 Thanks for joining us. My name is Meng Cheng. I'm the Johnny Everson Dean of College of Engineering here And welcome to spring weather Today we are above freezing temperature. So compared to Monday. We're now officially in spring and We also take great delight in welcoming back an alum who has done amazing work throughout Her career and welcome her back to both give a fireside chat and to give a lecture afterwards This is part of the Purdue engineering distinguished lecture serious where we bring the brightest minds around the world in different engineering disciplines to be here at Purdue and it takes great delight for me to introduce Lila Abraham who is one of our own from electrical engineering And she has traversed so many different paths. It's hard to summarize everything in a brief introduction But I'll say that Part of what she's gonna talk about today will be on entrepreneurship with social impact And with diversity impact. She has both in her capacity at Kleiner Perkins and Intel and Startup now is very big Coursera Served in different rows in the entrepreneurial ecosystem But also personally been doing a lot of social entrepreneurship with impact in different countries And then afterwards she will also talk about the research advances Happening at DeepMind where she's serving as the chief operations officer since last year and prior to that She has also worked in different capacities related to AI machine learning and Implications to different scientific engineering fields. What is amazing about DeepMind? I think is since being founded what about a decade ago in London And being acquired by Google and an alphabet about five years ago a DeepMind is like a university research Institute or college But without the sum of the bureaucratic processes involved In AI and it has attracted some of the very best talents around the world to London and its branches in other parts of the globe and it has made tremendous advances documented in Nature science other publications in an interdisciplinary way bringing together traditional machine learning and Engineering and scientists along with neuroscientists with ethics with the humanities and social sciences in a beautiful Combination so thank you Lila so much for sparing your time with us here today back at Purdue in ways more than one now we're gonna start with the first topic in entrepreneurship and introducing also my great colleague Arnold Chen who directs the Bert Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship and Arnold along with his colleagues also in Purdue Research Foundation the foundry and the parts of the ecosystem been doing amazing job in Getting us to where we are today the Wall Street Journal ranked last year Purdue number six in the world number three in the country in Number of startups created licensing Purdue Technologies and that is just one statistics among many we can brag about Because of efforts by colleagues like you so thank you Arnold for having this Moderation for the fireside chat today with Lila so welcome both Lila and Arnold Well welcome back So I kind of just I know there's a lot of stuff we want to talk about so I'm just kind of kind of jump right into it So walk us back to your decision that brought you to Purdue if you can think back what what made you choose Purdue What else were you looking at I? Actually am from Lafayette, Indiana, and I went to Harrison High School So I grew up basically on Purdue campus from the time. I was a young child. I was actually taking classes at Purdue There were a lot of activities for Youth and then when I was in high school even our senior I senior classes by final exams for calculus We're Purdue exam, so I was able to test out of a lot. So by the time I started Purdue. I actually had about 49 credits So I was really looking at here's a campus. I know top engineering school Or I could go somewhere else. I was thinking about MIT But I think the quality of education the proximity and I was really interested in the co-op program And that is how I end up at Purdue. Did you always know you wanted to be an engineer? Oh No, I wanted to be an archaeologist. I wanted to be a translator And then my parents sat me down and said it's easier to get out of engineering than to get into engineering So why don't you start there and then figure out really where you want your path to go? Okay? What we like as a student if you can remember back What was Lila back as the electrical engineer? I have a classmate in the audience that they're gonna hold me to be honest here. I Think I Worked really hard The I've developed my resilience. I think at Purdue I was a member of five sick morrow the engineering Sorority so really trying to connect with other Women engineers as well because there was a limited pool within double e But also found like a lot of collaboration with my male colleagues So I think it was like a kind of very social in terms of you know It was both the academic aspect as well as getting to know who my colleagues were especially because Purdue was so familiar to me And then the other thing was at the time we used to carry tackle boxes I don't know if you still carry tackle boxes. Okay, we had resistors capacitors and mine was purple I remember mine was blue was it yeah, and I painted mine So okay, I was often known as the the girl with a purple tackle box And I got really involved in the International Center So it was a chance for me to take a more global perspective while still being here in Lafayette and then would if you can remember were there any favorite these favorite classes that That you took Actually have fond memories. I can't remember the circuit whatever class we had the tackle box the lab I have very fond memories of Of that one as well like them a lot of the optics class classes the semiconductor But what I found was actually I like doing a little bit of a lot of things rather than one topic and going deep So I ended up doing a generalist Double e-degree what I did not like which is kind of ironic. So don't judge me, but I did not Want to do computer classes So in fact when I first interviewed For my co-op, which I'm sure we'll get to My dad gave me the sage advice of like don't tell Intel that you don't like computers Pretty good advice So then you ended up doing a co-op wall You're you're studying. Yes, and was that and I was obviously at Intel. Yes, I was actually Produce first co-op ever to go to Intel. Oh Wow So you went out to the Santa Clara Yes, I actually wanted to go to the East Coast and my dad my wise dad who Told me he said I've heard of this company out on California