 Good evening. Thank you all for joining the Future Forum tonight for our discussion on Women in Leadership. The Future Forum is an organization that brings together individuals with different backgrounds, experiences, and points of view to discuss the pressing issues that affect us today. Our goal is to create civil, informed, and bipartisan discussions, which is needed now more than ever. The Future Forum's events are made possible by our incredible members and our sponsors, and if you are not a member, I strongly encourage you to sign up before you leave tonight, or at the very least, visit lbjfutureforum.org to learn more. I'd also like to recognize Rosemary's catering for donating all of the delicious food that you'll have tonight, and to our beverage sponsors Carbock Brewery and Austin Wine Merchant. The Forum is hosting its last event of the season in two weeks on May 31st on the Mayor's Task Force Report on Racism and Inequity in the City. Mayor Adler will be joined by several other speakers to discuss that report and our recommendations for moving forward and how we can overcome. Full details for that event and registration to sign up are available on the website. I'm incredibly excited to begin tonight's conversation, and please keep in mind there will be time for questions at the end of the discussion, and we encourage you all to stay with us afterwards to continue the conversations and try some of that delicious food from Rosemary's Catering. And now I'll turn it over to Emily Ramshaw, Editor-in-Chief of the Texas Tribune and our moderator to introduce our guests. Hi everybody. Thank you so much for coming. It's so great to see such an awesome crowd. Obviously amazing women, but there are also a lot of gentlemen here, which I'm thrilled about. And this is the first one of these that I've moderated, where there is actually booze ahead of time, which means this will be a livelier than average discussion. We are thrilled to have you here. This event is called Women in Leadership, Leading Ladies, and I am so lucky to be joined on stage by three women who are not just leaders in their own right, but are helping to build the next generation of strong female leaders in Austin and in Texas more broadly. They are Toya Bell, the Deputy Chief Ethics Officer for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. Toya is an attorney with more than 25 years of experience. She's also the Chair-Elect of Leadership Austin, Vice Chair of the Austin Bar Foundation and Founding Chair of the Long Center for the Performing Arts Advisory Council. Mellie Price is the Executive Director of Commercialization at UT Austin's Dell Medical School, meaning basically she's the badass boss of all new technology. She is the co-founder of the Startup Accelerator Capital Factory, and she founded Front Gate Tickets, which was later sold to Live Nation. She won the Austin Business Journal's 2015 Profiles in Power Award. And Eric Assigns is UT Austin's Associate Vice President for Community and External Relations. Previously, she served in the Chancellor's Office at UCLA. She also serves on the board of Goodwill Industries. I live here, I give here, and Hispanic Alliance, among other organizations. Please help me welcome this incredible group of panelists. All right, so we'll have about 40 minutes of moderated conversation followed by 15 to 20 minutes of audience Q&A, so keep drinking and come up with some good ones. The three of you are brilliant, strong, empowered women in really incredible jobs, I mean at the pinnacles of your careers in government, technology, the highest echelons of university administration. What did you have to overcome to get in the positions you're in today, because it wasn't all just an easy rise to the top? Toya, why don't you start? Thanks. I think, you know, being aware of what your skill set is and constantly working to grow that skill set, so that was something that I consciously did. I also thought about, what are all the different things that you can do as an attorney? I love being a lawyer, and so I wanted to continue practicing law, but I also wanted to do something different that was part of executive leadership and part of management. So I think one of the key things that I pass along to each of you is to think about your options throughout your career, and to have multiple plans and multiple trajectories, so that when those doors of opportunity open, you're ready to step through them. And don't be afraid to promote yourself and make sure that people know what your skill set is and all the different talents that you have, because that's something that I've had to work at making sure that people know about all the things that I can do and all the broad experience that I have. And that's really helped me to have the current position that I have, but it's also helped me in inspiring other people, because I mentor a lot of people, and so I'm always telling them, think about where you want to be a few years from now, what skill sets do you have, what skill sets do you need to cultivate, and who do you need to inform about your talents and your skills? Because if you keep it to yourself, it doesn't help. You have to share that information. Who did you have to inform about your talents? Was there a time when you had to say to someone, hey look, I deserve the seat at the table? I came forward and said, this is what I do. My background is labor and employment law. I've also practiced as an ethics attorney. I'm trained as a mediator. So making sure that people knew that these are my skill sets. This is what I do, and I'm an expert in this area. Mali, what about you? Thanks for starting with one of the hardest questions for us. Oh no, they'll get harder. And can I just say, this is the coolest forum I'm looking at. It's like little blocks of wood with wine and good people. So thank you for having me. I'm actually a little embarrassed to answer the question. And the reason is that I was born into privilege. And the biggest thing I had to overcome to tap into more of my potential was myself. I didn't have a lot of third party obstacles. I was given an education. And really the journey for me about leadership, and quite frankly I think it's a lifelong journey and it's one I'm still in, is figuring out how to get out of my own way. There's amazing people who create opportunity around us all the time. Our own insecurities and our own fear of failure and just the programming that we come up with through whatever circumstances we come up with. And so the journey of self-awareness has been key for me and quite frankly I was a late bloomer in that department. So early on it was about just