leads to all these other community connections and people bring forth other ideas. So we had an in-person hackathon at our Allen office in 2019. Some of the employees there met staff from Collin College who were said, "Hey, we'd like to bring this hackathon to us." So then the employees said, "Hey, can we do a hackathon with Collin College?" It's so really it's employee driven, employee organized, supported by the company with the resources and other employees love to be part of that. And the event at Collin College brought out all those skills from the students. It was on climate change so relatively hot topic. And they did a fantastic job while they were there, but that employee engagement as you said, it comes from within. So they have the idea we have a way and a path that they can find what is needed in their community and deliver on that. And it really becomes a sense of pride and accomplishment that it wasn't a top-down mandate that you must go volunteer or paint this wall. They identified the need in the community, propose the project, get the volunteers, get the corporate support and go forth and do it. And it's really amazing to see what people do in their community. >> Well, it's incredibly rewarding and fulfilling but also very symbiotic. There's one thing that's great about the students or those that are from nine to 90, like you said, having a mentor or mentors and sponsors but it's also another thing for employees to be even more productive and proud of themselves to be able to mentor and sponsor those folks in the next generations coming up. I can imagine that employee productivity would likely increase because the employees are able to fulfill have something fulfilling or rewarding with these programs. Karen talk to me a little bit about employee productivity as a kind of a side benefit of this. >> Well, I was going to say during the hackathons I don't know how productive we are 'cause there's a lot of planning and pre-work that goes into it. But I think what happens is it's an incredible team building experience across the company. So you reaching out to executives hey would you be a judge for this event? And you know you're explaining what it is and where it is. And you're roping your coworkers into spending 12 hours with you on a Sunday. And then you're finding somebody who has access to a speaker. So you're talking to people about it it's outside your day-to-day job. And then when it's over, you're like, "Oh yeah, hey, I know somebody in that group I worked with them on the hackathon or I can go up and talk to this executive because we hung out in the hackathon room for X many hours on a Saturday." So it's another way to build those relationships which in the end make you more or help you be more productive as a whole across the company. >> Absolutely relationship building, networking, those are all critical components to having a successful career. Whether we're talking about STEAM or not. I want to unpack something Sally that you said in our remaining few minutes you talked about challenging assumptions. And I guess suppose I'm one of those ones that always assumes if I see a gen Z or they're going to know way more about how to use my phone than I do but you bring up a really good point that there are these assumptions that we need to focus on, shine the light on, address them and crack them wide open to show these folks from nine to 90 that there are so many opportunities out there, there are limitless out there I would say. >> Absolutely, it's all about breaking down those barriers. And that research I mentioned something like 43% of teenagers about kind of 16 to 21 years of age we're saying they don't feel data literate. And that assumption is incorrect so gain so making sure we include everyone in this conversation. So going as young as possible in terms of introducing people to these opportunities but making sure we don't leave any particular age group behind it's that breadth of engagement with all ages is absolutely key. But again showing there are so many different routes into tech as a career. There isn't one linear path, you can come from a different area and those skills will be hugely valid in a tech career. So absolutely challenging assumptions, changing the narrative about what a tech career looks like, I think is absolutely hugely important hence why I do that series because you want to see someone that's relatable to you, at your next level potentially, it's something you need a three steps ahead. It just makes it so important. So for me democratization of opportunity, breaking down barriers, showing that you can go around different ways and it's absolutely fine. And you know what that would probably you can learn from that experience, you can learn from mistakes all those things make a difference so don't be put off and don't let anyone hold you back and reach out for mentor. You mentioned sponsorship earlier on as well I think that's another thing as well kind of using the sphere of influence we develop in our careers and maybe through social media and can helping people along the way not just through mentorship but through active sponsorship as well. There's so many things we can do together. I think organizations are really listening to this is better embedding around DEI initiatives now than ever before and as Karen has been describing fantastic outreach into communities through hackathons, through linking up with schools. So I think we're getting a real contagion of change that's positive here. And I think the pandemic has helped. It's helped us all to kind of pause and reflect, what we stand for as people, as organizations all the way through and I'm really excited that we can really harness this energy and take it forward and really make a difference here by coming together. >> And that is such a great silver lining all of those points Sally that you mentioned. Karen, I want to wrap with you. There's great momentum within NETSCOUT I mentioned, over 2,400 employees actively so many people in the employee community actively engaging in the hackathons and the opportunities to show from nine year olds to 90 year olds the opportunities that STEAM delivers. So what's next for NETSCOUT, what can we anticipate? >> More hackathons, more focused on the digital divide. I just want to, as Sally was speaking, something occurred to me when you said it's never a clear path on the tech journey. I would love to be listening to one of those conversations 10 years from now and have somebody say, oh, when you were asked that question that you're always asked what got you on your journey? What started? I'd love to hear someone say, "Oh, I went to this hackathon once "and it is something and ever since then I got interested in it." That would be a lot of fun. I would love to see that. And for NETSCOUT we're going to continue to do what we do best. We focus on where we can make a difference, we go in wholeheartedly, we engage with volunteers and we'll just keep doing what we're doing. >> Excellent ladies what a great conversation. I love the lights that you're shining on these very important topics there. You're right, I talked to a lot of people about their career paths and they're very, zig-zaggy. Its the exception to find one, you know, that we're studying computer science or engineering, but Karen I have no doubt with the focus that NETSCOUT's putting that Sally that your organization is putting on things like hackathons, getting people out there, educated becoming data literate that no doubt that the narrative will change in the next few years that I went to this hackathon that NETSCOUT did and here I am now. So great work, very important work. I think the pandemic has brought some silver linings there to what your organizations are both doing and look forward to seeing the next generation that you're inspiring. >> Thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> Real pleasure. >> Likewise. For Sally Eaves and Karen McCloskey, I'm Lisa Martin you're watching theCUBE Conversation. (soft upbeat music)

>> Announcer: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is theCUBE conversation. >> Hey, welcome back everybody Jeff Frick here with the cube. This is a special week it's Grace Hopper week, and Grace Hopper is the best name in tech conferences. The celebration of women in computing, and we've been going there for years we're not there this year, but one of the themes that comes up over and over at Grace Hopper is women and girls need to see women in positions that they can envision themselves being in someday. That is a really important piece of the whole diversity conversation is can I see people that I can role model after and I just want to bring up something from a couple years back from 2016 when we were there, we were there with Mimi Valdez, Christina Deoja and Dr. Jeanette Epps, Dr. Jeanette Epps is the astronaut on the right. They were there talking about "The Hidden Figures" movie. If you remember it came out 2016, it was about Katherine Johnson and all the black women working at NASA. They got no credit for doing all the math that basically keep all the astronauts safe and they made a terrific movie about it. And Janet is going up on the very first Blue Origin Space Mission Next year. This was announced a couple of months ago, so again, phenomenal leadership, black lady astronaut, going to go into space and really provide a face for a lot of young girls that want to get into that and its clearly a great STEM opportunity. So we're excited to have four terrific women today that well also are the leaders that the younger women can look up to and follow their career. So we're excited to have them so we're just going to go around. We got four terrific guests, our first one is Annabel Chang, She is the Head of State Policy and Government Regulations at Waymo. Annabel great to see you, where are you coming in from today? >> from San Francisco >> Jeff: Awesome. Next up is Inamarie Johnson. She is the Chief People and Diversity Officer for Zendesk Inamarie, great to see you. Where are you calling in from today? >> Great to be here. I am calling in from Palos Verdes the state >> Jeff: awesome >> in Southern California. >> Jeff: Some of the benefits of a virtual sometimes we can, we couldn't do that without the power of the internet. And next up is Jennifer Cabalquinto she is the Chief Financial Officer of the Golden State Warriors. Jennifer, great to see you Where are you coming in from today? >> Well, I wish I was coming in from the Chase Center in San Francisco but I'm actually calling in from Santa Cruz California today. >> Jeff: Right, It's good to see you and you can surf a lot better down there. So that's probably not all bad. And finally to round out our panelists, Kate Hogan, she is the COO of North America for Accenture. Kate, great to see you as well. Where are you coming in from today? >> Well, it's good to see you too. I am coming in from the office actually in San Jose. >> Jeff: From the office in San Jose. All right, So let's get into it . You guys are all very senior, you've been doing this for a long time. We're in a kind of a crazy period of time in terms of diversity with all the kind of social unrest that's happening. So let's talk about some of your first your journeys and I want to start with you Annabel. You're a lawyer you got into lawyering. You did lawyering with Diane Feinstein, kind of some politics, and also the city of San Francisco. And then you made this move over to tech. Talk about that decision and what went into that decision and how did you get into tech? 'cause we know part of the problem with diversity is a pipeline problem. You came over from the law side of the house. >> Yes, and to be honest politics and the law are pretty homogenous. So when I made the move to tech, it was still a lot of the same, but what I knew is that I could be an attorney anywhere from Omaha Nebraska to Miami Florida. But what I couldn't do was work for a disruptive company, potentially a unicorn. And I seized that opportunity and (indistinct) Lyft early on before Ride Hailing and Ride Sharing was even a thing. So it was an exciting opportunity. And I joined right at the exact moment that made myself really meaningful in the organization. And I'm hoping that I'm doing the same thing right now at Waymo. >> Great, Inamarie you've come from one of my favorite stories I like to talk about from the old school Clorox great product management. I always like to joke that Silicon Valley needs a pipeline back to Cincinnati and Proctor and Gamble to get good product managers out here. You were in the classic, right? You were there, you were at Honeywell Plantronics, and then you jumped over to tech. Tell us a little bit about that move. Cause I'm sure selling Clorox is a lot different than selling the terrific service that you guys provide at Zendesk. I'm always happy when I see Zendesk in my customer service return email, I know I'm going to get taken care of. >> Oh wow, that's great. We love customers like you., so thank you for that. My journey is you're right from a fortune 50 sort of more portfolio type company into tech. And I think one of the reasons is because when tech is starting out and that's what Zendesk was a few five years back or so very much an early stage growth company, two things are top of mind, one, how do we become more global? And how do we make sure that we can go up market and attract enterprise grade customers? And so my experience having only been in those types of companies was very interesting for a startup. And what was interesting for me is I got to live in a world where there were great growth targets and numbers, things I had never seen. And the agility, the speed, the head plus heart really resonated with my background. So super glad to be in tech, but you're right. It's a little different than a consumer products. >> Right, and then Jennifer, you're in a completely different world, right? So you worked for the Golden State Warriors, which everybody knows is an NBA team, but I don't know that everyone knows really how progressive the Warriors are beyond just basketball in terms of the new Chase Center, all the different events that you guys put on it. And really the leadership there has decided we really want to be an entertainment company of which the Golden State Warrior basketball team has a very, very important piece, you've come from the entertainment industry. So that's probably how they found you, but you're in the financial role. You've always been in the financial role, not traditionally thought about as a lot of women in terms of a proportion of total people in that. So tell us a little bit about your experience being in finance, in entertainment, and then making this kind of hop over to, I guess Uber entertainment. I don't know even how you would classify the warriors. >> Sports entertainment, live entertainment. Yeah, it's interesting when the Warriors opportunity came up, I naturally said well no, I don't have any sports background. And it's something that we women tend to do, right? We self edit and we want to check every box before we think that we're qualified. And the reality is my background is in entertainment and the Warriors were looking to build their own venue, which has been a very large construction project. I was the CFO at Universal Studios Hollywood. And what do we do there? We build large attractions, which are just large construction projects and we're in the entertainment business. And so that sort of B to C was a natural sort of transition for me going from where I was with Universal Studios over to the Warriors. I think a finance career is such a great career for women. And I think we're finding more and more women entering it. It is one that you sort of understand your hills and valleys, you know when you're going to be busy and so you can kind of schedule around that. I think it's really... it provides that you have a seat at the table. And so I think it's a career choice that I think is becoming more and more available to women certainly more now than it was when I first started. >> Yeah, It's interesting cause I think a lot of people think of women naturally in human resources roles. My wife was a head of human resources back in the day, or a lot of marketing, but not necessarily on the finance side. And then Kate go over to you. You're one of the rare birds you've been at Accenture  for over 20 years. So you must like airplanes and travel to stay there that long. But doing a little homework for this, I saw a really interesting piece of you talking about your boss challenging you to ask for more work, to ask for a new opportunity. And I thought that was really insightful that you, you picked up on that like Oh, I guess it's incumbent on me to ask for more, not necessarily wait for that to be given to me, it sounds like a really seminal moment in your career. >> It was important but before I tell you that story, because it was an important moment of my career and probably something that a lot of the women here on the panel here can relate to as well. You mentioned airplanes and it made me think of my dad. My father was in the air force and I remember him telling stories when I was little about his career change from the air force into a career in telecommunications. So technology for me growing up Jeff was, it was kind of part of the dinner table. I mean it was just a conversation that was constantly ongoing in our house. And I also, as a young girl, I loved playing video games. We had a Tandy computer down in the basement and I remember spending too many hours playing video games down there. And so for me my history and my really at a young age, my experience and curiosity around tech was there. And so maybe that's, what's fueling my inspiration to stay at Accenture for as long as I have. And you're right It's been two decades, which feels tremendous, but I've had the chance to work across a bunch of different industries, but you're right. I mean, during that time and I relate with what Jennifer said in terms of self editing, right? Women do this and I'm no exception, I did this. And I do remember I'm a mentor and a sponsor of mine who called me up when I'm kind of I was at a pivotal moment in my career and he said you know Kate, I've been waiting for you to call me and tell me you want this job. And I never even thought about it. I mean I just never thought that I'd be a candidate for the job and let alone somebody waiting for me to kind of make the phone call. I haven't made that mistake again, (laughing) but I like to believe I learned from it, but it was an important lesson. >> It's such a great lesson and women are often accused of being a little bit too passive and not necessarily looking out for in salary negotiations or looking for that promotion or kind of stepping up to take the crappy job because that's another thing we hear over and over from successful people is that some point in their career, they took that job that nobody else wanted. They took that challenge that really enabled them to take a different path and really a different Ascension. And I'm just curious if there's any stories on that or in terms of a leader or a mentor, whether it was in the career, somebody that you either knew or didn't know that was someone that you got kind of strength from kind of climbing through your own, kind of career progression. Will go to you first Annabel. >> I actually would love to talk about the salary negotiations piece because I have a group of friends about that we've been to meeting together once a month for the last six years now. And one of the things that we committed to being very transparent with each other about was salary negotiations and signing bonuses and all of the hard topics that you kind of don't want to talk about as a manager and the women that I'm in this group with span all types of different industries. And I've learned so much from them, from my different job transitions about understanding the signing bonus, understanding equity, which is totally foreign to me coming from law and politics. And that was one of the most impactful tools that I've ever had was a group of people that I could be open with talking about salary negotiations and talking about how to really manage equity. Those are totally foreign to me up until this group of women really connected me to these topics and gave me some of that expertise. So that is something I strongly encourage is that if you haven't openly talked about salary negotiations before you should begin to do so. >> It begs the question, how was the sensitivity between the person that was making a lot of money and the person that wasn't? And how did you kind of work through that as a group for the greater good of everyone? >> Yeah, I think what's really eye opening is that for example, We had friends who were friends who were on tech, we had friends who were actually the entrepreneurs starting their own businesses or law firm, associates, law firm partners, people in PR, so we understood that there was going to be differences within industry and frankly in scale, but it was understanding even the tools, whether I think the most interesting one would be signing bonus, right? Because up until a few years ago, recruiters could ask you what you made and how do you avoid that question? How do you anchor yourself to a lower salary range or avoid that happening? I didn't know this, I didn't know how to do that. And a couple of women that had been in more senior negotiations shared ways to make sure that I was pinning myself to a higher salary range that I wanted to be in. >> That's great. That's a great story and really important to like say pin. it's a lot of logistical details, right? You just need to learn the techniques like any other skill. Inamarie, I wonder if you've got a story to share here. >> Sure. I just want to say, I love the example that you just gave because it's something I'm super passionate about, which is transparency and trust. Then I think that we're building that every day into all of our people processes. So sure, talk about sign on bonuses, talk about pay parody because that is the landscape. But a quick story for me, I would say is all about stepping into uncertainty. And when I coach younger professionals of course women, I often talk about, don't be afraid to step into the role where all of the answers are not vetted down because at the end of the day, you can influence what those answers are. I still remember when Honeywell asked me to leave the comfort of California and to come to the East coast to New Jersey and bring my family. And I was doing well in my career. I didn't feel like I needed to do that, but I was willing after some coaching to step into that uncertainty. And it was one of the best pivotal moment in my career. I didn't always know who I was going to work with. I didn't know the challenges and scope I would take on, but those were some of the biggest learning experiences and opportunities and it made me a better executive. So that's always my coaching, like go where the answers aren't quite vetted down because you can influence that as a leader. >> That's great, I mean, Beth Comstock former vice chair at GE, one of her keynotes I saw had a great line, get comfortable with being uncomfortable. And I think that its a really good kind of message, especially in the time we're living in with accelerated change. But I'm curious, Inamarie was the person that got you to take that commitment. Would you consider that a sponsor, a mentor, was it a boss? Was it maybe somebody not at work, your spouse or a friend that said go for it. What kind of pushed you over the edge to take that? >> It's a great question. It was actually the boss I was going to work for. He was the CHRO, and he said something that was so important to me that I've often said it to others. And he said trust me, he's like I know you don't have all the answers, I know we don't have this role all figured out, I know you're going to move your family, but if you trust me, there is a ton of learning on the other side of this. And sometimes that's the best thing a boss can do is say we will go on this journey together. I will help you figure it out. So it was a boss, but I think it was that trust and that willingness for him to stand and go alongside of me that made me pick up my family and be willing to move across the country. And we stayed five years and really, I am not the same executive because of that experience. >> Right, that's a great story, Jennifer, I want to go to you, you work for two owners that are so progressive and I remember when Joe Lacob came on the floor a few years back and was booed aggressively coming into a franchise that hadn't seen success in a very long time, making really aggressive moves in terms of personnel, both at the coaches and the players level, the GM level. But he had a vision and he stuck to it. And the net net was tremendous success. I wonder if you can share any of the stories, for you coming into that organization and being able to feel kind of that level of potential success and really kind of the vision and also really a focus on execution to make the vision real cause vision without execution doesn't really mean much. If you could share some stories of working for somebody like Joe Lacob, who's so visionary but also executes so very, very effectively. >> Yeah, Joe is, well I have the honor of working for Joe, for Rick Welts to who's our president. Who's living legend with the NBA with Peter Guber. Our leadership at the Warriors are truly visionary and they set audacious targets. And I would say from a story the most recent is, right now what we're living through today. And I will say Joe will not accept that we are not having games with fans. I agree he is so committed to trying to solve for this and he has really put the organization sort of on his back cause we're all like well, what do we do? And he has just refused to settle and is looking down every path as to how do we ensure the safety of our fans, the safety of our players, but how do we get back to live entertainment? And this is like a daily mantra and now the entire organization is so focused on this and it is because of his vision. And I think you need leaders like that who can set audacious goals, who can think beyond what's happening today and really energize the entire organization. And that's really what he's done. And when I talked to my peers and other teams in there they're talking about trying to close out their season or do these things. And they're like well, we're talking about, how do we open the building? And we're going to have fans, we're going to do this. And they look at me and they're like, what are you talking about? And I said, well we are so fortunate. We have leadership that just is not going to settle. Like they are just always looking to get out of whatever it is that's happening and fix it. So Joe is so committed His background, he's an epidemiologist major I think. Can you imagine how unique a background that is and how timely. And so his knowledge of just around the pandemic and how the virus is spread. And I mean it's phenomenal to watch him work and leverage sort of his business acumen, his science acumen and really think through how do we solve this. Its amazing. >> The other thing thing that you had said before is that you basically intentionally told people that they need to rethink their jobs, right? You didn't necessarily want to give them permission to get you told them we need to rethink their jobs. And it's a really interesting approach when the main business is just not happening, right? There's just no people coming through the door and paying for tickets and buying beers and hotdogs. It's a really interesting talk. And I'm curious, kind of what was the reception from the people like hey, you're the boss, you just figure it out or were they like hey, this is terrific that he pressed me to come up with some good ideas. >> Yeah, I think when all of this happened, we were resolved to make sure that our workforce is safe and that they had the tools that they needed to get through their day. But then we really challenged them with re imagining what the next normal is. Because when we come out of this, we want to be ahead of everybody else. And that comes again from the vision that Joe set, that we're going to use this time to make ourselves better internally because we have the time. I mean, we had been racing towards opening Chase Center and not having time to pause. Now let's use this time to really rethink how we're doing business. What can we do better? And I think it's really reinvigorated teams to really think and innovate in their own areas because you can innovate anything, right?. We're innovating how you pay payables, we're all innovating, we're rethinking the fan experience and queuing and lines and all of these things because now we have the time that it's really something that top down we want to come out of this stronger. >> Right, that's great. Kate I'll go to you, Julie Sweet, I'm a big fan of Julie Sweet. we went to the same school so go go Claremont. But she's been super aggressive lately on a lot of these things, there was a get to... I think it's called Getting to 50 50 by 25 initiative, a formal initiative with very specific goals and objectives. And then there was a recent thing in terms of doing some stuff in New York with retraining. And then as you said, military being close to your heart, a real specific military recruiting process, that's formal and in place. And when you see that type of leadership and formal programs put in place not just words, really encouraging, really inspirational, and that's how you actually get stuff done as you get even the consulting businesses, if you can't measure it, you can't improve it. >> Yeah Jeff, you're exactly right. And as Jennifer was talking, Julie is exactly who I was thinking about in my mind as well, because I think it takes strong leadership and courage to set bold bold goals, right? And you talked about a few of those bold goals and Julie has certainly been at the forefront of that. One of the goals we set in 2018 actually was as you said to achieve essentially a gender balance workforce. So 50% men, 50% women by 2025, I mean, that's ambitious for any company, but for us at the time we were 400,000 people. They were 500, 6,000 globally. So when you set a goal like that, it's a bold goal and it's a bold vision. And we have over 40% today, We're well on our path to get to 50%, I think by 2025. And I was really proud to share that goal in front of a group of 200 clients the day that it came out, it's a proud moment. And I think it takes leaders like Julie and many others by the way that are also setting bold goals, not just in my company to turn the dial here on gender equality in the workforce, but it's not just about gender equality. You mentioned something I think it's probably at as, or more important right now. And that's the fact that at least our leadership has taken a Stand, a pretty bold stand against social injustice and racism, >> Right which is... >> And so through that we've made some very transparent goals in North America in terms of the recruitment and retention of our black African American, Hispanic American, Latinex communities. We've set a goal to increase those populations in our workforce by 60% by 2025. And we're requiring mandatory training for all of our people to be able to identify and speak up against racism. Again, it