 The Cube presents On The Ground. Hi everybody, Jefferyk here with The Cube. We are On The Ground at Santa Clara, California for the Anita Board of Women of Vision Awards and one of our most special guests and favorite guests we've had on. A lot of times, Telly, people are going to start talking about us as many times as we've been on with you. So welcome, Telly Whitney, the founder and president of the Anita Board of Organization. Welcome. It's great to be here. Absolutely, so excited, big night at 600 people ready for the Gala occasion. The Women of Vision is one of my favorite events because at this, wait, tonight we celebrate the achievements of women technologists. We've got three award winners, they're inspirational, every single one of them, plus a great keynote. One of, I mean, Mary Lee Jepsen, who was a previous award winner, is somebody I admire tremendously and her contributions to technology. How long ago did she win? Because she is a phenomenal technical talent. She is incredible, so I'm trying to remember probably about four years ago, is what she won. Yeah, her journey has been incredible and continues just to see what she's going to do next. Yeah, and then of course, there's the big, the big granddaddy of them all, as they would say, with Grace Hopper coming up again in Houston. How many people this year? So we're really excited about Grace Hopper this year. We expect a little over 15,000 people. I mean, just incredible. We expected to sell out again. Right. I mean, the response to it has been incredible. So many companies are coming and they come again and again. They want to recruit, absolutely. We'll have about 35% of our attendees, be students and faculty, but they also increasingly are bringing their women about how to reward the women who are working at these companies and support their own technical growth. Yeah, I think Anna said she's bringing 100 people from Veritas, so it's really great to see the support. Yes. And what a great venue. We see more and more companies bringing 50, 100. It's very exciting. So last year, what are the topics we talked about and then B&Y, Mellon won this vision award, was kind of your benchmark study and helping people start to benchmark, whether they win the award or not, kind of where are they in helping women in the technology roles. Give us an update on what's going on there. So we have something called Top Companies, which is what you're talking about. And last year, we moved it to a single award to a leadership index. And what I believe passionately that what you measure, you will change. And so companies submit their data. They understand how they're doing and they compare themselves to all the other companies that are participating. This year, our goal was 50 right now. We have about 53 who started to submit their data. We're really excited. It's important to understand where you are with regards to the overall ecosystem, but this year we're piloting two new efforts. One is a qualitative side, where we're piloting with up to 10 companies, a survey that goes out to their workforce and it will be the same across all of these companies and we're partnering with an outside company called Conjoya that looks at the dozen analysis of these responses. So we're very excited about that. We're also asking more about policies and procedures. I mean, this is the front end to see how people create a culture for women's rights. Right. Because before it was more analytics, right? It was more numbers based. So what are some of the things that you're measuring on the softer side, if you will? Well, we're asking about how, so we're asked to on the survey, we're asking both women and men, how do they feel? I mean, what works for them? So really, we've got all these policies and procedures that we believe work, but what do people really think about them? Things like flex time. And how do they feel like their career is advancing? Because really what it's about is advancement. And so understanding how women and men feel like they are able to advance within that organization. Yeah, and it's so important. Like you say, if you didn't measure it, how do you know whether you're progressing? And Kim Stevenson, who we have on all the time, CIO of Intel, talks about, Intel's put in a bunch of very specific measures that they can now, like you say, at least benchmark and start to start the path. So the other thing is- And I will tell you that I often use Intel as an example because they've got support from the top. Their CEO has come out and really made a declaration. They've staffed it. They've got a lot of effort in this. And they have made a huge difference. So I really applaud the work at Intel. Yeah, that's right. It's Brian's chief of staff, I think. It's her charge. This is one of her main things that she's working on. She's not only the chief of staff, she's the chief diversity officer. That's right. And she just got another promotion too. I'm blanking on her name right now. Oh, I knew that. Danielle Brown. Correct, correct. That's right, I heard she just got a promotion somebody just told me the other day, so nothing but goodness. Yeah, no, I mean, they really got a lot of support. So I applaud Intel's work. They're not the only company that are doing great work, but I do think that they are focused on measuring what will really make a difference. Companies get caught up in activities and what, you know, putting all these feel good kinds of things in. But Intel really looks at what are they doing and doesn't make a difference. Right. So the other thing is as great as Grace Hopper is, there's only so many people you can fit in the Houston Convention Center. So I know you're doing, you know, to try to do things beyond just the central event that is Grace Hopper. Well, one of the things that we're really excited about is our ABI.locals. And this is an effort to create local communities. And at this point by the end of the year we expect to be in 17 locations. We started, we piloted in New York, but we have one in Silicon Valley and Seattle and Chicago. And these are local communities that come together. They get together on many different ways, networking, receptions, breakfasts online. And many of these will ultimately have a GHC-1, which is a one-day Grace Hopper. We expect to have a GHC-1 in London in June. We're very excited about that. And how many people do you expect to say GHC-1 in London? Kind of what's the model? Do you support them with materials and how to organize? Do you have an individual from ABI that's on the ground as kind of the central anchor? What's the model? Well, so that's a very great question. You know, part of what we're looking for in the GHC-1 is that they're locally created and run, but we do provide infrastructure. So we have an online presence, so we provide support like registration systems. We allow them to send email marketing. We support them in that. We actually have an ABI.local team that works with every single dot local. So for example, we'll have, I think, three ABI staff at the one in London. I mean, this is our first international one, so we're pretty excited about that. Yeah, it's a different challenge when you go international. We know that ourselves when we do shows in Europe and people want to come to Asia-Pacific, so it's not easy to do, but it's certainly worthwhile and a huge market opportunity for you. Well, you know, women in technology is a global issue, and we have a team in India, so we actually have a separate entity in India. We have four people there, but as we've looked at going more global, we're looking to do this to our ABI.locals and supporting our local communities. And so we're starting with London, but we actually have ABI.locals in Tokyo, and we'll have one in Africa next year, so we're pretty excited about that. All right, so I'm gonna give you the last word and watching people come up to you with Grace Hopper last year was a very special thing to see. So you have so many stories, I'm sure, of people coming up to you and expressing how you have directly touched them, either yourself or through ABI or through Grace Hopper. I wonder if you have any recent stories. I know you travel all over the world that you can share before we let you go out to the big affair. Well, you know, one of the best parts of my job is this feeling that you can touch people. I was actually in Brussels last week. And in Brussels, they had a regional conference of women in technology, and I gave a keynote there. And they had invited about 300 students. So after my keynote, I had these students and they were from Warsaw and Finland and the Netherlands and they were just saying that, I had really challenged them to take risks and to follow their dreams. And they, I mean, they were so excited by this idea that they could really do whatever they wanted to do. So that's the great reward of my job, is to be able to see young women reaching for the stars. Awesome. Well, Telly, thank you again for sitting down. I know you're super busy tonight and good luck with the event tonight. I'm sure it'll be a smashing success as always. And we'll see you in Houston in October. Well, it's great to talk to you again. Thank you so much for the opportunity. All right, Telly. Telly Whitney, I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE. Thanks for watching.