 Hey everyone, welcome back to Las Vegas. It's Lisa Martin of theCUBE Live at ClipRule23 at Mandalay Bay. We are so excited to be having such great conversations all day. I have a power panel next. We're going to be talking about data for good and combating climate change. Please welcome my three guests. Julie Kay is here. The VP of sustainability and DE and I. Executive director at click.org. Lambert Hoganhout is also here as well from the UN chief data analytics and emerging tech at the United Nations. Pretty cool. Sally Eves, one of our alumni is back, the CEO of Tomorrow's Tech today. Welcome everyone, great to have you. Great to be here, thank you. Julie, we'll start with you. Talk a little bit about how click is combating climate change and then Lambert will go to you because we want to dig into the UN and what you're doing. But give us that overview. Because sustainability is such an important topic. It's a board level conversation. Absolutely. And so from click's perspective, we really think of this in terms of tackling climate change and three distinct areas. One is being a sustainable business ourselves. So doing everything with regards to the latest standards, adhering to all of the requirements with regards to getting to net zero to meet the goals of the Paris Accords. And also just being that good steward of the environment as a company through all of our offices, through our employees and commuting and all of that. The second area we think about is how can we help our customers also combat climate change. And we play a really interesting role in that we help our customers with data. And oftentimes kind of understanding how an organization might be able to reduce its carbon footprint, for example, needs a lot of data and needs a lot of information as well as the ability to make better decisions going forward. So we're working with a lot of our customers and partners to help them achieve their goals around addressing climate change. And then the third also important aspect is advocacy and partnership. Partnering with organizations like the UN, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the UNFCCC, nonprofits like C40 Cities who are addressing climate change within our global network of cities. Leveraging technology, leveraging data. So again, we can achieve the goals that we need to get to faster and with efficiency. I love that. The impact that can be made, that's being made is huge. Lever, you've been at the UN for 19 years. You've seen a lot. You're a veteran there. Talk a little bit about how the use of data has evolved and then talk to us about what the UN is doing with click. Sure, yeah. So yeah, I've been with the UN for a long time and I think about 11, 12 years ago, I joined the central IT department and my role was to look after data and analytics and at the time it's maybe hard to believe now but at that time, most of what was being done was pie charts in Microsoft Excel and the journey we've made since is unbelievable, obviously. And I think what we first did was get everybody excited with some interactive data visualizations and that worked well and everybody wanted to do similar things and then we actually, we had a problem because we needed to be able to scale that up and enable self-service so that people, everybody could make their dashboards be because my team couldn't make the dashboards for all the 40,000 staff of the UN, right? So we needed to democratize that and that's where we started our relationship with click and very kindly allowed us to use that software and that went phenomenally well up to a point that a few years later, UN management started noticing these dashboards and started demanding them. They said, okay, we're not longer accepting some statements that things are such or such, we want to see the data, we want to be able to interact with the data, give us dashboards, give us the data and that in turn made people in the UN realize the value of data and soon it became that you want to start a new project, you want to achieve something, well, if you want to manage that, you have to be able to measure it. So what data are you going to collect in order to measure that? And now, of course, we have other techniques as well, machine learning, NLP, all the fancy stuff, but if you ask me what is the biggest change, the biggest transformation over the past 10 years, it's that cultural transformation that everybody thinks immediately about the data they're going to use and they're going to need and that's sort of the part that I'm happiest with and most proud of. A culture of data is hard for organizations to achieve, sounds like you've already created that, the demand has been there for a while, but Selly, I want to bring you into the conversation, when we think about climate change, it's on the news every day, I live in California where we have had Maureen, the snowpack is crazy and we don't do well, Californians do not do well when it rains, by the way, they're going to tell you, but Selly, talk about what's the evolution of how data is being used to combat climate change because it just seems like it's accelerating. It does, indeed, and we're used to that from a British point of view, the rain, we're good with these kind of weather things, but the first thing I'd say is the resonance around data for good, it's just exploding, it's lovely, and I did a datathon recently and young kids, Gen Z and below, frankly, are really leading the way, they get a chance to choose a project, it's using data as a force for good, they pick it nine times out of 10, which is amazing. I think from an organizational point of view, whether we're looking at SMB or right through to enterprise, there's the will to do more, the awareness is there, where we're seeing challenges, it's kind of intention to actualization sometimes, and some of the issues we talked about there, I think what we see, sometimes it's difficult to integrate the different data sources to come together, visibility right across your estate, I mean, particularly when you look at digital transformation, how it's accelerated over the last two years, bringing in different measures, it can be complicated, so we need to kind of reduce friction points in terms of the infrastructure we're using, so that's visibility, that's better integration, I mean, look at the sessions here at Click, it's kind of 50-50 analytics and integration, it's so, so on point at making that reality, and I think as well, it's what you're measuring, you're saying there, Lambert, about measurement matters, it absolutely does, and sometimes I think we see organizations maybe looking at one element, so say scope one, but not all the way through to scope three, and also doing that with internal and external data sources and bringing all those different elements together, we need to make it easier, you know, some of the dashboards that are on display