 From San Francisco, it's theCUBE. Covering Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference, brought to you by Girls in Tech. And welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at Downtown San Francisco, Girls in Tech Catalyst. Great event, we've been coming for a couple years, about 700 professionals, mainly women, a few men, and I think they brought in a busload of kids to get inspired. Talking about their stories, and really it's a series, it's a one track conference, two days, about 20 minute talks, and really good stuff, really great content, check it out online if you didn't register this year, make sure you come next year. We're excited to have our next guest, Cube alum, really from one of the hottest companies in tech right now, she's Wendy Piper, the CIO of Nutanix, Wendy, great to see you again. Hey, nice to see you, Jeff. Absolutely, so we see you at Nutanix next all the time, but we haven't seen you at Girls in Tech, so how long have you been involved in Girls in Tech? So I've been involved since the very first meetup, more than 10 years ago, Girls in Tech was very inspiring to me, and I was here at the Catalyst Conference last year, and I'm a member of the board of Girls in Tech as well, so I'm able to give back and provide some leadership at that level. So we just had Adriana on, and she was going through some of the numbers. I mean, the growth of this organization, Psychotunutanix is off the chart, I mean, really amazing. It really is amazing, you know, in some ways our time has come. Adriana's had this big vision for a really long time, really focused on educating women, helping them to understand the potential of careers in tech and technology knowledge, and that's a global message and a message that resonates at every age level and in lots of different sectors of society, so it's just a privilege to be able to partner with her and others on the board to enable the vision, and Nutanix as well is donating, is present here at these conferences and partnering at Catalyst and Amplify and other parts of the organization. Right, because it's not only the right thing to do, it's also a good business, which has been proven time and time again. Absolutely, and it's kind of taken on this passion, mission, just excitement thing, but it is practical as well. All the studies, I'm sure so many folks have talked with you about this. There's so many studies, there's so much research that says diversity brings better decision-making, better product development, and better satisfaction in our work environments as well. The other thing that struck me talking to Adriana, and I guess I just didn't know kind of the breadth of types of activities that girls in techs put on. So we've been to Catalyst before, we've been to the pitch night, Amplify, but I didn't know she's running, there's all kinds of different types of things. Absolutely, I think the underlying passion is for education. If you think about particularly people in underserved communities, there is a real opportunity, coding and learning to code, learning to interact with computers, that's a language that transcends geographic boundaries, ethnic boundaries, age and religious boundaries, and it's something that ever since my days at Yahoo, I really felt like technology could bring the world together, and today in particular, there is so much disparity between women and men and their access to technology education and technology careers. This is more than just creating a level playing field, I think we're making our own playing field, we're not going to their playing field anymore, we're creating our own at locations like this. Right, and clearly a bunch of founders are here today, they started their own companies, but the other thing I think is interesting is culture keeps coming up time and time again in all these conversations, and Adriana's built a culture starting always from the top down with the board, it's a phenomenal board, a professional women that she's pulled together with this organization. Yeah, there are a couple of males on the board too, I want to make sure I point that out because we're a diverse board as well, but she has brought together people who are leaders in the technology space, but also folks who are passionate about building a healthy nonprofit organization, one that's global, one that can scale, and so we also look at the fundamentals and the business fundamentals as well, so we are expanding from 60 to 100 countries and from 100,000 members to 200,000 members, I mean, who would think, right? It's extraordinary, even then though, those 200,000 women are a drop in the bucket compared to the 50% of the global population who are female. Right, and then you work in Nutanix, super hot, I don't want to say startup anymore, you guys have, I'd be out, but you're living it in terms of trying to get enough good, qualified talent just to feed the one engine that is Nutanix, so it's a real command in the marketplace. Definitely that's the case. You know, we sort of struggle with the thought, you know, are there just not enough women candidates in these fields, but what we learn at conferences like this is that there are enough women candidates, but we don't necessarily recognize those women and we don't know where to find them and they may not find the sort of work that we represent to be attractive, and so we're sort of trying to change how we speak and think. Culture is a good word, but it's a revolution, it's a cultural revolution in terms of identifying talent