called Intel and I see them on your list You really should talk to them. Oh, no, I don't want to go out there Like who is this what is this company anyway, and that's where they don't tell me don't like computers What other kind of organizations or things did you do on campus while you were while you were here Were there any other student organizations you were part of I think by Sigma row This society of women engineers the International Center I did a lot of volunteer work as well a community service was important in my upbringing So it was a chance for me to also get involved But when I was at Purdue I also really tried to focus on my academics because during my co-op sessions That's when I was able to do other things like when I was in California. I took fencing for example I did art classes. So I tried to have a more portfolio approach to my college years Okay, so for the students who are all sitting out here. What advice would you give them? Looking back now to make the most of their time on campus I think there's a couple things one is it's okay to sample and to try different things figure out what really gets you excited You don't have to make a decision and stay with it for a long time In fact, these are the years that you should be kind of experimenting with different clubs and activities Hobbies interests. I think that that and Purdue has so much to offer. In fact, I've been really impressed In my meetings here at Purdue to learn how much more the university has to offer than it did when we were students whether it's entrepreneurship, whether it's programs and community service or Working in cross-functional teams, and I think that's really unique. So Purdue offers a lot Take advantage of it learn from it. You'll make build a great network and you'll develop skills. I think the other Suggestion I have is and I was talking with a couple of the women engineering seminars earlier today and I always start by my third slide. I talk about failure Because I think it's really hard for it can be hard for Purdue engineers who Are extremely talented Got the grades to get into Purdue and all of a sudden you're faced with a new reality like the quality of your peer group The complexity of the courses the intensity of everything you're trying to do in university And it's really easy to like mess up on a test or maybe a class doesn't go as you plan and I had that experience and It would have been really easy and I've seen this happen to opt out of like, oh, that's it I can't do it and instead I think there's an opportunity to say what what did I learn from this? What support do I need how what are the other? Scaffolding that I need to learn this subject. How can I rely on my peers my TAs? Etc. And I think that element of resilience. So my Suggestion is if you face some adversity while you're here, don't be scared of it Don't let it stop you in fact lean into it a little bit and use it as a learning opportunity because years, you know, I'm 20 plus almost 30 years down the road and That class that I failed doesn't matter, right? I've had a very successful career despite that and in fact in some ways because of that because I learned how to persevere and Works through those problems. Yes So then moving on after graduating from Purdue the first job you had was that Intel correct? And I noticed that you had a lot of international experience You had two different stints overseas Can you tell us a little bit about that? The story of my going to Tokyo is pretty interesting. I was on a rotation program at Intel and one of my Through the rotations people had discovered that I speak Japanese because I was an exchange student in Japan in high school and So when an opportunity came up to start this new technology in Japan they came to me and asked if I would be interested and I'm like, oh, that sounds amazing. So I went to my manager and I Said I really want it. I'm really excited. I have this opportunity to move to Tokyo Into this other group at Intel wants to sponsor me and he looked at me and he said you're ruining your career What are you doing and what I realized later was he was putting his own career path and perspective He wanted me to follow him because he saw that as a successful career path and that's great That's what he wanted for himself, but it wasn't what I wanted The best part of that conversation was I told them what I would be working on This next generation type of CD and video type of work and he didn't understand And he said who's ever going to watch a movie on a computer? You know, there's never gonna be a computer in a living room. You're wasting your time not realizing that DVD, you know, I was the computer industry Representative into a lot of those conversations around DVD standards, which led to things like copy protection as software and code and decode which now, you know DVD is now obsolete. So when I tell people I worked on DVD, most people are like, what is that? Being in Tokyo and having such success of getting a seat around the table, I think sometimes being a foreign woman, young American from the computer industry, I was like everything that they didn't expect Yeah, and so it opened a lot of doors for me because I think people's curiosity and it gave me a chance to actually use my difference as an advantage in the conversations to Maybe pushed in ways that I couldn't have. So being the only woman in the room You were able to use that as an advantage and not as a barrier, so to speak Right, right and speaking Japanese certainly helped and then from there I went to Hong Kong to set up Intel's developer program at the time a lot of the computer industry peripherals were being developed in Taiwan and Intel wanted to try to to work with the ecosystem To align roadmaps and to really have that conversation and because I had proven both with my engineering skills and ability to work in foreign markets And with a broad range of stakeholders That I'd be a good candidate to go start Intel's developer program which led to Hong Kong and then 10 years later in my career. I moved to Shanghai to start To grow Intel's education program. It was an education technology program called the classmate PC and It was a worldwide group, but with Manufacturing and some of the engineering in China. I was based in Shanghai and then in between there You ended up rising in the ranks to ultimately become chief of staff of the CEO Craig Barrett. Yes How does one go about getting a job like that even at you know a 10,000 person company? Yeah, in fact, we were about 85,000 people 85,000. Okay So I think Also what happened in between