takes courage and it takes a voice. And I think it takes setting bold goals to make a change and these are changes we're committed to. >> Right, that's terrific. I mean, we started the conversation with Grace Hopper, they put out an index for companies that don't have their own kind of internal measure to do surveys again so you can get kind of longitudinal studies over time and see how you're improving Inamarie, I want to go to you on the social justice thing. I mean, you've talked a lot about values and culture. It's a huge part of what you say. And I think that the quote that you use, if I can steal it is " no culture eats strategy for breakfast" and with the social injustice. I mean, you came out with special values just about what Zendesk is doing on social injustice. And I thought I was actually looking up just your regular core mission and value statement. And this is what came up on my Google search. So I wanted to A, you published this in a blog in June, taking a really proactive stand. And I think you mentioned something before that, but then you're kind of stuck in this role as a mind reader. I wonder if you can share a little bit of your thoughts of taking a proactive stand and what Zendesk is doing both you personally, as well as a company in supporting this. And then what did you say as a binder Cause I think these are difficult kind of uncharted waters on one hand, on the other hand, a lot of people say, hello, this has been going on forever. You guys are just now seeing cellphone footage of madness. >> Yeah Wow, there's a lot in there. Let me go to the mind reader comments, cause people are probably like, what is that about? My point was last December, November timing. I've been the Chief People Officer for about two years And I decided that it really was time with support from my CEO that Zendesk have a Chief Diversity Officer sitting in at the top of the company, really putting a face to a lot of the efforts we were doing. And so the mind reader part comes in little did I know how important that stance would become, in the may June Timing? So I joked that, it almost felt like I could have been a mind reader, but as to what have we done, a couple of things I would call out that I think are really aligned with who we are as a company because our culture is highly threaded with the concept of empathy it's been there from our beginning. We have always tried to be a company that walks in the shoes of our customers. So in may with the death of George Floyd and the world kind of snapping and all of the racial injustice, what we said is we wanted to not stay silent. And so most of my postings and points of view were that as a company, we would take a stand both internally and externally and we would also partner with other companies and organizations that are doing the big work. And I think that is the humble part of it, we can't do it all at Zendesk, we can't write all the wrongs, but we can be in partnership and service with other organizations. So we used funding and we supported those organizations and partnerships. The other thing that I would say we did that was super important along that empathy is that we posted space for our employees to come together and talk about the hurt and the pain and the experiences that were going on during those times and we called those empathy circles. And what I loved is initially, it was through our mosaic community, which is what we call our Brown and black and persons of color employee resource group. But it grew into something bigger. We ended up doing five of these empathy circles around the globe and as leadership, what we were there to do is to listen and stand as an ally and support. And the stories were life changing. And the stories really talked about a number of injustice and racism aspects that are happening around the world. And so we are committed to that journey, we will continue to support our employees, we will continue to partner and we're doing a number of the things that have been mentioned. But those empathy circles, I think were definitely a turning point for us as an organization. >> That's great, and people need it right? They need a place to talk and they also need a place to listen if it's not their experience and to be empathetic, if you just have no data or no knowledge of something, you need to be educated So that is phenomenal. I want to go to you Jennifer. Cause obviously the NBA has been very, very progressive on this topic both as a league, and then of course the Warriors. We were joking before. I mean, I don't think Steph Curry has ever had a verbal misstep in the history of his time in the NBA, the guy so eloquent and so well-spoken, but I wonder if you can share kind of inside the inner circle in terms of the conversations, that the NBA enabled right. For everything from the jerseys and going out on marches and then also from the team level, how did that kind of come down and what's of the perception inside the building? >> Sure, obviously I'm so proud to be part of a league that is as progressive and has given voice and loud, all the teams, all the athletes to express how they feel, The Warriors have always been committed to creating a diverse and equitable workplace and being part of a diverse and equitable community. I mean that's something that we've always said, but I think the situation really allowed us, over the summer to come up with a real formal response, aligning ourselves with the Black Lives Matter movement in a really meaningful way, but also in a way that allows us to iterate because as you say, it's evolving and we're learning. So we created or discussed four pillars that we wanted to work around. And that was really around wallet, heart, beat, and then tongue or voice. And Wallet is really around putting our money where our mouth is, right? And supporting organizations and groups that aligned with the values that we were trying to move forward. Heart is around engaging our employees and our fan base really, right? And so during this time we actually launched our employee resource groups for the first time and really excited and energized about what that's doing for our workforce. This is about promoting real action, civic engagement, advocacy work in the community and what we've always been really focused in a community, but this really hones it around areas that we can all rally around, right? So registration and we're really focused on supporting the election day results in terms of like having our facilities open to all the electorate. So we're going to have our San Francisco arena be a ballot drop off, our Oakland facilities is a polling site, Santa Cruz site is also a polling location, So really promoting sort of that civic engagement and causing people to really take action. heart is all around being inclusive and developing that culture that we think is really reflective of the community. And voice is really amplifying and celebrating one, the ideas, the (indistinct) want to put forth in the community, but really understanding everybody's culture and really just providing and using the platform really to provide a basis in which as our players, like Steph Curry and the rest want to share their own experiences. we have a platform that can't be matched by any pedigree, right? I mean, it's the Warriors. So I think really getting focused and rallying around these pillars, and then we can iterate and continue to grow as we define the things that we want to get involved in. >> That's terrific. So I have like pages and pages and pages of notes and could probably do this for hours and hours, but unfortunately we don't have that much time we have to wrap. So what I want to do is give you each of you the last word again as we know from this problem, right? It's not necessarily a pipeline problem, it's really a retention problem. We hear that all the time from Girls in Code and Girls in Tech. So what I'd like you to do just to wrap is just a couple of two or three sentences to a 25 year old, a young woman sitting across from you having coffee socially distanced about what you would tell her early in the career, not in college but kind of early on, what would the be the two or three sentences that you would share with that person across the table and Annabel, we'll start with you. >> Yeah, I will have to make a pitch for transportation. So in transportation only 15% of the workforce is made up of women. And so my advice would be that there are these fields, there are these opportunities where you can make a massive impact on the future of how people move or how they consume things or how they interact with the world around them. And my hope is that being at Waymo, with our self driving car technology, that we are going to change the world. And I am one of the initial people in this group to help make that happen. And one thing that I would add is women spend almost an hour a day, shuttling their kids around, and we will give you back that time one day with our self driving cars so that I'm a mom. And I know that that is going to be incredibly powerful on our daily lives. >> Jeff: That's great. Kate, I think I might know what you're already going to say, but well maybe you have something else you wanted to say too. >> I don't know, It'll be interesting. Like if I was sitting across the table from a 25 year old right now I would say a couple of things first I'd say look intentionally for a company that has an inclusive culture. Intentionally seek out the company that has an inclusive culture, because we know that companies that have inclusive cultures retain women in tech longer. And the companies that can build inclusive cultures will retain women in tech, double, double the amount that they are today in the next 10 years. That means we could put another 1.4 million women in tech and keep them in tech by 2030. So I'd really encourage them to look for that. I'd encouraged them to look for companies that have support network and reinforcements for their success, and to obviously find a Waymo car so that they can not have to worry where kids are on for an hour when you're parenting in a few years. >> Jeff: I love the intentional, it's such a great word. Inamarie, >> I'd like to imagine that I'm sitting across from a 25 year old woman of color. And what I would say is be authentically you and know that you belong in the organization that you are seeking and you were there because you have a unique perspective and a voice that needs to be heard. And don't try to be anything that you're not, be who you are and bring that voice and that perspective, because the company will be a better company, the management team will be a better management team, the workforce will be a better workforce when you belong, thrive and share that voice. >> I love that, I love that. That's why you're the Chief People Officer and not Human Resources Officer, cause people are not resources like steel and cars and this and that. All right, Jennifer, will go to you for the wrap. >> Oh my gosh, I can't follow that. But yes, I would say advocate for yourself and know your value. I think really understanding what you're worth and being willing to fight for that is critical. And I think it's something that women need to do more. >> Awesome, well again, I wish we could go all day, but I will let you get back to your very, very busy day jobs. Thank you for participating and sharing your insight. I think it's super helpful. And there and as we said at the beginning, there's no better example for young girls and young women than to see people like you in leadership roles and to hear your voices. So thank you for sharing. >> Thank you. >> All right. >> Thank you. >> Okay thank you. >> Thank you >> All right, so that was our diversity panel. I hope you enjoyed it, I sure did. I'm looking forward to chapter two. We'll get it scheduled as soon as we can. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from Orlando, Florida it's theCUBE! Covering Microsoft Ignite, brought to you by Cohesity. >> Hello, and happy taco Tuesday CUBE viewers! You are watching theCUBE's live coverage of Microsoft's Ignite here in Orlando, Florida. I'm your host Rebecca Knight, along with Stu Miniman. We're joined by Scott Hanselman, he is the partner program manager at Microsoft. Thank you so much for coming on theCUBE! >> Absolutely, my pleasure! >> Rebecca: And happy taco Tuesday to you! Will code for tacos. >> Will code for tacos. >> I'm digging it, I'm digging it >> I'm a very inexpensive coder. >> So you are the partner program manager, but you're really the people's programmer at Microsoft. Satya Nadella up on the main stage yesterday, talking about programming for everyone, empowering ordinary citizen developers, and you yourself were on the main stage this morning, "App Development for All", why is this such a priority for Microsoft at this point in time? >> Well there's the priority for Microsoft, and then I'll also speak selfishly as a priority for me, because when we talk about inclusion, what does that really mean? Well it is the opposite of exclusion. So when we mean inclusion, we need to mean everyone, we need to include everyone. So what can we do to make technology, to make programming possible, to make everyone enabled, whether that be something like drag and drop, and PowerApps, and the Power platform, all the way down to doing things like we did in the keynote this morning with C# on a tiny micro-controller, and the entire spectrum in between, whether it be citizen programmers in Excel using Power BI to go and do machine learning, or the silly things that we did in the keynote with rock, paper scissors that we might be able to talk about. All of that means including everyone and if the site isn't accessible, if Visual Studio as a tool isn't accessible, if you're training your AI in a non-ethical way, you are consciously excluding people. So back to what Satya thinks is why can't everyone do this? SatyaSacha thinks is why can't everyone do this? Why are we as programmers having any gate keeping, or you know, "You can't do that you're not a programmer, "you know, I'm a programmer, you can't have that." >> So what does the future look like, >> Rebecca: So what does the future look like, if everyone knows how to do it? I mean, do some imagining, visioning right now about if everyone does know how to do this, or at least can learn the building blocks for it, what does technology look like? >> Well hopefully it will be ethical, and it'll be democratized so that everyone can do it. I think that the things that are interesting, or innovative today will become commoditized tomorrow, like, something as simple as a webcam detecting your face, and putting a square around it and then you move around, and the square, we were like, "Oh my God, that was amazing!" And now it's just a library that you can download. What is amazing and interesting today, like AR and VR, where it's like, "Oh wow, I've never seen augmented reality work like that!" My eight-year-old will be able to do it in five years, and they'll be older than eight. >> So Scott, one of the big takeaways I had from the app dev keynote that you did this morning was in the past it was trying to get everybody on the same page, let's move them to our stack, let's move them to our cloud, let's move them on this programming language, and you really talked about how the example of Chipotle is different parts of the organization will write in a different language, and there needs to be, it's almost, you know, that service bus that you have between all of these environments, because we've spent, a lot of us, I know in my career I've spent decades trying to help break down those silos, and get everybody to work together, but we're never going to have everybody doing the same jobs, so we need to meet them where they are, they need to allow them to use the tools, the languages, the platforms that they want, but they need to all be able to work together, and this is not the Microsoft that I grew up with that is now an enabler of that environment. The word we keep coming back to is trust at the keynote. I know there's some awesome, cool new stuff about .net which is a piece of it, but it's all of the things together. >> Right, you know I was teaching a class at Mesa Community College down in San Diego a couple of days ago and they were trying, they were all people who wanted jobs, just community college people, I went to community college and it's like, I just want to know how to get a job, what is the thing that I can do? What language should I learn? And that's a tough question. They wonder, do I learn Java, do I learn C#? And someone had a really funny analogy, and I'll share it with you. They said, well you know English is the language, right? Why don't the other languages just give up? They said, you know, Finland, they're not going to win, right? Their language didn't win, so they should just give up, and they should all speak English, and I said, What an awful thing! They like their language! I'm not going to go to people who do Haskell, or Rust, or Scala, or F#, and say, you should give up! You're not going to win because C won, or Java won, or C# won. So instead, why don't we focus on standards where we can inter-operate, where we can accept that the reality is a hybrid cloud things like Azure Arc that allows us to connect multiple clouds, multi-vendor clouds together. That is all encompassing the concept of inclusion, including everyone means including every language, and as many standards as you can. So it might sound a little bit like a Tower of Babel, but we do have standards and the standards are HTTP, REST, JSON, JavaScript. It may not be the web we deserve, but it's the web that we have, so we'll use those building block technologies, and then let people do their own thing. >> So speaking of the keynote this morning, one of the cool things you were doing was talking about the rock, paper, scissors game, and how it's expanding. Tell our viewers a little bit more about the new elements to rock, paper, scissors. >> So folks named Sam Kass, a gentleman named Sam Kass many, many years ago on the internet, when the internet was much simpler web pages, created a game called Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock, and a lot of people will know that from a popular TV show on CBS, and they'll give credit to that show, in fact it was Sam Kass and Karen Bryla who created that, and we sent them a note and said, "Hey can I write a game about this?" And we basically built a Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock game in the cloud containerized at scale with multiple languages, and then we also put it on a tiny device, and what's fun about the game from a complexity perspective is that rock, paper, scissors is easy. There's only three rules, right? Paper covers rock, which makes no sense, but when you have five, it's hard! Spock shoots the Rock with his phaser, and then the lizard poisons Spock, and the paper disproves, and it gets really hard and complicated, but it's also super fun and nerdy. So we went and created a containerized app where we had all different bots, we had node, Python, Java, C#, and PHP, and then you can say, I'm going to pick Spock and .net, or node and paper, and have them fight, and then we added in some AI, and some machine learning, and some custom vision such that if you sign in with Twitter in this game, it will learn your patterns, and try to defeat you using your patterns and then, clicking on your choices and fun, snd then, clicking on your choices and fun, because we all want to go, "Rock, Paper, Scissors shoot!" So we made a custom vision model that would go, and detect your hand or whatever that is saying, this is Spock and then it would select it and play the game. So it was just great fun, and it was a lot more fun than a lot of the corporate demos that you see these days. >> All right Scott, you're doing a lot of different things at the show here. We said there's just a barrage of different announcements that were made. Love if you could share some of the things that might have flown under the radar. You know, Arc, everyone's talking about, but some cool things or things that you're geeking out on that you'd want to share with others? >> Two of the things that I'm most excited, one is an announcement that's specific to Ignite, and one's a community thing, the announcement is that .net Core 3.1 is coming. .net Core 3 has been a long time coming as we have began to mature, and create a cross platform open source .net runtime, but .net Core 3.1 LTS Long Term Support means that that's a version of .net core that you can put on a system for three years and be supported. Because a lot of people are saying, "All this open source is moving so fast! "I just upgraded to this, "and I don't want to upgrade to that". LTS releases are going to happen every November in the odd numbered years. So that means 2019, 2021, 2023, there's going to be a version of .net you can count on for three years, and then if you want to follow that train, the safe train, you can do that. In the even numbered years we're going to come out with a version of .net that will push the envelope, maybe introduce a new version of C#, it'll do something interesting and new, then we tighten the screws and then the following year that becomes a long term support version of .net. >> A question for you on that. One of the challenges I hear from customers is, when you talk about hybrid cloud, they're starting to get pulled apart a little bit, because in the public cloud, if I'm running Azure, I'm always on the latest version, but in my data center, often as you said, I want longer term support, I'm not ready to be able to take that CICD push all of the time, so it feels like I live, maybe call it bimodal if you want, but I'm being pulled with the am I always on the latest, getting the latest security, and it's all tested by them? Or am I on my own there? How do you help customers with that, when Microsoft's developing things, how do you live in both of those worlds or pull them together? >> Well, we're really just working on this idea of side-by-side, whether it be different versions of Visual Studio that are side-by-side, the stable one that your company is paying for, and then the preview version that you can go have side-by-side, or whether you could have .net Core 3, 3.1, or the next version, a preview version, and a safe version side-by-side. We want to enable people to experiment without fear of us messing up their machine, which is really, really important. >> One of the other things you were talking about is a cool community announcement. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? >> So this is a really cool product from a very, very small company out of Oregon, from a company called Wilderness Labs, and Wilderness Labs makes a micro-controller, not a micro-processor, not a raspberry pie, it doesn't run Linux, what it runs is .net, so we're actually playing Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock on this device. We've wired it all up, this is a screen from our friends at Adafruit, and I can write .net, so somehow if someone is working at, I don't know, the IT department at Little Debbie Snack Cakes, and they're making WinForms applications, they're suddenly now an IOT developer, 'cause they can go and write C# code, and control a device like this. And when you have a micro-controller, this will run for weeks on a battery, not hours. You go and 3D print a case, make this really tiny, it could become a sensor, it could become an IOT device, or one of thousands of devices that could check crops, check humidity, moisture wetness, whatever you want, and we're going to enable all kinds of things. This is just a commodity device here, this screen, it's not special. The actual device, this is the development version, size of my finger, it could be even smaller if we wanted to make it that way, and these are our friends at Wilderness Labs. and they had a successful Kickstarter, and I just wanted to give them a shout out, and I just wanted to give them a shoutout, I don't have any relationship with them, I just think they're great. >> Very cool, very cool. So you are a busy guy, and as Stu said, you're in a lot of different things within Microsoft, and yet you still have time to teach at community college. I'm interested in your perspective of why you do that? Why do you think it's so important to democratize learning about how to do this stuff? >> I am very fortunate and I think that we people, who have achieved some amount of success in our space, need to recognize that luck played a factor in that. That privilege played a factor in that. But, why can't we be the luck for somebody else, the luck can be as simple as a warm introduction. I believe very strongly in what I call the transitive value of friendship, so if we're friends, and you're friends, then the hypotenuse can be friends as well. A warm intro, a LinkedIn, a note that like, "Hey, I met this person, you should talk to them!" Non-transactional networking is really important. So I can go to a community college, and talk to a person that maybe wanted to quit, and give a speech and give them, I don't know, a week, three months, six months, more whatever, chutzpah, moxie, something that will keep them to finish their degree and then succeed, then I'm going to put good karma out into the world. >> Paying it forward. >> Exactly. >> So Scott, you mentioned that when people ask for advice, it's not about what language they do, is to, you know, is to,q you know, we talk in general about intellectual curiosity of course is good, being part of a community is a great way to participate, and Microsoft has a phenomenal one, any other tips you'd give for our listeners out there today? >> The fundamentals will never go out of style, and rather than thinking about learning how to code, why not think about learning how to think, and learning about systems thinking. One of my friends, Kishau Rogers, talked about systems thinking, I've hade her on my podcast a number of times, and we were giving a presentation at Black Girls Code, and I was talking to a fifteen-year-old young woman, and we were giving a presentation. It was clear that her mom wanted her to be there, and she's like, "Why are we here?" And I said, "All right, let's talk about programming "everybody, we're talking about programming. "My toaster is broken and the toast is not working. "What do you think is wrong?" Big, long, awkward pause and someone says, "Well is the power on?" I was like, "Well, I plugged a light in, "and nothing came on" and they were like, "Well is the fuse blown?" and then one little girl said "Well did the neighbors have power?", And I said, "You're debugging, we are debugging right?" This is the thing, you're a systems thinker, I don't know what's going on with the computer when my dad calls, I'm just figuring it out like, "Oh, I'm so happy, you work for Microsoft, "you're able to figure it out." >> Rebecca: He has his own IT guy now in you! >> Yeah, I don't know, I unplug the router, right? But that ability to think about things in the context of a larger system. I want toast, power is out in the neighborhood, drawing that line, that makes you a programmer, the language is secondary. >> Finally, the YouTube videos. Tell our viewers a little bit about those. you can go to D-O-T.net, so dot.net, the word dot, you can go to d-o-t.net, so dot.net, the word dot, slash videos and we went, and we made a 100 YouTube videos on everything from C# 101, .net, all the way up to database access, and putting things in the cloud. A very gentle, "Mr. Rodgers' Neighborhood" on-ramp. A lot of things, if you've ever seen that cartoon that says, "Want to draw an owl? "Well draw two circles, "and then draw the rest of the fricking owl." A lot of tutorials feel like that, and we don't want to do that, you know. We've got to have an on-ramp before we get on the freeway. So we've made those at dot.net/videos. >> Excellent, well that's a great plug! Thank you so much for coming on the show, Scott. >> Absolutely my pleasure! >> I'm Rebecca Knight, for Stu Miniman., stay tuned for more of theCUBE's live coverage of Microsoft Ignite. (upbeat music)

