 Hey, everyone. Welcome to the AWS Women of the Cloud series. I'm your host, Lisa Martin. This is a special episode. The focus of this session is Pride Month with gaming gurus. If you're a gamer, you're going to love this. Manali Karmakar is here, senior account manager of games at AWS. And Katie Arajo, senior account manager in games AWS. We're going to be talking about the LGBT plus community technology, how they're coming together, inspiration, all that good stuff. So great to have you Manali and Katie. Thank you for joining me today. Thank you for having us. Would love the audience to know, first of all, a little bit about both of you and your backgrounds. Manali will start with you and then Katie will go to you. Sure. So Manali Karmakar. I'm an account manager within the game segment of AWS been here about four and a half years, always within customer facing roles within both AWS and previous companies as well. Love customer facing roles. Katie, what about you? Give us a little backstory. Absolutely. The Katie Arajo senior account manager, I actually have the good fortune of being on the same team as Manali and working in a very similar capacity where effectively we are the internal champions for our customers to help them navigate AWS and get the most out of their relationship with AWS really striving to ensure that we're working backwards from their goals and aligning a plan accordingly. We get the opportunity to do so within the game segment, which is really special. Very cool. We talk a lot with AWS. Whether it's re-invent or on the cube conversations or like this part of the women of the cloud series, and we know how customer obsessed AWS is. So it sounds like you guys have a great opportunity to really engage collaboratively with customers, but you're also both part of the LGBT plus community. We'll talk a little bit about that. Maybe share some experiences and how that really intersects with your experience as women in tech. Manali will start with you and then Katie will go to you. Sure, so I mean, I think, you know, in a lot of ways that it probably informs how I move through the world on a daily basis. I mean, it's not the only thing about me. I also think I'm quite a good chef and I really like doing a bunch of other stuff too. But yeah, I mean, in terms of specifically how it's how it's impacted my life in role in tech, I do think it's helped tremendously with things like customer empathy, which is super important in our day-to-day roles, just being able to empathize and understand customers from a wide variety of backgrounds, particularly those in gaming, which can be a quirkier segment for sure. So that certainly is a big thing. I'd say the other thing that it certainly helped me with is just having grit, like being able to get through tough situations and having a sense of humor throughout it all as well, which is really valuable for my day-to-day role here. Empathy, grit, and a chef with a sense of humor. I love it. We're going to have to swap recipes after we're done here. Fantastic. I just think the diversity that you bring in is so impactful. Can you tell us a little bit about your background as a proud member of the LGBTQ plus community and a female leader in tech? How did those two come together for you? And what are some of the things that you bring to the table? Absolutely. Yeah, very similar to Manali. I would say that there's a pretty beautiful cross-section and opportunity where you have a place to belong, being a woman in tech, being a member of the LGBTQ plus community, finding my path to tech was certainly not a linear one. But I have been very fortunate in always being in roles where I am customer-facing, where I am able to see the direct impact of aligning the value that I can provide to the goals my customers are trying to achieve or the goals that they're trying to achieve for their customers. And within tech in particular, I think there is a very special sort of ethos and sense of focusing on being builders and especially within our community. I find that that's an open opportunity for us to be able to step in and help make an impact, but also be honored for who you are genuinely and authentically, specifically within our roles. Yeah, it's a really beautiful place to be. And I would say, given the opportunity that Manali and I have, being able to be here and help kind of share that messaging is certainly something we're really proud to do. Authenticity is so important. It's hard for people to achieve. So the fact that you're both achieving it so well and within gaming is awesome, both as members of AWS as members of LGBTQ plus. Let's talk about the gaming sector. I'm not a gamer myself, but I know plenty. I've lived with plenty of them. Talk a little bit about Manali and some of the things that are really, really exciting right now in gaming that are energizing you. Yeah, so I mean, I think the big thing right now, which everyone is talking about is generative AI, machine learning and AI trends. And I see that not being impactful just for the games industry, but the tech industry and our lives right now as a whole over the next 20 years. Specifically for gaming, I think it'll be really interesting because we're already seeing potential use cases with NPCs, which are basically non-playable characters, having new dialogue, new aspects to their characters that can be generated from AI and can be player derived. So if you're playing a game and you are chatting with one of those characters, an AI use case would be to build that dialogue out. So it's more personalized for you. So we'll help a ton with game engagement. And another thing that AI can help with quite a bit, like generative AI is for art within video games. So improving art, making that easier for the artists that are working behind games. So that is super exciting to me because I think it'll reduce the cycles to make a new game. It'll make it more personalized for folks that are playing games and it's a whole new world. So I'm very excited to see what transpires. It's really exciting what's on the horizon, especially you talk about Manali making it more personalized. We all want that, whether it's gaming or we're having a retail experience or we're transacting an Uber. We want that