 Hi, welcome to theCUBE. I'm your host, Lisa Martin, and we are on the ground at Google with CloudNow, which is a nonprofit organization that's really focused on fostering development of females with careers in technology, those that are experts in cloud computing and converging technologies. We are very excited to be joined by one of the winners, and I should say tonight is the fifth annual awards event at CloudNow, featuring the top women in cloud innovation. We are joined by one of the award winners, Dr. Rupal Patel. Dr. Rupal, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you very much. Congratulations first and foremost on your award. Thank you, Lisa. So talk to us about the nomination that you got and the project for which you are being honored tonight. Yes, so I was nominated for this award for Vocal ID, which is a company that I founded in 2014, really focused on creating customized voices for the things in our life that talk. So we're really focused on how do we make voices that are unique to the individuals that are going to be using these devices or to make devices sound or machines sound different. And we've got one of your guests here, April, with us. So before we have a chat with April, talk to us about when you founded the company just a couple of years ago, you talked to us about the demand that you saw. For years and years and years, this has really been dominated by very generic voices, but you saw we need to change this. What was some of the key influencers for you starting Vocal ID? Sure, so my background is I'm a speech scientist and I am very interested in how do we make technologies that allow people to really have the fullest lives. And I was at a conference now many years ago where I saw several people who use speaking devices to talk because of some kind of speech impairment. And they were all using this handful of voices. In fact, it's not uncommon to have people use an adult male voice, even if they're a female or child. So that was just a really striking difference for why is there such a mismatch between the prosthesis that we give someone for a speaking and the actual voice that comes out of it. Our voices are so unique to who we are, yet the speaking machines that we make sound all sound generic. And it's just a real pain point for those who have to use a device to communicate. So April, let's ask you a question. What kind of voice are you looking to have? I would like my voice to be urban, but classy. Urban and classy? And April, tell us why is it important for you to have your own voice? It's important to me to have my own voice. Instead of a computerized voice, is these communication devices come with the same voice which means anyone can have the voice? For example, in September, I did a news interview and people kept seeing the commercial and they would tell me that I heard your voice, but it wasn't your face. And that didn't sit well with me. So to have my own voice would add to my identity, but most importantly, it would be mine. I think that is so fantastic. And so, RuPaul, how close is April to getting her own voice? So April is one of our early adopters and she's in queue to get her voice. So we've had a few people that already have their voices and we've been automating our technology and scaling it more. So April should be getting her voice in the next couple of months or so. We really need to find her though. An urban, classy lady. Yeah, so the way we make voices that are unique, building a speech synthesizer is actually really difficult and expensive. That's why there's only a handful of sort of generic voices. The way we do it is we crowdsource these voices from people. Anybody can donate their voice. And they have to read a whole set of sentences and from those donated voices and a little bit of April's own sound because April can make sound, we can then create a voice for her that actually fits her, her personality, her demographics, what she wants, her preferences. Just like you and I have our own voice that kind of tells people who we are, she will have that as well. So exciting, you're just a few months away. So I wanted to ask you about your career path. You're an award winner here tonight with Cloud Now. One of the top women in cloud innovation. Talk just about your career path. How did you get to be the CEO of Vocal ID? Were you always in love with science as a kid or did you have maybe some other interest that sort of led to what you're doing now? That's a great question. Well, I'm actually a professor at one of the universities in Boston at Northeastern University. And this project in particular started back in 2007, but I have had a passion for science and math pretty much all my life. I learned about speech pathology and people with speech disorders kind of late in my undergraduate career, but I started working with kids and people who had brain injuries and became fascinated by how science can actually then help influence the lives of people. I became a speech pathologist, but I was still sort of wanting more. And I went back to school to do my PhD in trying to build a computerized system that could recognize people with disordered speech. A little bit milder than what April has, but that's where my career started is really interjecting computer science into speech science and this project is sort of a combination of that. So it's sort of circuitous in some ways, but the passion's always been that how can we use science for good and vocal ID is really an example of science for good in that way. Absolutely and it's really an epitome of the CloudNow Awards, how you're using technology and science to really further the community, which is so exciting and it's a really heartwarming story as well. One more question for you before we wrap is, who are some of the, or maybe are some of the biggest influences in your like males or females to get you to this career where you are very successful? So I've had a lot of really great mentors all along and I think that some of the biggest influencers has actually been people that I have worked with in terms of maybe a child or maybe an adult. I remember one patient I had who had Parkinson's disease and he was a lawyer prior to that and for me understanding how he grappled with his communication impairment despite all of what he'd lived with before was just that you have to create new ways in which we can hang on to what's beautiful about us in life and kind of move through those moments with what knowledge we have. So I feel that a lot of mentorship comes in so many different shapes and sizes. I think my children sometimes are a huge influences in the way that we've been carrying out the work we've been doing. This work in particular requires people like the everyday person to donate their voice and the first people that kind of got onto this was my children. They donated their voice and they've been doing that. So I feel like if we can influence young people to think about how they can help others through their own means, whether it's science or math or in this case reading, it's going to change the world. It is. What a tremendous opportunity to give back. I wish I was urban in class the April. Unfortunately, I'm not. Well, Dr. Ruble-Cutell. Yes, you are. Congrats. I don't think I'm urban enough. Congratulations on Vocal ID. Thank you. Your top women in cloud innovation award. We so thank you for being on theCUBE. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. And if you know a woman in tech who should be featured on our program, tweet us at theCUBE, hashtag women in tech. I'm Lisa Martin, your host. We're on the ground at Google with Cloud Now and we'll see you next time.