 Why don't we make a project to analyze how people are watching it? Grace Hopper's Celebration of Women in Computing coverage continues in a moment. Live from Houston, Texas, it's theCUBE, covering Grace Hopper's Celebration of Women in Computing. Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of the Grace Hopper Conference. We are live in Houston, Texas. I'm Rebecca Knight, your host. Today our guest is Amanda Ghisharu. She is the co-founder of Tech Republic Africa, also an ABI winner. This is the Anita Borg Institute winner for Change Agent. This is for your work in giving girls and women in Kenya opportunities in the tech industry. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so happy to be here. So talk to me about your career. You actually started your career at the UN and you started in development and then moved on to Google. So I did start my career in development and that was because I always knew since I was a child that I wanted to do something to make the world a better place and just bring positive impact and change. So I started off in Italy working for the World Food Program around food security, specifically in communications and fundraising, just to make sure that programs are sustainable and were able to scale. And then from there, I actually moved on to do my masters in communications to learn more about how I could effectively raise funds for nonprofits and social enterprise. And then from there, I returned home to Kenya and worked with the United Nations Development Program around several aspects of development, from governance to energy, food security, conflict. So I got a more high level look at, you know, the entire, I guess, landscape of development issues that we do have within the region. And then at that point, I felt that, you know, international civil service was a bit slow and a bureaucratic. So I thought, you know, I want to go to a company that'll bring positive change, but it's a bit more fast moving. And that's how I ended up at Google, actually. Yeah. And so you're at Google, but you also have this real part of you that, as you said, wants to make the world a better place. Yeah. So what did you see at Google that made you? Yeah. So at Google, it's very much, I guess, a startup type of environment. They're always looking to innovate and with their innovations, they're trying to make a positive impact for the world. And specifically at the time when they had opened up the offices in Africa, they were trying to demonstrate to the local population how the internet could make an impact in their everyday life in a more positive way. So that really was attractive to me because we do have challenges within the country where we have a high mobile phone penetration. It's at 88%. But there's a lot of ignorance around what you can do with that phone beyond messaging and calls. So for me, I wanted to be part of that narrative and help people understand you could use the internet to access information and knowledge is power. So I was working in product marketing, consumer awareness. It was less around corporate, let's make money kind of consumer marketing and more around positive social impact. How can we show the local people how they can use the internet to make their lives better? And so as you said, 88% penetration in Kenya and yet some few people really understood the power of this little device they were carrying around in their pocket and in particular women. Yes. So the problem you were trying to solve in founding Tech Republic Africa. Yeah. So what we looked at, like I said, while I was at Google is digital literacy, right? Do people understand how to use the device and the internet? And while we're going around the country trying to help people have this understanding, I realized it's really deeply rooted in our education system where people are learning, I'd say, industrial age type skills, whereas right now we're in the artificial intelligence aid. And if you actually graduate from our Kenyan education system, you're not able to complete globally and the world is now global. We have to look at ourselves from that perspective. And women and girls are particularly at a disadvantage because they do have challenges accessing even basic education. So accessing STEM education is completely out of the question. So I left Google to start Tech Republic Africa with their support as well. And we're looking at how we can reach kids in rural areas as well as, I'd say, disadvantaged urban areas and educate them on STEM with a skew towards CS and tech because what's happening is when they do graduate from our local schools, the skills are equipping them to be more employees and less entrepreneurs and innovators. And that's led to a very high level of unemployment because people come out and are looking for jobs as opposed to starting their own initiatives. So with our program, we don't only teach them STEM skills, we also teach them soft skills and business skills so that once they complete the program, they're in a position to start their own initiatives and create jobs and grow the economy. I want to talk about the results that you're seeing but I also want to ask about the parents because so much of this too is parents either seeing opportunity for their young daughters or not seeing opportunity and really needing to be persuaded that this is a viable path for their daughters. How much outreach do you have to do to parents too? Yeah, that's actually the first point of contact because they are, like you said, the decision makers. So we actually do run workshops and awareness at schools and within the universities that we partner with to educate parents. They are also part of the system in the sense that they went through the same education system. So they also have that same level of lack of information on STEM and the opportunities that exist currently. So we do have workshops, two-day workshops, so we literally take the parents through a taste of the program, help them understand the opportunities, expose them a bit more. And we also use a lot of peer-to-peer marketing. In Kenya, that seems to be much more effective and credible when I hear from another parent my students went through this particular program and this is how they benefited. So that's work for us as well. So what are some of the challenges that you see for women getting this education? What are some of the biggest hurdles? Yes, I'd say that Kenya and maybe the wider part of Africa is still very patriarchal. So what you find is women entering the workforce have to work twice as hard because they have to be taken seriously, they have to gain credibility and also they have to face the brunt of, I guess, this social conditioning that a woman's place is in the home and having children and taking care of the home unless in the corporate world or even as an entrepreneur building her own business and creating her own path. So that's really been a challenge for these girls to get them to understand that. As much as women are perceived as that, we are the backbone of our society. If you actually look at a typical