 Would you think of yourself as a natural born leader and if you're not a natural board leader what can you look back that sort of pushed you or led you into a leadership role in your later life? Jump in. I'm not calling on you it's not class. I'll jump in. So I don't think that leadership was something as a girl that I didn't understand the construct of what leadership was or what it meant. Although there were leaders in my life and the primary leaders that you would have growing up in a low-income community in which I did in the California Central Valley I grew up in Stockton California that my teacher would be the closest thing and teachers would be the closest leaders that I knew. Ministers at the church would be leaders because of their pastoral role and leadership within the community particularly the African-American community. My parents were leaders because you know they were in control of me and that essentially was the realm but as I progressed and eventually was able to go to college I was able to understand that leadership is a formative process. It's happening while you don't recognize that it's happening and so to answer your question directly you know this idea is one born a leader or does one become a leader. I think that it is neither it is not either or but it is and in both because essentially what I have discovered is that there is a legacy that has come through my own family through my own community that has the principles and the qualities of leadership that was in my community all around me that I didn't know it but I was witnessing it because I was living in it and but I had to develop through school through work through challenges that allowed me to understand exactly what are the qualities and the tenets that makes an individual leader. So I think leadership is something that is within every individual but it's part of their environment and it's a part of the responsibility of the people within their environment to help them find that pathway to become the individual the leader who they're really meant to be. I agree it's both a innate sense as well as something you evolved into so I would say it was probably more I never considered myself a leader particularly in school or high school but I my family taught me to if you see a problem go fix it and it's on you to fix it no one else is going to fix your problems for you so you better do that yourself and what I discovered much later was that those are attributes of people view as leaders and so for example my freshman year of high school there was a an existing group in my school that would visit migrants every week and help them with school try and keep them in school for you know you battle for every six months hey don't get pregnant at 13 wait until 14 and and so that was what we did and I became the natural leader of the group because I you know I had ideas and and so on but I actually didn't come into a formal leadership position until much much later when I was working my first job out of school I got technical degrees in electrical engineering computer science so I was I was a geek I was a techie and one of things you discover as a techie is you're in a position of great control because you're working in a company and other positions really support you and that I think helped shape my my sort of world view and when I was eventually promoted to become a manager and leading a group of people I didn't want to do that initially I just wanted to stay a hacker but my lab manager to levels up basically said Beatrice you have a great vision for implementing this particular product and you can choose to be the leader and lead that group or we'll hire somebody else and you're gonna hate that and I thought about I said yeah I don't like telling people telling me what to do so I guess I'll become a manager and you know I never looked back it was something that that came naturally so it's I think it is very much a product of your environment as well as something that's inside you but it's also something that you evolve into over a long period of time let me ask you it all of you at what point did you sort of feel yourself switching from sort of a doer or a manager to being a leader of others well I think upbringing it has a lot to do with sort of some of your paths in life so I was the oldest child and my father and I did a lot together he treated me like a first son so I was the one changing tires with him and shoveling the snow and he was always the one teaching me and so growing up he always would encourage me and applaud me for anything I did even if I wasn't very good I probably didn't know it at the time but they would come and cheer me on and tell me how great I was and so I grew up with that sense of like I can do anything but I probably gravitated toward more women's events being a brownie or a girl scout playing women's sports and that's where I think having that team spirit and working with people is where I've kind of developed and I see Debbie Meslow here we were on a national women's political caucus and when we weren't allowed to endorse Willie Brown or John Burton we started our own organization but it was always seemed like groups and we would just step up and you know my dad would always say go do it and so someone said hey we need someone to take minutes I would take minutes someone you know to go make deposits at the bank I would go do it and gradually it led to public service being president of the Asian Business Association which I never wanted to do I thought I would get more clients but it's again it was like the team and advocating and one thing led to another and then you know running for office seemed like the place where I thought I could make the difference and that led me to you know running for my first office and then I really liked it right because I could help people and impact level the playing field and then I ran for my next office just because I could and I was available you know politics is like musical chairs when the music stops if there's no chair you're kind of stuck so I kind of had another opportunity and I ran for that and then now this is my fourth elected office and I think you know this is definitely my calling in life I don't necessarily want to do anything else nothing else motivates me but you know it just one thing leads to another and I would say always be available and willing and ready and doors open up I would agree a lot with Fiona about the upbringing part I come from a family of three girls there were no boys in the family and so my father did the same with me I went hunting with him I went fishing with him he taught me how to use a pipe threader and what you know and all the wrenches and all the hacksaws and everything else and he built this sense of competence in me and that became the foundation for my being confident enough to start moving into leadership positions but I didn't do that early in life I I I was in the legal field and so in the legal field you know you're in a firm but you're really operating independently or you're operating with you know a small team and usually very hierarchical and so there's not a lot of options for you to move out of your space in the hierarchy and so the way I learned to