here are fantastic, again, it's making it easier whatever role you're in to have more agencies use that data for good, so that's really important, so yeah, the three big challenges, I think, reduced complexity, improved visibility, and enhanced integration, it's very much the themes we're talking about here today, so I'm loving to see that centre stage and the design of the event here, it's aimed at sustainability all the way through, so it has to be that holistic 360 everywhere we're looking, it's not right at the end of a process, it's all the way through by design, basically. It is talking a little bit about, Sally, about what you're seeing, and I want to get your perspective as well, Julie, in terms of data literacy, to be able to leverage data for good, more people, it needs to be, we talk about data democratization all the time, right, but what are you seeing in terms of customers and companies out there, are you really seeing a dial up on data literacy? Absolutely, yes, and what I'm loving to see is not just a technology conversation anymore, as you just said, it's that culture, it's education, it skills uplift and reskilling and making sure every role is a data role, and we need to make sure learning and empowerment opportunities are available to every single role. Click has been very much at the forefront of that, we've been doing work on that for a few years, which is fantastic to see, and I think more organizations are partnering together as well, much better collaboration to make more resources freely available to more people, so it's great to see that, and also I think alongside data literacy, it's not just data skills, it's the skills that help you apply them, so skills confidence really matters too, so steam thinking, you know, having that emotional intelligence, skills that help you convert and tell the stories of data too, bring people along you in that journey, that's super important as well, so like metacondition, how we learn, smart tech with smart thinking basically, I love that. Julie, talk a little bit about how Click is an enabler for your customers, like the UN, to really deliver data literacy so that organizations, businesses, can get their hands on data in real time, make decisions that drive outcomes. Yeah, absolutely, so one project that Lambert and I worked on together was a travel dashboard that actually was built or designed to calculate the GHG emissions from air travel across the UN system, and this was a project really spearheaded by the sustainability team within the UN, which was responsible for reporting those GHG emissions every year, gathering the data, spending hours of time manually manipulating that data and coming up with a number, if you will, but that number represented what the emissions were the prior year, it always looked in the rearview mirror. So what Lambert, Steve, and I worked on, along with several members actually, people here at Click World, back at our conference, we had a hackathon actually to solve this UN air travel problem, was to create a dashboard that could be actionable. We heard Mike Capone speak about action this morning, right, that it's not just about looking in the rearview mirror, which often times within organizations, sustainability metrics, sustainability reporting is within a small team within an organization. But what we need is to unlock the power of that data and actually bring it to the people making the decisions every day. And we involved the travel department in the building of this application, and they still use that today to make decisions going forward when they book travel for UN representatives. They're looking at the environmental footprint of that travel that they book or suggest. So it's, again, it's not about looking in the rearview mirror, that's where we were 10 years ago. It's about unlocking that information and making it actionable. And that's kind of the work that Lambert and I and his team have been able to do, and I think it's been very transformative and it's involved everybody. It's molded a lot more people across the organization. It sounds very transformative. Lambert, the UN is on the Executive Advisory Council of Click. Talk a little bit about that from a partnership perspective. How it sounds like what the programs you've done together have been quite influential both directions. Oh no. Yeah, no, obviously it's very nice to be able to see the strategy that Click is embarking on and what they're doing to sort of go with the future and follow the trends that are happening. And because sometimes in the UN, to be honest, we're sitting a little bit in our ivory tower and we lose touch with reality. We don't connect that much with people in industry. And so for me, it's a fantastic way to be in contact both with Click and with other members of the advisory board and see what problems they deal with. And a lot of the problems I'm happy to see that they're similar. They're very problems with data integration, problems with, I think the challenge that the UN has there is that our mandate is just so wide. It's the whole spectrum of human life basically, right? From poverty to human rights to food, to climate, to everything. And most companies have a particular focus, a particular industry. And so that's a challenge for us, but it's been incredible to be on the board. It sounds like it. Sally, when you're talking with companies, how can they start wanting to use data for good? Because we know data's neutral. There's good uses. Absolutely. There's challenging, bad applications. How do you advise a company to get started to actually be able to create a program? Like what Julie was saying, it's about we need to be sustainable ourselves, help our customers. How do they start? Absolutely, we've got the bell behind us. Yeah. It's a great start. I think it's benchmark where you are. That's one of the biggest things. We see quite a lot of ESG reports that come out once a year and they're fantastic, but I think we need more regular benchmarking along the way. And you've got to start from that stat. It's like the latest technology. You don't just apply it for technology's sake. It has to be embedded to all you're doing, so don't consider it as a separate entity. It's all part of embedded strategy at the end of the day, but the benchmarking where you are is a place to start. And what we can do as well, there's an actual resource on that very subject. We can share it with the links in this video if you like, because it's a really great way of actually addressing that problem and kind of cutting through some of the noise. But yeah, the benchmarking is absolutely key. Bringing people with you, the storytelling we were talking about as well, and making sure it's not just a tech conversation, it's about the culture and the skills and the right process as well. If we're introducing different changes, we want to be faster