the hustle, just hard work, and I think every young person that's successful starts there. But then it becomes I think a more complex set of things. It's skill development, it's timing, it's self-awareness. But I think that for our young people are really, that's one of the things I actually love about the millennial generation, is they do have a propensity for looking inward, maybe sometimes too much. But how can we harness that and turn that into a really great asset for the next generation of leaders? And so what is the specific example of a time where you had to get out of your own way? Oh gosh, every day. There are so many times when my need to be right, my need to feel smart, my need to feel validated, my need to feel light got in my way of perfectly lovely opportunities that I could have just rocked from the beginning. And you're just in there, typical Taipei personality that gets women all the labels, the stereotypes that we come with, and just not having to do that has created so much more freedom and quite frankly joy in the task of doing things. I carried responsibility so heavy when I was young. I'm responsible, I am a CEO, I'm a young CEO, a woman. And there's no fun in that. That doesn't inspire people to want to work with you and travel a journey with you. So literally every day and just trying to get out of my way is probably the biggest gift. And it's brought me the most pleasure as I've gotten older. So now I'm in this amazing situation where I get to leverage that and invite other people on the journey. And that to me is probably the biggest blessing of getting older and growing in my career. Eric, what about you? What stumbling blocks were there that you had to surpass to get into your current position? I had another answer, but I want to play off of yours because I had the exact opposite existence at least beginning wise. Low income first generation, English was my second language. But I didn't know how underprivileged I was. And I didn't know the lack of opportunities that were not falling before me. So in a way that was sort of a positive thing. But then once I came to the University of Texas and I moved to Austin in 1993, I was like completely blown away by how much catching up I had to do. Quickly, my school was not as competitive as other peer schools of my UT valedictorian colleagues, which was not. And the hustle too, in that way we're similar. I just thought, okay, I see what privilege is now. I see I didn't have it. I'm glad I... I was embarrassed by some of those things growing up, but I didn't know it was have, have not. But here, and being exposed to information and education and opportunities that I knew I did not have, really lit a fire for the hustle and the knowledge and the learning and coming at it from the most positive way possible too because no one likes an angry person. A bitter person. So it's been a very interesting late bloomer type atmosphere for me as well. I think actually you just touched on something fascinating, which is nobody likes the bitter angry woman, right? And we're all sort of people in general, but women in particular. We're sort of hardwired to think about our behavior in certain settings. And I want to talk about moments where you felt like you were up against a stigma or a stereotype. I mean, I was a young woman covering a Texas legislature that was filled with older white men, and there were absolutely times where I felt self-conscious or talked down to. And we're not really rewarded for speaking out about those kinds of experiences. What are times in your careers where you all have felt like you've been up against that and be specific? I'm going to let whichever one of you wants to jump in. I'm sure you all have. Basically every executive or senior level meeting I've ever been in at UT or anywhere really in the community, even at non-profit boards who claim to embrace diversity and care about those sorts of things. What ways does it matter? A primary education was so dominant and higher ed is so male dominant. It's such a reverse culture. I think behavior, you're right, especially in a non-diverse environment of literally just a meeting. I'm very fortunate to work for a vice president who puts me in those situations that I ordinarily would not have the opportunity of being in and says you're going to be my proxy ghost in that meeting and be brilliant. And so you do. Yes. But those specific instances of they underestimate what you're able to contribute at the table if you're like pretty consistently and then you open your mouth and you're over-prepared and you're thinking about your behavior and you're ladylike or whatever. And all those things and then you have to also perform. You also have to meet those expectations and probably exceed them if you're really prepared correctly. So the layers that we have to engage in with all of those background things, noise, I feel like maybe some men deal in those multiple layers but certainly women have to navigate those. I think there are not as many men who are thinking in the back of their head, don't be shrill, don't be shrill. Right. Oh, that was my fridge face. You can use those words here. My adversity I think has been much more subtle. Quite frankly I think I was not attuned to it in my younger life. My experience of it was more around my sexuality because I've been out since I was 15. And so in the early days, particularly with any venture capital related things, there was, I think my adversity has come in the form of being invited into the room but then not actually heard. And so that experience of being a young tech woman who, you know, they would say they wanted the voice but then it wouldn't actually show up in the decision making process. And then quite frankly I'm actually experiencing the most of it that I've experienced in my life in my current chapter and that's in the healthcare ecosystem. The healthcare ecosystem at the executive levels is dominated by men and generally white men and generally older men. And not that there's anything wrong with their life or their experience but that for some reason that's been the development of that ecosystem and it's, I think it's something that we have to overcome to accomplish our sort of national mission of improving health outcomes and lowering costs and fixing this broken system. We need more voices in there. And yet it's profound to me that, you know, here I am in my 40s at the top of my career and I went to a meeting last week and I was one woman out of 16 men and I was the only person under 50. And I was just like, where are they? Yeah. So it was very interesting. And it's a heavier weight, right? For you do you