>> live from San Francisco, celebrating 10 years of high tech coverage. It's the Cube covering Veum World 2019. Brought to you by VM Wear and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back, everyone. Live Cube Live coverage here in San Francisco, California in the Mosconi North lobby for V Emerald 2019 tapes our 10th year covering with some great guest, three days of wall to wall coverage that an amazing signorina Rob Salmon is the president CEO of Cohee City. Dave Solo, presidency of the Special Olympics Northern California. Thanks for coming on. Thanks to spend the time. Thanks for doing. Set the table. Why we hear what we're talking about. What's the purpose here? I know I wouldn't want to set it up more >> absolutely. I've been involved with Special Olympics for several years now. When former company Netapp Matt Thompson over Adobe called me and said, We got this high tech challenge. Dr. We've never sold it out. We want it. We want to get more companies involved when you help out, and the answer was absolutely and that led to David asking me to be on the board. So I've been involved with David, the team for an awful long time. KOHI City When I joined the company, some of the folks there knew of my involvement is that we'd like to start participating as well, which has led to what we're doing here. Of'em World >> David Talk about Special Olympics Quick mission for sure about the folks that might not given update for sure. >> John Yes, so Special Olympics enriches the lives of children, adults with intellectual disabilities. And so, in our footprint in Northern California, with serve over 23,000 athletes ages eight above and it's it's it's interesting. There's a lot of misconceptions people will say to me That's a great event that you do every four years And they referring the World Games, especially its world games, where athletes from all over the world get a common compete. But locally, through the state programs, hundreds of competitions happen a each and every year. And in Northern California we have, or 400 competitions per year in 14 different sports provides a wonderful ray of opportunities for athletes to demonstrate what what they can do when given the opportunity >> to do so. Talk about the community of aspect of it because I think What's interesting is what's on TV and what's in the mainstream press. It's more reach people that can be known for that. But it's deeper than as you point out. But >> talk about the >> community aspect. Got volunteers, people, individuals involved. Yeah, but the makeup of the network? No, it's an incredible network. >> I think we've really brought in an expanded our reach over the last 10 years. It used to be well known primarily for sports programming. So now we have inclusive education and health programs. We're able to bring together people with and without intellectual disabilities through those mediums. So if I'd resource is to schools an education and they run special Olympics programming during the school day. So educators wanna have us because we're improving school clamp campuses, reducing bowling, enhancing social emotional learning. And so the work that we're doing is so so critical with that community, then the area health. We have inclusive health. So now we got health and medical crypt, uh, professionals that are now providing health screenings for athletes. So some of the younger volunteers that we get that they're wanting to make a career in the medical field they're exposed to our population, right? And so they learn more about their specific health needs. So it's really about changing people's attitudes. And so this community of supporters volunteers, health professionals, education, Really. Our goal is to change people's attitudes fundamentally worldwide about people with intellectual disabilities and really kind of produce inclusive mindsets. We call it really promote understanding. >> If I may. I I really think what David and his team does and folks of sports Special Olympics around the world, they're dying. Changing attitudes are changing lives, lives of the athletes, lives of the people that work with the athletes, lives of the families. If you go to these events and there's something special, there are a lot of fun. And when you get involved and you see it, it definitely touches your heart and you realize we could be doing so much more. We could be doing so much more. >> I'm struck by you. Clearly, there's a passion thread here, and your background is really interesting to me because you're an accomplished student athlete, played football on and then you started a career in nonprofit right away, and now Rob, he was somebody would have hired right. It was like the perfect student athlete. You know, magna cum laude. I want this guy on my team. My hard driving says that How did you get into this? And described the background of that >> know for sure, sewn with nonprofit work. I kind of kind of started out. I was working for Boys and Girls Clubs of America, raising money to go to grad school, to be a history professor of all things. And so I got involved with the Boys and Girls Club with special Olympics. When the opportunity came, what was what was unique about it? It's really about how sports changes people's lives. Growing up, my father left me when I was 10 years old, and so was my coaches. They were the ones that really wasn't for them. I don't know that I would be here today, so they really took an active role in my life. So I've been very passion. I believe sports is a catalyst for social change, changed my life and provide an opportunity for me to be successful. And so that's what I want to help get back to our after. And it's also so. It's interesting is it's also proves that takes a village, you know, in these experiences changes lives. I think this is the big story, and it points to that. The sports is one element of other things. Health care. So you start getting connected in this is where the magic happens. This is the key. Yeah, some of the stories that wherever just phenomenal. I think society focuses on what our athletes can't do and dwells on the disability. We don't do that. So what? We're passionate about showcasing what they can do and having our volunteer, you know, certified train coaches work with our athletes to really help them get to the next level so they could be successful not only on the field, but off the field. So I mean, I got to get involved. Talk about the virtual. You're in Northern California. That's your territory, your area. But people, how they get involved, they wanna be share some no points of touch. Yeah, for sure. So a couple key points to touch would be number one. We have over 20,000 volunteers in our footprints, so we have a tremendous need for volunteers both globally and here locally, with Special Olympics, Northern California number two is from a donor standpoint. So everything that we do for athletes is completely free. And we're able to do that because the support of our community partners, our corporate partners like, Oh, he city, you know, individual supporters foundations were able to do that because of themselves. You know, either someone could go to the global website Special Olympics dot order come to W w dot s, O N C dot or for Northern California. We're always looking for volunteers, donor's community supporters, and we're also looking for board members, particularly from the tech sector. Senior executives in the tech sector. Justin, you stay channel lies for the people involved that also includes the people who volunteered. I'm sure people that want to make a difference whether you're thinking of senior approach, rather urine or your employees who want to give back so tell about the lives changing impact there because this is a corporate angle here that's not doesn't it's not for profit thing. It's a four good thing. >> Oh, this is for a good thing, and the thing I did to that is, and we touched briefly on Boys and Girls Clubs of America. These are all great organizations. I know Patton is key note. This morning, touched on giving back. This is an opportunity. Well, we're all blessed. We should give back. But the whole notion of getting more involved in touching lives I'll start with my two boys. They went to summer games and U C Davis three or four years ago. Now both of her good runners and they had some other kids on the high school team go with them. They were incredibly impressed. They had a lot of fun. A little banter with the athletes. Newsome, Bath, please. Out there there, Let's talk your heart. The gun goes off for the start, and they're already you get the arms up, curing away, and there's others incredibly talented athletes as well. It's so it just opened your eyes of what is possible. You're the one thing I touch on Is self esteem matters for every one of us, whether you have a disability or not, whether you're young or my age, it matters for someone to tell you that you are good. You are really worthy. Your hard work is paying off. You see these athletes when they finish the race or accomplished something that couldn't be more proud going to these events it will want. You will want to get involved. That's what typically happens. >> It sounds like you do coverages gonna be making its way to these events. Actually, wait, are fully got this part in the NHL MLB, NFL Masters golf tournaments. We have to get a pro circuit going on here way. Wonderful. Yeah. Hey, this is a really great cause. Any final thoughts again, back for people who want to get involved in the North California group. What? What can you offer people? No, I think we offer people a tangible way, especially when we think of the tech sector. And we think of the, you know, the employees and the millennials and hands on way for people to come out to our regional competitions and actually engage with our athletes and volunteer and be hands on and actually see where your money goes. You know, see, see that it's something tangible and you're helping provide that venue for athletes to be successful. One of things I didn't mention that we're really proud of. So we have a way of athletes are college students. We have athletes that are full time employees. Married couples, >> Um, >> and then we have a published poet. But last couple months we have an athlete that passed the bar exam who is now going to be a practicing attorney on. So that's really shows that you know, one of the things that you guys are hitting on here, Rob, I know you guys do a lot with your company. You guys even donating one of your tech sessions for a survey that John Troyer's team did around. Check burnout. People get it and even my kids to go to the high school In a lot of high schools like this now, where people get stressed out of the weirdest things, >> This is the kind >> of thing that getting involved in these community events like this really could help everybody. She allowed a little bit, Really. Take a load off, work with people, see the connection, see the impact. It's a burnout tactic option. It's also a way to relieve some stress. Feel >> good about it. >> The employees of Cohee City, when they came to me and said they want to get more evolved, they didn't do it because of me, they did it because they're excited about working with Special Olympics and they're beaming. Means some of the athletes 11 9 with a bunch of athletes going the baseball game tonight, Hamilton tomorrow night, their families as well. We couldn't be more excited, But I agree with you. You look at all the stresses in our lives, and I think this notion of what you do, who you do with how you give back is really, really important. I think that gives back piece, I think more of us allowing employees to do that, helping our children and school understand truly important the value. Um, is this absolutely >> You guys are making a great point because we've both been involved in youth sports all our lives, and it's kind of become twisted where you've got kids needs and parents needs and the parents trying to meet him in the middle, and that's not the way it should be. Your initiatives, I mean, it underscores what it's really all about. Self esteem, having fun, supporting your teammates and the broader community. >> But they stay well and compete and win two that they're in there. See some of those players. I mean, they're >> hard. I've seen some hard core competition, no doubt. But how well do they start? So >> eight years always started eight. And we have an athlete that's 81 that participates in watching. >> So okay, so appropriate. But the reason I miss it because, you know, having studied this allowed it. It's like 12 years old is the crossover point where people start to get crazy. And if you start before then, in other words Oh, this kid is nine. But he's not that good. Who could tell what a nine year old Michael Jordan got cut from his freshman basketball team? So it just goes to show you. So I think that that again, the values that you guys air promoting our worthy thanks >> me feel better about what we're doing. A cohesive it really does. Thank you for doing this. Being able to put two things I'm really passionate about together. Ah, this is pretty special for me. And I think my it around our founder and the rest of the company. And in David and team, they just do a fantastic job. I just wanna make sure we keep building on it. >> Congratulations. Great to get the word out. Congratulations. All your hard work. Awesome Cube coverage live in San Francisco. We back with more after this short break.

>> From Santa Clara, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley, it's theCUBE. Covering Technovation's World Pitch 2018. Now, here's Sonia Tagare. >> Hi, welcome back, I'm Sonia Tagare here with theCUBE in Santa Clara, California, covering Technovation's World Pitch Summit 2018, a pitch competition for girls to develop apps in order to create a better, positive change in the world. This week, 12 finalist teams are competing for their chance to win the gold or silver scholarships. With us today, we have on Amy Kim, the Chief Operating Officer for Iridescent. Amy, congratulations, and welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you. >> Can you tell me more about Technovation? >> Technovation is a program for girls where girls identify a problem in their community and they build a mobile app and a business plan to help solve that problem. Our girls, this past year we had almost 20,000 girls participate from all around the world. We had about 115 different countries registered this year so we've had really big growth. We are in a ninth year of operation for this program, and Iridescent, who's our mother organization, we're about 13 years old. >> How did you get involved with all of this? >> I actually started off as a mentor and a volunteer here at Iridescent, so I used to volunteer for Technovation team when we used to do a small program in L.A. and San Francisco where girls used to physically come to the studio and do the Technovation program and also I used to be a mentor for our Curiosity Machine program, which is a hands-on engineering design challenge program and competition. I was a volunteer for about four years, and then I came on board as a staff member about four years ago. >> What have you noticed has been the change from when you came on to now? >> I think one thing we have done at Iridescent strategically is grow the program globally, and we did that by making our programs free and all of our curriculum accessible. What we've really relied on is training our volunteers. I think you've talked to some of the mentors, some of the regional ambassadors. The trainer model has really helped us grow, and then we're able to reach more girls at a lower cost. Most of the money that we are able to raise, we are able to serve more children and serve more kids. >> What method do you think that's really helping getting these girls noticing Technovation? Is it online, is it through mentorship? >> Actually a lot of it is word of mouth. We were featured in a documentary called Code Girl about two years ago, and that has helped us get a broader reach, too, but really it's one girl who participates or one volunteer who volunteered with us. And our RAs, our regional ambassadors, in each of their countries they really do a great job promoting on our behalf to get more girls an opportunity to be a part of this program. >> What are you most excited about for this year's competition? >> That's a little tricky, cause we always get a little attached to every team, and we really try hard not to pick a favorite, but I think one thing we've seen this year is we updated our curriculum last year and I think the curriculum has really shown to be really strong and then more and more countries can adapt it. I think just seeing what the girls can accomplish, if you guys, what you'll see is that the girls are tackling really hard problems and they bring their own unique perspectives. Just seeing how they approach a problem is, to me, very exciting. >> What are these girls judged on for their pitches? >> They're mostly judged on a few criteria. One is the actual technical ability of their apps and how well do they solve the problem that they are trying to solve. Also, what is their business plan, is this a doable thing, does this business already exist, what is unique. There will be a little bit of public speaking, also how they present themselves, and the actual technical ability of the apps as well. >> That's great. What do you hope Technovation will bring for the greater girls in tech community? >> I'm a chemist by training, and I was the only woman in my PhD program, and I think one thing that really comes up a lot is that women oftentimes don't have mentors, don't have a community, and I think for these girls, I hope that as they grow and as they go to college and they pursue their career that they have a community that they built from here that will carry on through their career. >> What success stories do you have from past Technovation winners? >> That's a tricky question cause we have so many. We have, sorry, I'm trying to remember her name. We have a student who participated about four years ago and she built an app to help Alzheimer's patients, and what she has done is she has actually created a start-up and has been featured in New York Times before. We have stories like that, but we also have stories like in the slums of India where girls don't have internet, they don't have power everyday, so what they will do is they will code on post-it notes. Then when the power will come on, they will turn on their internet and they will be able to code it on App Inventor altogether in that one hour. We have success that really varies and the way we count our success is really the fact that the girls had an opportunity that they may not have had otherwise. That's really how we count our success. Even if they don't become technology entrepreneurs, our goal really is that they try to tackle something hard, they learn through their failures, and they persisted is really our goal. >> That's wonderful, and we're so glad to be here at Technovation. Thank you for having us on. >> Thank you so much. >> Thanks for being here. I'm Sonia Tagare, and this is Amy Kim, and we're at Technovation's World Pitch Summit 2018. Stay tuned for more. 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want people to find their passion and purpose in life and achieve that because if you do what you love you know a lot of us do what we love some of us don't but if you do what you love you can be way more productive and happier right and then the end of day isn't that our goal okay bitchy it's okay to be cranky it's okay for anchor 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 a plenty of mine she's the founder of Austen women magazine and she has this catchphrase that's fabulous because the female role models if you can't see it you can't be right so if I'm a 24 year old young lady just graduating I don't see anyone else who looks like I think it is really important that you know there's all those cliches around the fact that you know you've got to go through the windows sometimes or you know opportunities are masked and they really are and so just saying yes to everything and really being open to trying new things and learning new experiences will give you opportunity didn't even realize and now I've been in it long enough where someone I met a couple years ago who was just at a conference kind of dabbling took a course from girls in tech and is now in the career field and they're kind of introducing girls detecting other so it's amazing is what it it's no longer grassroots this is actually making

>> From San Francisco, it's theCUBE covering Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference, brought to you by Girls in Tech. (upbeat digital music) >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown San Fransico at the Girls In Tech Catalyst Conference 2018. About 700 people, mainly women, some men. I think they brought in a school bus load of girls to participate. And really it's a two-day, single track conference. A lot of, just presentations by senior executive women telling their story, how they got to where they were, giving some inspirational advice. And we're psyched to be here. Adriana runs a great, great conference. It's a super organization, and we're excited to have our next guest. She's Wendy Howell, the chief of staff for Cisco Services. Wendy, great to see you. >> Great to see you, thank you for having me. >> Absolutely, so you're here instead of Cisco Live, which I think is great for you. What do think about this event? Why are you involved in Girls in Tech? >> Yeah, so I discovered Girls in Tech probably about three years ago and saw Adriana speak on just some interview. And I went, I don't know who she is, but I love her, and I love her message. So fast forward, attended my first Catalyst about three years ago, found out that we had two VPs that were on the board at Cisco which I didn't know. So, what's going on here? Let's do something with these guys. They were trying to put together a global partnership, and we really, they just couldn't get it over the line. Well, what's the problem? Funding. Okay, well let's fund it and let's just go. So we signed a global partnership two years ago with Girls in Tech. We've done, I think we've sponsored, overall with Cisco, about 15 different events. Catalyst Conference, AMPLIFY Women's Pitch Night. I think we've done eight. Hacking for Humanity events globally. It's just an amazing organization. It's the right organization at the right time. You know Adriana. She is amazing, she's a force of nature. And so I liken myself to be a mini Adriana for Cisco. (laughs) It's the time to get more and more focus on getting women in tech, and especially making sure that we have role models for the young ladies that are coming up in technology. >> Right, right. That's funny, that's how we found Adriana as well. I think she was on at a IBM event many, many moons ago and said you know, we got to get involved. >> It was random. >> The Pitch Night is really fun. You know, that's just a great event. And one of the ones from a couple years ago is really taking off, the little like, tile-like device. >> That's right, that's right. >> Which I can't remember the name, but it's not tile. >> And in fact, I saw one of your interviews, I think it was Sandy Carter. I don't know whether it was >> Yeah. the last year or the year before, I just did volunteer, >> Good, good. and it was great. >> So you know, the sponsorship list has really grow this year, and it's a who's who of corporate logos, >> Absolutely. which is great. We're looking at it over, across the way. And we talked about it a little bit before we turned on the cameras, about how some of the bigger tech companies specifically, 'cause it's kind of a tech focused event, obviously, can be, not only more involved, but a little bit more thoughtful, a little bit more organized, a little bit more coordinated in the way that they put resources behind events such as Girls in Tech. So why don't talk to kind of what your experience is there, what are guys doing, how are you trying to add a little bit more purpose and organization behind your efforts? >> Right, and again, originally the partnership, it came together quite fast after we sort of said hey let's just go do this. So then our first year, we really were focused specifically on events, and let's do events together to really get our name associated with the brand of Girls in Tech, which is global, and phenomenoal, and 100,000 plus members, etc. This year, in our second year, I think we're being a little more thoughtful, and we really want to continue to show the ROI for our organization. So we're really focusing more on the recruiting aspect. And there's some new cool things coming out on that front from Girls In Tech. And I really want to just say, hey it's great to have our name associated with Girls In Tech, but what's it doing for us? What are we doing for the women that we're supporting? Let's hire them into Cisco, let's hire them into AWS. So that's a real big key focus area for us this year. Plus the events, 'cause this is, you know, not only is it great for us, but I get to bring my team here and they come away feeling fantastic and amazing, and I get all psyched watching all these young ladies walk around. >> Right. >> Many of them, I'm like, I wasn't even thinking about things like this when I was your age. Back in the day (laughs). >> That's right, dune day, thankfully. >> That's right. >> So that's interesting, in terms of how do you measure your ROI in the investment? Clearly, recruiting has got to big a piece right? You can never get enough >> Yeah. people, and even though machines are going to take everybody's job, Everyone >> That's right one day seems to have a whole lot of open recs, and can't fill the people. So is there anything else that you look at besides just hiring, or is it the number of people that come through the process? How do you measure? 'Cause we know it's not only just good and the right thing to do, but there's real business benefit to participating in diversity programs. >> Absolutely. And I mean, every large organization right now, over the last three years, has come to that realization. This diversity is not just a buzz word, it's a thing. We know that there is greater ideas that come out of it, more diverse ideas, bookings, I mean, there's real, relatable, tangible feedback that you can get from it, right? >> Right, right. So recruiting is a big one for us, but also we look at the impact. You know, every quarter, we sit down with Girls In Tech and we get an impact report of what are you Cisco, what have you done, Cisco, and what has it done for Girls In Tech, and what has it done for us? How many people have we had attend a Hack-A-Thon? How many dollars have we supported with? How many people are going through a boot camp? So that's sort of the way we look at it as well, the impact report, also. >> And do you find it's a higher kind of ROI, in, not so much a smaller organization, but these are relatively small events compared to Cisco Live and a lot of the big events that are in the industry. Is it just a more focused return? Is it a better return? How does it fit in with your whole strategy? Yeah, I would call it more focused. It's more of a niche, but it still provides us, and we're growing, right? So we're only >> Right. the second year in, and I truly believe that if we continue our focus in this area, I can see a strong, high trajectory if you will. >> Right. So just a pitch for companies like Cisco that aren't involved with Girls in Tech, who you may compete with, you may not compete with, you probably partner with out in the ecosystem, what would you tell 'em about this organization and why they should get more involved? Yeah, I mean, I think there's a couple things. So number one, Adriana herself, and the brand of her, and the brand that is Girls In Tech now. If you think about it, I mean, 10, 11 years now, so going from one chapter to 62 plus, hopefully 75, I think, by 2020 is the goal, and now 100,000 plus members, being associated with this brand is fabulous for your business, but you know, it's also the right thing to do. Because again, I go back to my super passionate about the next generation of female leaders and these role models that the younger folks are seeing. You can't, you can't even put a price on how valuable that is for them. >> It's so funny, talk about the role models, we interviewed Maria Klawe, who runs Harvey Mudd, years ago, at Grace Hopper, and that was such a big part of her theme right? >> Are there people, >> Absolutely. are there women that the younger gals can look up to, and see oh, she looks kind of like me, or I could be like like her one day, and it's such an important thing. And she talked about, you know, Zuckerburg, and Jobs, and kind of the male tech rock stars, if you will, are tech rock stars, but they're not necessarily the ones that some 14 year old [Wendy] 10-25, or 14 13 year old, or 25 is going to look up to and say, that's me >> Exactly. in a few years, if I work, so ... >> Exactly. >> It's such an important piece of the whole component. >> My friend, a buddy of mine, she's the founder of Austin Women magazine. And she has this catch phrase that's fabulous. She goes, the female role models, if you can't see it, you can't be it. So if I'm a 24 year old young lady that's graduating, and I don't see anyone else who looks like me, then what do I do? So that's why I love this event in particular. It's my passion event, yeah. >> Alright, well Wendy, your passion comes through and thanks for taking a few minutes of your time with us. >> Absolutely, thank you for having me. >> Absolutely. Alright, she's Wendy Howell, I'm Jeff Frick. We are at Girls In Tech Catalyst in downtown San Francisco, thanks for watching. (upbeat digital music)

>> From San Francisco, it's theCUBE covering Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference, brought to you by Girls in Tech. (upbeat digital music) >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown San Fransico at the Girls In Tech Catalyst Conference 2018. About 700 people, mainly women, some men. I think they brought in a school bus load of girls to participate. And really it's a two-day, single track conference. A lot of, just presentations by senior executive women telling their story, how they got to where they were, giving some inspirational advice. And we're psyched to be here. Adriana runs a great, great conference. It's a super organization, and we're excited to have our next guest. She's Wendy Howell, the chief of staff for Cisco Services. Wendy, great to see you. >> Great to see you, thank you for having me. >> Absolutely, so you're here instead of Cisco Live, which I think is great for you. What do think about this event? Why are you involved in Girls in Tech? >> Yeah, so I discovered Girls in Tech probably about three years ago and saw Adriana speak on just some interview. And I went, I don't know who she is, but I love her, and I love her message. So fast forward, attended my first Catalyst about three years ago, found out that we had two VPs that were on the board at Cisco which I didn't know. So, what's going on here? Let's do something with these guys. They were trying to put together a global partnership, and we really, they just couldn't get it over the line. Well, what's the problem? Funding. Okay, well let's fund it and let's just go. So we signed a global partnership two years ago with Girls in Tech. We've done, I think we've sponsored, overall with Cisco, about 15 different events. Catalyst Conference, AMPLIFY Women's Pitch Night. I think we've done eight. Hacking for Humanity events globally. It's just an amazing organization. It's the right organization at the right time. You know Adriana. She is amazing, she's a force of nature. And so I liken myself to be a mini Adriana for Cisco. (laughs) It's the time to get more and more focus on getting women in tech, and especially making sure that we have role models for the young ladies that are coming up in technology. >> Right, right. That's funny, that's how we found Adriana as well. I think she was on at a IBM event many, many moons ago and said you know, we got to get involved. >> It was random. >> The Pitch Night is really fun. You know, that's just a great event. And one of the ones from a couple years ago is really taking off, the little like, tile-like device. >> That's right, that's right. >> Which I can't remember the name, but it's not tile. >> And in fact, I saw one of your interviews, I think it was Sandy Carter. I don't know whether it was >> Yeah. the last year or the year before, I just did volunteer, >> Good, good. and it was great. >> So you know, the sponsorship list has really grow this year, and it's a who's who of corporate logos, >> Absolutely. which is great. We're looking at it over, across the way. And we talked about it a little bit before we turned on the cameras, about how some of the bigger tech companies specifically, 'cause it's kind of a tech focused event, obviously, can be, not only more involved, but a little bit more thoughtful, a little bit more organized, a little bit more coordinated in the way that they put resources behind events such as Girls in Tech. So why don't talk to kind of what your experience is there, what are guys doing, how are you trying to add a little bit more purpose and organization behind your efforts? >> Right, and again, originally the partnership, it came together quite fast after we sort of said hey let's just go do this. So then our first year, we really were focused specifically on events, and let's do events together to really get our name associated with the brand of Girls in Tech, which is global, and phenomenoal, and 100,000 plus members, etc. This year, in our second year, I think we're being a little more thoughtful, and we really want to continue to show the ROI for our organization. So we're really focusing more on the recruiting aspect. And there's some new cool things coming out on that front from Girls In Tech. And I really want to just say, hey it's great to have our name associated with Girls In Tech, but what's it doing for us? What are we doing for the women that we're supporting? Let's hire them into Cisco, let's hire them into AWS. So that's a real big key focus area for us this year. Plus the events, 'cause this is, you know, not only is it great for us, but I get to bring my team here and they come away feeling fantastic and amazing, and I get all psyched watching all these young ladies walk around. >> Right. >> Many of them, I'm like, I wasn't even thinking about things like this when I was your age. Back in the day (laughs). >> That's right, dune day, thankfully. >> That's right. >> So that's interesting, in terms of how do you measure your ROI in the investment? Clearly, recruiting has got to big a piece right? You can never get enough >> Yeah. people, and even though machines are going to take everybody's job, Everyone >> That's right one day seems to have a whole lot of open recs, and can't fill the people. So is there anything else that you look at besides just hiring, or is it the number of people that come through the process? How do you measure? 'Cause we know it's not only just good and the right thing to do, but there's real business benefit to participating in diversity programs. >> Absolutely. And I mean, every large organization right now, over the last three years, has come to that realization. This diversity is not just a buzz word, it's a thing. We know that there is greater ideas that come out of it, more diverse ideas, bookings, I mean, there's real, relatable, tangible feedback that you can get from it, right? >> Right, right. So recruiting is a big one for us, but also we look at the impact. You know, every quarter, we sit down with Girls In Tech and we get an impact report of what are you Cisco, what have you done, Cisco, and what has it done for Girls In Tech, and what has it done for us? How many people have we had attend a Hack-A-Thon? How many dollars have we supported with? How many people are going through a boot camp? So that's sort of the way we look at it as well, the impact report, also. >> And do you find it's a higher kind of ROI, in, not so much a smaller organization, but these are relatively small events compared to Cisco Live and a lot of the big events that are in the industry. Is it just a more focused return? Is it a better return? How does it fit in with your whole strategy? >> Yeah, I would call it more focused. It's more of a niche, but it still provides us, and we're growing, right? So we're only >> Right. the second year in, and I truly believe that if we continue our focus in this area, I can see a strong, high trajectory if you will. >> Right. So just a pitch for companies like Cisco that aren't involved with Girls in Tech, who you may compete with, you may not compete with, you probably partner with out in the ecosystem, what would you tell 'em about this organization and why they should get more involved? >> Yeah, I mean, I think there's a couple things. So number one, Adriana herself, and the brand of her, and the brand that is Girls In Tech now. If you think about it, I mean, 10, 11 years now, so going from one chapter to 62 plus, hopefully 75, I think, by 2020 is the goal, and now 100,000 plus members, being associated with this brand is fabulous for your business, but you know, it's also the right thing to do. Because again, I go back to my super passionate about the next generation of female leaders and these role models that the younger folks are seeing. You can't, you can't even put a price on how valuable that is for them. >> It's so funny, talk about the role models, we interviewed Maria Klawe, who runs Harvey Mudd, years ago, at Grace Hopper, and that was such a big part of her theme right? >> Are there people, >> Absolutely. are there women that the younger gals can look up to, and see oh, she looks kind of like me, or I could be like like her one day, and it's such an important thing. And she talked about, you know, Zuckerburg, and Jobs, and kind of the male tech rock stars, if you will, are tech rock stars, but they're not necessarily the ones that some 14 year old [Wendy] 10-25, or 14 13 year old, or 25 is going to look up to and say, that's me >> Exactly. in a few years, if I work, so ... >> Exactly. >> It's such an important piece of the whole component. >> My friend, a buddy of mine, she's the founder of Austin Women magazine. And she has this catch phrase that's fabulous. She goes, the female role models, if you can't see it, you can't be it. So if I'm a 24 year old young lady that's graduating, and I don't see anyone else who looks like me, then what do I do? So that's why I love this event in particular. It's my passion event, yeah. >> Alright, well Wendy, your passion comes through and thanks for taking a few minutes of your time with us. >> Absolutely, thank you for having me. >> Absolutely. Alright, she's Wendy Howell, I'm Jeff Frick. We are at Girls In Tech Catalyst in downtown San Francisco, thanks for watching. (upbeat digital music)