all of that is I went on a sabbatical at Intel after seven years you get to have two months off so Clearly my father has played an important role in my becoming an engineer and he grew up in an orphanage in Lebanon so I went back to that orphanage and built a computer lab during my sabbatical and Craig Barrett He is an engineer without a business Degree and he rose to the ranks of CEO. He was Intel's manufacturing powerhouse was kind of hit his right rise to fame Then also he really believed in education He had a saying of computers aren't magic teachers are Computers are the tool and so I think he I Had been through so many different roles that Intel that somebody knew my name and passed it on to him so I was invited to interview and and Got got the job in his final years as CEO and transitioned to chairman so what is the Can you explain the role of the chief of staff to to us? What what are that entails and what's kind of like a day in the life of That like yeah, it's I I never I didn't go get my MBA, but I kind of feel like that was my Learning by fire. Yes, exactly literally by like fire at times so My role was a little bit of everything it my first project was Andy Grove and Craig were thinking about health care and so they said What is it? What's happening within the company within health care Lila go find out you have two weeks to pull something together so kind of navigating around trying to Unlock things and that led to a formation of an Intel health group. I Also did things like when he Part of the role as a technical advisor so Helping to think through strategic direction Communications dig into certain projects within the organization that are of high priority to him Then when he became chairman hit retirement age from CEO and transitioned to chairman I asked him Craig, you know, what's what do you see your role as chairman being like how do you need my job to evolve? And he looked at me and he said you're smart you go figure it out And it was an extremely empowering moment because we then Pivoted and he became Kind of a global evangelist around Techno the intersection of technology and social impact because it aligned with his passions so we would travel to about 20 countries a year including the middle of the Amazon or Colombia or India and across Africa and we would work on building out wireless infrastructure and compute and computing capability and help build the local capacity to sustain and Manage this so what that meant was you could certainly unlock capabilities in the local community such as Entrepreneurship health care helping Farmers get weather data helping teachers teach with a computer as a tool So it was a really cool couple of years and filled up my passport Yeah, I can only imagine and with your experience having having two stints Already overseas. It seemed like it was a perfect fit. Yes to continue traveling around the world So from there after that last role in Intel you were recruited away To the most prominent venture capital firm in the Valley Kleiner Perkins Tell us how that that process went about I don't it's interesting because venture capital wasn't on my radar and Nor was being entrepreneurial. In fact when I was at Intel someone actually told me I mean I did a executive program at Harvard and someone said, you know, Lila, you're really an entrepreneur And I'm like, what's what's that? And they said it's like an entrepreneur but within the framework of a large company and all of a sudden my career made sense to me because I had opened new markets started new businesses and Once I had that framing it was actually really helpful for me because when Kleiner Perkins came and I really didn't know that much about venture capital But I thought here's a chance to take my experience from corporate and work with entrepreneurs To see how I might be able to share some of those best practices, whether it's how do you think about global? Businesses, how do you think about growing an organization? Intel has objectives and key results which are kind of prevalent across Silicon Valley now, you know What aspects of my background can I help a startup? So I And so I went in as a senior operating partner to help run the firm do some business development and Help with some of the investments, okay And then having now sat on the all called the other side of the table on the venture capital side What kind of advice can you give the young? Entrepreneurs who are going to start saying okay if they're going into that first pitch or kind of common mistakes You see in those pitches that you know, you might be able to shed some light on There first of all be to your homework know who you're talking to From on the investor side Why should they invest in you and you and your idea? Is there something about their background that special something about their investment thesis? I saw a lot of entrepreneurs just trying to raise money, but not thinking about what the Direct correlation was mean why that firm why that why that partner exactly? And I think that was actually it just it doesn't It's surprising it feel to me that feels like kind of one of the basics Yes, and sometimes you know you have to do that homework because if someone invests that you don't want like later You find out there's values misalignment or maybe the way that they work with their other companies isn't how you like to work You know it's hard to get rid of investors, right? So you have to be very thoughtful up front when you're you're recruiting your investor the other thing too is most VCs make the investment not just in the Idea, but is there a market for it? How's the team look? Do it's very rare that an initial idea is exactly what goes to market So will this team with this idea be able to pivot as needed and adjust based on what they learn and Can they move quick enough and fail fast and experiment quickly to be able to integrate and make those adjustments? So a lot of times when you get interviewed about your own skills or capabilities some of those conversations stories about like resilience or adaptation How you got your testing quickly like how you were scrappy are actually really important because they signal What type of entrepreneur you're going to be and it'll also help them know like what your limitations are Some entrepreneurs can grow as a company scales and some are are less able to do so And did you find that those types of being able to show those types of attributes could kind of overcome the first time entrepreneur stigma of Students or you know people who come in and say well, I've never started a company. This isn't