feel, I feel like a heavier sense of responsibility to then represent all womankind and certainly Latinos because they will all be judged by my quality of knowledge. And it's just a, that's not a burden that everyone shares. I think part of it is also being aware of implicit biases that are out there. In my case, you know, many times I've been the only African-American or the only African-American woman or the only woman and so being in those settings, that's not really, I guess, where I'm uncomfortable. I went to a very small school in San Antonio, it was called Keystone School and I went there K through 12 and there were only 20 students allowed per grade level. So many of the classes were even smaller. I think the graduating class ahead of me only had 15 students in it. And in my graduating class there were just two African-Americans at the most, there were four during the whole time from kindergarten through 12th grade. So even though I grew up and had, you know, a community, a church home and other organizations that I was in, but in my day-to-day every day at school, I was just one of few. And then that kind of proceeded in college and in graduate school and then all the different things that I've been involved in. So I think that being aware of implicit bias that's out there because I haven't really expressed, experienced that really direct over activity but keeping your eyes and ears open to implicit bias I think is really important for all of us because there can be implicit bias even in systems. You know, now people are sort of talking about systems, thinking, systems design. There are implicit biases that are built into systems that people don't even know and so that's why you have healthcare disparities. That's why you have educational disparities. It's because of the implicit bias in the system, not always the overt racism or sexism or bias that might be expressed. So I mean explain that concept of implicit bias and how it has related to you. Like give us an example of a time where you've experienced implicit bias. I would say in instances, and this is one that I think many of the African-Americans maybe others in the room might identify with, you know, we're all educated, we're all professional, we're engaged in our communities and in our places of work and we're excelling and then someone says, oh, you're so articulate. They don't say that to me. Thank you. You know, and I want to say are you surprised I speak the king's English? You know, I was an English major. I graduated from Rice, I'm an attorney. But so, you know, things like, or you carry yourself so well. You know, and it's said with a smile and it may not be meant in a malicious way. But when you hear that over and over again, is that what you're noticing? Is that what you notice maybe not that I was correct or that I solved the situation or this problem or I executed on the assignment but the comment is, oh, you're really articulate. You know, I actually have a question about implicit bias. Because as you were talking, one of the things that I was thinking is that for those of us that have been in a unique situation where we're the one in many, that often becomes a competitive advantage. And I was not real active in supporting other women in earlier in my career. It's really been something that I've come to understand, you know, that I need to be proactive. And I don't, it was not in any malicious way. It's just in a, it was an advantage, right? And I was in the room and my focus wasn't on bringing other women into the room or other LGBT people into the room. It was, I was comfortable being the person in that role. So is that an implicit bias within me to not see the value of bringing others into the fold? Does that follow in that? You know, I don't know. I would, I brought this book because there's a book called Blind Spot that I recommend to everyone about implicit bias. And it's Blind Spot, Hidden Biases of Good People. And the professor, Mazarin Banaji, she spoke here at UT. They have a Women in the Law Summit, a conference that happens every other year. And it's a fantastic conference. Women who are attorneys from all over the country. It's by invitation only. And they have these great speakers. And so one year I was leading a work group of young attorneys at my agency who were interested in becoming ethics advisors. And one of the things that I put on our calendar for us to do was to attend the lecture that she provided on implicit bias. Because when you're interviewing people and you're hearing their concerns, whether it's, you know, in my case, employment law or ethics complaint or inquiry, you want to make sure that you're thinking clearly and that you're not, there's no implicit bias in the way that you receive the information that someone's sharing with you and the way you conduct your investigation, whether you take this complaint seriously more seriously than others because of who brought it. How do you deliver the results? Those are all things that you have to think about when you're going through any exercise in your day-to-day life. Is there something that causes me to favor one person over the other? And I may not even know it. And so I wanted them to be exposed to that and that's how I ended up learning a little bit more about implicit bias and studying it more and more. I think generally you were not, but if it was ever geared at a person based on some characteristic, whether it's visible or invisible, then perhaps yes. I mean, I'm curious how you all go about then building diverse and inclusive teams. I mean, I had a huge blind spot. We've been working really hard at the Tribune to further diversify our ranks to make our newsroom look more emblematic of Texas. And I hired a few young African-American reporters, and I was asking them for a great speaker for a Tribune Festival panel. And I wrote an email that said, I'm looking for someone like really vibrant and well-spoken and a young black male reporter. Thank God he came up to me afterward and he said, look, I don't want to make you uncomfortable, but I just want to tell you, that's like a dog whistle term. You know, you shouldn't write that in an email to young reporters of color. And I was obviously mortified, but I was grateful that he was comfortable to come talk to me about it. So how do you all take these kinds of factors into consideration and try to build teams that are more inclusive than the ones that you've gotten a chance to be a part of? I mean, for me, it's the work that we do in the division, so I have super easy practical answers. Like, you really have to think about those visible and invisible diverse qualities that