start being a decision-maker and a leader was to start going to joining groups like I joined the bar association and I'd go on the board of the legal services board of trustees and I was an advisor at St. Mary's and I went on the BIA board and various places where and I would just start by listening and so the way I learned to become a leader was to watch for a very long time and then the natural progression is if you're willing to become a leader you you're a member you're a member and then you start moving through the chairs right you become the recorder and then you become the treasurer and then you become the vice president and so on and and the more you do that the easier it is to to be in the leadership role and it became just easier and easier for me each time that I would move into one of those roles and running for elected office I will tell you that is that is possibly one of the most challenging things that you could ever do the fact that she's Fiona's run for fours I don't know how she does it I ran once and it it was in the words of world words of Charles Dickson Dickens it was the best of times it was the worst time but it was my my year of absolutely the most personal growth I ever had so getting out of your comfort zone is also a really important way to figure out you that you can do well at things you never thought you could do well at you might not but you got to try it and if you if you don't do well and you hate it then you stop doing it but you got to try it so those were the two things yeah and I think the path to leadership is very different by industry and and so on so that's that's one of the lessons to take away from this is there isn't any one path to leadership it's multiple ways so I was in a completely different environment so I was in a large corporation working for a Hewlett Packard that at the time when you were initially promoted into a leadership position puts you through a week-long training class of how to be a leader how to write performance reviews etc and that was a grounding that I had that you know many people today don't have because you know the IBM's and the HP's of the world really don't aren't the same companies that they were 20 30 years ago or 30 40 years ago but once I became a leader then you know the thing I was working on was very successful and you know then became promoted and moved on then I left HP I started a company and that that really brings it all home because as a leader of a company even if I wasn't the CEO I was a co-founder with a couple of other folks you you're responsible for all of those people right so you have to make sure you can make payroll if you're a small company that's not that's sometimes an iffy proposition and and keeping the team motivated and keeping everything going that really teaches you to reach deep inside yourself and find traits that you didn't think you have so for me it was a very different progression and one that just felt very very natural so so far we've talked about the influence of families and parents and one of the things we know from research is that in a family if a father invests in the daughter the daughter tends to be much more successful than you know she otherwise would another thing is how much your teachers and the people around you invest in you my own personal experience and that is I went to a girl's Catholic high school there's recently been an uptick in interest in same-sex education in that in that age cohort but for me there were nuns who said you know you girls are smart and you're gonna work and when I look back and go to a reunion and I see get given the milieu that I grew up in in New York where you know the dads were cops and firemen and truck drivers compared mice high school to the high the public high school in the same neighborhood the women I graduated with have just like outperformed amazingly and so I I give it up to the nuns who pushed I may not still be Catholic but I love the nuns so we've got we've got those influences and then and then this insight about leaping and leaping forward and taking risks and getting out of your comfort zone so I want to ask you to comment on something our own home grown Nancy Pelosi is the Speaker of the House and she's had a couple of things to say about power one of them is no one gives you power you have to take it from them and another one is know your power when you do others will know your power too so what do you think about that well my initial reaction is that the first phrase no one gives you you power you have to take it from them it assumes that having power is a zero-sum game and I I don't agree with that premise I think that power there's plenty of power to go around for everyone who wants to take it and wield it and so the notion that I'm in a power struggle with a man or some other person is not something I think is a very productive approach so but I agree if you just strike those last two words no one gives you power you take it absolutely because no one is going to give you power I mean why would they unless they want you to take the fall for some stupid decision they made but but this is this is your responsibility you have to decide whether you want to do this whether you want to wield power and if you do you there are many many things you can do to take the power and use it and that's what we're here to tell you about now absolutely no one will give you power title is not power the power comes from within and you know one of the things that I've observed over many many years and I've worked in a pretty much male dominated industry it was not unusual for most of my career to be the only woman in a room of a hundred two hundred guys and so that's just the way you know high-tech is and the what I observed from the very few women that I worked with was that they were often more tentative they would come and offer me alternatives and ask me to make the decision for them and you know in my role as a corporate leader that's not what your role is your role is to I employ you because I want your judgment I want your opinions and I want you to come to me and say look here's all the data that I've looked at here's what I've researched here is my conclusion my recommendation for what we do and I discarded these other ideas because of these these and these reasons and then I can ask probing questions but if someone comes to me and says well Beatrice you know I could do a or I could do be what do you think that's putting the ball on my court versus your court and that I find is a more consistent trait with women than with men and it's something that every woman that I've had working for me I've had to educate her out of which is you make the decision you take the responsibility if it's wrong that's that's on you if it's right it's gonna be on you as well but you know people ask me women ask me how do I get promoted to the next level you perform at the next level and you then take it and you ask it as opposed to work really hard at your desk and hope somebody will reward you that doesn't work it doesn't happen that way I give that advice to men as I do to women you have to if you want leadership you have to be a leader before it's given to you I definitely agree with that my my