 Live from Houston, Texas. It's theCUBE, covering Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. Well everyone, welcome back to the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. This is SiliconANG, it's theCUBE, our flagship program. We go out to the events and extract the civil noise. I'm John Furrier, the founder of SiliconANG. I'm joining my co-host Rebecca Knight here for three days of wall-to-wall coverage, introducing our Tech Truth 18 reporters here on the big stage in the middle of the hallway of all this awesome sea of women, hardcore tech power here in Houston. Our next two guests from Avonon, combination of Avenue meets Promenade, Joint Venture, between Accenture and Microsoft, now on its full-blown path to growth. And Stella Goulet, who's our CMO of Avonon, and Steve Kelly, head of Human Resources and leadership of the company, basically runs HR. Guys, thanks for joining us here in theCUBE. We're balanced, 50% men. Finally, we are parody right here. Grace Hopper has a huge problem, there's an inclusion problem, not enough men at the event. Oh, stop, stop. A thousand. Exactly, I'm with you, Stella. Now, all kidding aside, thanks for coming on. Great to see you again. Talk about the business, because now you have a mix of technology companies like Avonon, which is doing a lot of global services across the board, and you have educational institutions here, and hardcore programming. You guys aren't just doing stuff, you guys have some specific things, don't you have like a Guinness Book of World Records going on? Well, we're going, tomorrow we are going for a Guinness Book of World Records for the most people contributing to a program within, I think it's eight hours. So we are working on a chat box based on Windows 10 apps where we want people to answer the question, what are the things that, what's the thing that's been most impactful in their life? And so it's the idea is to give inspiration to others who want to search and get ideas. So is this on site here? Is this going to be off site? It is at our booth, which is just behind the booth here. So we ask anyone to come over, we're looking for a thousand to make the record. And so you need some coders to come over. We do, we want people to come over and... And how long that's going to go for? It is for what, eight hours, Steve? Yeah, from the opening in the morning till six. Tomorrow, okay, tomorrow. So please, please come by the booth. So talk about what you're taking on the show here because obviously there's so much historic activity going on, certainly women intact. Here in the U.S., the election cycle all you're hearing about is women with sort of the Trump tape out there, which actually completely changed the narrative and certainly focuses on the word women. We were talking about that last night, but that's all like typical garbage conversations in the gutter with politics. Here it's a beautiful message. Real coding and great technology power. How is that happening in now? I mean, what do you guys see with this dynamic? Because does that mean that this is the pipeline of women? What's your take on this tech trend in the industry? Well, we're seeing more and more women in technology and that's certainly something we want to encourage is more and more women coming into Avenard and people with great ideas. It's sort of an inclusion. You need to include everybody to get great ideas to make solutions for our clients, whether it be improving the in-flight experience for Delta or improving how Williams Martini works on and off the track or even sort of the supermarket of the future with Co-op Italia. It needs a lot of different minds, different ideas and women come with great ideas. Can you share an example where you, the coolest thing you can think of that you guys have been involved with that's been built out of an initiative that was formed with the women in tech? Well, I love supermarket of the future. You were showing it last year and see if you probably have an example to share as well where you take, the whole store was in the World's Fair in Milan and all of the technology, all the signage was digital. You could point at something, pick something up, all the data comes to show you where is it from, how heavy is it, what's in it, et cetera. Everything, everything digital. I think that would be the key one. I think the other things is, you know, adjacency with that, you know, sponsorship in moving with Aspire, right? Which is not directly, but what we're trying to do there is the same thing. You know, more influence, you know, more women in society overall, but using technology as a way to try and do that. So we're trying to use our corporate social responsibility to try and put that in place in terms of being able to get more technology by influencing more women in terms of those types of things. And also in terms of the influencing women customers, but also women, women workers, women employees, I know you were also your company signed the White House pledge. Can you talk a little bit about what moved your company to do that? I think, you know, I think there's some things you have to have a responsibility to do and hold yourself to account, and I think that's one of them. And whilst it's a, the White House pledge is a U.S. thing, we're a global organization. We believe