 Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Women in Data Science 2022. We've been live all day at Stanford at the Ariyaga Alumni Center, Lisa Martin. John Furrier joins me next, trying to cure your FOMO that you have of this event. I love this event. It's my favorite event since 2015. We've been coming, growing community over 60 countries, 500 ambassadors and growing. So many members. WIDS has become a global phenomenon and it's so exciting to be part of, just being part of the ride. Judy and Karen, the team have been amazing partners and it's been fun to watch the progression and International Women's Day is tomorrow and just the overall environment's changed a lot since then, it's gotten better. Still a lot more work to do, but we're getting the word out. But this year seems different. It seems more like a tipping point is happening and real time cultural change, a lot of problems. COVID pulled forward a lot of things. There's a war going on in Europe. It's just really weird time and it just seems like it's a tipping point. I think that's what we felt today was that it was a tipping point. There was a lot of our guests on the program that are first-time WIDS attendees. So in just seven short years, this is the seventh annual WIDS, it's gone from this one-day technical conference to this global movement, as you talked about. And I think that we definitely felt that women of all ages and men that are here as well understand we're at that tipping point and what needs to be done next to push it over the edge. Well, I'm super excited that you are able to do all the amazing interviews. I watched some of them online. I had to come by and join the team because I have FOMO. I love doing the interviews, but they're including me. I'm happy to be included, but I got to ask you, I mean, what was different this year? Because it was interesting, it's a hybrid event. It's in person, they didn't have it in person last year. Right. So it's hybrid. I show the streams were everywhere. Good interviews. What was some of the highlights? Great interviews, just a very inspiring stories of women who really this morning's conversations that I got to hear before I came to set was about mentors and sponsors and how important it is for women of any age, and anybody really, to build their own personal board of directors with mentors and sponsors. And they were very clear in the difference between a mentor and a sponsor. And John, something I didn't understand the difference between those two until a few years ago. I think it was at a VMware event and it really surprised me that I have mentors, do I have sponsors? And so that was a discussion that everybody on this onset talked about today. It was interesting, we're doing also the International Women's Day Tomorrow, big 24 interviews, including the wids of content as well as global women leaders around the world and Tanuja Randery, who runs all of AWS, EMEA or Europe, she told me the same thing. She's like, there's too many mentors, not enough sponsors. And she said that out loud. I felt, wow, that was a defining moment because here she is so impressive, worked at McKinsey. Okay, was an operator in running businesses. Now she heads up AWS saying out loud, we have too many mentors. Just get down to business and get sponsors. And I asked her the same thing and she said, sponsors create opportunities. Mentors give feedback and mentors go both ways. And she said, my teenage son is a mentor to me for some of the cool new stuff. But mentors can go both ways. Sponsors is specifically about opportunities. And I'm like, I felt like that comment hit home. It's so important, but it's also important to teach girls especially there's younger girls here this year. There's high school and I think even middle school girls here. How to have the confidence to find those mentors, those sponsors and cultivate those relationships. That's a whole, those are skills that are incredibly important. As important as it is to understand AI, data science, machine learning, it's to be able to have the confidence and the capability to create that and find those sponsors to help you unlock those opportunities. You know, I feel lucky to do the interviews certainly being included as a male, but you've been doing a lot of the interviews as females and females. I got to ask you, what was the biggest, because every story is different. Some people are taking charge of their career. Sometimes it's maybe doing something different. What some of the story themes did you see in your interviews out there? What were some of the, the key rings personal? Yeah. A lot of the guests had STEM backgrounds and were interested in the STEM studies from when they were quite young and had strong family backgrounds that helped to nurture that. I also heard that. You mean like role models? Yes. Like their father or mother? Exactly, exactly. Strong family backgrounds. I did talk to a few women who come from different backgrounds like international business, but love data and wanted to be able to apply that and really learn data analytics and understand data science and understand the opportunities that it brings and also some of the challenges there. Everybody had an inspiring story. Yeah, it's interesting. One of the senior women I interviewed, she was from Singapore and she fled India during a bombing war and then ended up getting her PhD. Now she's in space and involved and all that