thoughts on power is that you know it's a it's a it's a discovery process and it's something that it's internal you have to build this muscle of understanding who you are who you're becoming more of before I think women can really step into their power I don't think that power is something that's bestowed upon you I think it's something that wells swells up from the inside and and you know it when a woman embodies power Pete everyone knows it when she embodies power and has it may have a degree of positionality and title responsibilities for sure but you know it by the way in which she walks the way she talks where she carries herself and I'm not talking about taking on any characteristics that are that are our masculine although there may be a femininity and a masculinity or masculinity with less femininity however she shows up in the world that it's not about those type of traits it's about a sense of knowing that you're exactly where you should be knowing that what you're doing is exactly what you should be doing and that nobody has the same capacity to do it just like you and so to me power is around particularly for women and my lot of my work has been looking at the intersection of gender and race and so you know my book is really focusing on that because that's clearly my narrative and story as a as a as a African-American woman that has been in one of the most hierarchical and oldest fields in you know American life which is higher education you know those institutions were not made for people who look like me and then over time even as individuals like me were able to access those institutions such as be able to become students and undergraduate graduate what have you they still were not made for individuals who look like me to serve as leaders and so so fundamentally you know we engage I have engaged in women of color engaged institutions in these leadership roles that we have these titles and these responsibilities and the institutions were never made for us to be there to serve in a leadership capacity and so what happens is that it's a it's a internal process in which you do have to have coaches you got to have some people around you but what I have seen is that women find their power along the way regardless of the position that they're in and some of it find it earlier than others and so it's a it's an inner of process it's an interior process and it is and I do think that the way in which women show up in their power when they find it and when they embrace it is very powerful and I'd like just to add to marry mentors are really important and in politics it's pretty much a male dominated industry but I was lucky enough to get my first job opportunity with John Burton and for those of you know you know John Burton he now has retired but his foundation is supporting foster youth but the way he you know nurtured all of us and embraced us it was never about power even though John Burton does like to swear a lot but he wasn't swearing at us we figured out that his swearing was kind of a what is it like a his protection mechanism so that he didn't have to sit in a room and listen to someone or have a deep conversation or you know solve a problem so that was his way of kind of keeping everybody at a distance but he had a heart of gold and everybody who worked for John loved John you could never get a job with John unless someone you know quit or passed away I mean that's how much they loved him and I think that's the way he assumed power it wasn't because he took power or he asked for power demanded is because people just loved him and that gave him power when we were talking in preparation for this Beatrice you said something about about that yeah yeah no and yeah just a story that I'd like to tell is women are sometimes brought up from very early days to be passive and I remember my daughter who is a wonderful independent very strong young woman she's in New York and and really a beautiful person I got the dreaded call every parent gets your daughter's being disruptive this is kindergarten and and I walked in and the teacher was there and there was a perfect little circle of little girls all sitting very quietly around the teacher not moving and all the boys are running around as was my daughter and I said hmm and I looked at her I said look you may not call me again until every single one of these boys is sitting down as quietly as the girls then my daughter is being disruptive right now she's being one of the boys don't you dare ever call me again for that and she was kind of taken aback but it was very clear that even at that point you know she was not at the off the scales in terms of the people in the room she was off the scale versus the other girls in the room and I had brought her up to question authority to be independent and to have her own thoughts and and to fight back if need be and that was what she was being so was she being disruptive yes but so was half the class so so it's important that you know as we bring up our children our daughters our sons that we teach them that set of independence to really think independently to look at data to question what people are telling you even if they're adults because that will bring you good stead as you get to be older and have to push back against you know your boss or when I first became a CEO I was CEO of a public company and I'd never worked for a board and a board is kind of a weird entity you don't work for them like you work for a boss but one of the first things I had to do is I had to remake my board and you know think about figuring out how to fire your boss it's not so easy right so it was something but I by then I you know I've been in business a long time and I had that intestinal fortitude that said I can do this and I did so but it takes a long time to get to that level of confidence inside yourself and it starts before kindergarten the confidence inside yourself I think also generates confidence that people have in you and I I know Beatrice and Fiona have both talked about this as we were prepping and the phrase that Beatrice you used was you know you've got to be what willing to take a bullet for the team and it sounds sort of like the John Burton you know being willing you know be part of being a leader is you know having people being willing to to follow you up Sam Juan Hill and you know and be happy about it and different people have different leadership styles I remember again this lab manager I had in my very first job at HP everybody loved him it sounds like John Burton in retrospect he was not a great manager he couldn't protect the group as well but people would just you know they they throw themselves off a cliff for him so that's one type of leadership style mine is more you know I'm not the general that leads from behind I'm more a Teddy Roosevelt I will charge up that hill and I'm willing to take the bullets and I have people who have worked with me across companies for 20 30 years and you know they know I will sort of create that shield of invincibility as I'm going up the hill that will protect them from the bullets but that comes at a cost which is they have to be willing to do the same thing for me and that's not for everyone some people can't you