we want to do that those everywhere. It's good, best practice, and therefore putting those things in place and sitting in the pledge in place is something not just about a U.S. workforce, but it's about our workforce globally. And I think, you know, it's about, you know, you have to live by the ethos and the values you aspire, and clearly that's really important to us in terms of that aspect. Can you talk a little bit about the values of your company? I mean, as John was saying, this was a joint, this was the product of a merger, Accenture and Microsoft, and it's been so successful. What are your numbers? Yeah, we're now a two billion dollar business, 29,000 people, more than across more than 23 countries. So yeah, our values are really important to us. And you know, one of the ones come to mind, we believe everyone counts. And Steve talked about the Aspire, our relationship with Aspire Foundation, and they have a vision to impact a billion women by 2020 through mentoring. So the mentees sign up, they're from non-profit organizations or government or communities, and our people sign up as mentors to these mentees. And it doesn't matter whether you are a junior person or a senior person, a man or a woman, wherever you are in the world, you can get involved as a mentee. And you're going into schools and community use. You're doing one hour mentorship to people who sign up. Now they may come from very different organizations. They may need help with what's my next job. They might need help with how do I communicate? A very senior woman, you're looking at how can I be more visible as a technologist, or it might be someone who's heading up a non-profit that says, where do we go from here and can you coach me? So it's very much tailored to them. And I think the other thing to add to that is, you know, we are trying to improve our gender diversity in the organization. So about 25% of our people are females. So that means there's a lot of men in the organization who don't have the experience of mentoring. This is an opportunity as well for them to mentor women not in their environment who have got different challenges and different opportunities. So there's some learning, passing knowledge on and for individuals to also learn, which also means they may think differently about what we're doing internally, what we have to do. So it's a great win-win in terms of passing knowledge and learning from that. Steve, talk about the future of work because you know, you have to think about the past, the current and the future. And the past has certainly been a very male-dominated culture that we've lived in. Certainly I've been in the industry for 35 years. I've seen a very heavily male-oriented. Current situation now is a huge awareness. Obviously this show is successful. But the digital transformation that's being talked about, which is totally real, people are changing the way they work. And there's been a lot of pressure on how to maintain the right employees. What is the role of performance reviews? How do you modernize the HR leadership function so that people can have a nice balanced workforce, balanced life, great diversity, everyone's contributing? I think it's a great question. I think, you know, we generally do try and do that. You know, the great advantage that we have is technology allows you to work anywhere. You know, I live in London, I'm based in Seattle. I spend all winter traveling as Stella does, right? And we have a lot of people like that in terms of that aspect. And I think what we're also trying to do is recognize how we developed our careers is not how many people here are going to develop their careers. So employers, we need to be much more flexible and adaptable and we need to begin to think about, you know, what do we really need to put in place for people? When I joined an organization as you did, Stella, loyalty was a big issue. If employers don't provide a different form of loyalty, individuals will leave because there's plenty of choices out there for women. And therefore, what we're trying to do in our organizations is be different, try and encourage more people to come in, try to be much more flexible and adaptable. Some of the things people talked about, the key notes this morning, about some of the employment policies they want to be in place, about flexibility, about investment in leadership, investment in women, you know, we're trying to do that. We run our Avonad leadership program for women. You know, we take 40 women each year, we run them through a program and we not only just put them through the program, but we're trying to look at what do they need in the future in terms of skills. The other thing that we're actually trying to do is develop what we call an associate network. You know, again, beginning to think differently. Maybe people don't want jobs anymore, they want experiences. So can we provide people with experiences? And I think that's where technology's taken people now from a technology perspective. That's a great point. Let's double down on that because I think that ties into what we were just talking about earlier about having diversity, which makes things spicier, certainly, right? But also opportunity is there. So you want to create an environment where people can be leveraged in a way that provides their talent