someone may hold. So the vertical diversity qualities, things that are visible, gender, ethnicity, those sorts of things, and then the horizontal diversity factors which are more invisible, someone's religion or someone's sexual orientation, someone's ability or disability, and sometimes ability and disability is both depending on if it's a physical disability. Thinking about all of those ways in which people identify is something we do all day every day. And then, in addition to that, just to add another interesting layer, is thinking about interdiversity and intra. So just because you hire one African-American, you can check that box. That human being does not represent that entire community. The same thing for other Asian communities, a perfect example of this, too, because there's so much diversity within that within that population and so figuring out how to then get some intra-diversity, too, where it's not just about those specific things, but diversity within those categories. And, you know, you're saying it's not about checking a box. Mellie, we were just talking about women in particular a moment ago. I mean, on the 2016 campaign trail, and I promise we're not talking about politics here, Mellie. You know, Madeleine Albright got a lot of flack for basically saying I think the quote was, there's a special place in hell for women who don't help other women. Is true, false, complicated? I think it's complicated, you know, sort of drawing on that the last question, which is how do you build diverse teams? I'm embarrassed, again, I'm embarrassed at who I've been in the course of my life, apparently. And, of course, it's recorded, which makes it even more terrifying. But the truth for me, it's a big trigger for me. I've always really resented being given an opportunity because I was a woman or because somebody was checking the LGBT box on their board of directors, you know, diversity and inclusion thing. And I think it's complex. It's something, quite frankly, I struggle with personally on what's my position on this and my role as the director of diversity at Capital Factory. I struggle with what's our position as a tech hub and what it took for me to sort of just have a personal policy around building teams is I had to authentically find a place within myself where I saw the value of diversity and I don't really mean the visible diversity, like the power of a team that has multiple perspectives. And until I got to that place I was hiring very homogenous people that reflected the things that I valued and it wasn't until my early 30s when I saw the shift of like it is really like I'm a business person. It's valuable to my business to be able to talk to different markets and be able to look at and then at that point it didn't change my hiring practices. It changed what I saw and so I just finally was able to create more diversity in my teams, particularly like in the Frank A. Cull Center and things like that, that I don't know that I would have you hire, especially when you're in a small business and you know you're only hiring 20 or 30 people. It's really easy to end up with people that reflect the things that you like and they want to please you. And so I really think it's important that we do more work with people on helping them understand explicitly what where their businesses will benefit from bringing different voices, different ages, different political perspectives you know diversity across the board. You shouldn't be so hard on yourself though because one, there's a lot of research that supports all that, so that's good. You know always just look it up. But also I don't think you were having like non you were not supporting diversity. It's a matter of inclusion and exclusion. I'm, I actually I think check the boxes is like bare minimum you need to do that. Like diversity should be the easiest thing you work on because it's kind of numbers. Inclusion much more difficult, much more difficult to do. Now how do you incorporate those perspectives and those experiences into your business or into your environment and have them be valued and then be beneficial, right? And those things are also there's just work and cyclical and it's an important part of that formula, but one cannot be without the other. That's right and there's a famous quote, I can't remember who said it but it's great to be invited to the party, but it's even better to be invited to dance. So as you're thinking about building your teams, think about maybe first start with your personal circle. I mean I've always had a very diverse group of friends, so again it's not uncommon for me to be around lots of different people with different viewpoints, different ages, religions, backgrounds and then being in the area of labor and employment law, again along with what Erica was saying, well you know diversity is part of that thinking in that way and realizing how important it is to have diversity. I was going to mention that you know, Mellie and I are both on the leadership Boston board and this year our board may have been one of the most diverse nonprofit boards in Austin and it's really brought so much value to us because our board meetings, we don't go over committee reports, we have strategic planning discussions and the voices of so many different people, different ages, different professions, different income levels, different religions, I mean all of that comes into the fabric of what we're talking about, what we're planning to do to help continue to take Austin to even higher levels but I know we couldn't do that without the diversity of the group that we have at the table. Totally true. I want to hear from all three of you on advocating for yourself as a woman, I mean my mom always said to me the worst thing anybody can ever say is no, so I took that advice and asked for things I asked for a raise when I was on maternity leave I asked for you know, whatever I will ask for anything maybe I'll get it, maybe I won't but I see with a lot of even the young women who work for me that men tend to be much on average much better advocates for themselves they'll ask for jobs they're not qualified for, they'll ask for money even if they already just asked for a raise you know six months ago, why don't women do that the same way men do and how do you all guide the women who work for you to be better advocates for themselves? You know I'd say avoid self-sabotaging behavior and a specific example that I hear repeatedly it is a lot of times an opportunity will come up and if the women in the room will say oh you know I haven't taken a course in that or I don't have any experience doing that or maybe after I get my certification