about that. Things like CICD, Continuous Integration, Continuous Deployment becomes important. So all these different elements have to align. It's not just one element in isolation. So integration again is that key word. Right, it's not bespoke. It shouldn't be. Absolutely. Julie, talk to us a little bit about the data explosion. We know CLIC has been very successful helping its customers manage and handle that data explosion. It's only going to continue. But how from your seat can organizations use data to supercharge things like data for good, DE and I initiatives, which is another topic incredibly important. Yeah, and again, speaking to kind of what Sally was referring to, it's all about getting started, right? And yeah, so from our perspective, there's so much opportunity to not only kind of establish what the priorities of the organization are around these very important topics, whether it be environmental, social, governance topics, but to kind of set goals for yourself and measure your progress towards those goals. And the data exists. It's not that you have to create any data. The data is going to be existing in your HR systems. It's going, there's going to be public data. There's data inside your ERP system with regards to environmental calculations. And so what we've been really focused on is being able to leverage kind of the data within organization and also bringing that together to build a solution for the people that need it so they can take action. As opposed to kind of looking at historical information only, creating reports and publishing them on a website and then never using them again. But as you mentioned, data can play an important role in how companies achieve their DE&I goals as well. Yeah. And the funny thing, like the pun in there is, the data is there that demonstrates how much value data can deliver to DE&I. It's funny, but it's true. Organizations just need to open up their eyes. And one of the things I think the last few years taught us is that access to real-time data no longer nice to have. That's essential. Whether you're talking to the United Nations, whether you're talking to a consumer organization, because everybody has this expectation that we're going to get access to whatever we want, wherever we are, and it's going to be relevant to me. It's going to be real-time. Like Mike Capone, CEO talked about and is keynote this morning. It's not about looking back. It's not about looking about dashboards that show the last year of what's been going on at ESG. We have to understand what's happening now, what's the impact and how that data can help drive things forward. Remember, question for you. Talk a little bit about not just the partnership with CLIC, but what's next for the UN from a data-for-good perspective? What are some of the things that excite you about this culture of data that you've built? Sure, yeah. I think one of the exciting things that we've seen in the past few years is that data has become so much more available. And I think we're only using 5%, 10% of what is out there. So I'm really looking forward to increasing our skills in getting that data, in integrating that data, and putting it to use. And I think that's still another couple of years of journey that we have ahead of us. But exciting. The impact will definitely be keeping our eyes on the CLIC-UN partnership to see the continued impact that you're making. Sally, one last thing I want to bring up for you. I was talking to you on LinkedIn the other day, as I do. I thought that was something. And you said, the energy crisis we're living through today is the world's first truly global one, but you think it represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Give us a high level of the optimism, the opportunity that you see. Yeah, I have an expression about changing the narrative, and I think it really fits to this. So where something negative is happening, how can we reframe that to something different? So take pollution, an organization I work with, help convert pollution, basically, from diesel exhaust to something that becomes something useful for packaging and converts something negative to something really truly useful. That's a very quick example. But in terms of the energy crisis, we've had issues for a long time around energy scarcity and lack of inclusion around this. I think we have an opportunity to bring these things together and treat them not as separate entities. So if you look at the energy sector at the moment, obviously there's the cost crisis, there's a lack of access crisis on supply chains, there's also security crisis. So about 16% of cybersecurity tax are in this sector alone right now. We can integrate, I think, sustainability, security and inclusion in this vertical, but in others too. And that's what that piece represents. So I'm really excited about where we're heading there. And a lot of organizations in that sector are really helping to take a lead there. So it's a real opportunity to reframe this into like a scarcity problem and a security issue and a sustainability challenge to one where we're actually bringing kind of equitable energy access to the fore. So I'm really excited about where we're going there. I think it's an example of what we can do in many other verticals as well. I love your optimism. I've been hearing, we heard a lot of optimism on stage this morning from Mike, and it's contagious. So thank you. Last question, Julie, for you, take us home. What's next for click.org? What can the audience expect? Yeah, so click.org has just been an incredible opportunity for click to be on the forefront of supporting organizations like the UN and hundreds of nonprofits that are on the front lines of helping vulnerable people everywhere, right? So for click.org, we're going to continue that work. We're going to strengthen actually the work that we do with these nonprofits to include more products from our portfolio, the talent in acquisition included, to really drive home the idea that we can get faster and farther together. And through leveraging our technology and supporting these organizations that truly are on the front lines of helping humanity, we will only be hitting the electric gas pedal. So look for great things to come. I like that electric gas pedal. Excellent, and you can find out more on click.org. Guys, thank you, Julie, Lambert, Sally, pleasure to have you on the program, talking about some incredibly important initiatives that the UN is doing, how companies can start leveraging data for good. We appreciate it. We're going to have to have you back because we could keep talking. We're good to keep talking for a long time. But thank you. I really appreciate your insights. Thank you. All right. For my guest, this awesome power panel, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE Live from Clickworld 23. We'll be back after a short break.