experience to be really customized to us. So I think I agree with you. It's going to be exciting to see what Gen AI is going to deliver on that front. Kitty, I want to get your perspective on what stokes you out about gaming right now and also where do you see the biggest opportunity from a cloud perspective? Certainly. I think when all I really hit the nail on the head, Gen AI is absolutely top of mind for all of our customers. And I would say right now if I were to take a look at the customer or the meetings that I have in place, 75% of them are certainly engaged in that direction. I would say sort of a secondary topic and really where I'm finding a lot of personal interest is in the realm of community health, which is sort of our positive proactive spin on content moderation and finding a way to foster inclusive communities within gaming, which I think resonates very well with sort of the intent of our discussion today. AWS does have solutions and partners that we're working with incredibly closely to help bring that to life. And it's been a really incredible journey to be a part of seeing how we're able to make an impact and develop those social connections in a safe and accommodating way. I think that's incredibly important. It can't be underscored enough. I want to give you guys a little bit of a brag moment opportunity. Katie, we're going to start with you. You're on the same team as you mentioned to us, but so maybe you both can share some different examples of recent wins or big innovations where the team just really knocked it out of the park that you're proud of. Katie, what do you think? And then Manali will go to you. Definitely. Yeah, very fortunate. I do have a customer that I work with that their entire ethos is finding ways to break down barriers and foster genuine human connection. They really provide themselves on being able to lead with altruism and cultivate a safe space for players to engage in the virtual world. And we set a goal very early on in the year last year when we were having one of our long-term road mapping sessions to think big and say, you know, in a perfect world scenario, what could this year hold for you all? And there was the idea of setting a bar to say, could it be possible for us to hold, post the largest scale single-player event in history in the form of a concert? And so throughout the last 12-month time period, we worked together diligently to leverage some of the capabilities that we have within AWS to provide that immersive concert-like experience, bring it to life at the end of this last year, and actually ended up setting that world marker for the largest single event within games history. And not only was that impressive just in terms of the numbers, but it was something that we've seen a lot of carry forward in their players being able to share positive experiences, being continually dedicated to the game and are now in a space where they're asking for additional opportunities to have user-generated content and create their own versions of the game within world rather than the studio just being the ones that proactively provide the new releases. And so it's been a really beautiful journey which started with setting of what we thought was an incredibly high bar to attain that and then see what's happened thereafter. It's a massively high bar with the eyes of the world on it. It must have been so exciting, Katie, to be part of something so transformative, so unique, and I'm sure you're going to have to raise that bar, change that bar because it's probably like, and that's too low. We can do more. And I'll talk to you about some of the things that you've done from an innovation or a win perspective from your role that you think are just off the charts. Sure. So I support a customer, NC West, who produces a game called Guild Wars 2, which is one of the largest MMO RPGs. So that's massively multiplayer online, role-playing game. Something like 12 to 13 million players go in and out of this game a month. Globally, it's like a very huge fan base, very, very engaged group of players. And the wiki that this game runs is the number two wiki in the world, just behind Wikipedia. Yeah, it's crazy. You wouldn't know that. I didn't know that before I started supporting this customer, but there are 300,000 pages for this wiki because the thing with these role-playing games is some of them are so intricate. It's like you can't just jump into a game and understand how it works. First off, it would be like you'd have to go into the wiki to understand gameplay, all the characters kind of how to get in, how to build something. So these 14 or 15 million players rely on the wiki to have a good gameplay experience. And one thing the customer brought up as a challenge is this wiki is massive. People are in it while they're in the game. It's not performing as well as it could be. And running the data warehouse behind it is super expensive. So through conversations with this customer, we got them to move over to Amazon Redshift, which is our cloud data warehousing solution, as well as OpenSearch, which helped with the search aspect of the wiki. So end result was the wiki search time got down to two seconds and there's something like 20 million queries within OpenSearch. So massive amount of queries. And then through using Redshift, they saved 50% on cost. So ultimately had a happy customer that was saving money and then just much better performance of the wiki, which is what the players rely on. So super excited about that one. But huge, but both of those wins are massive and it must feel amazing to know that you're literally impacting tens of millions of people at any given time. That's awesome. I'd love to understand how, speaking of impact, how in your perspectives and your experiences, Katie, we're going to go to you first, how has gaming positively impacted the LGBTQ plus community? What have you seen there that really excites you? Absolutely. Yeah, it through a combination of my own experiences, some of my customers, other gamers, I really feel like the gaming space has offered a place of belonging and representation. And for some it's a place for escapism, to be able to escape the real world, live in the virtual world and be able to express