 Hello, and welcome to theCUBE's presentation of Women in Tech's global event, celebrating International Women's Day. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE here in Palo Alto, California, and we had a great remote guest coming in from Bahrain in the Middle East, Kouther Alagaf, general manager of 973 Labs. Thanks for coming in and being part of theCUBE, our International Women's Day. You can't get any more international than Bahrain. Thank you for coming on. It's my great pleasure and honor to be here, John. Thank you so much for this opportunity. Well, I'm super excited to chat with you because in our two visits with theCUBE in Bahrain for covering the AWS summit there in the past few years, we notice a surge in entrepreneurship. It's almost as if the region of AWS has created this revitalization and energy and vitality and momentum around entrepreneurship. Can you share what's the scene down there? What's it like? Well, when it come to my country, we're lucky to have a small population. It's not that large, but we have so many creative people who's eager to try the entrepreneurial journey and having Amazon as a data center in Bahrain is a privilege and they are pushing to have more entrepreneurial ideas and innovation and solutions within the ecosystem of Bahrain. So definitely with their support, I can see that so many youths they are eager to come in and contribute. I noticed that you're also the general manager of 973 Labs, but also the founder of a company. So you got two things going on here. You got the entrepreneurial thing happening. This seems to be normal. People got entrepreneurial activity and the job doing both, they're both entrepreneurial. Is that normal? Yes, absolutely. Well, I started my entrepreneurial journey back in four years and I've been appointed as a general manager of 973 Labs, which is leading on digital innovation. So that complements my passion of being an entrepreneur and while we can acquire talented people and support them to create their own solutions the best way they can. So basically following the main pillars of the lab that I'm working on, which is conducting a proper research and data analytics, innovation and sustainability. So for my two founded companies, it's not only one. I've worked in Fintech and also in Proc Tech as well. What inspired you to be an entrepreneur in technology? Well, I would say that my inspiration was to think outside the box and I see problems and gaps as an opportunity. So that helps me to figure out and come up with solution that can be beneficial for everyone. So analyzing data as well is something that I would really love. And also enhancing my skills and being more creative is my inspiration. I know this is a lot of entrepreneurial activity in Bahrain, a lot of investors are now coming into the market. What are some of the things that are going on there? Can you share what the entrepreneurial scene is like there? What people are working on? Has cloud computing accelerated that? What's, what are some of the things happening there on the ground? I would say that there is multiple competitions or hackathons run by multiple financial institutions. And also there are so many NGOs as I am a board member in technology and business society and also a member of women empowerment in the field of tech. We are trying to motivate and accelerate the desire to be within this ecosystem of entrepreneurial journey. So basically we have the Supreme Council of Women who's pushing as well women and ladies to be in this sector from early age, from university or even high school graduates that they should start on working on their ideas and come up with solutions. So you can see that everyone is up to being part of the ecosystem by putting in their ideas. Yeah, and the government wants to be digitally completely transformed by a certain date. They're pushing it hard too. Absolutely, yes. We have the governmental sector trying to migrate from legacy infrastructure to the cloud, I would say. And it's more efficient for government and also to the private sector as well. You know, one of the things that jumped out at me when I was in Bahrain visiting was there was a lunch, or I'm sorry, a breakfast for women in tech. And I went there because I always go to those lunch and breakfast because I really want to see and meet people. I had to get kicked out because there wasn't enough table space. So I was for all the people that were there because I was the guy that was the spot for women. I was sold out, lined to get in. So there's a huge interest of women in tech. I saw that firsthand. There are more and more people want to come in. So motivating women to consider Korean tech is really the focus. What steps do you see to make that happen? How do we take that to the next level? What's your view on motivating women to get into tech? How would you talk about that? Well, absolutely. I think it's really crucial to have a woman contribution within the field of tech. But I believe there are some challenges given our cultural norms of how men perceive women working in the field of tech. Sometimes a society burden woman from pursuing her passion to be in tech because it's a demanding field. I would say that it's equal to the medical field. You have to keep on updating and to be aware about what's going on. So basically, that might create a bit of a burden for specifically married women of looking after a husband or their families. So I think this is one of the challenges, but the steps to overcome those challenges is by trying to shift and change the way the society think about where women should position herself and what kind of job she should be in. So I think the other thing is by having educational