that I could do that the men in the room will say oh I can do it and they'll phone a friend who knows how to do it and they'll find out how to do it or they'll come ask you and you're like I'm working on that anyway and it's the story of my life you're speaking to me don't be afraid to take risks because it's about taking those risks and of course you don't want to get way out there in an area that you don't know anything about but don't be afraid to take risks because most things are doable and most things can be learned but I think as a gender we hear examples all the time and probably many of us have done this as well is step back from something because we feel like we're not qualified not because someone told us we weren't right but kind of along those lines I think any younger folks or anyone that I mentor period it's kind of back to the value thing until you really value yourself and your contribution and have that confidence I think it is hard advocacy just for advocacy's sake generally isn't successful because I think the people that you're asking sniff that out and my advice is really to go to the core of figure out what it's going to take for you to believe what you're asking for and then you can sell ice to Eskimos and I think you really have to stand behind whatever you're advocating yourself to be or do so if you're constantly talking about how collaborative you are and what a wonderful team player you are and how amazing co-worker you are on the other hand you do not behave in the manner that those qualities would require it's very off-putting and it's just it makes it so clear that you're unaware even of what you're advocating for because you aren't executing those actions through your day-to-day work women have to have like a 2x say to do ratio as a man it's like if you say you're going to do it you better do it and knowing what the core competencies are for the things that you want to do so once you know what those core competencies are whether you find them on an evaluation form or one of those 360 reviews it has what are the core competencies behind people who really are collaborative what are the core competencies around people who really are visionary leaders and those are the things you should be working toward right but at the same time that you are pursuing this really aggressive course or women in general are pursuing this aggressive course you know statistics show that there are huge wage disparities the moment that women have kids I mean there was in a great New York Times story about it three days ago that motherhood was the single best indicator of a pay gap behind men or there was a great Wall Street Journal story about a week ago about women still predominantly being the primary caregivers for elderly parents and that the biggest indicator of your safety and security as an elderly American is having a daughter yes I mean yeah right exactly I know I can quit now sorry you're in trouble you're only six today you're really in trouble you're worst off of everybody yeah I mean so this is not to say obviously that men don't play key and crucial roles but overwhelmingly women are still shouldering so how do we pursue these high powered you know the highest echelons of our careers and still face these you know serious obligations how do we balance it it's like working twice as hard well in the crazy thing for me is that again one of the things I'm like not super proud of is when I was in my 20s hiring women you know I had account managers that were in their 30s starting to have families and I unfortunately would be like seriously your kids sick again you know like I couldn't comprehend because I did not have kids that you know they could have strep throat one week and I don't know lice the next week or whatever it is that they do or that your whole family could be taken down for three simultaneously weeks over some and so I was quite frankly fairly intolerant of that and after employing again at a small business level probably hundreds and hundreds if not a few thousand people women who have families are so much more effective like as a gross generalization I'm probably not supposed to grossly generalize in like an equality related thing but you know they're miracle workers they get more done and have more focus and more precision and more dedication and are so effective with time management and yet here they are at the bottom of the pay scale it's mind blowing there's gotta be research science around this that like media organizations can publish about this this unfortunate disparity right exactly either of you want to weigh in on that gosh you know I I mean I see it even now I think it's very different private sector and the public sector I think fortunately for us at the university I find that we're much more nurturing and accepting of those kinds of priorities in people in people's lives certainly that's been my experience at the university where those things seem to be the norm and you're given that kind of there's a lot more flexibility in a much different way than I have heard the private sector has perhaps historically been so a lot of it has to do with the structures to manage it though you know in a small business you're not generally the tracking the policies and stuff are there technically but the enforcement of them is very different than the experience I've had in a large state organization where it's pretty easy to say okay well we quit paying you here because you know everything whereas when you've got somebody that you've been kind of flexible with just how to kid maybe they needed longer it gets messy in small business I was going to say something I've also seen in an evolution is you know I remember practicing law earlier in my career in a workplace where they've never had a woman who had a baby and so when one of my colleagues had a baby leading up to her going on maternity leave there was a lot of confusion and just question to ask like what's going to happen what are we going to do and she was nervous too because there wasn't a plan and so you know and then moving from that phase to okay most places have paternity leave and there's a policy but you can only be gone so long and if you're gone longer than that if you don't have any vacation time you may not have a job to come back to to now seeing maternity and paternity leave so now couples both the mother and the father are either taking time off together or they're staggering it so they can both be with their baby when the baby's little but neither one has to worry about jeopardizing their career or their livelihood and so it's been nice just to see that progression and you see how