 Live from Stanford University, it's theCUBE, covering Global Women in Data Science Conference, brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. Welcome back to theCUBE, I'm Lisa Martin, live at the Stanford Ariyaga Alumni Center for the fourth annual Women in Data Science Conference with 2019, and we're joined by a very special guest, Liza Donnelly, cartoonist for the New Yorker, but Liza, you are a visual journalist. Visual journalism, you're here live drawing a lot of the things that are going on at WIDS. You were just at the Oscars, at the Grammys. Your work is so unique, so descriptive. Tell us a little bit, our audience, about what is visual journalism? Well, I suppose a lot of us define it different ways, but I define it as somebody who goes to events, either political or social, cultural, and draw what I see. I'm not a court reporter, I'm an impressionist. I give people a feeling that they're there with me, from what I draw and what I see, how I draw it, and it's, I don't usually put any editorializing in those visual drawings, but my perspective is a certain kind of approach. So you're bringing your viewers along this journey in almost real time. When people see, people might be most familiar with New Yorker, your illustrations there, but for folks that are watching the WIDS event live and engaging with that, tell us a little bit about the importance of using the illustrations to bring them on this journey as if they were here. Well, you know, I send the drawings out immediately. I do them on my iPad and I send them out on social media, almost immediately, as soon as I do them, so that people can see them immediately, so they feel like they're there. And it's a way to draw attention to whatever it is I'm drawing, because on the internet there's so many words, so many photographs, and people see a drawing, go by, or they're streamed, and they're like, wait, what's that? And I'm a thumb stopper, in other words. So it gives people a different perspective on what's going on, and I think that my background is a cartoonist with a New Yorker for 40 years informs these drawings in an indirect background kind of way, because I've been watching culture, I've been watching politics for a very long time, so it gives me an attitude or a way to look at what's going on. Right, and so you call these illustrations not cartoons? I do call them cartoons. Cartoons, okay. Well, I do the cartoons for the New Yorker and some other magazines, and those have a caption, and they often are supposed to be funny, or at least cultural commentary. I do political cartoons for medium, and those also have a point of view or a caption, but this visual journalism, like I'm doing here, is more like reported, it's more like this is what's happening here, you might be interested in seeing what these people are talking about, what they're doing, and I do behind the scenes too, I don't just do like at the Oscars, I'll do the stars if I can get them, you know, I'm on the red carpet, it's really cool, but if I can catch them, I'll draw them, but then I also do the people taking out the trash, the guy painting the sideboard, or the counterman, things like that, so I try to give a sense of what it's like to be there. So you're really kind of telling a story from different perspectives. Yes, right, yeah. So the role, I'd love to understand if you mentioned being with the New Yorker for a very long time, and I'd love to understand from your perspective the evolution of cartoons and the impact they can make in society, in politics, in economics, talk to us a little bit about some of the impacts that you've seen evolve over the last few decades. Well I've written about that, I'm also a writer, I've written about that for various sites, I did a commentary, an op-ed for the New York Times about the Charlie Hebdo murders a couple of years ago, because we know cartoons can be very controversial and problematic, and that's been true through the course of the history of our country, and I'm sure in England and other countries as well, but it's compounded now because of the internet, I think. Cartoons could be misunderstood, they could be used as weapons. I'm going to be talking about this next week at the South by Southwest, I'm going to be talking about political cartoons and what their impact has been in the past and how they create an impact now and why that is and how we can use it to good effect, not a divisive tool, which I think is a problem that we're dealing with right now in our culture, is everybody's so divided and so opinionated and so hateful towards each other, can we use cartoons not to perpetuate that but to make things better in some way? And that's kind of the theme of WIDs, Women in Data Science Conference, we're talking to and listening to at the live event here at Stanford and all of those around the world, it's really strong leaders in data science and we think of data science and the technical skills but data is generated, we generate tons of it as people, with whatever we're buying, what we're watching on Netflix, what we're listening to on Spotify, et cetera, there's this data trail that we're all leaving and we know you talk about using cartoons for good, same conversations that we have on the data side about being able to use data for good, for cancer research, for example, rather than exposing and being malicious. That's interesting parallel that you've seen over the years that there is a lot of potential here. Tell me a little bit about the appetite in maybe we'll say the millennials and the younger generations for cartoons as a tool for positive, the spread of positive social news and not fake news. Interesting. Well, I know there's more and more cartoons on the internet now, there's a lot of web comics and cartoonists are, young cartoonists are using the internet effectively to