 Welcome to the ITU studio here at the Radio Communication Assembly, just prior to the World Radio Communication Conference 2023 in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. We're very pleased to be joined in the studio by Jennifer Manor, who is the Senior Vice President for EchoStar. Jennifer, welcome to the studio. Thank you so much for having me. Now, this is a fair few times that we've had a chat in the studio and I believe this is your eighth World Radio Communication Conference. That's correct. You keep better account than I do. I didn't realise that they allowed people in from high school. But I think in principle, we've discussed plenty of times the importance of this conference. The other thing that we've talked about also is gender balance in these conferences from the past. So the first one you attended, I think the gender participation was pretty slim. When you originally were involved, you think that the percentage was somewhere in the region of 18% or something like that? Correct. What's it like now? Have things evolved? Have things improved? Not dramatically, unfortunately. So you're still seeing, I think you're up a little bit and I think I hate to say there's anything good out of COVID. But I think part of what we saw at COVID because of the remote participation was increased participation by women, which was very good. We didn't have to pay for travel. You could join via Zoom and I know on our hybrid, we're still seeing a fairly good percentage of women. I don't have the numbers, but I think it's the in-person. We're still on the low end and even on officials, elected officials and committee chairs. So we're looking at electing committee chairs for our study groups and there's only one woman who's being considered for one of the six or seven or eight committees, but out of that percentage. We did have some good news. Our head of the radio assembly is a woman, Carol Wilson from Australia. Of course, our CPM chair has been Cindy Cook for CPM 1 and 2 for this conference. So you're seeing changes. They're just not as dramatic as I'd expect to see over almost 30 years that I've been doing this. You're right, starting when I was 16. And that's not too lack of trying, is it? That's correct. And I think part of it is it has to start, the member states have to get involved. And I think that's one of the important things about what we're trying to do here, which is we're hoping to have a gender resolution adopted by the radio assembly. This was called for by WRC 19 and we've spent an enormous amount of time and resources in the different regions, not just preparing for the resolution, but probably more important, bringing more activities and getting more women involved and more member states involved in the idea of the importance of gender equity, parity, and equality at the ITU. And we've also been working directly with women to mentor them and try and give them training and just so we can ensure that they feel confident. I think part of it is having people to trailblaze and people to follow in their shoes. So having people like Carol Wilson chairing a radio assembly just as we had Vina Rawat and a number of years ago chairing the World Radio Conference gives people that path and having those people available to talk to younger people and maybe even not just women, but younger people in general so they can understand how do you get there. And even at this conference I'm working with the young women who I'm trying to train on an agenda and I'll be hopefully chairing and really trying to show her, well here's how you do this because she's very, very good and I think she'd be a great addition to the ITU study group process and so forth to have other people. So I think we spent a lot of time on that. Now this morning we had Mario Manovich here, director of the Radio Communication Bureau here at ITU and he was telling us of course how important WRC is. All of the main characteristics of this conference which takes a very long time as we know it's over a five week period and it requires a lot of stamina and it's put it that way. But do you think that it's because women don't understand the relevance and the importance of the issues that are being discussed here or do you think there are other reasons for that? Not at all. So women certainly understand the importance of the conference. I think part of it is we've been doing a lot of work throughout the ITU and girls in ICT. And getting people even as young as three, four, starting maybe younger, getting excited about technical issues and engineering and I think there's things that you're seeing. I mean drones kind of get you enthused, right? You've got direct to device and everyone's going to have a satellite phone in their pocket. You've got all these other things. I'm not meaning to leave it at any technology but getting people excited, introducing them and really encouraging women to go into STEM careers. It was interesting. We've been negotiating the resolution and quite successfully so I'm very optimistic that this will go forward. And I was talking to one of the lead spokespeople from one of the regions and his wife is a computer scientist. His daughter's going to school for ICT technologies and that's what we want and I don't think that was happening as much when I was in college or younger. So I think that's part of what we're doing too and for people to see radio communications as an exciting field. Now of course, apart from addressing the gender balance here, you're of course here representing Echo Star. So let me ask you a little bit about the work of Echo Star and also of course about what you're hoping to take away from this conference. So thanks. So we're an exciting company and we're actually just on the verge of restructuring with our sister company just networks. So we'll be a joint company I'm hoping by the end of the year. Echo Star has traditionally been a satellite operator. We've operated geostationary satellites for a number of years and provide high speed broadband throughout the Americas. We also provide mobile satellite service throughout Europe and and we're an equipment manufacturer. So we actually make devices. Many of the much of the equipment that's used for fixed satellite around the world is made by our subsidiary Hughes. We did network. We're acquiring a very big direct to home provider in the United States but also a significant holder of wireless spectrum. So that's a big change for me from a WRC perspective and they built out the first nationwide ORA and network in the United States. We're really excited about. So for this WRC, I kind of am playing a little bit of a different role. We're not just interested on the satellite issues which still remain incredibly important and we're in the process of developing and hopefully soon beginning to deploy a global direct to device satellite, low earth orbit satellite system. But also how does that work with the terrestrial networks and those issues are so important to us. And we actually are huge supporters of open ran. We think that's really important for the world in order for everyone to reach the goals that the ITU and the UN have for global connectivity very soon. Is there any special message that you would like to impart to our listeners and viewers? I think one of the things we have to do is ensure that while we're trying to increase flexibility and increase usage of spectrum that we don't harm systems that are out there that are continuing to evolve and grow. So all the ideas are fantastic and I think we do need to make room but we need to do it. And that's one of the things I really like about the ITU study process is to take into account and make sure that we still protect the services that we rely on at a day-to-day basis because they're not going away anytime soon. And that's why I think even though we say the WRC is a long process and the preparatory process of course is four years, it's needed because you have to do the technical studies. Jennifer Mena, thank you so much for joining us in the studio. It's a pleasure. And I look forward to catching up with you again very soon, I'm sure. Thank you so much. Thank you. And if you've enjoyed this interview, which I hope you have, then do check out more interviews on the ITU YouTube channel as well as SoundCloud or wherever you get your podcasts from. And for more information visit www.itu.int. Thanks for tuning in.