my fourth company Yeah, I think we saw a lot of we invested in a lot of first-time entrepreneurs who did their homework who were thoughtful who were also humble and Knew that they had a lot to learn along the way There the interesting thing for me was I expected coming in from such a well-run Organization like Intel into venture capital, especially into Kleiner Perkins that there would be some magic checklist of how to think through things and what you realize is every partner has a different philosophy and And also a different methodology of how they make the decisions. Yeah It's part of why you need to know your audience I see were there any specific either kind of Companies that you can specifically remember like the big pitches or that might be obviously household names today that had gone through that board room While while you were there. Oh, there's so many one of the first companies I did a lot of diligence on was Twitter when it was a three billion dollar evaluation. So it's still kind of fairly Early-ish at the time There was a company which recently went public called Beyond Meat Which was really fun because part once we made the investment we got to actually try with a chef all the different products That was really fun But there were so many that Are doing really well today at some succeeded some failed, but what I was always impressed with was the passion the creativity the vision That entrepreneurs had as they came through the door how they want to change the world And some of them the science behind some of the things that were happening and Especially and more of the with the environment focus and green tech which is so fascinating. It's like I didn't realize That some of this was even possible So it was a really interesting and good time and of course The big one for me was doing diligence on Coursera Okay, so that segues very nicely into the next phase of your career which was Meeting to stand for professors who had an idea and then ultimately getting that company started So tell us a little bit about that how like you should remember that first pitch Totally, and it was around this time of year actually that it happened. So How many people here have taken our Coursera class? Oh Wow, it's great. Thank you So I am my passion for education and working closely with John Doar who is the Venture Capitalist who made the first investments in Google and in Amazon and Jeff basis for those of you who don't know his name John and I were working really closely together and He had gotten a call from Stanford that said this experiment was running on Stanford campus And they had actually figured something out. So they had done a flipped classroom So the idea was put a machine learning course out So that when students kind of get together in their class that they can talk about something other than the lecture And Andrew Ying who does the machine learning class realized that there are a hundred thousand people taking his machine learning class A hundred thousand and he's like this would have taken me 250 years if I was teaching on campus And it really and at the time this is Gosh, I think if I'm remembering right around 2011 So it was a it wasn't a very popular subject at the time And yet we saw that and same with a computer science course that was being taught so we We made the investment first the client Perkins made an investment in Coursera I worked closely with Daphne and Andrew the co-founders who were professors Who hadn't been in a company really built a company before and they We all got along quite well and my business experience And then I was eventually asked to come in when the company was still less than 40 people That's kind of the outside executive partnering with them to help Kind of take Coursera on its next stage of growth Was that a difficult decision at all to join the team and leave your role at Kleiner? Yes, and no the yes part is I Really I mean Intel was a large stable company Kleiner Perkins if I was going to leave Intel was a very prominent venture capital and all of a sudden I'm going into a Company of less than 40 people so maybe 18 months of funding and Yeah, it was it was so from that perspective of being at that point in my life What was a little bit difficult? So I actually made a little bit slower transition. I did some advising first, but then all of a sudden I'm there every day and I Eventually made the transition over the easy part of it was I was really passionate about what the team was doing and I learned a lot working with Daphne and Andrew And the chance to have an impact on millions of learners worldwide, you know every week at our all-hands meeting We would read Stories and emails from our learners and about the impact that Corsera classes had had so it was a very fulfilling Very fulfilling experience. What was the early days like what's up if you can go kind of go back to the your first year Kind of gives the students an idea of okay typical day was You know early start up unpredictable and completely unpredictable Exciting and fun and tons of energy You know I when I started I met with everybody in the company which you can do when the organization is that size I think I did I met everybody up until about a hundred people and then it was just getting difficult to manage No real rules because everything is you know, you're so start up, so yeah, you're one minute. You're talking about The pedagogy the next minute you're talking about some legal contract Then you're like talking about how do we build a business model wait a minute This employee has an issue with this other employee like it's just everything all at once and I found that you couldn't really prepare for a day The other thing that was interesting is because of the academic background We did everything in Google Docs and everything was like a lot of pages because everyone in the company was so smart And so passionate about education and just someone like me who was an engineer I'm like I've went into engineering, so I wouldn't have to do English and all of a sudden. I'm reading these long papers every day But it was a very collaborative mission-driven Environment and it was super exciting like I think back to those days with great fondness How would you describe the company culture that you? You know strive to build there Yeah, I it was very much about Collaboration because when you think about what we were trying to do We were working with universities on one hand and then also with learners worldwide and so Everything we we were doing was dependent on This these ecosystems working well together and providing