know for whatever reason don't want to can't give it that level of giving it all and that's fine but you have to find your leadership style and find the people that fit that leadership style so both of you are comfortable in the relationship there's people I worked for that I would never ever work for again these people I worked for that I would work for multiple times and you have to find that comfort zone that you have this is who I am and these are the sets of people that work well with me because you want that team you want everybody working well together because when you've got that there's no other feeling in the world of having this you know superstar team working with you to achieve a greater goal and I would like just like to add that taking that bullet I think is very very important you cannot get people to follow you for the long term if you are going to throw people under the bus I don't know anybody that wants to work for someone like that and if they are every day they are worried that they are going to get fired or reprimanded and people can't grow like that so you have to accept that there are going to be mistakes and you have to take the blame you have to take the bullet you cannot throw anyone on the bus otherwise you cannot advance to higher levels I'm looking at it our audience and we've got a fairly broad age range but we have a really good representation of younger women so I'm going to ask you for their benefit if you were going into a new position whether it's your first or your second job and you would like to be successful you would like to be a leader in whatever this chosen field is what should they know now that maybe it took us 10 15 20 30 years to learn about how to advance ourselves and how to step into those higher level roles in whatever our professions are you haven't had a chance yet oh we all stare at you anybody can jump in the one one of the things that I struggled I struggled with actually three things at the beginning of my career the first was I was subordinating my interest to the interests of my boyfriend and there are things I should have done that I could have done that would have been really remarkable right at the beginning of my career that I didn't do and I'm so mad at myself for doing that and so we weren't married there wasn't a commitment there it was just a mistake of a flaw character that I had at that time that made me make that choice the second so so looking out for your own interests first not not you don't if you're madly in love with your boyfriend or your girlfriend or whatever you don't split up with them and say screw you I'm gonna go over to Washington DC I never was you know if you want to stay together then you start a negotiation I didn't even start a negotiation so that was one issue I had the second issue I had was when I graduated from law school there was great pressure to go into a big firm and now there's even greater pressure going to big firm because everybody so inundated in student debt to go into a big firm and to go to the litigation department specifically at the big firm and I did that and and I really really struggled with it and I never sat down and tried to figure out why I was struggling with it and what I what took me about eight years because I would go from I went from one firm then I went to the DA's office and I went to the federal the dark Department of Justice and I was in litigation in all of those positions and what I discovered was I really wasn't a very good litigator and I didn't like it and so what I what I would do is I would I would I would arrange my workload in such a way so I could avoid a trial at any expense when I figured that out I went to I went to a law firm I was I got married I got pregnant and I had to move out to the suburbs and and I I interviewed a law firm that wanted to hire me and I said okay two rules I don't do trials and I don't do interrogatories but I'll do anything else and they hired me and from then on I was just happy as a little clam because I was doing all the stuff I love which was writ work and anything having to anything that didn't have to do with me having to stand up and in a in a court and think on my feet because I just was not good at that and then the third thing that really held me back for about the first three years of my career was I didn't know the rules I didn't know the unwritten rules and I was probably the there was 65 in my firm in the it was a big downtown law firm there were maybe 65 people and I think I was the fourth woman that had been hired one had already left two were still there they didn't come and help me out I didn't even know how to ask them to help me out I had no one there guiding me I did not know the unwritten rules and so I screwed up so many ways so many ways one of which I was told only three years after I left the firm was you would come in every Monday morning and with a big bunch of flowers and you would spend 20 minutes arranging those flowers in a vase you know how off-putting that was like no so those so yes having the mentor having the person on the inside rooting for you pulling for you teaching you the ropes huge difference yeah absolutely and if you I'm sorry no I was just gonna say you know this whole idea of we call it sponsorship but I if I were to go back I would look for people that were transformative allies meaning that people that recognize that they have significant capital at social capital in the organization is political capital in the organization it might even be financial capital and if you put all those things together that generally means in most organizations in a US context most likely it's going to be a male and even more likely it's probably a white male and so if I were to go back literally 20 years from from where I was this particular time I would have found a way to not look for a sponsor I would have found and made relationships with influential and powerful white males knowing that as a black female that the risks for me to take as a leader as a manager were so great and if I failed even a little bit that the consequences would follow me in a way where I would not be able to progress in the normal promotions and there will be a narrative that emerges around tonality you know the tone when I show up with the best of intentions thinking that with my newly minted bachelor's degree and then eventually my newly earned master's degree and then eventually a doctoral degree that all those things are enough but yet at the same time they weren't enough and so one of the things that I have learned is that you have to have someone of power and influence and everybody in the organization knows it everybody knows that he has your back and if you can find it in a woman that's awesome but you need to have a powerful male who has decided that he is going to be your champion and he and you may have to teach him women's issues you may have to teach him issues about women of color we have to teach him racial issues so that he is better prepared and better equipped to become that champion for you so in many ways you have to build your own champions just like you have to take assume power you also have to kind of build capacity for allies to become their highest