yourself in ways that perhaps you don't feel it safe to do in the real world. Or maybe you're feeling a certain way, but you don't know how to express it, but you have the opportunity to do so in this virtual space and be welcomed for it. And so I think games have really been a safe space to put it completely directly. And with that has been a very empowering opportunity I know for even myself to be able to come into alignment with who I am and to continually learn and evolve, but then also be able to be empathetic for others. Learning to seek first to understand and to be in a space where we're understanding that diversity is strength, diversity is beautiful. And we all come to the table with different backgrounds, different experiences and different skills and strengths that can be leveraged. And I know through games that I've played in a lot of these simulation atmospheres, I've had the opportunity to experience that. Community inclusivity is a hard thing to achieve and it's something that I think deep down everybody wants. I know I mentioned knowing a lot about AWS and its customer obsession, but it really sounds like the culture that you both are describing here is one of true community and that's pretty rare gem. Now I talk about some of the influences on LGBTQ plus that you've seen in your role in gaming at AWS. Sure, so I mean, Katie really encapsulated a lot of the things that I think are super important in gaming, but another thing that I would say is my, because of all of those themes with just gaming being sort of a refuge for folks in the LGBTQ plus community and having it be like sort of another way to express yourself, I support behavior interactive right now which produces dead by daylight. And I would say something like if you look at their Twitch streams or some of the social media for those games, most of the major Twitch stars are within the LGBTQ plus community. And just being a war game, it's super campy. I do think it appeals to a wide segment of folks, but I would say from a customer perspective itself that that's something to really note is just attracting a wide variety of folks from the LGBTQ community. And I think the other thing with gaming is one statistic that I saw is in the UK, 20% of the games industries like developers, people who are actually working on games are part of the LGBTQ community. So I think it also attracts a wide variety of folks. And yes, I do think the gaming industry probably has a far way to go with things like gender parity, that's still certainly an area for improvement. But personally as someone who supports gaming customers and plays video games and is like involved with the gamer side of the community, I've never personally felt that just being myself as a detriment, I felt that it was a positive thing allows me to connect better with customers and the industry. And yeah, I love being in the game segment. It's that authenticity that we mentioned a few minutes ago, there's just no replacement for it. But a lot of times a lot of company cultures don't allow or people are not courageous enough to be able to express it. It sounds like you guys have this perfect recipe. Speaking of attraction, can you want to go to you and then Manali back to you? How do you think that from a pipeline perspective, an LGBTQ plus pipeline perspective, particularly in gaming, what can tech do to help build that up? Sounds like there's a good base there, but what do you think some of the levers are that can be pulled to really bring that parity a little bit more into reality? That's an incredible question. I would say that there's probably two audiences for that answer, right? Sort of the candidates themselves and then the folks who are already in role who have an opportunity to drop the ladder down and help folks climb it as well. For the candidates, I would certainly say, like Manali and I are talking about being able to step in and have a couple of different things in play. The first is the competency, right? Get out there, get trained up. We have training certifications, lots of tools and resources that can help increase your knowledge base and ensure that you have the tools that are going to help you do the best in role. I would also say having the confidence in yourself and knowing and trusting that you as you are are valid and worthy of opportunities and be willing to learn and open yourself up to even failing. Within those harder moments, there's usually an opportunity in facing adversity to learn more about yourself and to learn how to progress forward and pick up the tools and resources that you need in order to potentially face that opportunity differently next time. And then the third piece I would say is build out your community. So find folks who are willing to be your mentors. Find folks who are willing to be even more, more bought in advocates and a bit more of a sponsor so that let's say if you're not in the room, you know, this person is having your best interest in mind. They're giving you a seat at the table and again, if you're not there, these are the sorts of things I think will really help kind of build out your baseline so that you can be prepared for these opportunities. And then conversely for folks who are already in role, I would say put your hand up and put your hand out, right? Like we're all here today because others have been willing to do the same and build a foundation and contribute towards, you know, putting the papers down on this path of progress and we wouldn't be here without that. So if you can identify a way that is true to you and resonates best that you feel like you can give back to this community and help support others, step into that mentorship role, step into that sponsor role. Definitely be an active member in doing that. I could not agree more with everything you just said and I loved how you talked about cables on that pathway to progress. I'm going to remember that. I'll quote you, don't worry, I'll get the credit for that but it's so important that advice is, I want to, I feel like this is a drop the mic moment for what you just said, but Manali, I want to give you the chance to answer the same question because it's so important to get different perspectives on the LGBTQ plus LGBTQ plus