 Hello everyone, welcome to a special On the Ground Cube presentation. I'm John Furrier. We are here at VMware's corporate headquarters in beautiful Palo Alto, award-winning campus. Beautiful campus. You're going to get a chance to visit VMware. It's really one of the most beautiful places that we're actually recognized as such. Our next guest is Betsy Sutter, who's the Senior Vice President and Chief People Officer. It's part of her job to make it feel like I'm not sure she made the facilities decision, but welcome to the Cube. Good to see you. Thanks, John. Nice to see you, too. What I'm excited to talk to you about is, one, your experience with VMware has gone way back. You've known the company, been part of the original core group of VMware early on, culturally, watching the transformation of the company transform multiple times. And I got to say, just to give you some props on VMware, there's always the V-Mafia get-together. They call it Jerry Chen, Pete Sancini, all the VCs, and all the alumni that have left VMware and started companies, not just venture capitalists, but a lot of engineers. So you've created a great culture. Congratulations. Thank you. It's been fun. So what's the secret of success of VMware, in your opinion? I mean, honestly, they've been a great company. I won't say pivoted, but have ridden the waves of innovation. What's the people formula that you deploy here? Yeah, well, it's all about the people, right, from the early days. And everything we do on the people side of the business is pretty deliberate. And it's pretty closely aligned with what we're trying to do with the technology, with our products. And that's been sort of the secret sauce. So I can't take a lot of credit for it because the founders had some great guiding principles, and we just kept building on that. So that is the secret sauce. It's the people. But in connection with that, it's aligned in what we're doing on that front with what the business is trying to do, which is be cutting edge and disrupt and innovate and think about what people today want when they come to work. I think Diane Greene also deserves some credit, too. She, after her speak about it, she lets a thousand flowers bloom, but will pull the weeds out fast, as she would say. This has been a big part of it, where that is a part of experimentation. That's the culture of the company on the innovation side. But now as it grows into the cloud, and as you guys continue to grow, I don't know how many employees you have, there's more and more people coming in. There's more and more people coming in. I mean, we're almost 20,000 people now, right? When I joined the company, there were about 150. But the core tenant, says Diane likes to talk about of helping things bloom, still remain strong with the company and what we're trying to do. And culture is key, you know, the saying, culture eats strategy for breakfast. Diane really believed in that. And a lot of what she planted in those early days is just continuing to go. We hire roughly a thousand people a quarter now, so thousands of people a year and bring them in. And things just resonate for them in terms of what we're trying to do. You know, the other thing I want to chat with you about is talking with Yang Bing, who heads up the V-San Group. She's one of the great leaders. She has the best Twitter handle. I think it's Yang Bing High Heels or something, if you get the title. It's a great one. But she's always well-dressed, and I just love her outfits. She's also a great executive. But this notion of women-led culture, you're a big part of. We were just at Grace Hopper, 16,000 people, another record year. Great content coming out. You're seeing resurgence of energy. You are. I agree. And the numbers still aren't there. We've still got some work to do. But what's your thoughts on where we are now? Yeah, well, it's fun to mention Yang Bing. She is one of the great leaders. She's had a great journey at this company and really has done exceptional things. And I think that Diane, being a female founder, one of the first female founders to get a company to a billion is a phenomenal milestone for women in tech, obviously. But one of the things we're doing now is we're continuing to push the envelope on that and trying to innovate new ways for women to become more established in technology. And one of the conferences that we piloted last year, which is coming back this year, is called Women Transforming Technology, or WT2. And that's also a reflection. And the date on that just to get the plug-in. You know, I can't remember the specific date. It's in February 28th, February 28th. February 28th. John, it's February 28th. I've got so many dates going on in my head. But it's a one-day conference. Last year we piloted it. It sold out within hours. Then we livestreamed the rest of it. We had thousands of women attending. But it's a unique approach. It's a consortium of companies coming together and deciding what women want and need to talk about. And so we create that environment where this consortium of companies comes together, determines what the subject matters are going to be for discussion. We have guest speakers. This year we have Gloria Steinemann, Kara Swisher. Last year we had Ariana Huffington and Mary Lou Jepsen. Full house. Any males? There are men that do attend. There are men that do attend. But it really is... Are we allowed to attend? You are allowed to attend. But registration... Be inclusive. Registration just opened and it fills up fast. So hurry. So right after this she should go say hi. If Kara's going, I'm going to go. Kara, don't mess with the switch. I love Kara. She's amazing. Kara's going to be a lot of fun. And so is Gloria Steinemann, obviously. What's the main theme? What are you hearing? So when you hear all these people come together, what are some of the patterns? What's the trending topics that seem to resonate most with people on their top of mind and longer term, what are some of the longer term challenges? Well I think there's a resurgence of women really wanting to move the needle. And this time a little bit differently in that men want to do it as well. People understand that diversity is a differentiator. And so a lot of companies are focusing on that. Some companies talk about it by talking about their numbers. We choose to talk about it by talking about our actions and starting to measure that journey with the numbers but not leading with the numbers. So it's obviously a very politically hot area. So I want to ask you your thoughts on what you've seen work and not work in the spirit of doubling down on what's working and patterns that you've seen because there's a lot of experimentation. Let's just, you know, it's happening, right? So try to get the formula right. There's no playbook. I