and their best selves and that doesn't happen naturally you're in in research on how people succeed in their professions there is a term kip knowledge intensive professions and what the research focuses on is that in a lot of professions law for one politics I'm sure these are things where you learn by doing you learn by word of mouth knowledge that's handed down and who gets that hand me down knowledge and that assistance is decided very early in the process like moments after you're through the door and if you're not picked out as the star very early on you've fallen by the wayside go someplace else find another job start all over and so this picking people you know having that idea of I have to identify myself as a star to this person who is influential is going to be important so how do you do that how do you identify yourself as a star well for me I want people who are willing to work hard learn not look at their watches not be concerned about their pay but that's public service that is public service but you know I spoke to a group of CSU students and they were kind of saying well how do we compete with you know the Ivy League students what are you looking for and I said I don't look for Ivy League students I want people who are going to be committed who want to stay with me for more than a year who are just happy and excited to have a job every day and for public servants you cannot be concerned with money if money is something that you think of having a nicer car eating at nicer restaurants buying fancy or clothes you're never gonna make it in politics you're either gonna get in trouble or you're gonna end up right I'm leaving because it's just not you know in the DNA and I would say as I have gotten older when I turn 40 I started feeling more confident about myself and that's because I got elected to my first office at 36 years old because my parents didn't want me to run for all these years so I kept asking and look seeking their approval finally I got elected I felt pretty good and as I get older 50 I mean I don't care as much anymore about what people think and Warren Hellman one of my mentors Warren Hellman his partner when he died at his funeral said Warren always believed life is too short to deal with jerks and that struck me that I said you know I'm gonna start practicing that and so I try to get rid of people who have negative energy take too much of my time and it has helped a lot in terms of my you know my mind body spirit being happy every day and so that's what I strive to do I don't want to get stressed I don't want to you know hold grudges I don't want to go to work every day you know being angry for me every day like should be a happy day yeah and I think also keeping in mind social capital that was a concept I didn't understand for for many many years but if I were to you know give my younger self advice it would be to really not underestimate the power of social capital and creating networks within organizations where you bring value to someone else and they bring value to you and then that becomes a self-fulfilling thing so now that's an alternate way of you know rather than having the person protecting you you have your network of influential individuals who protect you both of those work but that's an alternative and in addition I think finding folks outside of your organization that you can bond with you know the in the preparation we talked about a friend of mine colleague she and I are on boards together we teach together how to be on boards etc and she very recently started a small group for senior technology women who are at a point where they want to look at the next step in their lives do they want to be on a board they want to be a CEO do they want to take the next step up and most of these are women like myself they're you know they're working at companies that are very male intensive uber you know LinkedIn you know companies that they are the woman visible and we just you know we take them out to dinner there's a couple of us who are more senior people who can give them coaching and guidance of boy what should I do next now I'm kind of unhappy where I'm at now I've been there nine years should I move on you know I think I might get a promotion in six months should I stay those kinds of decisions which you get to a certain point in your life it's time to get help from people who have been there done that and can give you a little bit of guidance if you don't find such a group create it because it is incredibly invaluable to talk to other people in similar situations they will help you because it will help them as well it's a different kind of social capital but it's a very important one one of the things for young women I think in going into this sort of a new situation you know you've got to build your social capital you've got to build your expertise and one of you've got to ask questions and I think what we're hearing is have a curious mind and learn as much as you can so you've got to sort of go in with the mindset of what's the technical expertise that I need to be successful what's the social expertise that I need to be successful you know what who do I need to know within the company who what do I need to understand about the way things work and who do I need to know outside and how do these networks all connect so that you can navigate your way through it you can be a superstar and one of the things that there's a there's a famous mayor of New York probably before your time but a guy named Ed Koch and Ed Koch was famous for going around New York and asking people you're not in Fiona you know the quote yeah how am I doing and he wanted to know I mean he would ask anybody and it's a good thing people hate to give you feedback here's another thing to know early in your career people will hate to tell you when you've done it wrong so ask them you know how am I doing how can I approve how can I improve ask the people that you want to promote you what should I know next how do I get that knowledge how am I doing what do I work on and if you ask for the feedback they will give it to you and be so relieved if there's something that they were hesitating to bring up so let's let's switch the conversation a little bit because i'm sure that all of us have experienced and probably many of the women if not all of the women in the audience have experienced situations where they felt that their words their decisions were being undercut in some way so let's talk about those situations what they look like and share with the audience some ways that we have dealt with them and again what do you wish you had known about that years ago so we're talking about things like you're in a meeting you've got a great idea you tell your great idea everybody ignores you and then two minutes later a man says the same thing and it's like oh that's a great idea um that happens the other thing that happens a lot and it's very interesting this has there been a done scientific studies on this women get interrupted by men at meetings something like 15 times more often than either being interrupted by women or men interrupting men so that's a cultural thing we know about it and we need to handle it and took me a while but i would turn to