value To the learners that they felt they perceived value And to the university so they would continue engaging as So it required a lot of cross-functional Collaboration within within for Sarah in the early days and then we also struggled with how do you bring a business mindset? Into something like this that feels very mission-driven a lot of employees actually had initially had a very difficult time Trying to think about what a sustainable path was And versus kind of just being a nonprofit and making all this free It's how do you right and so how do you in order to do good in the world? We had to do well so that we could have the money to fund where we needed to go But it was a cultural shift for a lot of people once you get got we got to a larger stage And then another one was in the early days There's no process and so when you start to put things into place like after a while people want to know that They have a career path here. So how do you start putting? The growing pains yes as you're going through and doing Process in a way that doesn't feel like it like it serves some purpose, which is you want to provide a Fair environment for people to develop you want to like the first time you have to roll out the performance review process Yeah, and and yes and have development conversations and deal with compensation Adjustments and like the people stuff to me and I'm not trained on that I've like learned how to do it just by doing it, but it's always way more complicated than figuring out okay How do we iterate on this product or deal with some of the compute issues? One thing I've kind of noted when we've talked with a lot of entrepreneurs that most students For example, don't know is that almost every startup Goes within six months even six weeks of running out of cash, and this includes companies like Amazon Nike Netflix did Coursera have struggles like that where there are tough decisions to make or kind of forks in the road that When you look back we're much easier in hindsight, but at the time we're agonizing We managed our cash well and okay many of investment So we were fine from a cash runway perspective, but the monetization part of the culture was a big a big shift So we the struggles really were more of how do we partner with? Yeah, how do you partner within universities and still kind of influence the type of content that you want to get? so that it delivers the right type of value for the Learner because at the time wouldn't universities have viewed that you guys as competitors Yes, and no like it the jury was still out on all of that So in many ways they just gave us whatever content they had rather than thinking oh Here's this emerging field of data science, and we have this unique skill set We're gonna really do a class well and do it on data science So what we ended up having to do was shift it from taking whatever content came to us to thinking about What's happening in the industry what two companies want so doing the interviews with companies saying you know How are you trying to upskill or reskill employees where you finding knowledge gaps, and then developing an entire content strategy? while also capturing some of the best practices and pedagogy that we could share with the university so we were making requests Here's the type of content we need and here are some of the best practices that we need to see in the content as it comes onto our platform And so and a lot of your roles you've been in the operations I was curious how you Either manage yourself into that role or how that kind of came about because you know chief of staff is really an operations role Then a Kleiner and then of course Sarah and then even now at DeepMind They've all been a little bit different so we can talk about that but you know that general management skills basically and I one of the things I think I really developed at my time at Purdue too was kind That as I mentioned liking a lot of the classes, but not necessarily going deep into one specific area, so I Found that The engineering training has taught me how to ask questions and how to be curious I want to know how things work and why things work, and I've just been able to apply that in a lot of different scenarios So it's something and I like getting things done I'd like being able to say okay, what do we need to do and then what's like what's the best way to get there and So like a little bit of the engineer optimization side of things Okay So Yeah, I was yeah, so I think that's so I've kind of found my And I found that along the way I actually like working with people So that helped too so having both the technical background liking working with people and wanting to try to get things done Was really kind of the right combination for me, but each of the roles have been slightly different. So for example at Coursera I Didn't have engineering in my scope as chief operating officer, but I do have it in my scope at DeepMind Okay, but and how have you gone about Developing these managerial skills because again as an engineer you would like you said early You would have thought that you would have gotten an MBA But most of all this is sort of in on-the-job training or just picking things up as you go There are a few things I think joining a large company that that ran well and that infested in Employees so I think that's one of the benefits of going to a large company as you get to see What are decision-making processes? How do people have meetings what works what doesn't what's it look like to have a good agenda to take action? So you learn some of those really good Day-to-day Activities in a larger company Then the other thing is that they'll invest in you they usually have some type of learning and development program So I feel like Intel especially going through the rotation program invested so much in my leadership development That the made the on-the-job training better because it wasn't just me It was also a lot of other employees, so I learned from really good managers I also had really bad managers and learned what didn't resonate with me and what didn't get me motivated And so I think sometimes in those When you're in a large organization, you just naturally have that in a small organization you wear a lot of different hats and Some people get addicted to that You know one minute you're the finance person the legal person the head of engineering the head of product and customer support And so you can learn this similar set of skills, but it's a different different path Did you have specific role models or mentors throughout your career? Can you talk