[Music] and y'all know that these [Music] ladies and gentlemen please take your seats and silence your cellphone's our program will begin shortly ladies and gentlemen please welcome Red Hat executive vice president and chief people officer dallisa Alexander an executive vice president and chief marketing officer Tim Layton [Music] hi everyone we're so excited to kick off this afternoon day 2 at the Red Hat summit we've got a stage full of stories about people making amazing contributions with open source well you know dallisa you and I both been coming to this event for a long long time so what keeps you coming back well you know the summit started as a tech conference an amazing tech conference but now it's expanded to be so much more this year I'm really thrilled that we're able to showcase the power of open source going way beyond the data center and beyond the cloud and I'm here also on a secret mission oh yes I'm here to make sure you don't make too many bad dad jokes so there's no such thing as a bad dad they're just dad jokes are supposed to be bad but I promise to keep it to my limit but I do have one okay I may appeal to the geeks in the audience okay so what do you call a serving tray full of empty beer cans yeah we container platform well that is your one just the one that's what I only got a budget of one all right well you know I have to say though in all seriousness I'm with you yeah I've been coming to the summit since its first one and I always love to hear what new directions people are scoring what ideas they're pursuing and the perspectives they bring and this afternoon for example you're gonna hear a host of different perspectives from a lot of voices you wouldn't often see on a technology mainstage in our industry and it's all part of our open source series live and I have to say there's been a lot of good buzz about this session all week and I'm truly honored and inspired to be able to introduce them all later this afternoon I can tell you over the course the last few weeks I've spent time with all of them and every single one of them is brilliant they're an innovator they're fearless and they will restore your faith in the next generation you know I can't wait to see all these stories all of that and we've got some special guests that are surprised in store for us you know one of the things that I love about the people that are coming on the stage today with us is that so many of them teach others how to code and they're also bringing more people that are very different in to our open-source communities helping our community is more innovative and impactful and speaking of innovative and impactful that's the purpose of our open brand project right that's right we're actually in the process of exploring a refresh of our mark and we'd really like your help as well because we're doing this all in the open we've we've been doing it already in the open and so please join us in our feedback zone booth at the summit to tell us what you think now it's probably obvious but I'm big into Red Hat swag I've got the shirt I've got my pen I've got the socks so this is really important to me personally especially that when my 15 year old daughter sees me in my full regalia she calls me adorable okay that joke was fed horrible as you're done it wasn't it wasn't like I got way more well Tim thanks for helping us at this stage for today it's time to get started with our first guest all right I'll be back soon thank you the people I'm about to bring on the stage are making outstanding contributions to open source in new and brave ways they are the winners of the 2018 women and open source Awards the women in open source awards was created to highlight the contributions that women are making to open source and to inspire new generations to join the movement our judges narrowed down the panel a very long list just ten finalists and then the community selected our two winners that were honoring today let's learn a little bit more about them [Music] a lot of people assume because of my work that I must be a programmer engineer when in fact I specifically chose and communications paths for my career but what's fascinating to me is I was able to combine my love of Communications and helping people with technology and interesting ways I'm able to not be bound by the assumptions that everybody has about what the technology can and should be doing and can really ask the question of what if it could be different I always knew I wanted to be in healthcare just because I feel like has the most impact in helping people a lot of what I've been working on is geared towards developing technology and the health space towards developing world one of the coolest things about open-source is bringing people together working with other people to accomplish amazing things there's so many different projects that you could get involved in you don't even have to be the smartest person to be able to make impact when you're actually developing for someone I think it's really important to understand the need when you're pushing innovation forward sometimes the cooler thing is not [Music] for both of us to have kind of a health care focus I think it's cool because so many people don't think about health care as being something that open-source can contribute to it took a while for it to even get to the stage where it is now where people can open-source develop on concepts and health and it's an untapped potential to moving the world for this award is really about highlighting the work of dozens of women and men in this open source community that have made this project possible so I'm excited for more people to kind of turn their open-source interest in healthcare exciting here is just so much [Music] I am so honored to be able to welcome to the stage some brilliant women and opensource first one of our esteemed judges Denise Dumas VP of software engineering at Red Hat she's going to come up and share her insights on the judging process Denise so you've been judging since the very beginning 2015 what does this judge this being a judge represents you what does the award mean to you you know every year it becomes more and more challenging to select the women an opensource winner because every year we get more nominees and the quality of the submissions well there are women involved in so many fabulous projects so the things that I look for are the things that I value an open source initiative using technology to solve real world problems a work ethic that includes sin patches and altruism and I think that you'll see that this year's nominees this year's winners really epitomize those qualities totally agree shall we bring them on let's bring them on let's welcome to the stage Zoe de gay and Dana Lewis [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] alright let's take a seat [Applause] well you both have had an interesting path to open-source zuy you're a biomedical engineering student any of it you have a degree in public relations tell us what led to your involvement and open source yeah so coming to college I was new I was interested in science but I didn't want to be a medical doctor and I didn't want to get involved in wet lab research so through classes I was taking oh that's why I did biomedical engineering and through classes I was taking I found the classroom to be very dry and I didn't know how how can I apply what I'm learning and so I got involved in a lot of entrepreneurship on campus and through one of the projects I was asked to build a front end and I had no idea how to go about doing that and I had some basic rudimentary coding knowledge and what happened was I got and was digging deep and then found an open source library that was basically building a similar thing that I needed and that was where I learned about open source and I went from there now I'm really excited to be able to contribute to many communities and work on a variety of projects amazing contributions Dana tell us about your journey well I come from a non-traditional background but I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at the age of 14 and over the next couple years got really frustrated with the limitations of my own diabetes devices but felt like I couldn't change them because that wasn't my job as a patient but it was actually through social media I discovered someone who had solved one of the problems that I had been found having which was getting date off my diabetes device and that's how I learned about open source was when he was willing to share his code with me so when we turned around and made this hybrid closed-loop artificial pancreas system it was a no brainer to make our work open source as well that's right absolutely and we see using the hash tag we are not waiting can you tell us about that yeah so this hash tag was created actually before I even discovered the open source diabetes world but I loved it because it really illustrates exactly the fact that we have this amazing technology in our hands in our pockets and we can solve some of our most common problems so yes you could wait but waiting is now a choice with open source we have the ability to solve some of our hardest problems even problems dealing with life and death that's great so zuy with the vaccine carrier system that you helped to build how were you able to identify the need and where did you build it yes so I think before you even build anything first need to understand what is the problem that you're trying to solve and that really was the case when starting this project I got to collaborate with engineers in Kampala Uganda and travel there and actually interview stakeholders in the medical field medical doctors as well as pharmaceutical companies and from there I really got to understand the health system there as well as what is how do vaccines enter the country and how can we solve this problem and that's how we came up with the solution for an IOT based vaccine carrier tracking system I think it's really important especially today when products might be flashy to also understand what is the need behind it and how do we solve problems with these products yeah yeah it's so interesting how both of you have this interest in health care Dana how do you see open-source playing a role in healthcare but first before you answer that tell us about your shirt so this shirt has the code of my artificial pancreas on it and I love it as an illustration of no thank you I love it as an illustration of how open-source is more than we think it is I've just been blown away by the contributions of people in my open-source communities and I think that that is what we should apply to all of healthcare there's a lot of tools and technologies that are solving real world problems and I think if we take what we know in technology and apply it to healthcare we'll solve a lot of problems more quickly but it really needs to be recognizing everything an open source it's the documentation it's the collaboration it's the problem-solving it's working together to take technologies that we didn't previously think we're applicable and finding new ways to apply it it's a great answer Sooey yeah I think especially where healthcare is related to people and open-source is the right way to collaborate with people all over the world especially in the project I've been working on we're looking at vaccines in Uganda but the same system can be applied in any other country and then you can look at cross countries health systems there and from there it becomes bigger and bigger and I think it's really important for people who have an idea and want to take it further to know that open-source is a way that you could actually take your idea further whether you have a technical background or not so yeah stories are amazing you're just an inspiration for everyone in open-source I want to thank you so much for joining us here today let's give another round of applause to our winners [Applause] [Music] you know the tagline for the award is honor celebrate inspire and I feel like we've been doing that today very very well and I know that so many people have been inspired today especially the next generation who go on to do things we can't even dream of yet [Music] I think collabs important because we need to make sure we get younger children interested in technology so that they understand the value of it but also that there are a lot of powerful women in technology and they can be one of them I hope after this experience maybe we'll get some engineers and some girls working our hot so cool right well we have some special guests convite for the club stage now I'd like to invite Tim back and also introduce Red Hat's own Jamie Chappell along with our collab students please welcome Gabby tenzen Sofia lyric Camila and a Volyn [Applause] you've been waiting for this moment for a while we're so excited hear all about your experiences but Jamie first tell us about collab sure so collab is red hats way of teaching students about the power of open source and collaboration we kicked off a little over a year ago in Boston and that was so successful that we decided to embark on an East Coast tour so in October we made stops at middle schools in New York DC and Raleigh and these amazing people over here are from that tour and this week they have gone from student to teacher so they've hosted two workshops where they have taught Red Hat summit attendees how to turn raspberry pies into digital cameras they assigned a poem song of the open road by Walt Whitman and they've been working at the open source stories booth helping to curate photos for an installation we're excited to finish up tomorrow so amazing and welcome future women in open source we want to know all about your experiences getting involved can you tell us tenzen tell us about something you've learned so during my experience with collab I learned many things but though however the ones that I valued the most were open source and women empowerment I just I was just so fascinated about how woman were creating and inventing things for the development of Technology which was really cool and I also learned about how open source OH was free and how anyone could access it and so I also learned that many people could you know add information to it so that other people could you learn from it and use it as well and during Monday's dinner I got this card saying that the world needed more people like you and I realized through my experience with collab that the world does not only need people like me but also everyone else to create great technology so ladies you know as you were working on your cameras and the coding was there a moment in time that you had an AHA experience and I'm really getting this and I can do this yes there was an aha moment because midway through I kind of figured out well this piece of the camera went this way and this piece of the camera did it go that way and I also figured out different features that were on the camera during the camera build I had to aha moments while I was making my camera the first one was during the process of making my camera where I realized I was doing something wrong and I had to collaborate with my peers in order to troubleshoot and we realize I was doing something wrong multiple times and I had to redo it and redo it but finally I felt accomplished because I finished something I worked hard on and my second aha moment was after I finished building my camera I just stared at it and I was in shock because I built something great and it was so such a nice feeling so we talked a lot about collaboration when we were at the lab tell us about how learning about collaboration in the lab is different than in school so in school collaboration is usually few and far between so when we went to collab it allowed us to develop new skills of creativity and joining our ideas with others to make something bigger and better and also allowed us to practice lots of cooperation an example of this is in my group everybody had a different problem with their pie camera and we had to use our different strengths to like help each other out and everybody ended up assembling and working PI camera great great awesome collaboration in collab and the school is very different because in collab we were more interactive more hands-on and we had to work closer together to achieve our own goals and collaboration isn't just about working together but also combining different ideas from different people to get a product that is so much better than some of its parts so girls one other interesting observation this actually may be for the benefit of the folks in our audience but out here we have represented literally hundreds and hundreds of companies all of whom are going to be actually looking for you to come to work for them after today we get first dibs that's right but um you know if you were to have a chance to speak to these companies and say what is it that they could do to help inspire you know your your friends and peers and get them excited about open source what would you say to them well I'm pretty sure we all have app store and I'm pretty sure we've all downloaded an app on that App Store well instead of us downloading app State well the computer companies or the phone companies they could give us the opportunity to program our own app and we could put it on the App Store great idea absolutely I've got to tell you I have a 15 year old daughter and I think you're all going to be an inspiration to her for the same absolutely so much so I see you brought some cameras why don't we go down and take a picture let's do it [Applause] all right I will play my very proud collab moderator role all right so one two three collab okay one two three [Applause] yeah so we're gonna let leave you and let you tell us more open source stories all right well thank you great job thank you all and enjoy the rest of your time at Summit so appreciate it thanks thank you everyone pretty awesome pretty awesome and I would just like to say they truly are fedorable that's just um so if you would like to learn more as you heard the girls say they're actually Manning our open-source stories booth at the summit you know please come down and say hello the stories you've seen thus far from our women and open-source winners as well as our co-op students are really bringing to life the theme of this year's summit the theme of ideas worth exploring and in that spirit what we'd like to do is explore another one today and that is how open-source concepts thrive and expand in the neverending organic way that they do much like the universe metaphor that you see us using here it's expanding in new perspectives and new ideas with voices beyond their traditional all starting to make open-source much bigger than what it was originally started as fact open-source goes back a long way long before actually the term existed in those early days you know in the early 80s and the like most open-source projects were sort of loosely organized collections of self-interested developers who are really trying to build low-cost more accessible replicas of commercial software yet here we are 2018 the world is completely different the open-source collaborative development model is the font of almost all original new innovation in software and they're driven from communities communities of innovation RedHat of course has been very fortunate to have been able to build an extraordinary company you know whose development model is harnessing these open-source innovations and in turning them into technologies consumable by companies even for their most mission-critical applications the theme for today though is we see open-source this open source style collaboration and innovation moving beyond just software this collaborative community innovation is starting to impact many facets of society and you're starting to see that even with the talks we've had already too and this explosion of community driven innovation you know is again akin to this universe metaphor it expands in all directions in a very organic way so for red hat you know being both beneficiaries of this approach and stewards of the open collaboration model we see it important for us to give voice to this broader view of open source stories now when we say open source in this context of course will meaning much more than just technology it's the style of collaboration the style of interaction it's the application of open source style methods to the innovation process it's all about accelerating innovation and expanding knowledge and this can be applied to a whole range of human endeavors of course in education as we just saw today on stage in agriculture in AI as the open source stories we shared at last year's summit in emerging industries like healthcare as we just saw in manufacturing even the arts all these are areas that are now starting to benefit from collaboration in driving innovation but do we see this potentially applying to almost any area of human endeavor and it expands again organically expanding existing communities with the addition of new voices and new participants catalyzing new communities and new innovations in new areas as we were talking about and even being applied inside organizations so that individual companies and teams can get the same collaborative innovation effects and most profound certainly in my perspective is so the limitless bounds that exist for how this open collaboration can start to impact some of humankind's most fundamental challenges we saw a couple of examples in fact with our women and open-source winners you know that's amazing but it also potentially is just the tip of the iceberg so we think it's important that these ideas you know as they continue to expand our best told through storytelling because it's a way that you can embrace them and find your own inspirations and that's fundamentally the vision behind our open-source stories and it's all about you know building on what's come before you know the term we use often is stay the shoulders are giants for a lot of the young people that you've seen on this stage and you're about to see on this stage you all are those giants you're the reason and an hour appears around the world are the reasons that open-source continues to expand for them you are those giants the other thing is we all particularly in this room those of us have been around open-source we have an open-source story of our own you know how were you introduced the power of open-source how did you engage a community who inspired you to participate those are all interesting elements of our personal open-source stories and in most cases each of them are punctuated by you here my question to the girls on stage an aha moment or aha moments you know that that moment of realization that enlightens you and causes you to think differently and to illustrate I'm going to spend just a few minutes sharing my open-source story for for one fundamental reason I've been in this industry for 38 years I am a living witness to the entire life of open-source going back to the early 80s I've been doing this in the open-source corner of the industry since the beginning if you've listened to Sirhan's command-line heroes podcasts my personal open story will actually be quite familiar with you because my arc is the same as the first several podcast as she talked about I'm sort of a walking history lesson in fact of open source I wound up at most of the defining moments that should have changed how we did this not that I was particularly part of the catalyst I was just there you know sort of like the Forrest Gump of open-source I was at all these historical things but I was never really sure how it went up there but it sure was interesting so with that as a little bit of context I'm just gonna share my aha moment how did I come to be you know a 59 year old in this industry for 38 years totally passionate about not just open source driving software innovation but what open source collaboration can do for Humanity so in my experience I had three aha moments I just like to share with you the first was in the early 80s and it was when I was introduced to the UNIX operating system and by the way if you have a ha moment in the 80s this is what it looks like so 1982 mustache 19 where were you 2018 beard that took a long time to do all right so as I said my first aha moment was about the technology itself in those early days of the 80s I became a product manager and what at the time was digital equipment corporation's workstation group and I was immediately drawn to UNIX I mean certainly these this is the early UNIX workstation so the user interface was cool but what I really loved was the ability to do interactive programming via the shell but by a--basically the command line and because it was my day job to help figure out where we took these technologies I was able to both work and learn and play all from the same platform so that alone was was really cool it was a very accessible platform the other thing that was interesting about UNIX is it was built with networking and and engagement in mind had its own networking stack built in tcp/ip of course and actually built in a set of services for those who've been around for a while think back to things like news groups and email lists those were the first enablers for cross internet collaboration and that was really the the elements that really spoke to me he said AHA to me that you know this technology is accessible and it lets people engage so that was my first aha moment my second aha moment came a little bit later at this point I was an executive actually running Digital Equipment Corporation UNIX systems division and it was at a time where the UNIX wars were raging right all these companies we all compartmentalized Trump those of the community and in the end it became an existential threat to the platform itself and we came to the point where we realized we needed to actually do something we needed to get ahead of this or UNIX would be doomed the particular way we came together was something called cozy but most importantly the the technique we learned was right under our noses and it was in the area of distributed computing distributed client-server computing inherently heterogenous and all these same companies that were fierce competitors at the operating system level were collaborating incredibly well around defining the generation of client-server and distributed computing technologies and it was all being done in open source under actually a BSD license initially and Microsoft was a participant Microsoft joined the open group which was the converged standards body that was driving this and they participated to ensure there was interoperability with Windows and and.net at the time now it's no spoiler alert that UNIX lost right we did but two really important things came out of that that sort of formed the basis of my second aha moment the first is as an industry we were learning how to collaborate right we were leveraging open source licenses we realized that you