the person who was interrupting me male or female and i would say oh excuse me could i please finish and then go on it took me years to do that because the cultural setup was such that i just didn't feel like i had the power to do it what's important is that i also didn't do it for the other women in the room i could if if i see another woman being interrupted or some idea being taken from her and and abducted and used as someone else's then it's on me to say oh wait a minute could you let her finish please i'm really interested in what she's saying or oh yeah george i think that's exactly what judy said two minutes ago you guys must be you know on the same plane something like that so there are ways to do it it's um but it's scary when you're younger when when you're the one of the very few women in the room when you you haven't developed a level of competence that gives you the confidence to just speak up because you know you're right so it's a learned for me it was a learned thing and the earlier you start doing it the easier it becomes you can practice this skill at home and i speak from experience because i my husband and our mutual best friend and i were having dinner we're all in a heated discussion and they started doing that to me i was like time out guys do you know what you're doing and they they were both like who me you know practice at home practice with your friends because they will do it and build up that that muscle yeah and don't assume that people yeah exactly understand that so i'm you know perhaps very odd i'm in the unusual position that's actually never happened to me but it's a combination of being a tech person in a tech company or multiple tech companies tech is very egalitarian it's really about how good you are and you know most engineers including myself are completely oblivious to these interpersonal things right so you can you can go for good good many years and be completely not realizing any of the personal dynamics but no one else around you does so it's okay but but i think the important thing is i was on a on a board at one point and it was six venture capitalists and the newly named ceo and a founder and the founder was unhappy at no longer being the ceo and he was downright disruptive so this happens to men as well he would interrupt the ceo every time he opened his mouth he'd object and and so on and i'm sitting around what are you the six of you guys doing letting this continue and you have to understand that there's a group dynamic where people are afraid to call that out and i just and i just said stop roberts rules of order i felt like a kindergarten teacher okay you get to talk no no no that's it you talk and now you're done talking now you talk no you can't interrupt him and after about half an hour you know people then started not interrupting one another so it does happen but there's a group thing that that people get into that they don't want to call it out and it isn't and if they see it happening to someone else they just that's it they just sit there and watch it happen so you have to take control of the situation because in nine times out of ten you know unless you've got someone like you who has been through it you may not get rescued you may have to rescue yourself you know one thing that i was thinking of is that because i've been working with college age students you know the sum of my career and obviously there's you know the kind of a traditional age college student and and and obviously there's adult learners but particularly of what i've i've witnessed over the last i would say seven or eight years but really in the last three to five years is the ways in which the young women on my campus watching them organize themselves watching them in their social circles watching them in the classroom as i teach that there is a um a capacity that they have if they have had have had an opportunity to engage you know in some leadership development um and they have uh kind of a collective collectivist um you know environment where they're engaged with other young men and young women that um i don't think that particularly the millennial women are having it the way and allowing that to happen in the ways that other generations have had it and i see a couple of nods in the and the audience and i've seen that change because that's part of my job as an educator as someone that what that is a student of the developmental process and the developmental process of young adults of a young adulthood and just seeing the ways in which they are challenging um and their capacity to challenge and um i'm not sure all the the reasons why that's the case um you know there's various theories out there um on why that is but um one of the things i'm seeing particularly even in the work face you know workplace um the university is one of the most intergenerational workplaces around you know at least five generations currently because you could teach for a very long time you could teach into your 70s and 80s actually and then there's a whole core of millennials and then you have the baby boomers which is a large core of the management um then you have the uh the the student me the employees that are even younger than a millennial so we just got this wide range of people um in this uh this ecosystem called work the millennials are the ones in my organization and i know it's happening as well um and you know universities are anchor institutions they really are um challenging um processes um they question um they want to understand why things they are the way they are and um and at times we've seen intergenerational um not i won't use conflict because that's a two i think too much of a word um but um they have to work it out in regard to how the millennials are showing up and so i have great confidence as an educator and what i'm seeing with the young women that are and that are um in the spaces of learning um in post-secondary education right now i think they i think they got it going on and i would like to add millennials uh we have millennials Noah's here with me um i have probably half my staff are millennials and they are much more confident i think than our generation where we wanted to be recognized we needed that confirmation we needed to be encouraged i mean these young people they're ready to go they're ready to run for office um you know that they they never say no they're ready to do it which which i love about um their confidence uh but i will say i try to get a lot of um young people to run for office especially women and it takes like seven times before a woman would run for office because they have to think about it they have to check um you know ask around you know what does it take can i do the job whereas men they self-select and they're like i'll do it i'm ready to go um but i am heartened to see that there were so many women that ran last year for office many that have never run before that would never have done it and they're like you know what we're angry what's happening and if not you know me then who and the women really stepped up to run for office but i will tell you it is a double standard when you run for office the questions uh they ask women when they are candidates but i will also say it is