quickly things are changing because we're both we're all three of us all four of us are very young but over this period of time we've seen some really great strides in that area and you know companies that don't offer the same paternity benefits as maternity benefits maybe it's implicit maybe it's explicit bias you know we're sort of reinforcing these same challenges I mean we've started really encouraging men at our organization to take the full three months of paternity leave because it sets that expectation and hopefully is improving lives for their their wives so I do think it's something we need to keep working on well I mean the three of you are leaders in your own right but we never stop learning I mean how how do you keep progressing and developing as leaders as you mentioned we're also very young how do you make sure you're still a phenomenal even better leader you know five years from now than you are today to learn I'm curious about so many different things and so there are things that I do on my own but I also take an opportunity to learn from this women in the law power summit that I just mentioned we just had another one this year and it's great to be around peers and other women who have excelled at even higher levels in the legal profession and have speakers like Valerie Jarrett and lots of other national people are coming to talk about the law their career for her you know she had a great presentation on life in the in your responsibility as a government employee and when you work for the government what's the burden that you carry and that it's not about power it's about responsibility that your your burden every night is responsibility to the taxpayers and the people that you serve and take care of so going to things like that has really been inspiring to me of course you know these leadership programs Leadership Texas, Leadership Boston we're both alumni of the Texas Lyceum, Emily and I are we're going to have a program in Washington that's coming up we'll be having fireside chats with you know people who are ambassadors and very high ranking government officials and so we'll learn about their careers and their trajectories and their challenges and we learn from each one of those experiences so I would encourage you all to do those things oh and one of the things I was going to mention when you were talking about Madeline Albright came to Austin it's been several years ago and she had a book signing how many of you have seen that book it's about her pen collection the lapel pens that she wears well most of those pens have a story behind them that's related to her life as the secretary you know her career secretary of state and she had some phenomenal stories even about world leaders many of whom were men and why she chose to wear a particular pen and what it meant in her own defiance that she showed by wearing some of these pens so that you know that was a fun thing that I did with another girlfriend I look for interesting things like that to do with with my other girlfriends and with my husband Stephen who's here who I love hanging out with but those are all ways that you can learn formally and informally let's see I I think you've probably figured out by now I don't know who said it maybe it was just my grandma that the older you get the less you know and I am totally guilty of that as I get older I'm like oh my god I totally thought I knew that and I so didn't have a clue and so the journey for me on leadership I'm kind of a simpleton at the end of the day I try to find people that embody the person that I would like to be and I try to hang out with them and learn from them and and that's way more effective for me than I'm really grateful for the like professional leadership development opportunities I've had along the way but the most life changing I think you know helping me become a better human being a better friend a better mom a better partner you know those those things have come from just being around amazing people and you know growing up I didn't really have figure heads you know I don't know if you all had that experience but I didn't really sort of get that you could model your behavior after somebody else and so I am constantly looking for amazing people and constantly trying to figure out how to not be a total adult in life but then for me as I moved away from being just a software as a service entrepreneur into this you know relationship where I am serving the taxpayers in my role at the University of Texas and I've really been enjoying quite frankly learning from my colleagues like Toya who have been in that kind of role for a long time and understanding more about the responsibilities and the thought processes and so there is a professional development for me but it's always sort of related to the job I have at that time the leadership development has really been a function of spiritual leaders, friends family also learning from people that you don't want to be like as equally as effective Very very important and critical especially in professional settings when someone is behaving in a way that is negative in your perspective or someone is reacting negative to that you have to be able to think to yourself do not act like that man is acting ever never speak to people that way it's such important lessons I mean I feel like just as critical as it is by good model examples certainly bad negative examples are essential to how not to be and I think as we grow and develop too and learn from those models and those figures one of my awareness things is that then you start kind of becoming that person that then younger people look to and then you have to sit up straight and remember that students are listening to you and looking to you to be brilliant and insightful as well and to model the behaviors that they then will see and replicate in their own style I think is also really essential important I also think being quiet enough to listen when you're in a meeting many times when I'm in a meeting I could be in a board meeting I could be in a meeting at work but I'll just listen observe how individuals interact with each other observe how their interactions are received and you learn a lot about how to communicate with other people and then start reflecting on yourself are you being received how do people respond when you ask them to do something and that will tell you a lot about your leadership style and things that you can tweak and start working on but you have to spend the time to listen and be reflective and be self aware and sometimes be self critical because for all of us sometimes there are things that need to be changed or they need to be tweaked