stuff. And she said, we're now living in nerd native environment, meaning the younger generation, they're nerds. And I, you know, we're at Stanford, nerd nation of course, we're Stanford. It's nerd nation here. But her point is that everything's digital now. So the younger generation, they're not necessarily looking for programmers. Certainly coding, great. But if you're not into coding, you can still solve society problems. There's plenty of jobs that are open for the first time that weren't around years ago, which means there's problems that are new too. That need new minds and new fresh perspectives. So I thought that aperture of surface area of opportunities to contribute in women in tech is not just coding. No. And that was a huge theme. That was, and we also, this morning I got to hear, and we've talked with several of the women before the event about data science in healthcare, data science in transportation equity. That was a new thing for me, John, that I didn't know, I never thought about equity in transportation or lack thereof. And so what this conference showed I think this year is that it's not just coding, but it's every industry. As we know, every company is a data company. Every company is a tech company. If they're not, they're not going to be here for long. So the opportunities for women is the door is just blown wide open. And I said, it's a data problem, that's our line. We always say in theCUBE, people who know our program, we always say that. But actually when you look at the data on the pipelining, the pipelining has data points where the ages of drop-off of girls and young women is 12 to 14 and 16 to 18, where the drop-off is significant. So attack the pipelining problem is one that I heard a lot of. And the other one that comes out a lot, it's kind of common sense and it's talked about it, but it's nuanced, but it became very elevated this year in the breaking the bias theme, which was, role models are huge. So seeing powerful women in leadership positions is really a focus and that's inspires people and they can see themselves. And so I think when people see role models of women and folks in positions, not just coding, even the executive suite, huge focus. So I think that's gonna be a next step function in my mind. That's, if I had to predict the trend, it would be you see a lot more role modeling, flexing that big time. Good, that's definitely needed. You know, we often used to say, she can't be what she can't see. But one of the interviews that I had said, she can be what she can see. And I loved the pivot on that because it put a positive light. But to your point, there needs to be more female role models that girls can look up to so they can see, I can do this, like she's doing. Leading YouTube, for example, or Cheryl Sandberg of Facebook. We need more of these role models to show the tremendous amount of opportunities that are there and to help those, not just the younger girls, those even that are maybe more mature, find that confidence to build your own tribe. I think that was another king that came out. Role models, either from family members, dad or relative or someone that could see was a big one. The other common thread was, yeah, I tend to break stuff and like to put it together. So at a young age, they kind of realized that they were kind of nerdy and they like to do stuff. Very engineering, but mind is more math or science. And that was interesting, Sally Yves from in the UK brought this up. She's a professor and does cyber policy. She said, it's STEM's great, but put the arts in there, make it STEAM. So STEAM and STEM are in two acronyms. STEM is obviously the technical, but adding arts because of the creativity needs. We need creativity, we need problem solving with technical. Yes. So it's not just STEM, it's STEAM. We've heard that before, but not as much this year, it's amplified big time. Sally's great. I had the chance to interview her in the last couple of months. And you bring up creativity, which is an incredibly important point. There are the obviously the hard skills, the technical skills that are needed, but there's also creativity, curiosity, being curious to ask a question. There's probably many questions that we haven't even thought to ask yet. So encouraging that curiosity, that natural curiosity is as important as maybe someone say as the actual technical knowledge. What was the biggest thing you saw this year? If you zoom out and you look at the forest from the trees, what was the big observation for you this year? I think it's the growth of Woods. We've said seven years, it's now in 60 countries, 200 events, 500 ambassadors, probably 500 plus. And the number of people that I had on the program, John, that this is their first Woods. So just the fact that it's growing, we've seen it for years, but I think we really saw a lot of the fresh faces and heard from them today, had stories of how they got involved and how they met Margo, how she found them. I had a young girl on who just graduated from Harvard back in the spring. So maybe not even a year ago, working at Skydio doing drone work and had a great perspective on why it's important to have women in the drone industry, the opportunities, drones for good. And it was just nice to hear that fresh perspective and also just to hear the women who are new to Woods get it immediately. You walk in to the Arriaga Alumni Center in the morning and you feel the energy