a little bit about that again? even starting back from Engineering where when we were in school you probably would have been the only girl in the class kind of situation to Going through it now being you know in the sea level as a female It's throughout my career. I've always had an amazing mentors I got used to as I mentioned earlier like when a class or something doesn't go as you want You you and you don't want to go through that again Like I learned to ask for help and ask questions a lot and so I think naturally What happened I didn't tell several senior managers will like oh here's someone who actually wants to hear my opinion Once my advice and takes it and then comes back and tells me how she used it So I'd regularly I remember in one role I had There was this new technology coming out USB so I went and I kind of shared some of the information and trained some of my peers who are Much more senior than me But they weren't as like paying attention to some of the more the emerging technologies and they really appreciated it and they saw that I was sharing information with them and so What I found was I just started having almost a personal board of advisors and I it happened accidentally and then over the years I've been much more deliberate So I think about one of the problems. I want to solve. I am not shy about asking for mentorship And one of the ways that I do that is I'd say something like Arnold. I really admire how you were Developed your career such that you could do your role right now. I'm interested in learning specifically How did you develop your skills to be? Head of operations and be a managing director. Can I spend? Can I spend two hours with you over the next six months to learn more and so I've time bounded it I've been very specific with my request. I've told you what I'm looking for from you And it makes it harder for you to say no to me, right, right So I think just naturally I had some of that at Intel and then some of the mentors I Live off my mentors one-liners Craig Barrett who at was the Intel CEO told me once Pathfinders end up with more arrows in their back than in their front because you know if you're you're trailblazing and people are always telling you What's wrong when you're trailblazing? Pathfinders end up with more arrows in their back than in their front. So stop occasionally So I can pull them out so you can run faster and So I like always knew he had my back and so that was the kind of a management thing I took a gone when I was in venture capital Bill Campbell who is a famous coach who has worked with Silicon Valley executives made a comment to me about Your title makes you a manager, but your people make you a leader So he was very much into you have to be able to influence people if you really want to lead them and then another one was There's a difference between a team of all-stars and an all-star team So bringing that team collaboration into play so I've had I feel very fortunate because I pick I've been around a lot of amazing leaders and Some of their one-line snippets have really influenced how I approach leadership Okay, we're running a little bit on time So what I wanted to make sure was that the audience got a chance to ask questions And we're actually a good transition point because I'll leave the deep-mind questions because you'll be talking about that in your latest session So we have we have mics that are that can be passed around So if you have any questions, just please raise your hand and then our runners can can come by my name is Maric and I'm a senior studying industrial engineering and my question is just to try to elaborate more on a topic you discussed earlier, which was Almost like impact investing when you talked about green tech and things like that. So What are your thoughts on doing good through a business versus doing good in business? So you can generate profits with which you then do good separately There are a lot of different approaches and people need entrepreneurs need to find what motivates and inspires them I'm a fan of some of the work that's happening with the B corp. I don't know if you're familiar with that a friend of mine was one of the co-founders and it basically is Bakes into the letters of incorporation how companies can How they plan a double bottom line so they have social impact and they have profits Like Warby Parker is a great example of that at sea I Also think on some of the Fields like green tech or some of the life sciences these are really long By the time you develop product find product market fit Remove the remove the cost out of it because a lot of these can be capital intensive It just takes time. So you need to find the right kind of investor who's doing that It's kind of long-term thinking and who understands the value there. I was just with I former vice president Al Gore Has a firm an investment firm called Generation Management where they do a lot of this type of Investing and have done really well And it's it's impressive if you've got the and at Kleiner We had a green growth fund that was really kind of looking at also once market risk Our technical risk was reduced and you had proven out some of the market risk Could you put some dollars to just accelerate the growth? So I think there's a lot of firms out there that are doing this and it's a matter of finding the right one for you question in back Hi, my name is max. So I wanted to ask as AI starts to impact a bigger and bigger part of our life and the business Do you think there will be an unemployment problem because of that or will it all kind of average out by itself? I think as in every Field there is technology changes have always required some adjustments so for example, I mean even automation of manufacturing and the The kind of work that the people are doing I remember when We were bringing internet into places that didn't have the internet before and Everyone's like okay. We're gonna put teachers out of out of business They're gonna lose their jobs. In fact as the teachers develop tech skills They went on to do other things and of the initial so we actually had the opposite problem was the technology actually created more more of a need And so I think But I do remember this conversational lot around the internet build-out in the late 90s and early 2000s which isn't that long ago and the impact that technology hasn't had in those areas on AI specifically I think it is Incumbent on those of us working on AI to be responsible and how we think about the downstream implications and Where and how this could see is I mean already AI is having a