pipeline, that's a mouthful and what you think can be done because there's a lot of different levers but can you find a great points about it? It's not just for those hiring, it's also for those in the candidacy. Manali, what do you see as some of the levers that we should be pulling? Sure, so I mean, I think it does start at the top. I mean, having a leader at the top of the chain who sees that as important like having diversity in their general mandate of hiring folks, I think that is the most important thing because that informs new pipeline being created and specifically targeting folks that are earlier in career or maybe from non-traditional backgrounds that would be good fits for the tech industry. And I mean, I do think from like the beginning of the pipeline perspective, there are great nonprofits out there. I currently volunteer for this organization called Out in Tech which pairs like mid-career to late-career tech professionals with kids that are literally like 17 to 24 looking for their first job in tech. And I think for a lot of like your first job in tech, if you're not from a traditional background with an engineering degree or maybe you didn't have certain opportunities, having that mentorship is super, super important. So I think from like a beginning of the pipeline perspective, that's really important. And then just from, yeah, like management, like folks at the top, like mentoring folks that are earlier in career for folks that have non-traditional backgrounds, finding ways to bring them in. All that's super important. And then kind of the last thing is, yeah, there's so many ways to learn about technology, whether that's doing a formal degree or taking an online class or learning about more of the business side of technology which with Katie and I sit on. So there's so many roles and I think, yeah, just don't be intimidated. There are plenty of openings. So figure out how to get in there and like find those folks who can help actively mentor you and bring you in. Absolutely. Another drop the mic moment. Manali, thank you for sharing that. I couldn't agree more that the mentors, the sponsors but also the communities and being able to encourage people to raise your hand like advice you would give your younger self. I would always say, raise your hand. Don't be afraid to ask a question. It's probably not dumb and half the people in the room probably weren't listening either. So you bring up such great advice for those that are that it also needs to know that you both brought this up. It doesn't have to be linear path. In fact, for most of us, it's not. And that is A-okay. Last question for both of you before we wrap up is inspiration to keep moving forward. Manali, what inspires you? It sounds like there's so much promise within just the AWS ecosystem. It's customer based and gaming for the LGBTQ plus community. What is some of your guiding lights? So I think in terms of general guiding lights and sort of last words, I mean, I think we are living in an amazing time. I've seen so much progress specifically like gains with the LGBTQ plus community over the last 15, 20 years, both within gaming and outside of it. So, I mean, I'm super excited about that. I'm super grateful to be here. I'd also be super remiss if I didn't sort of mention that unfortunately there are 500 anti-LGBTQ bills out there. I mean, don't want to end on a sad note, but it is what it is. So, I mean, there are so many folks that inspire me today, but especially today, I would say that I'm inspired by just the acts of folks like in the trans community that are kind of fighting the good fight in other states. Again, super immune to that in California, but that's sort of my last note. That is who I'm inspired by today. And then just super excited about the future and all the changes with generative AI that we're going to see in the game space and are going to positively impact us for years to come. Well, we're all lucky regardless of community to have somebody like you helping to lead the charge with an LGBTQ plus lot of work to do there. But there's definitely some guiding lights. Kitty, what are some of the things that you're focused on that inspire you to move forward? Definitely. I think Manali said it incredibly well. There are a lot of folks that are out there right now who are standing up, speaking out, being the frontline change makers. Not only is that incredibly inspiring for me, but I think it's also inspiring for my younger self, right? Because I don't think I necessarily knew of or had that individual to look up to at that time or I'm constantly thinking about, you know, who would I want my younger version to look up to? Or how can I be that person for somebody else? So that is something that certainly helps keep me motivated and incentivized to move forward. Simultaneously, I do think that we're very fortunate on the team that we're on and the organization that we work for. AWS has a really beautiful job of instilling a strong sense of ID&D importance through our trainings, through some of the employee benefits and otherwise. And so it's certainly something that's very woven deeply into our culture. Lots of opportunity like Manali was saying, but I'm certainly very, feel very strongly that we are making progress in the right direction. And then beyond that, what I find most beautiful is having the opportunity to connect directly with the folks that are also members of the community. You know, we're really lucky to be able to not only work with the studios, but see the players, play the games. It's really sort of a holistic, all-encompassing experience and that makes doing what we do incredibly fun. I love that. It's been so great having you both on the program, really honoring pride from the gaming guru's perspective and sharing what it is that you're doing, how you're helping in the fight and what there is to be done. And we so appreciate you guys keeping up the fight. We appreciate you being on theCUBE. Thank you for joining me today. Thank you so much for having us. Thank you so much. We want to thank you for watching this incredibly important episode of AWS Women at the Cloud, honoring pride man with gaming guru's. I'm Lisa Martin. Thanks so much for watching. We'll see you next time.