probably the most humbling experience if you've ever run for office anyone have ever run for office no when you do uh and you go around and you ask your friends and family uh to support you they're usually like oh great yeah i'll support you then you go okay i need to raise money can you cut me a check oh um i have to think about it let me see how you do right uh and you can weed out very quickly over the years like who is your friend who has been there is like i'm in your corner versus i gotta think about it i'll get back to you they don't return your phone call they don't don't donate money right i mean politics i think is the true way to weed out the people in your life that are gonna be supportive and love you and the people that are like trying to figure out how they're gonna benefit uh themselves well at this point i think um let's open it to questions from the audience um i think we've got uh some microphones that uh we're going to have the staff the volunteers bring around so that everybody can hear the question we've got people down here in the front we've got people over thank you so much for speaking it's been uh really delightful to listen to all of your stories i'm from stockton i wanted to do a whoo whoo but then i didn't want to scare the audience i was like okay i gotta find her um and i really appreciated all of you talking about mentorship allies and knowing the rules i grew up in a family where my parents are refugees from laos and so i had the chance to get to berkeley and work at a big law firm and i was so freaking clueless i mean you talked about the flower story somebody came to my office and said you know what your cheeriness is so effin annoying can you just shove it and i was like whoa it was it was brutal i'm granted i graduated and what was that what do you say you're cheering cheering cheering yes and i graduated in 2009 during the recession so i think that might have had something to do with it too um but i wanted to ask you you know you talked so much about what you can do to be a protege or somebody that's a star but how do you find who would be that quote unquote transformational ally or that sponsor because often it's not easy to figure out who's doing what and who would have your back so what are the qualities that you've seen have worked for you and how do you sift that out i'm in your case you know it's political we don't eat money then maybe but maybe not so i'd be curious from each of one of you how you have found that person well hey i'll start um i started my practicing law with a big firm and got assigned to a guy who was a total jerk and you know i put in my year i mean when they assigned me to him it wasn't what i had signed on to do and i said uh you know i understand your short staffed i'll do this for a year if i'm not happy will you commit that i can move someplace else and they said yes and at the end of the year i was not happy um so part of it i think is you know keep your eyes open and you know if you're in a bad situation jump you know just jump um but in the meantime look around for those people who other people respect you know you hear people and you see how people react you know it doesn't take it just takes keeping your eyes open to see who in the shop that you're in people think are really good and people think you know yeah he maybe that's a boss but not one that you want to work for um and those are the people the people that people respect are the people you want to ask for the opportunity to work with volunteer see if you can see if you can get the opportunity to work with that person so that you can show them your stuff because they you know they're not going to open the door and say oh come in i want to be your mentor you've got to demonstrate to that person that you're really doing the work you're showing an interest in the company you're trying to learn about things you're not just sort of in your cubicle you're you know you're out there trying to meet everybody and trying to figure out you know this is what i do but how does that interact with the person in that other department and how can i help them and and i would say you have to think about what you want to do in life right you want to run for office you should contact me you know keep bugging me call me drive with me if you want to be a chief of staff you should reach out to my chief of staff she's filipina she's amazing she's organized she's good with people hr um so you need to also think about what you want um because i'm totally different than jennaby right jone right noah um and we're just different people but she doesn't want to run for office and i never want to really manage people in an office so that's also part of you know beside working or looking for that mentor who you respect um kind of what you see your role in life is or what you want to do i think i've got the uh not remote but whatever whatever this thing's called um thank you all for coming uh beatrice you brought up the fact that sometimes you deal with supervisors who can't make a decision to save their life and this is somewhat directed to you but all the women as well how do you um move yourself forward when you've got a supervisor who again cannot make a decision but you obviously don't want to step their bounds but also prove yourself in that atmosphere um some one of the the things that i've learned is that you have to figure out what situations as you said you have to walk away from and sometimes um supervisors who are unable to make decisions um are going to hamper you forever and so you need to decide and and find yourself a situation because one of the things i've learned is you cannot fix that person um i remember my very first job out of school um our you know it was a bunch of us we were you know technical degrees very young people and there was the you know the the team lead uh was a great guy we loved him dearly but he could not make a decision to save his life so we you know my my cohort hi another woman very strong minded people you know he said look you know we're now 10 people you you can't you don't want to manage so we hired a boss um our decision making in terms of the qualities we wanted and a boss was let us say very poor and so we uh we thought management was you go to meetings and so we hired a guy who liked going to meetings which meant that we got to go lots more meetings and uh eventually my cohort and i decided we can't stand this anymore and so we went to the guy and we said we want you to leave and he was a very nice guy um and he liked going to meetings and so he actually said well yeah i can see that you know i'll go find another job but then we were back to our buddy who couldn't make a decision um and uh and eventually i i moved on because we loved him dearly but that was just who he was and you just need to make that that decision for yourself thank you um i work for an all girls um all girls high school and i think we some of you spoke um about your experience as a child or even at an all girls school um so i think that we do an excellent job um empowering the next generation to be confident and confident and um but they are almost in this bubble of there's so much support and i i think it's great um but when they