but also provides growth for the employee. So with all this agile conversation happening, this new formation, so it's not like you're in the job or hey, they promoted that person. I hate that person. That person's the wrong person for the job. What criteria? So a new kind of algorithm is developing where getting the right people in the right position is a big data problem. Yeah, and with the tools today, I mean, we work with colleagues in India or wherever you're doing an agile sprint or meetings together, you're whiteboarding things, you're sharing as if you're in the same room. Do you guys use big data because that's come up many times on CUBE interviews where HR, rethinking HR has come down to, well, if we can use analytics. Like you're fielding a team in the same way that Cybermetrics has affected has changed baseball and basketball and football. And I think we've done that this year. We've used analytics and really for the first time, trying to look at retention, attrition, why are people waving us, whether it's irrespective of gender, but why are people waving us? What's the real reason? How's the career? So the ability to use that has enabled us to really focus down on a number of key things that we've wanted to try and address because we spend a lot of time recruiting people and bringing people in the organization. There's no point. Time and money. Time and money. So I think really being able to use big data as a way to try and get better at it is something that I think HR can put a big role in. Stella, talk about your experience here at Grace Hopper. And Steve, I'd like to get your take as a first time attending. Not yet well known globally yet. It's certainly rising very fast in terms of awareness word of mouth in all circles of the globe for technology, intersecting, social justice, women in tech, women in technology, steam, et cetera. For the folks that aren't here that are watching, what's it like and how has the Grace Hopper celebration of women in computing evolved? How is it changing? What's the vibe? Could you share some color? Well, there's incredible energy. I don't know if you were in the basketball stadium this morning with those 15,000 people. I remember last year I was my first year coming here and I was stunned by the keynote so that big hall being filled. But today walking in and rewalking at the top tier. And you're looking down all those women. Absolutely incredible. And there's people all walking around, milling around. These are people who have their futures ahead of them. I mean, how exciting is this? Why should someone get involved in this community? In tech. And Grace Hopper, this event, the ecosystem of what this is building. It's the networking, the ability to go and see what's out there. We're doing mentoring on our, speed mentoring on our booth. Speed mentoring. You're doing those kinds of things. There are other companies doing things to connect great way to meet people. We're accepting your resumes from interns and experienced as well as people just coming out of college. So you have a great place to find a job. Of all the shows I go to, I got to say, this is the most colorful relative to theme-based booths because the engagement is so high here that you can see the personality of the company by their booth. That's true. That's the idea. That's the marketing idea that you execute properly. I love this event. Your thoughts, your first time here. Well, I think when I, I could show you a photograph, we turned up three years ago. And I won't show you the photograph, but my team sent me the photograph and I was embarrassed, right? Then when I found out a little bit more about Grace Hopper, we got serious in the last two years. So I think, you know, I never attended last year, but I think for us, we just see so much value in richness. A, been able for us to explain a little bit of what we do, people to experience, as you say, the brands represent the organization. But for us to touch people, you know, in a way, and for people to touch us in a way that we've never been able to do before, it's just pretty phenomenal. Arrow smiling, I mean, everyone's happy and watching out here. People walking around with their friends, students, mixing with executives, a complete transparent environment of like, and people are happy. And there's no status, right? I think that's the other big thing. It's just, you know, you know, there's no status and I think that's another fantastic. Rebecca, your thoughts, your first time too. I'm loving it. I think this is so much fun and it's just really great to be around all of these young women who are so inspired and veterans too, who are looking out at the crowd and saying, this is wonderful, the future is yours, but I also had to take some hard knocks, so appreciate me for what I did for you for opening those doors. Well, thanks for being our host. Because last year we had no women hosts and we got kind of politely talked to in a nice way. Well, I'm glad. I'm glad I can add some diversity to the host of you. I love having more hosts. Yes. So thanks for sharing your thoughts here. Stella, appreciate it. Appreciate you guys coming on theCUBE. We are here live in Houston, Texas, for the Grace Hopper Women in Computing Celebration. You're watching theCUBE. You're back with more after this short break.