but you're not going to be aware of that and it's better to be self aware and start learning on your own than to have something harsh happen or something that you could have fixed but you just were too blind to see it then there's just the like fail fail fast model every day I step in a pile and then I learn from it and I try not to do that same thing again we would like to learn from you all now I'm sure you all have better questions than I had so please raise your hands and we would love to hear from you I usually and this is something I learned from my vice president positive modeling never come from it from a deficiency direction even if they're not seemingly being exclusive or showing some sort of bias always come from some positive perspective about how they perhaps should have seen that or how they could reflect on that or how you perceive something to be instead of coming at it as no you're wrong because you're actually saying you're a person and you're discriminating and it's actually illegal and we're going to sue you say the positive aspects of of that perspective whatever that opposite of that is come to it with that opposite perspective and bring it as genuine as you can without being catty and without being I told you or whatever just really expressing coming from it positive plays and not from deficiency it's such miracles for me I mean miracles in a meeting where you are going towards a no and you just change your perspective and you change your tactic in that way and I've seen that turn into a yes or into a let's think about it some more and we might we might be able to do that or we might be able to do something it's a great opportunity to hone your perspective to the that which we resist persists is like a really great mantra for me typically when I'm in strong resistance to somebody it's a reflection of my own position and it's an opportunity to clarify that and fortify it and reflect and so a lot of times I face controversy with more like a socratic message method of asking questions and trying to truly understand the perspective so I can always say I'm done so usually usually I try to embrace it it's getting more difficult these days the woman in the black and then the woman in the white and black right there I was wondering if you could speak a little bit to collaboration impact versus competition because that's such a difficult thing for women in particular I don't know if that's generational or not if you see anything different in younger women but we have to be effective at work and so you want to mentor and collaborate but how do you compete I'm going to say something flipped up like are they different I don't know I actually think competition has gotten a bad name I think competition can be really effective in the workplace if it's done respectfully and it's so collaboration between people in my experience between people that respect each other and are working towards a common goal with common purpose you know that sparring that trying on different and opposing views I think can be really powerful I would say not to personalize it you know it's about you and your success and it's easy to get derailed if you're thinking about what's the other person doing and what are they doing and how do they do that and how do they get that so think about what you want to do and how are you going to get there and what are the competencies that you need what are the skills you need what are the relationships that you need we've been talking about skills and competencies but relationships are just as important maybe sometimes more so so think about nurturing and cultivating those things versus focusing your energy on the other person because if each person is thinking that way then the entire team is going to rise you're going to have a better work product a better decision a better relationship hi Elizabeth with the Miracle Foundation I'm really curious especially Millie talked about modeling behavior who are y'all's heroes and role models as it relates to leadership well mine unfortunately I can't share anything that you would recognize mine have largely been very personal people in my life who are famous leaders or anything like that so I'm not a good one for that one I think different people at different times you know so for me it can be situational it can be a particular characteristic someone that I know that might be extremely gracious and so when I'm in a stressful situation I think about her and how she handles situations under fire how she's gracious so I don't know if there's one one particular or even two or three particular people because I have a big circle of people that I admire and then other people that we all think about people who are on the national level that may have a characteristic that we'd love to emulate and we work toward I think you're right about the certainly personal ones teachers growing up huge school counselors growing up middle school high school huge life changing individuals in my life personally I'm not Catholic and did not grow up Catholic but the Virgen de Guadalupe is a huge model for me because she's an indigenous virgin that could not be conquered and changed you know so the Spaniards were like just let them keep her you know just fine the Virgen Morena fine when they were really I mean it's amazing and then you know like Rachel Maddow like people that are brilliant and not like that that don't give up and don't give in and are super inspirational depending on the times yes that's a great question I'll take it because it's controversial for me I grew up in an abusive household my father is physically and verbally abusive and he said the best bad example I ever could have had my mother said a bad example too because she resisted so much and she but you know she was also victimized so now in my older age I see that she was she was me she was us she was in our shoes but at the time I was like another bad example of how not to be you know but there were good qualities in him too he was an entrepreneur incredibly hardworking he was a fantastic friend terrible family man but a really fantastic friend and helped wherever he could and there are really positive things about him so I think it's exactly that modeling of good and bad in one human being you know to boil it down I think my my father's journey really showed me the value of hard work I mean he was just a hardworking dedicated get it done person and I think that if I were to choose two of my favorite characteristics from each of my parents my mom is really where I got the curiosity from which is more the entrepreneurial nature my dad has a profound problem solving analytical