where it sits. We spoke a lot in the last day and a half around blended careers, the bringing together of art and technology or communication and technology, and the fact is that technology just underscores everything we do nowadays. And so, you know, having people who can blend those things is a real advantage and women have this ability to take a multifaceted approach to the work that we do and the way that we live our lives. We multitask as a sport. Right, right. It's interesting too as the machines get better and as AI gets better, machine learning, the softer skills applied with the context become so much more important than necessarily just the super hardcore coding skills. You know, I have a story around that, so we've just deployed, my IT department has deployed a machine learning tool at Nutanix to replace a lot of the interactions that happen on our help desk. And we found we just couldn't scale as the company was scaling, so we've been training an AI from a company called MoveWorks and we've been training it uniquely with our voice and I think a little bit with my voice and I just had one of our employees write back to me and say not only is this thing, we call it X-Bot, not only is X-Bot solving my problems, but he said, she is pretty sassy too. And I'm like, yay, he knows it's a she, right? And she's sassy too, so yeah, that unique voice is infusing even the machine learning training that we're doing. And I think that makes for a more delightful experience for all of us. It's funny, the voice thing, because Google had their very famous, the restaurant reservation call-in demo at IO. They got kept on a little bit for what's real or not, but what made it so dramatic was the human-like elements in the conversation of the machine. With ums and ahs and ahs and pauses, which we laugh about, because when we shoot cube interviews, everybody wants to cut those parts out. And we're like, no, that's what makes people people. Right, exactly, I agree with you. And at the same time, there are things that are uniquely female stereotypes. We're more wordy, we have more things to say. We're more multi-dimensional, we can hold two thoughts at the same time. And so that's part of the richness of communication and our interaction too. But to the extent to which we can embed that in our technologies and our interactions, those are the extent to which they'll be more delightful. It's no coincidence that Siri and Cortana and all of those AIs sort of have this female persona. And I don't know if you know this, the Cortana who's the Microsoft AI, she's voiced by the same character that's Cortana in one of their video games. Oh really? And she's sort of this badass fighter gal too, so check it out. Well we know what happened to Bob, right? Right, I know poor Bob. Which ironically goes Melinda Gates' project, which I don't know if you knew that story. Oh, I did not know that though. Yeah, Melinda Gates' introduction to Bill was as a product manager for Bob, which if you don't know that story, check it out, it's old history. That's fantastic. But it's very good. All right, so before I let you go, one last thing, so you spoke and they've got these great posters all around the room with little highlights from people's conversations and yours was, I just grabbed it off the wall, it's okay to be bad. Yes. I love it, for the people that missed it, what's the message there? It's an important message, especially for women. Yeah, I think as women, we don't have a lot of role models and when I get up as a role model, I'm one of a few CIOs who's female in Silicon Valley, we give these speeches and they sort of make us like Mother Teresa, you know, first you have your mission in mind and you lean in and you do all these awesome things. Well, the fact is it is actually okay to be yourself. It's okay to be bitchy, it's okay to be cranky, it's okay for anger to feel 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. I can be those things at all at the same time. And I also say it's also okay to be good, to be merciful, to be soft-spoken, to be wordy, to be studious, that combination of things. We're allowed to be our genuine selves and we don't have to be perfect to be successful and I feel like I embodied that in particular. Yes, you certainly do. What, what, I'm not perfect? You certainly do, no, that's the success. I mean, the Nutanix story is a phenomenal story. We are fortunate we've been there since the beginning and really watching it grow. And helping us to frame the story, so thanks to theCUBE, I appreciate that. Whoa, and you're super successful and the company's successful. So the fact that you are windy, you know, you are, you are your big personality and it comes through and it's great and it works and you're successful. So if they need someone to look up to, you're certainly a fantastic role model. Thank you so much. Well, I appreciate that. It's funny because I have never tried to be a role model and now just by accident, I have survived long enough. Yeah, but then. Here, here I am. Well, that's a whole different conversation when you just look around and like, I'm the oldest guy in the room, but that's the different thing, all right. I know, and you're actually the only guy, just saying. All right, well, Wendy, thanks for taking a few minutes and I guess we'll see you next at Nutanix, next if not sooner. I look forward to it, thanks. All right, thanks. She's Wendy, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE from Women's, or Girls in Tank Catalyst 2018.