curriculum that we taught in schools teaching both genders about the importance of how we are equal and how we can complement each other in that field because the future is in technology. So young generation should understand this very well. How is the women entrepreneurship going? Are they being financed? Are there ventures out there? What's the momentum and progress on women starting ventures? Yes, absolutely. We're lucky to have our first lady, the wife of the king who's heading the Supreme Council of Women who is pushing women to create their own businesses or to become an entrepreneur. Also, we have financing coming through the government with an entity called Tim Keen who provide different plans and support all through, not financials only, but it covers other areas of businesses as well. So financing is not a problem. Again, for an entrepreneur, a woman as an entrepreneur, you can always seek multiple options for financing, not necessarily inside, it can be international as well. So a lot of good capital there. Also, there's fellowship opportunities. I noticed you were a Halcyon fellow, you had a fellowship with the Halcyon organization. Talk about that, that experience. Well, I really loved the experience. We started in Feb last year and we flew to Washington in July and we've met with Amazon people who were really supportive. We got solution architects supporting us of how to build the solution that we want to deliver. And I got my CTO to get trained by Amazon as well. So we found so much value in the courses and the mentorship they provided. And I'm really glad to be part of that family and their CEO, she said now, and for a lifetime, you are a part of our family. And it's all the support that we needed to get. It's a great community. What advice would you give to people who are out there who want to learn and get into cloud computing and take that step towards creating value whether it's entrepreneurial or within a company? What's the secret formula that you would say or the secret to success? Absolutely. I think a cloud is a massive and it's a brilliant opportunity for any technology to be built on. Myself, I believe in the cloud most or all of my solutions is built on cloud. And now even me leading the digital lab building infrastructure on cloud. And basically it will give you more room to identify more gaps, you do assessment, you can utilize the tools that is within cloud which is artificial intelligence, machine learning, you call it. So you can seize the opportunity to the maximum and you can scale faster. So basically you're not limited to your country, you can go across countries as well utilizing cloud. Katharine, talk about what's next for you. What's the next step? Well, the next step in my new role or new job leading on digital innovation in 973 labs is to finalize my strategy and also to acquire talented young people and go through a program which is the I designed where they get the mentorship, the support till they get a final product that will be invested in and they can guarantee themselves a carrier within the digital lab that I'm trying to lead on. And I think the projects that we'll be covering not specifically only in fintech, it could be in any other industry. So we're trying to follow the recent trends thanks to Amazon and Google and the other companies that we can extract data and create our own reporting. So to come up where we should be investing our time. That's great. I want to ask you about the demographics of the folks in Bahrain. I noticed that there are very, a lot of young entrepreneurs coming up and a lot of them. Is that true? Yes, in our population, the majority are youth. And I would say the average age is in 30s till 35 or 36. So relatively, we have so many young people or youth who's eager to learn. But again, we need the expertise, we need older people to also mentor and coach the young generation of how they should calculate the risk and come up with the proper business models and brilliant ideas. Well, I'm very impressed with the folks down there. I said before the pandemic, unfortunately the pandemic hit, but we really wanted to have a cube location there, a lot of vitality, a lot of action, a lot of good stuff going on, certainly with the AWS region in there, it's really created a lot of value. And so we're looking forward to hearing more. And thanks for coming on and sharing your story with us. And for the folks out there watching, what advice would you give to women who are watching around the world, around entrepreneurship, what's going on from your experience? What should we be doing and talking about? What's the story? Obviously this theme is bias, inherent bias in the culture. What would you share as your thoughts on to the world? Well, I think the only advice I can give to all of the women out there, just try something new, try to solve a problem. There are so many gaps we have around us. Look around you, just take one step forward and try it at least once in your life. You can come up with a brilliant solution that serves all humankind, not only the people of your country. So even if the road is bumpy, just have the courage, be resilient and go for it. And we're all connected on the internet. So of course we can communicate with each other and have a good time and grow the community. Thanks so much, Kather, for coming on the cube and celebrating International Women's Day with us as part of our special presentation. Thanks for coming on, really appreciate it. Thank you, it's my pleasure, thank you so much. Okay, this is theCUBE's presentation of women in tech, a global event celebrating International Women's Day. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. Thanks for watching.