positive impact in manufacturing taking on some of the more complicated work that may be hazardous For a human to do so I like to think of it as the technology is a tool That solves a problem that we need it to solve versus as a replacement Question over here on my left. Hi. Thank you for coming My name is Andrew Gonzalez, and I'm a data scientist, but also a vascular surgeon So I know that in the deep learning space a lot of our innovations come from academia Now I was wondering if you had any thoughts for people who cannot necessarily take the plunge Immediately to go and just go out and be an entrepreneur and do it and still have to function within academic environment Because as much as I like doing things that are innovative I have to operate at some point in time and sometimes the College of Medicine for instance is not super great about Part-time and whatnot and I was wondering how you think in the next coming years the relationship between Academia and industry are going to involve evolve to have people doing both at the same time I don't know if I'm the best person positioned to comment on that Arnold might but I'll share some thoughts With you one is that I think if you're interested in entrepreneurship. There's also Opportunities to join boards or be advisors and it's a great way to be engaged in the process and learn and So that when the time is right for you you can move forward a bit faster. I Also think that I started actually started a nonprofit. That's my entrepreneurial Activity and I did it with a co-founder who was absolutely committed. So we agreed as part of the As we co-founded this what my role would be as chair And so it's a little bit different than a company and developing a product But there are different models that you can make things work if you're depending on what you really went out of Went out of it. Do you have anything to add only like you're kind of do one of the comments You made earlier was that when you're at a large company like Intel you actually thought yourself as an entrepreneur And so using those types of skills of hey, you can still be a big company You can still innovate and maybe in today's world a lot of people kind of incubate their ideas at big companies And then at some point they may spin out only to get acquired back. That's actually very common at Google for example Thank you Other questions Hi, thank you very much for coming. My name is Caleb I'm curious because you mentioned how important it was to you and the benefits you got from working at Intel a big company that invested in their Employees and now in Silicon Valley. There's definitely some companies that have like super high turnover rates Where people just kind of come work for a little bit and then move on and there's none of that Active development in employees. Do you think that sort of culture is healthy? And if not, what do you think should be done about it? Thank you It's a it's an excellent question So for those of you who don't know the I don't know what the latest data is but there was a point in Silicon Valley where in the startups where The average turnover was about 25 to 30 percent a year Which if you imagine for a small startup where you need that but you're bringing people in and training them And even if you're trying to be thoughtful in the interview process, it's still a lot of turnover There's an interesting book by Reid Hoffman who was the founder of LinkedIn called Something yourself like no network the the other network it talks about a tour of duty and If you look that up, you'll find it But basically you go into either a company or within a company You might have a couple of tours of duty So what are you trying to really get out of that? What are you contributing and what are you getting out of it? And there's a lot of elements in that Book or you can look on slide chair that are really interesting for people that are in that type of environment. I Don't think it's particularly healthy Because it's really hard to run a business with that type of with that type of turnover and You start a lot of times people around you are competing for who's paying the most or what's the biggest job? Title and so all of a sudden you've got this job title that maybe is inflated and you're not necessarily having The right skills to go with it. So I think what I'm interested in is I don't know what the the longer term impact will be I It's been interesting having deep mind in London. So we have very low attrition We go through a very thoughtful interview process and I think the type of work We're doing is very long-term. So we tend to get people who kind of come in and say long term I also think being outside of Silicon Valley in some ways has helped because when people join there There's an element of commitment where as I think in Silicon Valley Looking back on my time there. It's like you kind of get caught up with oh so-and-so moves companies Maybe I need to move companies or oh the cohort I started with two years ago was thinking about what's next Maybe I should I don't want to be left behind. So sometimes there's this artificial Movement I think that gets created I totally I totally agree because it also ends up being a little bit of the arms race of our people joining startups For the mission or just for the dollar and the highest pay and the best necks And so it goes to if you can recruit people who are on the same mission driven as yourself Then they're less likely to turn over other questions It's one of the back I love John Cortez. I'm your classmate back in definitely Question I was worried you were gonna actually say something about what I was really like as a student No, you hit the nail on the head from what I remember What's been your biggest? I was the opportunity that you've had in your career and then how'd you overcome that or biggest challenge maybe biggest challenge in my career. I actually think some of it is getting labeled Right and in some ways You know, I mentioned like okay, I'm a generalist, but then some people are like generalists You know what value does that add to me? Like I need somebody to do this. Well, wait a minute I'm really not a generalist. I can really can do all of these things And I think sometimes we short-hand thing short-hand it and maybe cut ourselves short for what we're really able to contribute. I Also think to some extent I've been in several times in my career where I've been really unhappy and I've just kind of tried to push through it and I think there's this balance of figuring out what you really want out of your career and Having the guts to