put out their ideas. In fact, when the internet hit, I was mid-career, and it just took off and helped me become more well-known just by leveraging the internet, because I love it, I love communicating. It's actually, it's really an extension of what I did as a child, learning to draw and communicate with people because I was shy, didn't want to talk. The internet is just a matter of, for me it's like a dialogue with people and that's how I look at it. And I think this new generation is really trying to find ways to use these tools in a good way. I think there's a whole new, the kids in their 20s, I think they're trying to make a better world, they're working on it and that's exciting. You talk about communication and how you used your artistic skills from the time you were a child to communicate being shy. We also talk about communication in the context of events like the Women in Data Science where it isn't just enough to be able to understand and have the technical acumen to evaluate complex, messy data sets. But the communication piece, kind of go back to sort of a basic human skill, being able to communicate effectively, this is what I think the data say and why and here's what we can do with it. So I think it's interesting that you're here at this event that has a lot of parallels with communication, with using a tool or information for the betterment. Tell us a little bit about how you got involved with Women in Data Science. Well, I met Margo Garrison about five years ago and through a mutual friend, we met in Iceland of all places. At a conference about women's rights, it was the Icelandic women are so powerful. Anyway, we met there, got really good, to be good friends and she invited me to come live draw her new conference at the time I think she'd had one year of it and I thought data science, okay. Did you even know what that was? Yeah, kind of, but I didn't see my connection but I thought, well, it's about women's rights and it's a big part of my interest and what I want to do with my work is promote equal rights for women around the world and so I thought this sounds terrific, plus it's global and I do a lot of work globally to help women and help freedom of speech as well. So it seemed to be a great fit and it seems even more to be a good fit in that it's a way to get the information out there in a visual way, because people, they hear the word data and they like, they probably just glaze over. I start, yeah, ways and zeros. But they see it connected with a cartoon or a drawing, it humanizes it for them a little bit. And if I can do that, that's great and that's what's also fun is that I thought about this today, it was drawing the speakers and I'm drawing one of the speakers, I forget her name right now, but I thought, and I put it out on the internet, there were no words on there, but it was just a woman speaker talking about really very technical data science. I put it on the internet with a caption on the tweet and I thought people, it's just a constant reminder to people that women are doing this and it's not necessarily, you're not writing a long essay about why women should be in data science and why they are and why they're important and they're doing great things, but if you see it, it resonates a little bit more quickly and more forcefully in your brain. Absolutely and it aligns with what we hear and say a lot is we can't be what we can't see. That's right, yeah, that's a saying, right? Yes, I'm not sure, I'd love to take credit for it, but it wasn't anything. Yeah, if she can see it, she can be it, that's some other things. A young girl sees my drawing of a professor talking on stage, maybe she'll think about it. Absolutely, so in the last few seconds here, can you just give us a little bit of an idea of how you actually, what inspires you when you're seeing someone give a talk like you mentioned about maybe an esoteric or a very technical topic? What do you normally look for that's that aha moment that you want to capture in 10 minutes? Well, I try to capture that person's essence. I'm not a caricaturist, I don't pretend to be, but I draw a likeness of them and the full body is the best because the body language, they're gesticulating. And then oftentimes I try to capture a sentence that they're saying that has more universal appeal that somehow brings like a layman into the subject a little bit. If I can find that sentence in what they're saying, I'll put that, I'll have the speech balloon and they'll be saying that. But I just try to capture the person best I can. Is there anything if you compare to WIDS 2018, here we are a year later, even more people here at the live event, even more people engaging, I think Margot said about 20,000 live today, 100,000 over I think the 150 plus regional WIDS events. Anything that you hear, see, or feel that's even more exciting this year than last year? Well, I do feel the increase in numbers, I can feel it, there seem to be more people here. I don't know if it's true, but there seem to be more young people here. What else? Is it, is it, there's a buzz, I think there's a. There's an energy. There's an energy, not that there wasn't there last, the last, I've done three years now, it's been there, but there's a certain excitement right now. I think more women are stepping into this field and being recognized for doing so, yeah. And it's great that you're able to reach, help WIDS reach an even bigger audience and tell this story with your illustrations in a more visual way. We also thank you so much, Liza, for taking some time to stop by theCUBE and talk to us, it's an honor to meet you and love your drawings. Thank you so much, great. We want to thank you for watching theCUBE, I'm Lisa Martin, live at the fourth annual Women in Data Science Conference at Stanford. Stick around, be right back with my next guest.