side to him as an engineer and you know just sort of muster through really difficult things but like me the older they get the more I realize the less they know oh my god that is so true you know with my dad I think the things that I look back on and value are very different than the way I see him today yeah and so the reconciliation of that I think particularly for women my mom stayed at home and so but she also was educated so she got a master's degree and taught but then when she got two kids and it was more cost effective to stay at home then pay for daycare she quit working you know anyway so that's a really loaded question a really awesome one and I think that somebody should write a book with women leaders about their like relationships to their parents I'm sure they have we learned so much from both of them you know and I mean my father is very he's retired from the Air Force and the Securities Exchange Commission and he and my mother both have master's degrees he was always he is always very focused always has a long-range plan what's your next step you know have you seen have you have a long-range plan what's your approach to accomplishing these goals on the plan and he'll check in with you on those things my mother is you know very gracious generous she also is focused in that way but she is the person who encouraged me early on to learn as much about as many things as I wanted and so when I was in college I was fortunate that I didn't have to work in college as an undergrad and I lived on campus the whole time and when I would register for different things I was an English major but I was a classic liberal arts person I was all over the map I mean I took English, French I took architecture for non-architects because I love the art and architecture and I remember my dad asking me okay you know with each one of these options is that marketable is that going to lead to a job in this area and my mother and my mother saying this is wonderful, learn as much as you can while you're there and you have this opportunity because you're in a fortunate situation so take in as much as you can just make sure you have a plan to graduate and so that was the compromise but I love that she said that because it really encouraged that lifelong learning in me but also the discipline to have a plan of some type my parents were both journalists covering Watergate so I had no choice ah right here and then right there I guess you've got the mic back there and then we'll come up here well first I want to say that hearing all this is incredibly validating as a person who's developing management and administrative role it's questions about self-care because I'm also a counselor so how do you manage not to stay angry or drill or flip a table during a meeting when you have to maintain your lady-like behavior or not be too bossy or too assertive like how do you guys take care of yourselves to not stay angry or burn out or rage quit when people are putting their implicit bias on you or you're obviously fighting the patriarchy and just kind of having a bad day and pushing your way through being a leader and just keep going on a day-to-day basis how do you take care of yourselves and maintain I flip tables but you guys work for the government so you can't do that so what do you do flip tables in private you know I think mostly try to keep balance through perspective whatever the thing is just try to put it in its proper wherever you can think of proper place of importance in life and the overall pursuit of happiness whatever that means for you what power are you giving this thing and in what order where are you placing it and what kind of perspective and then oftentimes you'll be really important like if someone's life's at stake then you know it's important but when no one's life is at stake I tell my colleagues all the time I'm like no one's life's at stake don't freak out about that don't make yourself crazy about that and then a month down the line your perspective that you have about that thing that you've had misplaced perspective on is totally different and look you've been pissed off for a month and we have time I think for one more I'll try to make it a good one well and first off thank you all for being here I'm pretty sure I can speak for most people that we really appreciate this conversation it's been really great tonight my question for y'all or whomever wants to answer is in the discussion about the wage disparity but also maternity leave and females being the main caregivers there have been thoughts from women like Cheryl Sandberg and Ann Marie Slaughter who have said that nothing will really change with that until some of our societal norms have changed regarding men becoming more of a caretaker in the family and kind of sharing a little bit more of that balance so understanding those are all very personal decisions between couples but what advice would you give a woman who wants to approach that with their partner get very very clear with yourself and honest with yourself about what you really want and need because I think we go into a lot of those conversations sort of like the societal message is playing and we're supposed to not want to I don't know if you're a strong woman like you're supposed to not want to stay at home you want to be Cheryl Sandberg you want to do it all and like you may actually really want to stay at home or vice versa you may have married a macho man and you never thought you would have a dad that stays at home and like I think we have these really convoluted crazy conversations without getting clear about our position sort of outside of the pressures of what we think we're supposed to want and even in leadership too like do you want to be that leader in your office and or sweet who has to be the orchestra conductor of 5, 10, 15, 20, 100 people and be constantly flexing to everyone's wonderful unique personality it is exhausting and sometimes you know you is that what you want to do and are you good at it I mean if you're not good at it then you're just going to be exhausted and bitter and upset for months all the time but if you can orchestrate those things and conduct and meet people where they are and be equitable and not equal all the time you're just going to find so much more success I have a one year old and my husband is at home with her right now and my advice is get a great google calendar where you can just send him invitations for all the things you need him to do it works quite well and then don't criticize when he does something not the way you want him to so that's when the best take away so anyway please help me thank this incredible panel for