know these complex technologies are best done together and that was a huge epiphany for the industry at that time and the second of course is that event is what opened the door for Linux to actually solve that problem so my second aha was all about the open collaboration model works now at this point to be perfectly candidates late 1998 well we've been acquired by compacts when I'm doing the basically same role at Compaq and I really had embraced what the potential impact of this was going to be to the industry Linux was gaining traction there were a lot of open source projects emerging in distributed computing in other areas so it was pretty clear to me that the in business impact was going to be significant and and that register for me but there was seem to be a lot more to it that I hadn't really dropped yet and that's when I had my third aha moment and that was about the passion of open-source advocates the people so you know at this time I'm running a big UNIX group but we had a lot of those employees who were incredibly passionate about about Linux and open source they're actively participating so outside of working a lot of things and they were lobbying more and more for the leadership to embrace open source more directly and I have to say their passion was contagious and it eventually spread to me you know they were they were the catalyst for my personal passion and it also led me to rethink what it is we needed to go do and that's a passion that I carry forward to this day the one driven by the people and I'll tell you some interesting things many of those folks that were with us at Compaq at the time have gone on to be icons and leaders in open-source today and many of them actually are involved with with Red Hat so I'll give you a couple of names that some of whom you will know so John and Mad Dog Hall work for me at the time he was the person who wrote the first edition of Linux for dummies he did that on his own time when he was working for us he he coined he was part of the small team that coined the term open source' some other on that team that inspired me Brian Stevens and Tim Burke who wrote the first version to rent out Enterprise Linux actually they did that in Tim Burke's garage and cost Tim's still with Red Hat today two other people you've already seen him on stage today Denise Dumas and Marko bill Peter so it was those people that I was fortunate enough to work with early on who had passion for open-source and much like me they carry it forward to this day so the punchline there is they ultimately convinced us to you know embrace open-source aggressively in our strategy and one of the interesting things that we did as a company we made an equity investment in Red Hat pre-ipo and a little funny sidebar here I had to present this proposal to the compact board on investing in Red Hat which was at that time losing money hand over fist and they said well Tim how you think they're gonna make money selling free software and I said well you know I don't really know but their customers seem to love them and we need to do this and they approve the investment on the spot so you know how high do your faith and now here we are at a three billion dollar run rate of this company pretty extraordinary so from me the third and final ha was the passion of the people in the way it was contagious so so my journey my curiosity led me first to open source and then to Red Hat and it's been you know the devotion of my career for over the last thirty years and you know I think of myself as pretty literate when it comes to open source and software but I'd be the first one to admit I would have never envisioned the extent to which open source style collaboration is now being brought to bear on some of the most interesting challenges in society so the broader realization is that open source and open can really unlock the world's potential when applied in the collaborative innovative way so what about you you know you many of you particular those have been around for a while you probably have an open source story of your own for those that maybe don't or they're new to open source are new to Red Hat your open source story may be a single inspiration away it may happen here at the summit we certainly hope so it's how we build the summit to engage you you may actually find it on this stage when I bring up some of the people who are about to follow me but this is why we tell open-source stories and open source stories live so each of you hopefully has a chance to think about you know your story and how it relates over source so please take advantage of all the things that are here at the summit and and find your inspiration if you if you haven't already so next thing is you know in a spirit of our telling open source stories today we're introducing our new documentary film the science of collective discovery it's really about citizen scientists using open systems to do serious science in their backyards and environmental areas and the like we're going to preview that I'm gonna prove it preview it today and then please come see it tonight later on when we preview the whole video so let's take a look I may not have a technical scientific background but I have one thing that the scientists don't have which is I know my backyard so conventional science happens outside of public view so it's kind of in this black box so most are up in the ivory tower and what's exciting about citizen science is that it brings it out into the open we as an environmental community are engaging with the physical world every day and you need tools to do that we needed to democratize that technology we need to make it lightweight we need to make it low-cost we needed to make it open source so that we could put that technology in the hands of everyday people so they go out and make those measurements where they live and where they breathe when you first hear about an environmental organization you mostly hear about planting trees gardens things like that you don't really think about things that are really going to affect you hey we're the air be more they'd hold it in their hand making sure not to cover the intake or the exhaust I just stand here we look at the world with forensic eyes and then we build what you can't see so the approach that we're really centered on puts humans and real issues at the center of the work and I think that's the really at the core of what open source is social value that underlies all of it it really refers to sort of the rights and responsibilities that anyone on the planet has to participate in making new discoveries so really awesome and a great story and you know please come enjoy the full video so now let's get on with our open stories live speakers you're going to really love the rest of the afternoon we have three keynotes and a demo built in and I can tell you without exaggeration that when you see and hear from the young people we're about to bring forward you know it's truly inspirational and it's gonna restore totally your enthusiasm for the future because you're gonna see some of the future leaders so please enjoy our open source stories live presentation is coming and I'll be back to join you in a little bit thanks very much please welcome code newbie founder Saran yep Eric good afternoon how y'all doing today oh that was pretty weak I think you could do better than that how y'all doing today wonderful much better I'm Saran I am the founder of code newbie we have the most supportive community of programmers and people learning to code this is my very first Red Hat summits I'm super pumped super excited to be here today I'm gonna give you a talk and I'm going to share with you the key to coding progress yes and in order to do that I'm gonna have to tell you a story so two years ago I was sitting in my hotel room and I was preparing for a big talk the next morning and usually the night before I give a big talk I'm super nervous I'm anxious I'm nauseous I'm wondering why I keep doing this to myself all the speakers backstage know exactly what I'm what I'm talking about and the night before my mom knows this so she almost always calls just to check in to see how I'm doing to see how I'm feeling and she called about midnight the night before and she said how are you how are you doing are you ready and I said you know what this time I feel really good I feel confident I think I'm gonna do a great job and the reason was because two months ago I'd already given that talk in fact just a few days prior they had published the video of that talk on YouTube and I got some really really good positive feedback I got feedback from emails and DMS and Twitter and I said man I know people really like this it's gonna be great in fact that video was the most viewed video of that conference and I said to my office said you know what let's see how many people loved my talk and still the good news is that 14 people liked it and a lot more people didn't and I saw this 8 hours before I'm supposed to give that exact same talk and I said mom I gotta call you back do you like how I did that to hang up the phone as if that's how cellphones work yeah and so I looked at this and I said oh my goodness clearly there's a huge disconnect I thought they were really liked they were I thought they were into it and this showed me that something was wrong what do you do what do you do when you're about to give that same talk in 8 hours how do you begin finding out what the problem is so you can fix it I have an idea let's read the comments you got to believe you gotta have some optimism come on I said let's read the comments because I'm sure we'll find some helpful feedback some constructive criticism some insights to help me figure out how to make this talk great so that didn't happen but I did find some really colorful language and some very creative ideas of what I could do with myself now there are some kids in the audience so I will not grace you with these comments but there was this one comment that did a really great job of capturing the sentiment of what everyone else was saying I can only show you the first part because the rest is not very family-friendly but it reads like this how do you talk about coding and not fake societal issues see the thing about that talk is it wasn't just a code talk it was a code and talk is about code and something else that talked touched on code and social justice I talked a lot about how the things that we build the way we build them affect real people and their problems and their struggles and that was absolutely not okay not okay we talk about code and code only not the social justice stuff it also talked about code and diversity yeah I think we all know the diversity is really about lowering the bar it forces us to talk about people and their issues and their problems in their history and we just don't do that okay absolutely inappropriate when it comes to a Tech Talk That Talk touched on code and feelings and feelings are squishy they're messy they're icky and a lot of us feel uncomfortable with feelings feelings have no place in technology no place in code we want to talk about code and code I want you to show me that API and when you show me that new framework that new tool that's gonna solve my problems that's all I care about I want to talk about code and give me some more code with it now I host a podcast called command line heroes it's an original podcast from Red Hat super excited about it if you haven't checked it out and totally should and what I love about this show as we talk about these really important moments and open swords these inflection points moments where we see progress we move forward and what I realized looking back at those episodes is all of those episodes have a code and something let's look at a few of those the first two episodes focused on the history of operating systems as a two-part episode part 1 and part 2 and there's lots of different ways we can talk about operating systems for these two episodes we started by talking about Windows and Mac OS and how these were two very powerful very popular operating systems but a lot of a lot of developers were frustrated with them they were closed you couldn't see inside you can see what it was doing and I the developer want to know what it's doing on my machine so we kind of had a little bit of a war one such developer who was very frustrated said I'm gonna go off and do my own thing my name is Linus this thing is Linux and I'm gonna rally all these other developers all these other people from all over the old to come together and build this new thing with me that is a code and moment in that case it was code and frustration it was a team of developers a world of developers literally old world of developers who said I'm frustrated I'm fed up I want something different and I'm gonna do something about it and what's really beautiful about frustration is it the sign of passion we're frustrated because we care because we care so much we love so deeply then we want to do something better next episode is the agile revolution this one was episode three now the agile revolution is a very very important moment in open-source and technology in general and this was in response to the way that we used to create products we used to give this huge stack of specs all these docs from the higher-ups and we'd take it and we go to our little corner and we lightly code and build and then a year with Pastor here's a pass a few years have passed and we'd finally burst forth with this new product and hope that users liked it and loved it and used it and I know something else will do that today it's okay no judgment now sometimes that worked and a lot of times it didn't but whether or not it actually worked it hurt it was painful these developers not enjoy this process so what happened a dozen developers got together and literally went off into their own and created something called the agile manifesto now this was another code and moment here it's code and anger these developers were so angry that they literally left civilization went off into a mountain to write the agile manifesto and what I love about this example is these developers did not work at the same company we're not on the same team they knew each other from different conferences and such but they really came from different survive and they agreed that they were so angry they were going to literally rewrite the way we created products next as an example DevOps tear down the wall this one is Episode four now this is a bit different because we're not talking about a piece of technology or even the way we code here we're talking about the way we work together the way that we collaborate and here we have our operations folks and our developers and we've created this new kind of weird place thing called DevOps and DevOps is interesting because we've gotten to a point where we have new tools new toys so that our developers can do a lot of the stuff that only the operations folks used to be able to do that thing that took days weeks months to set up I can do it with a slider it's kind of scary I can do it with a few buttons and here we have another code and moment and here that blink is fear for two reasons the operations focus is looking over the developer folks and thinking that was my job I used to be able to do that am I still valuable do I have a place in this future do I need to retrain there's also another fear which is those developers know what they're doing do they understand the security implications they appreciate how hard it is or something to scale and how to do that properly and I'm really interested in excited to see where we go with that where we take that emotion if we look at all of season one of the podcast we see that there's always a code and whether it's a code and frustration a code and anger or a code and fear it always boils down to code and feelings feelings are powerful in almost every single episode we see that that movement forward that progress is tied back to some type of Oshin and for a lot of us this is uncomfortable feelings make us feel weird and a lot of those YouTube commenters definitely do not like this whole feeling stuff don't be like those YouTube commenters there's one thing you take away from this whole talk let it be that don't be like these YouTube commenters feelings are incredibly powerful so the next time that you're working on a project you're having a conversation about a piece of software or a new piece of technology and you start to get it worked up you get angry you get frustrated maybe you get worried you get anxious you get scared I hope you recognize that feeling as a source of energy I hope you take that energy and you help us move forward I would take that to create the next inflection point that next step in the right direction feelings are your superpowers and I hope you use your powers for good thank you so much [Applause] please welcome jewel-box chief technology officer Sara Chipps [Music] Wow there's a lot of you out here how's it going I know there's a lot of you East Coasters here as well and I'm still catching up on that sleep so I hope you guys are having a great experience also my name is Sarah I'm here from New York I have been a software developer for 17 years it's longer than some of the people on stage today I've been alive big thanks to the folks at Red Hat for letting us come and tell you a little bit about jewel box so without further ado I'm gonna do exactly that okay so today we're gonna do a few things first I'm gonna tell you why we built jewel BOTS and why we think it's a really important technology I'm gonna show you some amazing magic and then we're gonna have one of the jewel bus experts come as a special guest and talk to you more about the deep technology behind what we're building so show hands in the audience who here was under 18 years old when they started coding it's hard for me to see you guys yep look around I'd have to say at least 50% of you have your hands up all right keep your hand up if you were under 15 when you started coding I think more hands up just what is it I don't know how that mouth works but awesome okay great yeah a little of I think about half of you half of you have your hands up that's really neat I've done a bunch of informal polls on the internet about this I found that probably about two-thirds of professional coders were under 18 when they started coding I myself was 11 I was a homeschooled kid so a little weird I'm part of the generation and some of you maybe as well is the reason we became coders is because we were lonely not because we made a lot of money so I was 11 this is before the internet was a thing and we had these things called BBS's and you would call up someone else's computer in your town and you would hang out with people and chat with them and play role-playing games with them it didn't have to be your town but if it wasn't your mom would yell at you for a long distance fees and I got really excited about computers and coding because of the community that I found online okay so this is sometimes the most controversial part of this presentation I promised you that they dominate our lives in many ways even if you don't even if you don't even know a 9 to 14 year old girl even if you just see them on the street sometimes they are deciding what you and I do on a regular basis hear me out for a second here so who here knows who this guy is okay you don't have to raise your hands but I think most people know who this guy is right so this guy used to be this guy and then teenage girls were like I think this guy has some talent to him I think that he's got a future and now he's a huge celebrity today what about this guy just got his first Oscar you know just kind of starting out well this guy used to be this guy and I'm proud to tell you that I am one of the many girls that discovered him and decided this guy has a future all right raise your hand if you listen to Taylor Swift just kidding I won't make you do it but awesome that's great so Taylor Swift we listen to Taylor Swift because these girls discovered Taylor Swift it wasn't a 35 year old that was like this Taylor Swift is pretty neat no one cares what we think but even bigger than that these huge unicorns that all of us some of us work for some of us wish we invented these were discovered by young teenage girls no one is checking to see what apps were using they're finding new communities in these thin in these platforms and saying this is how I want to commune with my friends things like Instagram snapchat and musically all start with this demographic and then we get our cues from them if you don't know what musically is I promise you ask your nearest 9 to 14 year old friend if you don't do that you'll hear about it in a few years but this demographic their futures are all at risk everyone here knows how much the field of software development is growing and how important technical literacy is to the future of our youth however just 18% of computer science graduates are girls just 19% of AP computer science test takers and just 15% of Google's tech force identify as female so we decided to do something about that we were inspired by platforms like MySpace and Geocities things like Neopets and minecraft all places where kids find something they love and they're like okay to make this better all I have to do is learn how to code I can totally do that and so we wanted to do that so we talked to 200 girls we went to schools we sat down with them and we were like what makes you tick what are you excited about and what we heard from them over and over again is their friends their friends and their community are pivotal to them and this time in their lives so when we started talking to them about a smart friendship bracelet that's when they started really freaking out so we built Jewel BOTS and Jewel BOTS has an active online community where girls can work together share code that they've built and learn from each other help each other troubleshoot sometimes the way they work is when you are near your friends your bracelets light up the same color and you can use them to send secret messages to each other and you can also code them so you can say things like when all my swimming friends are together in the same room all of our bracelets should go rainbow colors which is really fun you can even build games jewel BOTS started shipping about a year and a half ago about after a lot of work and we are about to ship our 12,000 jewel bot we're in 38 city sorry 38 countries and we're just getting started okay so now it's time for the magic and I have an important question does anyone here want to be my friend pick me all right someone today Gary oh I don't have many friends that's awesome I'm so glad that we'll be friends okay it's awesome so we just need to pair our jewel BA okay okay and in order to do that we're gonna hold the magic button in the middle down for two seconds so one locomotive two locomotive great and then we got a white flashing I'm gonna do yours again I did it wrong locomotive two locomotive it's we're adults we can't do it okay it's a good that are smart alright so now we get to pick our friendship color I'm gonna pick red hat red does that work for you sure okay great so now I just picked a red hat red and my jewel bot is saying alright Tim's jewel bot do you want to be my friend and imageable about it's like I'm thinking about it I think so okay now we're ready okay great so now we're red friends when we're together our bracelets are going to be red and I will send you a secret message when it's time for you to come out and trip and introduce the next guest awesome well thank you so much thank you tailor gun so glad we could be friends and if only people would start following me on Twitter it'd be a great day awesome alright so now you can see the not so technical part of jewel box they use bluetooth to sense when your friends are nearby so they would work in about a 30 meter hundred foot range but to tell you about the actual technology part I'm going to introduce is someone much more qualified than I am so Ellie is one of our jewel box ambassadors she's an amazing YouTube channel that I would please ask you to check out and subscribe she's le G Joel BOTS on YouTube she's an amazing coder and I'm really excited to introduce you today to Ellie Galloway come on out Ellie [Applause] hello my name is le gallais I'm gonna show you how I got coding and then show you some coding in action I first started coding at a6 when my dad helped me code a game soon after I program form a code for Minecraft then my dad had shown me jo bot I keep coding because it helps people for instance for instance you could code auto crack to make it a lot smarter so it can help make people stay run faster but what about something more serious what if you could help answer 911 calls and give alerts before we start I have three main steps to share with you I often use these steps to encoding my jaw bot and continue to use some of these now step one read the instructions and in other words this means for Jabba to memorize the colors and positions a way to memorize these because it's tricky is to remember all the colors and positions you O type will be capital and remember that the positions are either short for north west south west north east and south east step to learn the basic codes when it comes to coding you need to work your way up step 3 discover feel free to discover once you mastered everything now let's get to coding let's use or let's first use combining lights so under void loop I'm going to put LED turn on single s/w and blue and before we make sure that this works we got to put LED LED okay now let's type this again LED dot turn on single now let's do SW green now we have our first sketch so let's explain what this means led LED is a function that to control the LED lights LED turn on single SW blue tells that SW light to turn blue and green flashes so quickly with the blue it creates aqua now let's do another code lets you i'm going to use a more advanced command to make a custom color using RGB let's use a soft pink using 255 105 and 180 now let's type this in the button press function so let's do LED led LED dot set light and now we can do let's do position 3 255 105 and 180 now let's explain what this means the first one stands for the position the three others stand for red green and blue our GPS can only go up to 255 but there are 256 levels but if you count the first one as zero then get 255 so let's first before we move on let's show how this works so this is it before and now let's turn it on to see how our aqua turned out now let's see how our RGB light turned out so we are looking for a soft pink so let's see how it looks think about how much the code you write can help people all around the world these are ideas are just the beginning of opening a new world in technology a fresh start is right around the corner I hope this helped you learn a little bit about coding and even made you want to try it out for yourself thank you [Applause] alright alright alright I need your help for a second guys alright one second really really fascinating we're short on time today is Ellie's 11th birthday and I think we should give her the biggest present that she's gonna get today and it's something none of us have experienced and that is thousands of people saying happy birthday Elliott wants so when I say three can I get a happy birthday Elly one two three happy birthday Elly great job that's the best part of my job okay so those are that's two of us we're just getting started this numbers out Dana would almost shipped 12,000 jewel BOTS and what I'm really excited to tell you about is that 44% of our users don't just play with their jewel bots they code them and they're coding C do you even code C I don't know that you do but we have 8 to 14 year olds coding C for their jewel box we also have hundreds of events where kids come and they learn how to code for the first time here's how you can help we're open source so check out our github get involved our communities online you can see the different features that people's are asking for we're also doing events all over the world a lot of people are hosting them at their companies if you're interested in doing so reach out to us thank you so much for coming and learning about jewel box today enjoy the rest of your summit [Music] ladies and gentlemen please welcome hacker femme au founder Femi who Bois de Kunz [Music] good afternoon red hat summit 2018 i'm femi holiday combs founder of hacker femme Oh I started coding when I was 8 when I was 9 I set up South London raspberry jam through crowdfunding to share my passion for coding with other young people who might not otherwise be exposed to tech since then I've run hundreds of coding and robot workshops across the UK and globally in 2017 I was awarded an inaugural legacy Diana award by their Royal Highnesses Prince William and Prince Harry my service and community we welcome young people who have autism or like me tract syndrome because coding linked me up to a wider community of like-minded people and I'm trying to do the same for those who might also benefit from this I also deliver workshops to corporate companies and public organizations whilst feeding back ideas and resources into my community work we like to cascade our knowledge and experience to other young coders so that they can benefit too we're learning new tech every day we're starting to use github to document and manage our coding projects we've no dread we're using the terminal and beginning to really appreciate Linux as we explore cybersecurity and blockchain it's been quite a journey from South London to the world-famous Tate Modern museum to Bangladesh to this my first trip to the States and soon to China where I hope to translate my microwave workshops into Mandarin on this journey I'm noticed it is increasingly important for young coders to have collaborative and community led initiatives and enterprise and career ready skills so my vision now is to run monthly meetups and in collaboration with business partners help a hundred young disadvantaged people to get jobs in the digital services in fact out of all the lessons I've learned from teaching young coders they all have one thing in common the power of open source and the importance of developing community and today I want to talk about three of those lessons the value of reaching out and collaborating the importance of partnering event price and the ability to self organize and persist which translated into English means having a can-do attitude getting stuff done when you reach out when you show curiosity you realize you're not alone in this diverse community no matter who you are and where you're from from coding with minecraft to meeting other young people with jams I found there are people like me doing things I like doing I get to connect with them that's where open-source comes to the fourth second the open source community is so vast then it crosses continents it's so immersed perspectives that it can take you to amazing places out of space even that's my code running on the International Space Station's Columbus module let's take a lesson and playing was an audio representation for the frequencies recorded in space my team developed Python code to measure and store frequency readings from the space station and that was down linked back to earth to my email box Thomas who's 10 developed an audio file using