 From Phoenix, Arizona, the Cube at Catalyst Conference. Here's your host, Jeff Frick. Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here in Phoenix, Arizona at the Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference. Fourth year of the conference. Going to be back in the Bay Area next year. But again, as we've said before, something in the water here in Phoenix because we're here two years ago for the Grace Hopper Conference as well. So a lot of good women in tech action happening in Phoenix. So we're really excited to have the brain child behind this whole thing. The force who's really making it happen. Adriana Cascon, welcome. Thank you. Good to be here. Thanks for having us down. So Adriana, so tell us a story of Girls in Tech and Catalyst specifically. Yes, so Catalyst was an inspiration based on when I worked on Intel. We invested or we sponsored a conference for Oprah. It was called Oprah's O Conference. And what was super compelling about that conference was that there were 10,000 women in the Moscone Center in San Francisco and they were engaging and raising their hand and sharing their own personal stories, trials and tribulations. And speaking about really interesting hot button topics such as building a business or finances or interior design, things that really were compelling to them. And so it really struck me about this environment is that women actually had a voice. They were encouraged to raise their hand and speak up. And I wanted to do this in the tech world because in a very gender scarce world, it's important for us to have both voices, right? And so I think this environment enables women to speak up and share their feelings and their passions openly. And I think I heard your story early on where you were at a startup and you were like the only woman and then they hired more people and you were still the only woman and they hired more people and you were still the only woman. So you kind of lived it firsthand. Yeah, so that was sort of the impetus behind girls in tech. And I felt that the company, the startup I was working at wasn't doing enough for recruiting and recruiting not just women but just in diverse groups of people which does affect product development. You need many different perspectives, many different experiences and backgrounds in order to have a comprehensive product. So I decided to take matters into my own hands and I started girls in tech in 2007 and nine plus years later, we're in 60 cities around the world in six continents and 36 countries with over 40,000 members. So it's awesome to see the growth. I'm now doing it full time and the sky's the limit. So how do people get involved? So what's your kind of corporate mission statement? And then if people are watching from some city that you either are in or maybe you're not, how do they get involved? What does it mean to be involved in girls in tech in city X? Yeah, so our tagline is empowerment, engagement and education of women in tech. So this is an inclusive organization for both high tech women who wanna learn more about entrepreneurship and leadership and for women that are in startups that wanna be employees or leaders or start their own companies. So we've developed curriculum that we prototype and pilot in Silicon Valley, perfect it and then deploy it to our 60 chapters around the world in electronic press kit format. This is great because we get to customize it with the teams on the ground and do everything from coding and design boot camps, entrepreneurship boot camps to the catalyst conference to our Lady Pitch Night competition. Pitch Night, not anything else. Yeah, yeah, I got that. Pitch, pitch. Pitch, pitch. No more PG show, no problem. And we do an exchange program that brings 20 to 30 female entrepreneurs to Silicon Valley to really experience the nuances of this tech ecosystem, what makes it thrive, learning skills on how to become entrepreneurs, meet and greet with VCs and influential people in Silicon Valley and we have a few other programs that you can check out on the website. But it's exciting because it's not one size fits all approach. It's I'm a woman and there are many different changes I have in my career lifetime. So we want to be there for you within your junior middle career as well as a leader. Right, we've certainly heard that over and over with the guests that we've had on today about people changing tracks, changing careers, changing industries and really this theme of continual learning, continual growing, it's a long journey. We have a saying at Heart Company, you're never there, you're only here, they're still there and you keep moving down the road. It just keeps moving further out. So a couple three day conference, what are some of your take away some surprises over the last three days that you'd like to share? Wow, where do I begin? I mean, the sound bites are all so stellar, inspirational skills, best practices but the thing that really stood out I think in this year specifically was people's stories, their emotional stories, their passions. The things that wake them up in the morning and they say yes, I wanna change the world and make an impact and love my life while doing it and it was very candid. Some of these women really shared difficult situations and these situations help fuel energy and their fire to make change in their life to help and pay it forward with up and coming women and leaders in the tech industry. So it was powerful from the candor and the friends that were made and the passions that were shared. Awesome, well I know you gotta get back to the conference to the master of ceremonies, keeping everything on track. So I appreciate you taking a few minutes out of your time to stop by and again, thanks for inviting us to this conference. We're really excited to come down and we'll look forward to next year. Yeah, next year it's going to be in the Bay Area. So in your neck of the woods. Awesome. Adriana, again, thanks for inviting us to run into the great show, the Girls in Tech Conference. I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching theCUBE. Thanks for watching, we'll catch you next time.