don't think there's any one playbook but there's certain things you can do. What are you seeing that's working, that's not working? And what's the general framework to allow people to innovate? Yeah, the key differentiator for VMware is that we're taking approach where we're embedding all of these strategies and these plans and these actions in the business. So everything we do around diversity and inclusion, women especially, that was where we started, is about embedding those strategies and plans in the business strategies and plans. And I think that's the differentiator. It is true and core to who we are and what we're trying to do. And mentoring. How's the mentoring thing going? We, you know, we do a lot of sponsorship and we do a lot of mentoring. We do both. We partner heavily with the Klayman Institute, their experts in gender research. They've been terrific in terms of helping us design some really innovative programs to how we're sort of tackling the issue. Any technology innovations that you guys have seen adopt, I mean obviously you have your own workspaces and all these applications and user computing. Are there any kind of tools and techniques that you guys have put into place or experimented with? No, there's more. There's more. It's the kind of conversations that we're starting to allow and the kinds of forums we create so that people can have those conversations. So no syntax, no like by this app or downloads apps, mostly social forums like the communities? Yeah, level of conversation, level of engagement, level of substance in those conversations is really what it's all about. So talk about the thriving planet, one of the topic areas in the global economy is climate change. Right. It's come up a lot. The ozone layer is being worked on and solved from what the folks of the weather people tell me. But climate change is different. Also there's all these other thriving planet discussions. Your thoughts on the climate? Yeah. Well, you know, one of the core principles of VMware is also being a socially responsible company. And we've done that since the early days. And that is also grounded in a lot of what Diane brought in as the founder and the leader of VMware. And so one of the first things we did was, did it on a small scale with grassroots efforts. But in about 2009, 2010, we founded the VMware Foundation. And that was our first foray into becoming a truly socially responsible company. But what we did is we turned that upside down. It was not a tops driven approach to being socially responsible. It was employee led. So a lot of what we do, John, is we ask employees what they think we should be doing. And that diverse set of opinions creates a huge amount of collective impact. So with the foundation, it's all employee led. It's not driven from the top. It's not like corporate mandate. Check the boxes. No. It's organically built. That's right. That's right. And so that was one of the first things we did. Right now what we're doing is sort of taking everything that we've done in the product space to be a sustainable and responsible company, and turning that into a force for good. And so taking all these elements that are sort of alive and well, but not really formalized or talked about, taking a lot of the grassroots efforts and putting them in more formal. How does that bubble up to the top? So let's just say that's a subtraction, all kinds of conversations are happening. Is it like a program manager? Does it bubble up? No, that's a great question. So one of my favorite things to do is take a multi-pronged approach to everything. So bottom up from the sides and top down. And I think that's how you find the real truth and the real meaning as to whether or not it's... So you don't bottleneck it through. You just kind of have to keep it transparent. Well, there's a little bit of art and science, right, because a lot of what I do is listen to what the people think we need to do, whether it's from a product perspective or a people strategy perspective. And so you have to constantly take a multi-pronged approach. And I think that's the name of the game. You know, it's all about iterating and innovating and those that can do that. All right, so let's talk about the art side because the science side, there's a zillion books that you could read. There's a zillion books. There's a lot of stuff about data analytics, a lot of system stuff. On the artistic side of kind of having a gut feel for it, how do you develop that? How did you develop that? And what senses do you kind of have to peek to kind of feel the right kind of like vibe? What's the art side? How do you tap into that? You listen really well. You ask a lot of questions and you listen really well. And I also like to describe the MR as a why culture. We ask why a lot. Now, why are we doing that? Why is that important? Why is that more important than that? And that leads to just better answers. And one of the things we like to say is it's not about who gets the right answer, it's just getting to the best answer. And so that's what we do. So if no, why? That's right. That's right. That's right. Next time we're going to do the Cube, if no, why? If no, why? That's right. You can ask. But we always show up, don't we? It's a great interview. We can go another half hour. I'm going on the sustainability. People might not know this. I want you to provide some extra data if you can. The campus here is very sustainable. It is. Can you talk about some of the facilities here? Because I believe it's pretty much all built around. It's very green. Yeah. The campus is very green, all sustainable. We started the design of the campus with a very famous green architect named William McDonough. And it's just taken off. And so we started with the first 30 acres. And we built buildings that have, it's as simple as windows that open. All our food is from Bon Appétit that works with us in terms of making sure it's locally sourced and resourced. So there's just all sorts of elements around the campus. And we started on 30 acres. And now we're on 100 acres, whereas big is Disneyland. But a lot greener. So you're socially responsible and that's not a corporate bumper sticker, it's not just for show. It's not a bolt-on to anything that we're doing. It is embedded in everything that we do. Great. And so we're looking forward to seeing you at your event. Yeah. I can't wait to have you. You're going to sign up, right? Thanks for coming on, sharing. Great, great. Congratulations. Great work with your people here. Yeah. VMware is a great culture. And can you thrive? We'll see how they do with the new AWS partnership, which we've been detailing. Thanks so much. Thanks, John. I'm John Furrier. You're watching the Special Cube on the Ground at VMware's corporate headquarters. Thanks for watching.