and the support and that it was just perpetuated year after year. Yeah, it's awesome. One of the things I think it was reflecting on this morning was how many women we've interviewed in our CUBE alumni database now. And we are massing quite the database of really amazing people and there's more coming in. So that was kind of a personal kind of reflection on theCUBE and what we've been working on together, all of us. The other thing that jumped out of me was the international aspect this year. It just seems like there's a community of tribal vibe where it's not just the tech industry, you know, saying rah rah, it's a complete call to arms around more stories, tell your story, more enthusiasm outside of the corporate kind of swim lanes into like more of, hey, let's get the stories out there. And the catalyst from an interview turned into follow up on LinkedIn, just a lot more like viral network effect so much more this year than ever before. So, you know, we just got to get the stories out there. Absolutely and I think people, given what we've been through the last two years are just really hungry for that in-person collaboration, the opportunity to see more leadership, to get inspired at any level of their career. I think the women here today have had that opportunity and it's been overwhelmingly positive as you can imagine as it is every year. But I agree, I think it's been more international and definitely much more focused on teaching some of the other skills, the confidence, the creativity, the curiosity. Well, Lisa, as of right now, it's March 8th in Japan. So today officially is kicking off right now, it's kicking off International Women's Day, March 8th, and theCUBE has a four region portal that we're going to make open thanks to sponsors with WIDS in Stanford and AWS supporting our mission. We're going to have Latin America, EMEA, Asia Pacific and North America content pumping on theCUBE all day today, tomorrow. Exactly, and we've had such great conversations. I really enjoyed talking to the women. I love hearing the stories, as you talked about, we need more stories to make it personal, to humanize it, to learn from these people who either had, some of them had linear paths, but a lot of them are zigzaggy, as you would say. And I always find that so interesting to understand how they got to where they are. Was it zigzaggy? Was it zigzaggy intentionally? Yes, some of the women that I talked to had very intentional pivots in their careers to get them where they are, but I still thought that story was a very valuable story. And I like how you're here at Stanford University with WIDS, the day before International Women's Day, technically now in Asia, it's starting. This is going to be a yearly trend. This is season one, episode one of theCUBE, covering International Women's Day and then every day for the rest of the year. Right, what were some of your takeaways from some of the International Women's Day conversations that you had? I think the number one thing was community. The number one vibe was, besides the message of, more roles are available, role models are important, you don't have to be a coder, but community was inherently the fabric of every conversation. The people were high energy, highly knowledgeable about being on point around the core issue. It wasn't really politicized, it was much more of about this is really goodness and real examples of forced multipliers of diversity, inclusion and equity when it works together as a competitive advantage. And as a student of business, that is a real change. I think the people who do it are going to have a competitive advantage. So community, competitive advantage and just overall break that bias through the mentoring and the sponsorships. And we've had a lot of great conversations about, I loved the theme of International Women's Day this year, breaking the bias. I asked everybody that I spoke with for International Women's Day and for WIDS, what does that mean to you and where are we on that journey? And everyone had a really insightful stories to share about where we are with that in their opinions, in their fields, industries. Why? And ultimately, I think the general theme was we have the awareness now that we need. We have the awareness from an equity perspective that's absolutely needed. We have to start there, shine the light on it so that the bias can be broken and opportunities for everybody can just proliferate. Yeah, and I think the global community is going to rise and it's going to continue to rise. The tide is rising, it's going to get better and better. It was a fun year this year and I think it was relief that COVID is kind of going out. People getting back into physical events has been really, really great. Yep, absolutely. So, John, I appreciate all the opportunities that you've given me as a female anchor on the show. International Women's Day coverage was fantastic with 2022 coming to an end, was fantastic. Look forward to next year. Well, Margo, Judy and Karen who put this together had a vision and that vision was right and it was working and when it gets going it has a skate velocity, it's unstoppable. It's a rocket ship. It's a rocket ship. I loved that I love to be part of. John, thanks for joining me on the wrap. We want to thank you for watching the CUBE's coverage of International Women's Day, the Women's Showcase, as well as Women in Data Science 2022. We'll see you next time.