audacity and importing it back into Python how cool is that Trulli collaboration can take you places you never thought possible because that's how the community works when you throw a dilemma a problem a tip the open source community comes back with answers when you give the community gives back tenfold that's how open source expands but in that vast starscape how do you know what to focus on there are so many problems to solve where do I start your world enterprice enterprise software is very good at solving problems what's the big problem how about helping the next generation be ready for the future I want to do more for the young coding community so I'm developing entrepreneurial business links to get that done this is a way to promote pathways to deal with future business problems whether in FinTech healthcare or supply chains a meeting the skill shortage it is a case for emerging in it's a case for investing in emerging communities and young change enablers throwing a wider net equates to being fully inclusive with a good representation of diversity you know under the shadow of the iconic show back in London there are pockets of deprivation where young people can't even get a job in a supermarket many of them are interested in tech in some way so my goal for the next three years is to encourage young people to become an active part of the coding community with open source we have the keys to unlock the potential for future innovation and technological development with young coders we have the people who have to face these problems working on them now troubleshooting being creative connecting with each other finding a community discovering their strengths along the way for me after running workshops in the community for a number of years when I returned from introducing coding to young street kids in Bangladesh I realized I had skills and experience so I set up my business hacker Famicom my first monetized fehmi's coding boot camp at Rice London Barclays Bank it was a sellout and a few weeks later shows my second I haven't looked back since but it works the opposite way - all the money raised enable me to buy robots for my community events and I was able to cascade my end price knowledge across to other young coders - when you focus on business problems you get active enthusiastic support from enterprise and then you can take on anything the support is great and we have tons of ideas but what does it really take to execute on those ideas to get things done can-do attitudes what open source needs you've seen it all this week we're all explorers ideator z' thinkers and doers open source needs people who can make the ideas happen get out there and see them through like I did setting up Safford and raspberry jam as an inclusive space to collaborate and learn together and that that led to organizing the young coders conference this was about organizing our own two-day event for our partners in industry to show they value young people and wanted to invest in our growth it doesn't stop there oh nice now I'm setting up monthly coding meetups and looking at ways to help other young people to access job opportunities in end price and digital services the underlying ethos remains the same in all I do promoting young people with the desire to explore collaborative problem-solving when coding digital making and building enterprise you fled having the confidence to define our journey and pathways always being inclusive always encouraging innovation and creativity being doers does more than get projects done makes us a pioneering force in the community dreaming and doing is how we will make exponential leaps my generation is standing on the shoulders of giants you the open-source pioneers and the technology you will built so I'd love to hear about your experiences who brought you into the open-source community who taught you as we go to upscale our efforts we encounter difficulties have you and how did you overcome them please do come to talk to me I'll be in the open-source stories booth both today and tomorrow giving workshops or visit the Red Hat page of my website hack Famicom I really value your insights in conclusion I'd like I'd like to ask you to challenge yourself you can do this by supporting young coders find the crowdfunding campaign kick-start their ideas into reality I'm proof that it works it's so awesome to be an active part of the next exponential leap together thank you [Applause] so unbelievable huh you know he reminds me of be at that age not even close and I can tell you I've spent a lot of time with Femi and his mom grace I mean what you see is what you get I mean he's incredibly passionate committed and all that stuff he's doing that long list of things he's doing he's going to do so hopefully today you get a sense of what's coming in the next generation the amazing things that people are doing with collaboration I'd also like to thank in addition to femi I'd like to thank Sauron Sarah and Ellie for equally compelling talks around the open source stories and again as I mentioned before any one of you can have an open source story that can be up here inspiring others and that's really our goal in telling these stories and giving voice to the things that you've seen today absolutely extraordinary things are happening out there and I encourage you to take every advantage you can hear this week and as is our theme for the summit please keep exploring thank you very much [Applause] [Music]

(electronic music) >> Hello and welcome to the Cube conversation. I'm John Furrier here in the Palo Alto studios with two great guests, Tara Chklovski, who is the founder and CEO of Iridescent and Anar Simpson, global ambassador of Technovation. First, thanks for coming in today. I appreciate moving your schedules around to come in. Thanks for coming into our studio. >> You bet, yeah. >> So Sundar Pichai was at your event. That's the big story this past week has been the Google memo from a low level employee who wrote some things that got the whole world shaking around gender biases, role of women in tech, and as we do a lot of women in tech as you know at the Cube. Hundreds and hundreds of women in over the years, friends, and also smart people. This is a pretty big moment for you guys. You had an event at Google. Sundar canceled his all hands meeting to address this under fear of retaliation and safety but came to your event on the Google campus. Surprising to many, as written up on VCode and the Verge. Pretty notable. So tell us about what happened. >> So this was the 2017 Technovation world pitch competition and the award ceremony and Sundar came and he talked to a lot of the girls who were presenting their ideas to solve problems in their community and then he had a little bit of a one on one conversation to learn a little bit more about the kinds of problems, their interest in technology, entrepreneurship, and then he addressed the crowd of 900 plus supporters and really reemphasized that there's a place for women in technology, and more importantly, for him and Google, that there's a place for these girls at Google. >> Talk about your mission. >> Right, so Technovation's mission is to empower girls to become technology entrepreneurs and it's much more than just learning how to code. It's really about telling girls that if there's a problem in their community, technology can help them have a very powerful voice. We've been running for eight years and Anar is our global ambassador who has helped us grow to more than 100 countries, but Technovation's relationship with Google is eight years long. Google has supported Technovation, was the very first technology company to support Technovation way before any other company saw the potential and since then, since 2010, Google has provided funding, mentors, spaces, not just across the U.S. but globally. >> Is it beyond entrepreneurship and beyond coding? Talk about specifically what you guys are bringing to folks outside of Silicon Valley. >> Oh, sure, so my role as the global ambassador for Technovation is really getting to girls all over the world and saying to them, you need to be engaged in technology. And what we found, as Tara mentioned, we've been doing this now, I've been doing this now for five years, is that we're building a movement. We're bringing in girls, we're bringing in mentors, we're bringing in companies and governments together to make this a reality for girls in tech careers in their own countries. >> What's some examples during your life when you had those kind of change moments? >> I think Iridescent, we are now in our 12th year, and every couple of months, it's a change moment because it's a test of grit and just believing in yourself because I started it with just an idea and grew it to be an organization that's all over the world and it doesn't come with just full hearted focus and a lot of courage is what I've seen, I think. I've also seen that how much you are passionate about an idea really swings how the other person is thinking and so the idea only matters so much, I think, of course I mean the track record and everything has to be there, but I think a lot of it depends on your own passion for it and I think I've come to realize that passion is maybe proportional to the complexity and the impact of the problem you're trying to solve, so if you're only trying to solve a small problem, you lose interest in two years. And maybe that's why, I'm always curious, like why do so many start ups fail after two or three years? It's because maybe you came in not thinking that you're going to change the world, maybe you came in because you wanted to make quick money or exit or whatever and so I think for me, it's this is my life's work and we want to bring more underrepresented communities into innovation, and so it's not something that is going to be solved easily. >> Let's get back to the Sundar event that you guys were at because I think it's a good conversation to have because one of the things that came out of the brouhaha that became that memo really was a conversation publicly. Now, it's been polarized here. There's just kind of a hate kind of mindset with it most of the time, plenty of stuff on the internet to go read through but there was actually some good conversations in the industry. What was the conversation like during the event because this was in full conversation mode while you guys were having your 2017 world pitch competition, which he presided over and had a speech to the entrepreneurs. What was it like? What were some of the conversations that were taking place? >> I think the most powerful piece of the whole evening was really the girls walking in and seeing the incredible diversity that we have in this world, right? So we had girls from and mentors and supporters from over 30 countries and just them coming and waving the flags and different faces and different cultures all trying to make the world a better place, I mean it's rare that you see that using technology and I think it's very fitting that Silicon Valley is the center of this, but I think there was not one dry eye in the group because you realize, the conversation is so much bigger than one company, one country. It is something that affects us as all human beings and you're believing in human potential so I think seeing these young girls, some of them 10 years old, there was this, I think, maybe the crowd's favorite was these 10 year old girls from Cambodia who want to improve the lives of these people working in cottage industries, right, and they created an app like say Etsy or something, but focused on Cambodian products and the courage of these little girls, I think everybody walks away feeling, okay there's hope. Even in the midst of all of this discussion. >> Yeah it creates a lightning rod in some ways and hopefully it will move on to the substantive conversations. How do you guys feel about what happened and as you take this mission forward? You guys are doing some amazing work, we'll do a whole nother segment, I think, that's on that in a minute, but given the landscape now, how do you view this and how are you talking with friends and colleagues and family members around it because I've certainly had conversations with my friends, certainly on the east coast, like no, no, that's not the way Silicon Valley is. Google actually is a very cool company, it's not exactly like what you think it is. They're very open. They support a lot of great initiatives and they're candid. And then I go on and explain, it's like a university, serene little area, have this little ecosystem, that they've kind of built a university culture, if you will. But it is open and there's things that happen that get misrepresented and that was my take. That's for the folks that filmed at Silicon Valley. But what's your take? What do you think about what's happening? >> So this is really, really good that you brought up the university campus environment. So I have two girls. They're both millennials and they're both in the tech world and we have this discussion and here is the perfect answer, right. So one of my daughters, Kat, she said that when she read that, she thought it was basically a gathering of his thoughts and it was a gathering of his thoughts because he was probably asked to adhere to I&D staff that's going on in every company right now, right, and so it was a little bit of a, wait a second, you know. He wants to sort of respond to his being asked to go to I&D staff and then Katia said, but you know mom, it was just a gathering of his thoughts and this is an essay, and it was a poorly written one, and if I was grading it, I would give him a C minus. Then my older daughter said-- >> Host: I would have given him an F on that one. She's generous. >> Because he did, he tried to make it very professional and very academic and she said but it was a first draft, he has not, he didn't proceed to toughen it up, solidify it, find more evidence, have it critiqued. It was just a gathering of his thoughts and he hasn't gone through the presses and both these girls graduated from Berkeley and so I think they would know what a C paper looks like versus an A paper. And then my older daughter said, and the other thing is, you know, it's not like I&D efforts are actually bad but what we're trying to do is we're trying to condense the time in which we're trying to get women at equal pairing in the tech world. Now, you know women have never been at equal pairing in many professions. They were not enough doctors, lawyers, accountants, you name it, right? Main Street, Wall Street has never had equality. And now we're looking at technology and the reason everything just flairs up in technology is because we live in today's world where news and information is available all the time. So there's two things going on. Information is readily available. People can come into the conversation very quickly and whenever anything happens in Silicon Valley, the effect is massive because all eyes are on Silicon Valley all the time. So it's a bit of a distorted view but we have gone through this. It took a long time for women to become astronauts. It took a long time for women to become neurosurgeons. It took a long time for women to become lawyers and dentists. It will take a little bit of time for women to become top technologists, but we're hoping that it'll shorten and things happen quickly in the valley and we're trying to get that quicker and so we're seeing a little bit of friction. This is responses from millennials so for me, it was like, yes. >> Host: Interesting perspective. >> Yes, great perspective, and when Sundar said these things at the world pitch, I was sitting in the second row and every time he said something I would clap real loud and Todd said, why are you being so good and I said I need to hear that, I need to hear him say that because-- >> Host: What did he say that moved you? >> Oh he just said, you know you have a place in technology and I said yes, we needed to hear you say that right away, all the time and especially to these girls, these eight to 18 year old girls, and all of the ones that come from 100 countries that weren't at Google but were listening to the live pitch. >> We seem to be going back to a crowd that wants to see respect for the individual and citizenship. These were company values at Hewlett Packard, when I was there, that I always remembered was unique. They go hey, you can have differences, but if you have respect for the individual and you have a citizenship mindset. That seemed to have been lost in tech. With this whole movement you see and win at all costs, being an asshole is what you got to do to be a CEO or flip it fast or bros program, so it became a very selfish environment. It seems to be shifting now, with this conversation. Your thoughts? >> So I have to say, doing a start up is not easy. Getting successful in this world is not easy. Shaking the status quo is not easy, so I have to say that the same people, and we're not going to name names, but the same people who are very arrogant and have little respect for the laws and rules, they have given us products that are changing peoples' lives. There is no question about it. Without their bravado, without their I don't care, I'm just going to go over you if you don't comply with me, a lot of ride sharing wouldn't even have happened, and to me, when you provide employment, when you provide alternative services, when you provide something that takes away the way things were, I see that as a plus. I think what we're seeing is that's needed to a certain extent and then you realize, okay now we have to get back to growing it and working it and if you keep going in that mode, you probably won't succeed. >> So being tough and determined and having grit is what you need to break through those walls as a start up. You don't need to be necessarily a jerk, but your point is if you're creating value. >> If you're creating value, and that sometimes you actually have to be a jerk because there are very few brave, non-jerk people who have gone against a big unions and big monopolies. Right, you and I, I would not be able to go against the taxi commission. You need somebody who is a complete a-hole to do that. And he did that and it made a difference. He doesn't have to continue to do that and that's the point. >> There's a meme going around on the internet, if you want to make friends, sell ice cream. >> Exactly! >> So you cannot always win friends when you're pioneering things. >> And you know, there is a balance and maybe we've fostered the fact that you need to be that attitude for everything and that's not true so the pendulum shifted a bit too much but I think that we shouldn't scorn them because really they have made a difference, let's just let everybody get back to-- >> Its a tough world out there to survive and you have to have that kind of sharp elbows to make things happen and it's the value you're providing is how you do it. >> Exactly. >> Well it's no secret to the folks that know me and watch The Cube and know the Silicon Valley that I'm a huge proponent for computer science and, you know, as someone who kind of fell into that in the '80s, it's now become very interesting in that the surface area for computer science has increased a lot and its not just coding and heads down and squashing bugs and writing code. There's been a whole nother evolution of Soft Scales, Agile, Cloud, you've seen a full transformation with the potential unlimited compute available, with mobile now 10 years plus into the iPhone you see new infrastructure developing so it creates the notion that, okay, you can bring the science of computers to a whole nother level. That must be attractive as you guys have that capability to bring that to bear in the programs. Can you guys comment on how you guys see just the role of computer science playing out and this is not a gender thing, this is more of, as I have a young daughter I try to say, it's not just writing code, you could certainly whip out a mobile app, but it's really bringing design to it or bringing a personal passion that you might have, so what are some of the patterns you're seeing in the surface area of what's now known as computer science? >> I think it's super important because as technology has progressed, we've been able to provide this program. If we were still programming in front of screens and doing the what you see is what you get kind of thing without, we would not be there. I think the big thing that's happened in the last 10 years is the mobile phone. I mean, if you find a girl anywhere today in the world, chances are she'll have a mobile phone on her and she's going to be loathe for you to take that one thing from her. You could take other things from her, but try taking that phone away from her. She will not let you. And so the fact that she's so attached to that mobile phone means that you can then tell her, hey, you don't have to be just a consumer of that thing, you can be a producer of that thing. Anything that you see on there, you can actually design. This is power. This is your thing to good and great and better. And if we can shift that in their minds that this is their link to the world that's wide open, we're seeing that. >> Well the world is consumed by it. I mean, a lot of women in the world will be consumers of product, certainly with AI, the conversation over the weekend I was having with folks as the role of women is super important not just in AI, but as software becomes cognitive, you have to align with half the audience that's out there. Must be hard for a guy to program something that's going to be more oriented towards women, but it brings up the question of application and whether it's self driving cars or utility from work to play and everything in between, software and the role of software is going to be critical and that seems to be pretty clear. Question is how do you inspire young girls. That's the question that a lot of fellow males that I talk to who are fathers of daughters and who are promoting women in tech and see that vision. What are some of the inspiration areas? How do you really shake the interest and how do you have someone really kind of dig in and enjoy it and taste it and feel it? >> So there is some research to back what the formula is that works to drive change in behavior and so there is, one of the biggest names in cognitive psychology is Albert Bandura. He's a professor at Stanford. But basically it's the same principles that drive, say, the addiction from alcohol or weight loss or any kind of new behavior change. So the first is you need to have exposure to someone whom you respect showing that this is something of meaning, and so the key words are someone you respect, right? And so media can play a very big role here, for scale, right, otherwise it's only maybe a teacher or a parent and if they're not exposed to technology they can't really affect your... And so media can play a huge role there. Second is the experience itself, like how do you make it easy to get started. And then it's like learning from video games, so you make it very, very easy, like the first step is just come over here, it'll be fun, there's pizza, come, right, like your friends are coming, but then the feedback has to be very fast, so the first step, and that's where your good curriculum matters. So that's where also working on a mobile phone is very appealing even though maybe apps is not-- >> Host: It's relatable. >> It's relatable but the feedback is instantaneous and so the programming language that the girls use is block based so even though you don't have any prior programming background, you can still build a working app, so that's critical. Then human beings get tired very easily and so the feedback needs to keep changing. It has to be unpredictable. The third piece is that of expectations. Sou have to have very high expectations and so that's why this current discussion around cognitive differences in gender, I feel is missing the point, because it's not what you're born with, what are you capable of? And so if we looked at our genetics, we would never go to space, we would never go to the deepest parts of the ocean, because we're not meant for that. But we had really high visions and expectations and so human beings rose to that. And then the last piece is less relevant in developing countries but it's still important, so it's sort of the human energy. We're not a brain disassociated from the body, we're connected, right? And so if you're hungry and tired and sleepy, not the right time to sort of make a dramatic change in you interests, so this is relevant like for us, we tried to figure out which countries are we going to work in, so post-conflict, war-torn areas are not the best areas to start a new program in. You need the right-- >> So you're saying the biological argument of, of course they're different, men and women, but it's the capability, that's where people are missing the boat. >> And the support system. So have high expectations, provide them with the right support, but the most important thing is your own beliefs in that. >> Let's get your thoughts on that 'cause I think you guys have a great program with Technovation, you mentioned mentors. Key part of the formula most likely. What we here, in the conversation I've had with women here has been, there's a real call to arms at the executive level now, folks my age in the 50s who made it, who were there, succeeding, they really want to give back and they really have recognized the value of having that peer mentorship and then inspiring the young generation, whether it's part of the things that we cover like Grace Hopper or Technovations, things that you do, or even just mentoring in their own communities. What does that mentorship look like that you guys see that you'd like to see double down on or areas you'd like to see tweaked or perceptions that need to change? What's your thoughts on mentorship and the role of inspiring young girls? >> Mentorship from men? >> Host: Men and women, I mean... >> From both? >> Well I see the mentorship with women, as that's the first step. I have a whole nother conversation, in my opinion, about the men needing training, not just like go to class and learn how to talk but how to empathize. >> Well my big thing has been that when you wanted to encourage women up the ladder in your companies or you wanted to encourage women to actually get in to technical roles, that intent should not be placed in the CSR department of your organization 'cause that speaks volumes, right? To say oh, well that's in the social responsibility department or the HR, that just says, okay, so you're not really, you don't think we're capable of helping you with your product or service, we're sort of part of this, and it's like, no. So I think you want to mainstream it, which is what a lot of I&D things are trying to do now. >> Host: Inclusion and diversity. >> Inclusion and diversity. >> To make it part of the fabric, not a department checkbox. >> Exactly. >> That's what you're getting at. >> Exactly and the involvement of these departments, to include everybody and to make it more diverse is going to be not frictionless. It will be friction until a time where it won't even be necessary. I&D departments should have one goal which is to work themselves out of a job. If they can work themselves out of a job, then the company would have done what it needs to be done, but I think-- >> Meaning it's self sufficient, it's self governing, people are humans, it's respect for individuals. I mean this just basically comes down to, if you look at it as humans, it takes it, every conversation could be tabled, that's what? There's a person on the other side, it's a human being, not a woman or a white male or whatever. They're not there yet, but I mean certainly that would be the endgame, so in that scenario, that department's out of business, the I&R, the inclusion and diversity department, has done its job. >> Exactly, you don't need one because you know you're okay. And I think capabilities is really important in corporations and this isn't anybody's fault, this is just how it's been done. This has just been the culture of it. Who gets invited to which meetings. Who gets invited to which conferences. And so we heard the CEO of YouTube, Susan Wojcicki saying, you know, she had to sort of elbow a little bit to say hey, why am I not allowed at a certain conference and it's like, maybe just wake up to that and say why aren't you involving more people at conferences and think tanks because, you know, I come from an oil and gas background and people used to do a lot of deals on the golf course 'cause oil and gas people play golf a lot and a lot of deals used to happen, well in the Valley we don't play golf a lot but we do do other things, conferences or get togethers, and if you don't include the people in your team as groups or representationally, well they're not going to be there when you make these decisions so maybe just be a little bit-- >> Exclusionary is a problem and Kleiner Perkins was taken to task, they had ski trips apparently planned and they did all mostly guys and they didn't invite the women part, there was a big scandal. This is where they make that, it's a normative thing and they've got to change the norms. >> Change the norms and if you actually want your company which is made of all kinds of people to move really far ahead, don't be like that. Include everybody because the only goodness about that is you'll go forward. If you don't include somebody, well you're going to hurt them. >> I want to add to that. So there's quite a bit of data. So the patterns are not anything different from what the message girls get from school and parents. So if you look at the data there are 100 countries that legally discriminate against women and so what message industry is telling, is really, firstly it doesn't filter through to the larger population. Silicon Valley is a completely different problem, but overall, the messages girls are given is like, this is not for you, and so especially in some of the most populous, dense countries of the world. And so we have to fight a lot of these kinds of perceptions from the ground up and the number one gatekeeper is the father and so a key part of what we've now done to date is to provide education and training to the parents because there's a very moving story that we work in a remote town in south India and a mentor who's very dedicated has been trying to get these girls to participate in Technovation. He did that and then one girl was actually offered a job but the father kept saying no, not needed, no girl in my family ever needs to work, but he fought it and so the girl actually gets a job. And then a year later, the father calls the mentor and said, you know what, I'm so grateful that you did it because a day after she got the job, I got hit in an accident and I lost my job, but it's these kinds of perceptions that have to be changed one person at a time which is what makes this very hard, unless you actually are able to get the media to change the messaging and I think in the U.S., which is, there's some very interesting studies and a question, right, like if you were to think, would there be more women in STEM in poorer, developing countries versus richer, highly developed countries. Where would you see more women in STEM? The answer is actually the women in the poorer countries like Iran, Malaysia. The reason is because in an individualistic society