Kenyan household, you'll find that a mother could be at home just looking after the children but at the same time maybe she has a small side business where she's selling vegetables or she's making clothes or she's baking cakes and telling them so they actually are entrepreneurs. They just don't label themselves as that and you need to tap into that particular, should I say, will to do whatever it takes to survive and take care of their families and innovate because they are innovating in their own way. And so you have these women who as you said are small business owners because they are making things and then selling them, also running their households, making decisions probably that affect their children and their husband. Is there a sense that things are changing in the sense of becoming a less patriarchal society? Do you sense an underlying change? So from a policy perspective at the government level there has been a big push towards empowering women more. So there are policies that are recently established that allow women or rather enable women to have whole more positions in government. And of course that's very impactful generally for women across the board because they are in a position to make decisions that will make things easier for women to get into business, into positions of power influence within the government or the corporate world. So there is that change. And then you'll find because of programs like ours as well as other institutions who are working towards educating women, girls are feeling a bit more empowered and starting to realize, hey like actually I have a position of influence like you said within the household and I can be able to take this further and have positions of influence within the corporate world or within governance as well. And you are a nonprofit right now. But you said that you may be moving a little bit toward the social enterprise model. Can you talk about that? So generally if you look at the world right now and the recent economic recessions that have taken place it's become a bit more challenging for nonprofits especially small nonprofits to access sustainable and consistent grant funding. So as a result a lot of nonprofits are shifting towards the social enterprise model that allows them to carry out some commercial operations to allow them to be more sustainable as opposed to being dependent exclusively on grants. Yes, so that's what we're looking at right now just reconfiguring and restructuring our business so that we are sustainable. And if grant funds do come in, yes, it'll be supplementary but not the main source of our funding for us to run our programs. So let's talk a little bit about Grace Hopper. We are here in Houston, Texas the biggest tech conference, the biggest technical tech conference for women. What are your impressions? What are your thoughts? First it's amazing like the energy in here 15,000 plus delegates coming together just to understand more about the tech world opportunities for growth in their careers and understanding like cutting edge, innovations taking place. It's amazing. I'm learning so much. This is actually my first time here. So I'm so grateful for the opportunity. And it's been an amazing first day. This is a second day. I'm learning a lot. I wish I could actually be in all these different workshops like in multiple places at once. Yes, I wish you could divide yourself and go to multiple places. Exactly, because there's so much to do. It's a great experience. I hope to be back here next year as well just to keep learning and growing. And I've met so many interesting people not only just from a career perspective and challenging myself as a woman and what I can do but also from a perspective of understanding where my country could go and could be within the global tech sphere. I'd love to talk a little bit about the election right now too and just sort of the backdrop that this conference is taking place against. I mean particularly you live in Nairobi so you live many, many miles away from what's taking place here in the US. But does it seem, you're talking about this patriarchal society in Kenya and we'd like to think that we've moved on, that we are a more progressive, socially aware culture. But how do you see this election and what are the impressions that you have being in Kenya watching Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton? So in Kenya we're watching very closely. So in my country our celebrities are politicians. So we're very much into the political sphere, the arena and what goes on there. So we're watching very closely. And for me it's interesting to observe that at this juncture it's very like there's a political revolution I guess you could call it because it's unexpected that the candidates that actually have made it to this point in the race are here. Hillary has all this experience and then Trump comes from the corporate sector and it's a very, I'll just call him an interesting character. Do you have an apprentice in Kenya? We actually had an apprentice of Kenyan origin here in the US who made it into that show. So Trump is not like, he's very familiar to us I would say. It's just unexpected that he chose to go this direction and that he's made it this far. That was very unexpected. For Hillary it isn't as unexpected obviously because she has this long running career. But for us it's, I don't know, it's the only one I can use is unusual. And we're watching very closely. It's a mild word to describe this. Yes, I'm trying to be diplomatic. I'll just say unusual. Some would say entertaining but I'd say, I wouldn't call it entertaining. I'd say it's very concerning because I've been following the debates and I've been looking at how it's less about policy and development and moving the country forward and more about individuals and personality and mudslinging in some sense. Well particularly for Kenya. So we have President Obama who is on his way out who has a Kenyan father, really a son of Kenya. I mean, how does that, how do you feel to watch the first African-American president exit office? Wow, I mean it's sad for us because we're always saying that's our son, that's our own, that Kenya helped actually like raise him in a sense. So I mean, he's leaving an amazing legacy. So he's done a lot of work, especially in international relations and the work that he's done in Africa. I recently actually just completed a state sponsored program called Tech Women and it's selected men from Africa, Asia and the Middle East and brings them Silicon Valley and places that different companies for a month long mentorship where we'd learn more about what local companies are doing here within the tech world and that's something that he started. So it's been amazing what he's done. I just hope that whoever does make it into office is able to continue and build on the work that he's done. Great, well thank you so much. Amanda Ghisharu, thank you so much for joining us here at theCUBE's coverage of the Grace Hopper Conference in Houston, Texas. We will be back after the short break. Hi, I'm John Furrier.