say it's time to move on One of the things I've learned is You're kind of back to the the failure like not wanting to fail But just saying okay, it's now the right time for me to think about what's best for my career myself So I would say that's another one and the third thing I'll say is Whenever you're dealing with people issues It's very sometimes easier to not confront them And what happens is it builds up and all of a sudden this small thing turns into this big issue That now feels very high stakes and that could be giving people feedback At this one point where somebody I felt like someone was treat wasn't treating me with respect And so what I had learned by that point in my career was go and have the conversation early and do it a way That wasn't passing judgment. So I went to his office and I said something like When you do this it makes me feel like you don't you're don't respect me and I want to have a conversation about this and What I did was I had to bring that awareness in and I'm happy I did it early because it was a complete misunderstanding, but I think I learned that the hard way because in the past I think John Dore has a great saying ideas are easy Execution is everything and it takes a team to win and the people part of everything is always the most complicated Unpredictable so if you can kind of lean into the times that are Uncomfortable and resolve them quicker. I think I could have That answer the question How do you balance the like things are I'm not happy and Sort of the I need to persevere through this tough part versus unveiling and I'm kind of jumping ship. I Think when you to me it for me personally it comes down to values And I've learned this later in my career when you know what your personal values are and you're clear about it Then you start to figure out how is that with the group of people you're working around because values don't really change and I think when there's a fundamental difference there It's probably worth changing when you're spending more time focusing on what you're not doing versus what you are doing Like I'm a firm believer of playing off of your strengths instead at your resume your CV is always going to have gap have gaps But if you're always saying what do I need to do to fill that gap? I think you stop Kind of these side of what value you really add. I think we have time for one or two more questions There's one up front Is there a female who has a question to I don't want to get some diversity in here. Come on ladies No, you can ask a question to Hi, so I was sort of wondering what is your personal drive what sort of like pushes you to want to improve to move forward and How did you originally find that and come up with that? I'm a child of immigrants And so I think a lot of it was the kind of that that culture that was passed down to me and that I grew up in also have a sister who has cerebral palsy and has two masters degrees and Graduated second in our class, so I'm like I had to persevere because I looked around me and said everyone else's So I think I felt kind of that obligation and There is nothing like a little bit of struggle and then to succeed and to get some type of accomplishment and to know what it took And so I think that also that adjourn a little bit of it the adrenaline other question Here we go Hello, hi, my name is Deborah and Basically, the question is for people for students now that are looking for jobs. I'm a PhD student I mean the face that I'm starting to seriously applying and Forming the vision and the career as you said the what are your values and how to to approach it and So the question is if you have any key advice for especially women is starting in this same the same area how to not only how to Performing interviews, but our mindset how to go after Looking for jobs that actually are going to be in Intending with my own personal and Technical values. I think one of the things that's important in interviewing is to remember that They're interviewing you, but you're also interviewing them The worst thing you can do in an interview is go in and be someone that you're not Because let's say you get the job great You got the job, but now they've interviewed someone they're expecting someone else to show up They're not expecting you to show up And if what happens if you're go in and as yourself and you don't get the job Great, maybe that wasn't that wouldn't have been a good fit for you Anyway, so what it what was it that you want? So I think going into an interview with that mindset and saying what are the questions that I'm going to ask that are really Going to get to the heart of is this the organization that I want to be a part of And that may be even things like checking out their website Realizing what their values are and asking them a question about it And maybe about their mission and asking about how they balance their mission with Profitability for example to the earlier question So do your homework, but go in with a mindset of you are interviewing them as well I spent about 50 hours Interviewing with DeepMind and I did that because I didn't I was only going to move to London and Work an artificial and general intelligence if I felt good about the people the team The values the vision and I felt I could make a difference and I was at a point in my life where that element of diligence was really critical and It worked for them it worked for me the onboarding was completely smooth, so It's the first time I had ever done something so extensive, but it felt like the right thing and it felt like what I needed All right Well these hour has gone by incredibly fast just a couple of announcements that will have a short half hour break There are refreshments and water and some cookies on the side. I will be around and then at Six six o'clock she'll be giving her lecture on artificial intelligence and if I could one of the things I've been super impressed with on campus is the amount of activities that are really set up for students these days between all the Entrepreneurial support the work that you can do on vertical integrated projects. I believe that was the right acronym It is the type of mentorship that you have It I realize it's above and beyond the course load and yet at the same time It's extraordinary to me the type of opportunities that Purdue engineers now have available to them So I'd really encourage oh and international to really encourage you to go check it out if you don't know about it I think it's unusual to have this type of variety and opportunity at a university. So take advantage of it All right. Thank you