like in the U.S., where there's a lot of emphasis on materialistic but it's also about are you happy. The conversation has changed from parents telling children and do what makes you happy and then you are very prone to advertising and advertising works when it's highly targeted and highly gendered. And so in the 60s, there was no such thing as pink and blue. Now there is pink and blue. And so now we just made our entire society entirely susceptible to advertising. And girls are passive and complaint and boys are aggressive and so then when you're looking at the board structures, it's very, very hard to fix the problem right there. You have to go down deeper because you don't get leaders who are complaint. Maybe secretaries are compliant. But you have to fix the message that teachers give girls, that parents give their baby girls when they are born, and so industry is just sort of in the spotlight right now but the issue is not that of industry, I think it's also that of society. >> Industry, if you look at what Sundar is supporting you guys it's interesting that this industry seems to chipping and certainly Silicon Valley is a little different as you said, but in general, it is a cultural parent thing. Any plans there with Technovations to have a parent track? >> Yes, totally. I mean, I think, right now, 10% of parents actually volunteer to be mentors, kind of like girl scout troop leaders, and so we are trying to figure out, okay, what is a way to involve parents and to make them part of the discussion? >> Tara, Anar, thanks so much. This is The Cube conversation here in Palo Alto. I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) >> Hello and welcome to theCUBE Conversation. I'm John Furrier here in the Palo Alto Studios, with two great guests, Tara Chklovski, who's the founder and CEO of Iridescent, and Anar Simpson, Global Ambassador of Technovation. Thanks for coming in today. Appreciate moving your schedules around to come in. Thanks for coming to our studio. >> You bet, yeah. >> So Sundar Pichai was at your event. That's the big story this past week. There's has been a Google memo from a low level employee who wrote some things that got the whole world sharking around gender biases, role of women in tech. We do a lot of women in tech as you know in theCUBE, hundreds and hundreds of women over the years, friends, and also smart people. This seem a pretty big moment for you guys. You had an event at Google. Sundar canceled his on-hands meeting to address this, under fear of retaliation and safety, but came to your event on Google Campus, surprising to many. It's written up on Recode and The Verge. Pretty notable. So tell us about what happened. >> So, yeah, this was the 2017 Technovation World Pitch Competition and the awards ceremony. And Sundar came and he talked to a lot of the girls who were presenting their ideas to solve problems in their community, and then he had a little bit of a one-on-one conversation to learn a little bit more about the kinds of problems, their interest in technology entrepreneurship, and then he addressed the crowd of 900 plus supporters, and really emphasized that there's a place for women in technology, and more importantly, for him and Google, that there's a place for these girls at Google. >> Great timing for you guys too. And I want to drill more into what happened but I want to just point out this was a scheduled stop for Sundar in terms of it. You guys have a program called Technovation which was a 2017 World Pitch, folks around, you're the Global Ambassador, take a minute to talk about what Technovation is. Why was it on Google's Campuses? What was it all about? What does Global Ambassador mean? Talk about your mission. >> Right, so Technovation's mission is to empower girls to become technology entrepreneurs and it's much more than just learning how to code. It's really about seeing girls and telling girls that if there's a problem in their community, technology can help them have a very powerful voice. We've been running for eight years and Anar is our Global Ambassador who's helped us grow to more than a hundred countries. Technovation's relationship with Google is eight years long. Google has supported Technovation, was the very first technology company to support Technovation way before any other company saw the potential. And since then, since 2010, Google has provided funding, mentors, spaces, not just across the US but globally. And so this year, it was a year long worth of relationship made with code which is their arm focusing on gender equality. They basically provided funding but made this event possible at Google headquarters. >> Anar talk about the Global Ambassador role you have, and kind of comes down to the question for Tara as well, is it beyond entrepreneurship and beyond coding? I mean talk about specifically what you guys are bringing to folks outside the Silicon Valley. >> Oh sure, so my role as the Global Ambassador for Technovation is really getting to girls all over the world and saying to them you need to be engaged in technology. And what we found, as Tara mentioned, we've been doing this now, I've been doing this now for five years, is that we're building a movement. We're bringing in girls, we're bringing in mentors, we're bringing in companies and governments together to make this a reality for girls in tech careers in their own countries. And I want to go back and address Google's relationship with Technovation a little bit more because this is more of an anecdote. I got into Technovation not willingly. Six years ago I had a start-up, it was called Parallel Earth, and I was working hard at it. And I was using the offices at Mozilla because they allow people to do that, you know people like me to work there. And one day somebody sent me a note, it just came on the internal email system, and they said, "You're a woman, you're in tech, "there's an event going on at Andreessen Horowitz "where the luminaries of the Valley are going to be talking." And so the luminaries were Mary Samayo who was at Google at that time, Freada Kapor Klein, Padma Ashriwurier , and I think that there was two other people. And so we went to this event and we sat in a packed room at Andreessen Horowitz. And these women, the luminaries at the Valley at that time, each one of them stood up and told us their story, and afterwards they fed us hors d'oeuvres and offered us wine. And then they said before you go, we have one to ask of you which is could you sign up to be a mentor for Technovation. And I thought to myself, no, I am like over my head in my own company. I don't even have time for myself. And they asked, be a mentor, it's just two hours a week for 12 weeks. And I thought to myself, oh God, man, I drank their wine, I ate their hors d'oeuvres, I listened to them and now how can I say no? And so I signed up. And it was a stretch for me because what happened at that time, the curriculum was still being delivered by a person. And so I've been assigned to the Google Campus in Mountainview. And somebody in engineering at Google had been able to get a room, a very small conference room. And so for 12 weeks I met this team of girls from Mountainview, and there were other mentors like me, and then there was a whole bunch of girls from Sequoia High School. And John, in that 12 weeks, I was a changed woman. Those five girls, they blossomed under me. When I met them, I said to them, "I'm here, I am a type A, this is a competition." >> "I signed up for the Andreessen Horowitz--" >> Exactly, exactly. "Listen, I got my own star, "but we're going to win, this is a competition." So they just rolled their eyes at me, like, who the heck she is, we don't even want to be here. >> John: They draw the short straw on this one. >> Exactly. But those 12 weeks changed my life. >> John: In what way, what way did it change your life? >> I have a degree in Computer Science. I have a Master's in Communication. I went to Stanford for innovation and entrepreneurship. So I've been in the field for a very long time. And what I saw in terms of the curriculum, what I saw in terms of the mentorship, what I learned about design thinking and being able to create an app, I never had that. When people like me, we go in to a university, and doing computer, we never had that kind of stuff. And I thought, oh my God, if I'd had that, I would be, like, soaring the skies right now. And to have girls who really came to this table with nothing, and you see them becoming graphic designers because they had a little bit of access to Microsoft Paint, someone who has the ability to do PowerPoint, one girl, in my team of five, almost never showed up, she was late, she never came, and then two sessions before the Pitch, she showed up and she realized, have we've gone so far without her. So here's what she did, she took that little graphic that that woman who'd done it in Paint, and she got her mom and they went to some t-shirt shop, and they got that graphic printed. And the next time she came, there were five t-shirts that said the name of our team which was Intoxication Station, and one for me. And then it turns out she's a really good speaker. Who knew? So she almost never came, brought these shirts, was the speaker for the group, and we won the local competition and then the next one, then we placed second in the finals. >> She came in, contributed with a t-shirt, and graced you the back end, won the trust of the group, ended up being the speaker and winning the award. >> Yes, they grew, they literally, you know if you take a time lapse and you see a flower blossom, that's exactly what happened. >> Tara talk about your credentials 'coz you have a Ph.D. >> So I have a, yeah, Bachelor's in Physics, and Master's in Aerospace, and I was in the Ph.D. program in Aerospace but I dropped out because I wanted to start Iridescent. >> That's good. Dropping out of Ph.D. has a good track record. A lot of folks who dropped out of Stanford includes some of the big names we now know. What's some examples during your life when you had those kind of changed moments? >> I think, Iridescent, we are now in our 12th year. Every couple of months it's a changed moment because it's a test of grit. And just believing in yourself because I mean, I started with just an idea and grew it to be an organization that's all over the world. And it doesn't come with just full-hearted focus. A lot of courage is what I've seen. I have also seen how much you are passionate about an idea really swings how the other person is thinking. And so the idea only matters so much, I think, of course, I mean, the track record and everything has to be there, but I think a lot of it depends on your own passion for it, and I've come to realize that passion is maybe proportional to the complexity and the impact of the problem you're trying to solve. So if you're only trying to solve a small problem, you lose interest in two years, right, and maybe that's why, I'm always curious, why do so many start-ups fail after two or three years? It's because maybe you came in not thinking that you're going to change the world, maybe you came in because you wanted to make quick money, or et cetera, whatever. And so I think for me this is my life's work. And if you want to bring more and to represent the communities into innovation. And so it's not something that's going to be solved easily. >> Start-up success and then people working on teams, really is about inclusion and letting things bloom and being ready for anything. That's the greatest feat. Let's get back to the Sundar event that you guys were having. Now this is a good conversation to have because one of the things that came out of the aha that became that memo, really was a conversation publicly. And now it's been polarizing. There's just some kind of a hate, hate kind of mindset with it most of the time. Plenty of stuff in the internet to go read there, but what actually are some good conversations in the industry? What was the conversation like during the event? Because this was in full conversation mode while you guys were having your 2017 World Pitch competition of which he presided over and had a speech to the entrepreneurs. What was it like? What are some of the conversations that were taking place? >> I think the most powerful piece of the whole evening was really the girls walking in and seeing the incredible diversity that we have in this world, right. So we had girls, and mentors, and supporters, from over 30 countries and just them coming and waving the flags, and different faces, and different cultures, all trying to make the world a better place. I mean, it's rare that you see that, using technology. And I think it's very fitting that Silicon Valley is the center of this. But I think there was not one dry eye in the group because you realized the conversation is so much bigger than one company, one country. It is something that affects us as all human beings, and you believing in human potential. So I think seeing these young girls, some of them 10 years old, there was this, I think, maybe the crowd's favorite was these 10-year-old girls from Cambodia who want to improve sort of the lives of these people working in cottage industries, right. And they created an app, like, say, Etsy or something, but focused on Cambodian products, and the courage of these little girls, I think everybody walks away feeling okay there's hope even in the midst of all of this discussion. >> It creates a lightning rod in some ways that hopefully will move on to the substantive conversations. How do you guys feel about what happened as you take this mission forward? You guys are doing some amazing work. And we'll do a segment on that in a minute, but given the landscape now, how do you view this? How are you talking with friends and colleagues and family members around it? Because I certainly had conversations with my friends certainly in the east coast, like, "No, no, that's not the way Silicon Valley is." Google actually is a very cool company. It's not what you think it is. They're very open. They support a lot of great initiatives. And they're candid. And then I go on and explain. It's like a university. So me and Larry have this little ecosystem that they've kind of built the university culture if you will. But it's open and there's things that happened that get misrepresented. That was my take for the folks who don't know Silicon Valley. But what's your take? What do you think about what's happened? >> So this is really, really good that you brought up the university campus, environment of it. So I have two girls, they're both millennials, and they're both in a tech world. And we had this discussion. And here is the perfect answer, right. So one of my daughters, Kat, she said that when she read that, she thought it was basically a gathering of his thoughts. And it was a gathering of his thoughts because he was probably asked to adhere to I&D stuff that's going on, in every company right now, right. And so he was like a little bit of a, wait a second, he wants to sort of, respond to his being asked to go to I&D stuff. And then Katya said, "But you know mom, "it was just a gathering of his thoughts. "And if this is an essay, and it was a poorly written one, "and if I was grading it, I would give him a C minus." Then my older daughter said-- >> John: Oh, she'll give him an F on that one. >> Right. >> John: C minus, she's generous. >> No, because he did. He tried to make it very professional and very academic. And she said but it was a first draft. He didn't proceed to toughen it up, solidify it, find more evidence, have it critic. It was just a gathering of his thoughts and he hasn't gone through the process. Both these girls graduated from Berkeley and so I think they would know what a C paper look like versus an A paper. And then my older daughter said, "And the other thing is, "it's not like "I&D efforts "are actually bad, "but what we're trying to do is "we're trying to condense the time "in which we're trying to get women "at equal peering in the tech world." Now women have never been at equal peering in many professions. There were not enough doctors, lawyers, accountants, you name it, right? Main street, Wall Street has never had equality. And now we're looking at technology and the reason everything just flares up in technology is because we live in today's world, where news and information is available all the time. So there's two things going on. Information is readily available. People can come in to the conversation very quickly. And whenever anything happens in Silicon Valley, the effect is massive because all eyes are on Silicon Valley all the time. So it's a bit of a distorted view. But we have gone through this. It took a long time for women to become astronauts. It took a long time for women to become neurosurgeons. It took a long time for women to become lawyers and dentists. It will take a little bit of time for women to become top technologists. But we're hoping that it'll shorten and things happen quickly in the Valley and we're trying to get that quicker. And so we're seeing a little bit of friction. This is responses from millennials. So for me it was like-- >> John: Interesting perspective. >> Yes, great perspective. And when Sundar said these things at the World Pitch, I was sitting in the second row and every time he said something I would clap really loud. And Todd said, "Why are you being so good?" And I said, "I need to hear that. "I need to her him say that because--" >> John: What did he say that moved you? >> Oh, he just said you have a place in technology. And I said yes. We needed to hear you say that right away, all the time, and especially to these girls, these two 18-year-old girls, and all of the ones that come from a hundred countries that weren't at Google but were listening to the live pitch. And I needed to hear it. I'm a veteran but I needed to hear it because-- >> It's interesting too the narrative that the millennials and certainly the younger kids hear is an echo of what comes down. And, interesting, my son who is 15, at dinner last night said, "Dad, I'm a white male. "What does that mean?" >> Poor guy. >> Then I'm like, oh my God, he's a kid. So, again, things are shifting, they're out of context. Tara your thoughts on how this all evolves and the positive things that folks can do. What's your perspective? >> Yeah, I mean, I think, I had a lot of discussion with my husband yesterday on this because he's a white male, right? And, but also we have two daughters, right. And so there's this whole he for she campaign, right. And that I think like our conversation earlier, the discussion has to be very inclusive and you cannot polarize. And I think I have to be careful because, I mean, my passion is what drives the work because the work is hard, but I have to also remind that, okay, there's a whole another segment of the population that cares, right, and, so I think it's just constantly remembering these kinds of things. I think in terms of what the industry can do, I think the normal thing is that people are doing which is really well, investing lower in the pipeline, investing in young girls, and all of that kind of stuff, and also sort of the inclusion and diversity stuff in the workforce. But I think there are some other segments, other industries that we can learn from, and I think one very unique place is actually the aviation industry. But the experimental aircraft, so we're just aviation enthusiasts, right. And so they have this gathering, yearly annual gathering, and 600,000 people come from all over the world, the thing that makes it unique and there's almost equal representation, there are two things that make it very unique. First is the family affair. And I think the tech industry has done a very good job, sort of convening these developer conferences but they are closed and most of them are 100% male, right? I think there could be something there where the, again much more than a company, that the industry has to do. And to make it maybe not commercial but do it as a fun family gathering and not in Silicon Valley. And then I think the second would be to actually lean on the veterans of the industry to share their passion with the young ones. And I think one of the problems of technology is that it's moved so fast that it has become very abstract. And nothing is very hands on. If you open up something, you will not understand anything. And so what the aviation industry had done really well is to showcase the core fundamental principles of how these things work using the old airplanes, old engines, combustion engines. But you can see how things work, right, and so-- >> John: It's like kindergarten. >> Exactly, exactly, start that way and then you can go into the more complex. But I think there's a role for the veterans of the tech world to play here. And I think it's not just sort of gender but it's also maybe age and making it much more about the family, rather than just the developer in the family. >> Tara and Anar, you guys are inspiration. Thanks for taking the time. And I've had the, my age, luxury of spending nine years at Hewlett Packard company before, maybe these early 90s when Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard were around. And one of the things that really influenced me, and I think this is something that I see a positive light coming in this industry, to your point, about so much changes, is that we seem to be going back to a crowd that wants to see respect for the individuals, citizenship. These were company values at Hewlett Packard when I was there that I always remembered was unique. Hey, you can have differences but if you have respect for the individual, and you have the citizenship mindset, that seems to have been lost in tech, and with this whole movement you're seeing, win at all cost, being an asshole, what you going to do to be a CEO, or flip it fast, or programs. So it became a very selfish environment. It seems to be shifting that way with this conversation. Your thoughts? >> So I have to say doing a start-up is not easy. Getting successful in this word is not easy. Shaking the status quo is not easy. So I have to say that the same people and we're not going to name names, but the same people who are very arrogant and have little respect for the laws and rules, they have given us products that are changing people's lives. There is no question about it. With that, they're a provider. With that, they're sort of "I don't care, I'm just going to go over you "if you don't comply with me." A lot of ride sharing, wouldn't even have happened. And to me when you provide employment, when you provide alternative services, when you provide something that takes away the way things were, I see that as a plus, okay. I think what we're seeing is that's needed to a certain extent, and then you realized, okay, now we have to get back to growing it and working it. And if you keep going in that mode, you probably won't succeed. >> So being tough and determined and having grit is what you need to breakthrough those walls as a start-up. You don't need to be necessarily a jerk. But your point is if you're creating value. >> If you're creating value, and that sometimes you actually have to be a jerk because there are a very few brave, non-jerk people who have gone against big unions and big monopolies, right. I would not be able to go against the taxi commission. You need somebody who's a complete a-hole to do that. And he did that and it made a difference. He doesn't have to continue to do that and that's-- >> There was a meme going around the internet, "If you want to make friends, sell ice cream." >> Exactly. >> So you can't always win friends when you're pioneering. >> Right, right. There is a balance and maybe we've fostered the fact that you need to be that attitude for everything and that's not true. The pendulum shifted a bit too much. But I think that we shouldn't scorn them because really they have made a difference. Let everybody get back to-- >> It's a tough world out there to survive. And you have to have that kind of sharp elbows to make things happen. But it's the value your providing, it's how you do it. >> Exactly. >> Well thanks so much guys for coming up. Appreciate to spend the time to talk about your awesome event at 2017 World Pitch as part of Technovation where Sundar represented Google in your great program with young girls go over some tech books. Thanks for sharing. This is CUBE conversation here at Palo Alto. I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

(click) >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown San Francisco at Moscone West at the Professional BusinessWomen of California Conference. 6,000 women, this thing's been going on for 28 years. It's a pretty amazing show. We see a lot of big women in tech conferences, but this is certainly one of the biggest and it's all about diversity, not just women. And of course, if there's a women in tech event, who are we going to see? Sandy Carter. >> Woo hoo! (laughs) >> Sandy, so great to see you. CEO of Silicon Blitz and been involved with PBWC for a while. >> I had suggested to Congresswoman Jackie when I saw her about three or four years ago about doing something special for the senior women. I proposed this leadership summit, and you know what they always say, if you suggest something, be prepared to execute it. She said, "Would you help us get this going?" Three years ago, I started the Senior Leaders Forum here, and yesterday we had that forum. We had 75 amazing women from all the great companies of California Chevron, Clorox, IBM, Microsoft Intel, Amazon, you name it all the great companies here in the Bay. Oh, Salesforce, Airbnb, all goes on. >> That was like a little conference in the conference? >> It was for C-Suite only and it was about 75 women. We do three TED Talks. We pick out talks that are hot but that are very actionable for companies. So yesterday, Jeff, we talked about millennials how to have inclusion of millennials in your workforce. 50% of the workforce by 2020 will be millennials. >> Is that a harder challenge than just straight-up diversity? >> This is really important. (laughs) It may be. But I had Allison Erwiener and Erby Foster from Clorox come and speak and they did a TED talk. Then we actually do little workshops to action. What would a millennial program look like? Our second topic was around innovation. How do you link diversity to innovation? There are so many studies, Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley, Harvard, DeLoy that shows there is a linkage but how do you get the linkage? For all these amazing diverse- >> The linkage between better business outcomes, correct? >> That's right. >> Better outcomes. >> That's right. In fact, the latest study from Harvard came out at the end of 2016 that showed not only with diverse teams do you get more innovation but more profitable innovation which is everybody's bailiwick today. We had Jeremiah Owyang of Crowd Companies who's a innovation expert come and really do that session for us. Then last but not least we talked about diversity and inclusion, primarily inclusion in the next century. What is that going to look like? We saw some facts about what's going on in changes in population, changes in diversity and then how we as companies should manage programs in order to tap into those changes. It was an awesome, awesome session. Then of course we had Pat Waters from Linkedin. She is chief talent officer there. She came and closed it out with her definition of inclusion. It was powerful. >> You won an award. >> I won an award, yes. >> Congratulations, what did you win? >> Game Changer for PBWC, and I'm really proud of it because last year we had Serena Williams speak and she was the first recipient so I guess you'd say I'm in great company because it's now Serena and I with this great award. >> Absolutely. Before we went on air we were talking about some of this next-gen diversity and thinking about getting that into programming languages and you brought up, there was some conversation around bots and obviously chat bots are all the rage and AI and ML is driving a lot of this but ultimately someone's got to write the software to teach these things how to behave so you're going to run into the same types of issues if you don't have a diversity of the thinking of the way the rules and those bots work as you have in any other situation where you have singular thinking. >> I think Jeff, you're right on. In fact, I think it's really going to accelerate the desire for diverse teams. If you think about artificial intelligence machine learning, and bots you have to train the computer. The computer's not naturally smart. There is a team that actually uses a corpus of knowledge and trains the bot. If the data that goes in my dad always said, "Garbage in, garbage out." If the data that goes in is biased then the output is biased and we're seeing that now. For instance, I was just looking at some VR headsets and people are now looking at virtual reality. You know you get a little nauseous. They've been tweaking it with artificial intelligence so that you don't get as nauseous but it was done by all men. As a result, it greatly improved the nauseousness of men but not women. That's just one example. You want your product to go for 100% of the world. >> That's weird, you'd think that would be pretty biological and not so much gender-specific. >> You would, but there are apparently differences. We talked to a doctor yesterday. There's apparently differences in motion-sickness between the two and if you only have one set of data you don't have the other. >> But then there's this other kind of interesting danger with machine learning and I think we see it a lot in what's going on in the news and causing a lot of diversion within the country in that the algorithms are going to keep feeding you more of that which you already have demonstrated an affinity to. It's almost like you have to purposefully break the things or specifically tell it, either through active action or programming that no, please send me stuff that I'm not necessarily seeing all the time. Please give me stuff that's going to give me a diversity of points of view and opinion and sources because it feels like with your basic recommendation engine it's going to keep sending you more of the same and rat hole you down one little track. >> That is true, and that's why today we have a panel and we're going to be talking about especially for AI and bots you must have diverse teams. From the session this morning I really loved one of the speakers, Kim Rivera, from HP and she said, "It's hard, but we just said 'Look, we've got to have 50% women on the board. We've got to do this.'" I think the same thing's going to be true for AI or bots Jeff, if you don't have a diverse team, you will not get the right answer from a bot. Bots are so powerful, and I was just with a group of nine year old girls and we had a coding camp and I asked them, "What do you want to do?" All of them wanted to do bots. >> Really. >> They had all played with- >> What kind of bots- >> The Zootopia- >> Did they want to do? >> They all had played with a Zootopia bot from Disney. I don't know, did you see Zootopia? >> I did not see it. I heard it was a great movie. >> It's a great movie, animated movie of the year. >> Bunnies, bunnies, bunnies as cops, right? >> That's right. In fact, the bunny is what they made into a chat bot. 10 million kids use that chat bot to get a little badge. Now all the kids are into bots. They used bots to remind them to brush their teeth to do their homework. In fact, there was a chat bot written by a 14 year old boy in Canada that's a homework reminder. It's actually really quite good. >> Also I'm thinking of is the Microsoft little kid that didn't, I guess timing is everything. >> Timing is everything, that's right. >> That one didn't work so well. >> But I guess what I would just leave with people is that when you're looking at this great, great new technology for AI and bots in particular, you must have a diverse team. You must look at your data. Your data's got to be unbiased. Like you said, if you just keep doing the same old thing you're going to get the same old answer. You've got to do something different. >> You're doing all kinds of stuff. You're working with Girls in Tech on the board there. I think you're doing some stuff with the Athena Alliance who's driving to get more women on >> Boards. >> Boards. You're really putting your toes in all kinds of puddles to really help move this thing because it also came up in the keynote. It's not a strategy problem. It's an execution problem. >> That's right, and because I'm so passionate about tech I love tech and I see this linkage today that is been never really been there that strong before but now it's almost like if you don't have diversity your AI and bots are going to fail. Forester just said that AI and bots is the future so companies have to pay attention to this now. I really think it's the moment of time. >> We're running out of time. I'm going to give you the last word. What are one or two concrete things that you've seen in your experience that leaders can do, like came up today in the keynote tomorrow to really help move the ball down the field? >> I think one is to make sure you have a diverse team and make sure that it represents diversity of thought and that could be age, it could be gender it could be sexual orientation, race you got to look at that diversity of team, that's one. Secondly, just by having a diverse team doesn't mean you're going to get great output. You've got to be inclusive. You've got to give these folks great projects. Like millennials, give them a passion project. Let them go and do something that can really make a difference. Then third, I think you have to test and make sure what you're delivering out there represents that cognitive diversity of thought so make sure that you're not just putting stuff out there just to get it out there but really double-checking it. I think those are three actionable things that you can do tomorrow. >> That's great, Sandy. Thank you very much. >> Thanks, Jeff. >> Thanks for stopping by. We just checked Sandy's calendar and there we know where to take theCUBE because she's all over the place. She's Sandy Carter, I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE from the Professional BusinessWomen of California conference in San Francisco. Thanks for watching. (synth music)