enter college or the workforce it it's really shocking and it's really frustrating to to be kind of introduced for the first time to the glass ceiling and um just so many of the issues that um they face as women um so excuse could you speak up sure sorry do you want me to repeat that yeah sorry so i work for an all girls high school um and i think that we i think we do a great job at empowering um our girls to be um to be leaders to be confident and to have those skills um but then when they go into into college or into the workforce they're really shocked and frustrated um by like being introduced to the glass ceiling and to so many of the issues that um they hadn't had to deal with in the past um or during their um single gender experience um so do you have any advice to educators or community builders within education to prepare them for that or is that is that even important um what would you recommend i'd recommend they go to a girls college too yeah sorry i'm a smithy and you know i i i only applied to two schools when i went to college both of them were all girls schools the best decision i ever made because i got so easily distracted by boys my own care i already told you about that particular character flaw and uh it was wonderful because i only had to deal with boys on weekends and i could you know attend to all of my work and everything else during the week and so by the time i got to law school and i was in a co-ed setting it didn't matter because i knew how to handle everything and i had reached a level of competence and a level of confidence uh that i mean i don't know what it's like in a co-ed college but being in all girls college was really empowering for me and so i mean i'm kind of answering you tongue in cheek but there are other ways to to explore those settings you do it in social settings you do it with weekend jobs you do it with summer jobs you do it in various ways but i don't think the problem is that they went to an all girls school i really don't i think there must be some other issue maybe they're over protected at home maybe they barely had any social intercourse with boys at all in the course of their schooling and that's the issue i don't know but i just i just don't think that's where the problem is i would agree very quickly i just want to say that i i have been um in the context as a educator and on a co-educational environment the the the sum of my life both personally my own education and as a provider of education and so that you know um i believe in the the mission of public education i believe in private institutions that are have strong missions like my current institution yet at the same time because of my experiences but personally as well as the work that i'm doing to both support and retain um and to hopefully you know facilitate a whole educational environment for the students that i work with i recognize the value and i try to construct it even within a co-educational environment where if it's around gender whether it's around um other identities social identities um race um interest whatever it is i think there's a lot of value that people get when they're able to come together around a shared language a shared culture a a shared way a shared interest because what it does it gives them a chance to get stronger and it gives them a chance to um be able to um uh have a a sense of who they are even in the context of the greater society one of the things is that the students are going to only be in school for a certain period of time this is a time for them to be able to come together and and um build that capacity that they're going to need so i agree um i can always tell somebody that has come out of a single-sex educational experience i can also tell people that have come out of catholic school educational experiences there's certain characteristics that are identifiable to me as an educator when i'm dealing with them whether they've transferred into my institution or i'm dealing with them as a professional as she has said it's rare to find a woman that has come out of a single-sex educational experience um that is not innately confident and so if she has to deal and you know and manage with the realities of of of structural inequity just like you know people of color have to deal with uh you know structural inequities um as they go out into work because black children you know they grow up in loving black homes and then they kind of go off to school and then all of a sudden how do they you know they have to understand like i might get you know everything is not equal for all people at all times and so they have to come to grips with that and they have to learn how to manage that but yet at the same time that environment of of support is actually the anchor that will hold them when they need it the most and so um so i would so i would i would say that um maintain those experiences so they can get really strong and i would agree um i've met a lot of people in my job over the past 25 years and i can tell you it doesn't matter man or woman um it's just there's personalities right in both um whether you're friends whether your colleagues whether you are a boss i mean they're good legislators that are men uh and they're bad women legislators right there's men that love that their staff loves them there's women uh that their staff loves them and there's women that their staff hates them right so as you're kind of moving up i don't think it's you know one sex or one religion or race or creed uh i just think it becomes people right and if like they said if you can connect with people um that share maybe your values that you know you want to see the world a better place right you want to be positive i mean those are the people i look at so i wouldn't say going to an all-girl school um hampers them in any ways i just think that it's just life you know men and women you know we grew up differently and we have different management styles we have different insecurities different ways to lead and i don't think it's it's you know it's because you go to a girl school well i would say that confidence is is really important in that training that you get but um it's also really important to be prepared for things and you know if you want your students not to be surprised when somebody grabs them or says something inappropriate you know i think you tell them this can happen and think today about what you're going to do when that situation happens and practice you know how are you going to respond if somebody says that to you or if somebody does that to you um you know that's part of what we've got sort of in our toolkit without even thinking about it because you know you you go through things and you know you know how i know how i'm gonna respond if somebody cuts me off um you need to tell your students these are the kinds of things that may hamper you here's what you need to be you need to be able to do this go practice getting groups of three your job is to cut her off at some point and your job is to leap to leap in and correct that behavior now practice it and then change roles do we have time for like another question well thank you all you've been a wonderful audience with great questions and a wonderful panel