>> Narrator: Live from Palo Alto, it's theCUBE, covering Women Transforming Technology 2017, brought to you by VMware. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of the Women Transforming Technology conference held at VMware here in beautiful Palo Alto, California. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. I'm joined by Yanbing Li, who is the senior vice president and general manager for storage and availability here at VMware. Thank you so much for joining us. >> Thank you for having me, Rebecca. I'm so excited to meet you actually. I've done quite a few CUBE interviews. >> You're a CUBE veteran, yes, I know. >> But you're the first female host I got to talk to, so really excited meeting you. >> Well, the pleasure's all mine. >> Thank you. >> So Business Insider calls you one of the most powerful women engineers in the world, in Silicon Valley. It's exciting to be talking to you. VMware is committed to diversity and inclusion. We're here at a Women Transforming Technology conference. You're hosting the conference. Talk a little bit about your experience and what you're involved in, in terms of that emphasis on diversity and inclusion here. >> Yes, certainly being a part of VMware and certainly being a female engineering leader myself, this is very near and dear to my heart. My experience, actually involvement in women leadership initiative started many years ago when I was actually based in China. My career at VMware, I've been here for nine years. >> You led the Chinese operation for a while. >> Yeah, I was leading the China engineering operation in China for a few years, and when I was based in China, I started a series of women technology conferences in Beijing. So we started in 2011, and that quickly turned into an industry event, kind of very similar to what's going on here at Women Transforming Technology. So this has been certainly close to my heart, and I've been involved in starting the initiative in China. And when I moved back to Palo Alto, I have been part of the VM Women initiative. I was part of a dialogue circle, and this year, we expanded the initiative, or since last year, from just the women focus to now a much broader diversity focus and certainly being Chinese myself, I'm also representing the Chinese community at VMware. We have a Chinese VMware circle that create that community feeling for all the Chinese and Chinese Americans working at VMware. >> Can you talk a little bit about what you've observed with the women in China and the women here in Silicon Valley? Are the issues the same? Is the culture similar? What are your experiences? >> I think there is a lot more similarity than differences. China, there has been a stronger emphasis of women contributing to the society for the past 50, 60 years, so you see a higher percentage of women working. You see a slightly higher percentage of women in tech. But the issues are still the same. You know, how we deal with stereotype of women, especially how we overcome unconscious bias and how we overcome the lack of women in technology and lack of women in leadership. I think these issues definitely transcend culture and community. It was interesting, we hosted an APJ discussion on diversity. >> In China? >> In Sydney. >> Okay. >> So this was part of our APJ initiative. And there were tables of people from different countries talking about the women issue, the gender issue. And the simple question was, is there a glass ceiling in your country? And I guess every country's answer was yes, except for the country, the table of Japan because their answer was they didn't have a glass ceiling, they had a steel ceiling. >> Yeah. (laughs) >> But you get the point is, yeah, this is a issue that's everywhere. >> And did you find that your Chinese colleagues in China were as mobilized to work on them and to make changes? >> Yeah, I think definitely, you see that coming down from the leadership level. I think when you have initiatives like this, often sometimes, you have grassroot initiatives, but it's much more important to up-level that to a business focus. And I think that is what VMware is doing by starting VM Women several years ago and now extending that to VM Inclusion. At VMware, the leadership team definitely see this as a business imperative rather than just something we want to do good to the society. So there is a balance of trying to do good but also trying to do smart. You know, how we move the needle from a business outcome point of view. You know, we've been very open about our diversity data. We've been tracking them as part of leadership MBOs, so I'm excited to see the levels of investment and emphasis that VM as a company is putting on. >> As a leader, you are a senior vice president here. How do you make sure that you are, you're a woman, you're a Chinese woman, but we also know that we're not immune just because we're women to subtle biases, to discrimination. How do you work on yourself in your day-to-day practice as a leader and a manager? >> Yeah, I think it's... Along our career, we've seen a lot of things like sexism or how people apply unconscious bias toward women and certain stereotyped view of women. I think we've all experienced that. And just the, I can think of lots of examples on a daily basis. I was having dinner with a male coworker, which is a very important way for us to build strong relationships. >> Relationships, yeah. >> And as we were eating, we were mistaken as on a date. There's all these subtle things that reminds you somehow people see women not necessarily, even if you're having a business setting, they tend to not assume the same. So I think that's happening all the time. So my approach towards this has been recognizing that it happens and have a good way to defuse it because most people are doing it in a very unconscious way. And when you have a way to defuse it, you help have a positive impact on that person. Give you an example. I think for women, we are constantly introduced as a woman something. One year, I was speaking at an event, and when we were doing the rehearsal, a senior leader was introducing me as a woman engineering leader. So I just gently said, "Hey, look. "People can tell I'm a woman. "You don't have to say it." >> The dress gives it away. >> Yeah, and that made him become aware. Yeah, that's, the merit you're standing on that stage is not because of your gender or shouldn't be limited by your gender, rather than because of the message or the business or the technology that you're bringing to the audience. >> But that's not always easy for people to do, to use humor to defuse the situation. We just heard from Kara Swisher, the founder of Recode, and one of her pieces of advice was to be authentic, be genuine, be an original. Your Twitter handle is ybhighheels. I love it. I love it. >> Yeah. Thank you. >> But it is this mix of professionalism and femininity. Is that hard to do? Is it hard to pull off? >> It is hard, and I have debated over and over. Where I got my Twitter handle actually, one of my coworkers, my team members from many years ago said to me, "Yanbing, you're the high tech girl "in high heels." And I kind of liked it. It felt like very me. But there's been lots of people telling me, Oh, is that really good? Is that insulting? Or is that demeaning of the levels of the position, the type of job you have? And I actually felt otherwise. First of all, it is fairly authentic of me. If people who, I remember when I was leaving one job and my male boss was commenting, saying, "Yanbing, you didn't leave very big shoes to fill. "You leave very high shoes." >> Very tall shoes. (laughs) >> To fill. So I'm known to like high heels. And people, and I've also learned that once you establish your competence, this does not become something that is negative. And I've seen increasingly your colleagues or coworkers, people around you, want to embrace who you are rather than penalize for who you are, as long as you're confident about who you are. So I find that, yeah, having lots of fun with my Twitter handle. >> Right. Right, right. But as you said, as a woman, you have to also have proved yourself and that you are smart and just 'cause you wear high heels and you like high shoes, you also can get the job done. >> Yeah, and it's not just high shoes or whatever shoes of choice that people have. Yeah, and we are most comfortable and most successful when we are truly authentic to ourselves. >> Being who you are at work, at home, and in your private life. >> Yeah, yeah. >> So talk a little bit. The last time you were on the show, you talked about the hyper-converged world. Can you give us a little bit of an overview of what's going on in the software space and what you're working on now? >> Yeah, it's a very exciting time. Certainly as part of the storage business unit, a key initiative that we're working on is vSAN. This is VMware's leading product in a hyper-converging infrastructure. And what we're seeing certainly is this fundamental disruption that's going on in storage and data centers and infrastructure in general. And if you think about what is one of the highest gross market segment that's happening in a data center and infrastructure today is actually hyper-converge. As a market, this is quickly disrupting the traditional way of delivering storage, and it's growing at 60% for the next few years. And we as a business has been growing triple digits. Last year, we almost tripled our the size of the business, and we're seeing tremendous customer momentum and tremendous customer adoption and seeing hyper-converged is really becoming a mainstream way of delivering infrastructure to our customers. So a very exciting time. >> It is exciting, and yet, it's hard to think beyond hyper-converged because if everything then becomes one, what's next? What do you see down the pipeline two, three years from now, in terms of how businesses deal with their storage? >> Yeah, so certainly VMware are, being a leading infrastructure software vendor, we're going through a fundamental transformations of providing not just the best in class software for your data center, you know, how we modernize it, how we provide higher levels of automation in the private cloud but increasingly, there is a shift towards service-based consumption and cloud-based delivery of infrastructure. And I think the same thing is happening in the storage space. You know, certainly, with a hyper-converged infrastructure, not only we see a highly, high degrees of integration, automation, but we're also seeing the same architecture is extending into the cloud. And as we look at the cloud, we also constantly think about how do we take the value prop of just building the best infrastructure, the best storage, take that infrastructure plate now to an application plate or a data plate. And certainly, from a storage side, we're increasingly focusing on how we make data better managed, better governed, how we provide more insights through data. So taking that storage levels of innovation to focus on data. >> Understanding what the data is telling you and making that data work for customers. What are you hearing from customers in terms of what is keeping them up at night? >> Keeping our customers are all facing the challenge of how they keep up with their business demand. As we look at it, every company is now being transformed but into a digital business, and suddenly, the role of IT becomes so much more interesting and exciting and it's really about enabling business. And so, that put demand on how you deliver things in a much more agile fashion, how you keep costs down so that you can invest for really where the business value at is, and how you can ready yourself to adopt a new way of building your application for the future. So these are the typical challenges that we hear from our customer, is really to keep up with their business demand. And we are certainly excited to see VMware is playing a very vital role in helping solving our customers' digital transformation challenges. >> So the role of Silicon Valley looms large in our business world and also just in our imagination. What do you think the media get wrong about Silicon Valley? Or just, what do you think is the line out there that you wish you could dispel in the sense of this is not right, this is not the way it happens? >> Yeah, so I have lived in Silicon Valley for the past 20 years, except for a few years where I was back in Beijing. I decided to move back because I just feel for being someone in tech, this is really just an amazing place to live in. >> To be at the center, yeah. >> And it's definitely the epicenter. I have three children, and I just see how privileged they're growing up, being exposed in this very dynamic, innovative, vibrant environment. So this is what I absolutely love about Silicon Valley. But on the other hand, when you go outside the world, I do think it feels like it's almost like a little ivory tower. You know, there's so much technology, so much access, so much wealth being created here. Sometimes, we tend to forget life is different outside Silicon Valley. And so, I think having that perspective is very, very important. >> In terms of, you mentioned you're a mom, what do you wish for your children? I don't even know if you've got daughters or sons, but in terms of just getting back to why we're here, breaking barriers is a theme of this year's conference, Women Transforming Technology, what barriers do you want to see broken for your kids, for the next generation? >> Right, I'm excited. My kids, certainly being a part of Silicon Valley and being in this very dynamic environment right now, I think there is incredible levels of awareness in them about what's going on in the world. It was funny, I was just talking to my son. He's got a new shirt, and he's 13 years old. And I didn't know where the shirt had come from because I didn't buy it. That turned out, it's the first shirt he bought using his own money, and he bought a pink shirt. And he told me that he wanted to get a pink shirt because he wanted to break the gender stereotype. And I certainly wasn't thinking anything like that when I was 13 years old. And this is just being exposed to certainly what's going on in Silicon Valley, being exposed to working parents and being exposed to what's happening in the political arena, that led him to make a very interesting choice. And I have two 11-year-old girls, and I wish they can grow up, they love technology to begin with. Their Christmas wish was to build all of their Christmas cards using some online language. And so, we all got these electronic animated things from my girls, and they want to write video games. And so, I wish they grow up in an environment feeling when they have that social awareness, being female does not create a barrier for them to pursue what they love because they genuinely are excited and interested in technology. And I'm hoping that's the environment we're going to help create for them, but I'm also very excited to see, at a very young age, they have demonstrated levels of awareness that I certainly didn't experience when I was young. >> And just speaking about that level of awareness and you brought up politics and sort of what's happening on the national stage, so much about this administration really does go against what are core values of Silicon Valley and particularly in terms of immigration, in terms of gender issues, transgender rights, gay rights. Do you feel that Silicon Valley will take a leadership stance on these things and stand up? >> I think we should. We should because Silicon Valley has benefited tremendously from the success of our technology and success of our businesses. And so, with that, we have incredible power, incredible platform that's being. >> And a voice. >> And a voice, being created out of Silicon Valley. I think, yeah, we should play a role in advocating for what we believe in, just like VMware and other partner companies are taking a leadership position to advocating women transforming technology, the role women play in Silicon Valley and in technology at large. I wish all of the companies here have the willingness and you know, to really stand up for what we believe in. Yeah, so given the power that we have and given the influence that we have, not just in this country but all over the world. >> Yanbing Li, thank you so much for joining us. This has been a pleasure talking to you. >> Thank you, Rebecca. I'm so glad to have spoken to you. Thank you for having me back at theCUBE. >> Thank you. I'm Rebecca Knight. We'll be back with theCUBE's coverage of Women Transforming Technology here in Palo Alto.

(upbeat music) >> From Phoenix, Arizona, theCUBE, at Catalyst Conference. Here's your host, JefF Frick. (upbeat music) >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We are in Phoenix, Arizona at the Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference. About 400 people, fourth year of the conference. Something in the water here in Phoenix, every time we come down here to some Women in Tech event. We were here two years ago for the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing which was fantastic, so we're really happy to be here, get a wide variety, really of women in tech stories from the people here at the conference, so we're excited by our next guest, Tejal Shah, the founder and CEO of Kid Admit. Welcome. >> Well thank you for having me. >> So what is Kid Admit? >> So we help parents search, compare, and apply to preschools based on criteria that's important to them. And so we partner with the schools, we give them the technology to bring their admissions process online, hence making it easier for parents to find schools nearby to them and based on criteria like philosophy that's important, schedule, that sort of stuff. >> So just for preschool? >> Right now just for preschool. The bigger vision is to add more products and services as the kids get older and so we'll have this great, rich data set of information on parents, so then we can give them more relevant recommendations and things that fit in their lives for their kids, like other extracurricular activities and that sort of stuff. >> So it's kind of like helping people with the college admissions process but for-- >> For preschool. >> The five year old right? So I mean, I've got kids, it seems like it's really kind of a function of proximity, is probably the number one thing, or is it in route to my office so I can drop the kid on the way to or from. What are some of the factors that are less obvious that people use in kind of deciding where they want their child to go to preschool? >> Yeah, I mean parenting has changed, because everything is available on the tips of your smartphone, so everyone is researching so many more things that are trying to make it more relevant to the child. It's not like, "Oh we're going to send the kid down the street "to the nearby preschool" anymore. It's like, "Oh we really want this philosophy "because they're going to excel in that." And really, that's kind of the more subtle things that parents are doing now is because it's so easy to find this information, matching up what's going to make their child succeed in these environments. >> And then how are the preschools, because now that you are saying that, I'm thinking of all these preschools in our neighborhood, that are very, very different, in kind of look and feel and the way they operate. How are you collecting that data, how are they getting you that data? How excited are they to have the opportunity to actually communicate how they're different, rather than whether they're on the main strip to the freeway? >> Yeah, it's actually really exciting, because I think the technology has changed so much since we started Kid Admit. And at first, there was a little bit of hesitancy, because people are like, "What are you doing? "What is this? "Why do you need a technology solution here?" And as technology has changed so drastic in the last few years, all of these schools are very excited to be part of a platform that makes their reach a lot bigger. You don't have to just put up fliers in your neighborhood anymore. You can attract people in a slightly bigger geo code. And there's been a lot of new preschools opening up as well for the demand. And it's nice for them to be able to be a part of a platform and easily get to families really quickly. >> Okay, so just a little bit more on Kid Admit. So you said you're three and a half years old? >> Yes, correct. >> And did you raise some outside funding? >> Yes, we raised 1.15 million dollars over a pre-seed and a seed round, so we're still early stage. >> Congratulations. >> Thank you. >> And what metro areas do you operate in? >> So we're in about 9,000 preschools across 20 states, and we're poised to be nationwide soon. So we are actually here in Phoenix, we just launched here recently, which has been pretty exciting. And yeah, so we actually have listings for more than that many schools, but the ones that partner with us. So we get the information from the state licensing, and then we do our own data, and get more data on our data-mining efforts. After that, we reach out to the schools directly, so they become member schools, and then they can add any information that they need that makes their program special. And with that, once they be part of the platform, then it's easier for parents to navigate the whole process. >> And from how many preschools do generally people kind of search through, what's kind of their tam if you will when they're trying to figure out their preschool? They start with how many and whittle it down to one, what do you kind of see? >> Yeah, so it's interesting. Most people only hear about five, and then you go on Kid Admit and the search in San Francisco, there's 357 preschools so, obviously that's not the pool that they're going to go after, it's probably based on a couple of criteria filters, it will probably whittle down to maybe 10. And so now you're not researching 350, you're getting down to 10. But even if they go a little bit specific, it's usually they'll really evaluate about four to five. >> And what are the top five factors? Not necessarily the value in the factors, but the factors that they're looking at that help drive the decision? >> Yeah, location is definitely a big, big factor. You want to make your life as convenient as possible, and you don't want to have to, if you're dealing with work, and kids, and if you have multiple kids, you want to keep that obviously pretty proximal. And it could be on your way to work too, like you mentioned earlier. Then philosophy, so Montessori, Reggio, is it play based, those, and schedule is a big thing, whether you want part-time or full-time. Interestingly, people talk about price, but ends up being a secondary factor, cause people want what's best for their children, and they want to see what all of those options that are available. >> What is the most surprising factor that you had no idea mattered so much to people as you've gone through this process? >> That they think that it's going to dictate the rest of their child's life on this first educational milestone. And it's just surprising that how it's completely false. And it's just crazy to see how much people still buy into this. >> Right, right. It's like the old Seinfeld episodes right? From Manhattan, and people trying to get in that first, getting in that school, but that's not what you're about at all, you're really about just knowing what the options are and finding the right fit. >> Yeah, we want to like democratize it a little bit, get the access to it. So a lot of people in Manhattan, or even San Francisco hire consultants to help for this, and they're like $15,000 to help you just with preschool. And so you can search Kid Admit for free, you get to see all the information, things that giving access to more families to make better choices for their kids, and it's all about finding a nice environment for your kid, who's going to develop a life-long love of learning. That's the only thing about preschool that makes it great. >> And how did you come up with this idea? >> So I have kids myself, and I went through the process. It was super, super crazy cause Google didn't spit out any results when I did this, my oldest one's seven and a half. And when I was pregnant, people were like, "Are you on the wait list?" I'm like, "I don't even know my child, "how am I going to go and find a preschool at this stage?" So I didn't take that advice, I'm like, "You know what. "I will do this when it's appropriate, "and I feel comfortable." And I did, and then I created this crazy spreadsheet, and cause there wasn't a lot of information available on the internet, so I'd have to call around, and ended up being another full-time job of mine. And once I created this, then a lot of my friends started using it, and using it, and so that was kind of the start of Kid Admit. >> Awesome. So we've had a lot of conversations here over the course of the day, about pivoting and getting involved in tech, and not necessarily being a tech person, and changing career paths. We talked a little bit offline before we came on air, you've got kind of an interesting journey. You started out as a mechanical engineer I think you said, and then got into finance, and now you're doing a kid based, basically marketplace exchange. >> Yes. >> How did that happen? I think I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur, though I didn't quite, was not truthful to myself when I was younger. I became a mechanical engineer. I worked at Ford Motor Company right out of school designing fuel systems, and then I did a lot of other things. Ended up in finance and I kept switching these careers, but I learned all these different skill sets. And all these different things then when you become CEO and start a company, they actually really are very relevant cause you get to, I have to book keep, and manage my own finances for the start-up. I've had to, for when I did financial services, I also cold called. I did that when I started doing early customer development. I did marketing for a medical devices company a long time ago and that's part of it. So all of this journey, as different as it is, it kind of led me to be able to be a generalist to start a company. >> Right, and then what was the tipping point that you said, "Okay, I'm doing it. "I'm going to start this company, I'm going to quit my job and do this?" >> Yeah, so I wanted to leave financial services after 2008. So it's been a-- >> Good timing. >> Yeah, well, but I still stuck onto it for two more years, because in that timeframe, actually four more years, in 2010 we left to start our own wealth management firm, my husband and I, and then I wanted to ramp that up before I could actually formally leave to start my own. So I always wanted knew I did it, but I wanted to have the timing, as well as the idea. >> Right, right. Okay so we're running low on time. So what advice would you give to the budding entrepreneur out there that's got an idea, that's just needs that final little kick out of the nest to go for it? What are some of the learnings that you can share, and advice that you would give them? >> Yeah, you'll never have, you'll never be ready. Just like anything else in life. You just have to kind of take that leap of faith. You're not going to know everything on the journey, and there's something sweet about that. It's something, I kind of miss some of the naitivity I had when I first started this because it keeps you really excited and passionate and relevant in that. And tenacity, resourcefulness, you definitely have to have those things. And just enjoy the journey cause as much as it's a high and low and roller coaster of a start-up experience, you definitely have to enjoy it. And I've gotten to do some really amazing, amazing things and meet some incredible people along the way, and I relish those times. >> Excellent. Well, Tejal thanks for sharing your story with us. >> Well thank you, thanks for having me. >> Absolutely. So great story on entrepreneurship. Eventually you've got to jump out of the nest. It's never easy, but as you said, there's never a right time. You just got to go for it, like everything else that's important in life. So thanks for watching, we're here at the Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference. I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching theCUBE. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)