 Hi everyone and welcome. You've tuned in today to JSA TV, the newsroom for tech and telecom professionals, and JSA radio, your voice for tech and telecom on iHeartRadio. I'm Barb Mitchell and on behalf of my team here at JSA, welcome to our monthly virtual CEO roundtable. These virtual roundtables of course lead up to our in-person on-site CEO roundtables at our C-level networking event, the telecom exchange. Of course, we just finished one last week in Los Angeles, which was fantastic and our next one is just around the corner in New York City, May 14th and 15th. If you are interested and would like any more information, you can go to thetelecomexchange.com. One more quick note for our on-demand audience. We love your questions and the panelists would love to answer them. Please feel free to go ahead and email them to pratjsa.net and we'll make sure they get to the panelists and get your questions answered. So we're going to get started. Today's topic is women in tech, trends in tech and telecom across Canada. And today we're talking to some top leaders in the Canadian tech and telecom industry about the latest trends that we're seeing across Canada. And in particular, we'll discuss how influential women are actively shaping the landscape around them. So without further ado, it's my pleasure to introduce to you our executive lineup from some truly breakthrough organizations across Canada. It's my pleasure to introduce you to Jamie Leverton, VP and GM for Canada NAPAC, Kojiko, year one. Angela Adam, Marketing Director for East Structure Data Centers, located in Montreal, but with facilities across Canada. Vivian Chan, CEO of iExpo, Technology Corp and of course Erin Athene, our Managing Director of Purpose 5. Ladies welcome. We thought we'd start the panel with the first question, giving you an opportunity to talk a little bit about your organization, but really allowing you to offer some perspective on what developments and trends you're seeing in the Canadian marketplace, specifically as it relates to your organization. So Vivian, if you wouldn't mind taking that first question. Go ahead. Yeah, so in terms of trends and developments, I have to say it's such an exciting time to be in Canada right now, because I think there's been so much work done over the last 20 years in building a reputation in emerging technology. Having worked at Simon Fraser University for a tenure, there are a number of ecosystems where we're globally known for. These would include big data, quantum computing, AR, VR, verticals like clean health, clean tech and health tech. And you know, back east I would say AI, you know, Jeffrey Hinton from UT started. He's the godfather of AI. And so these clusters of expertise are now really creating immense opportunity in Canada and globally. And so what's happening is these technologies don't work in isolation. iExpo technology is a digital transformation company. What we do is we enable marketers to go from a 2D to 3D interface. We're building software that enables you to build 360 panoramic environments, 3D interactive imaging, creating sort of a sense of a new UI. And so that's what we do. But it's so funny. A lot of times folks will say, oh, so you're a VR company. And I often have to correct folks. And I say, no, VR is just one of the modalities of what we offer. But really, we are an AI company, a big data company, and a VR company, an immersive technology company at that. And I just think that for companies to stay competitive, you need to be able to integrate all of that together. And Canada is a tremendous place to be able to do that. So yeah, that's that's what I'm excited about right now. Amazing. Thank you. Jamie, do you want to jump in there with your perspective? Absolutely. I really echo Vivian's comments about Canada kind of coming into its own with respect to some swagger around how innovative we are. We've got clusters, as Vivian mentioned, across the country. And we're really seeing tons of focus in these areas of innovation. We've got great support from our government that helps to really foster and invest in this movement in Canada. You see people coming from all over the world to participate in some of our hubs, which is absolutely fantastic. And for companies like ours at Cogeco Pier 1, where we're a Canadian owned and operated company, but we're global. So we have data centers and network across across the globe. And we offer hybrid managed solutions to our customers. We've got a deep history in emerging technology, a strong focus in gaming, AI now, and and the other the other technologies that the Vivian mentioned. And really what what we're so excited about is all all of the work that's happening in Canada. We can help our customers, whether they're in emerging industries themselves are trying to take advantage of these new technologies as more traditional enterprises and really take advantage of of how to access them, how to capitalize on them and how to how to do that on a global scale, which is unique for a Canadian tech company such as ourselves. So we're really proud to be Canadian and really really excited to be able to participate in all of the innovation that's happening across the country. Amazing. Thank you. And Angela, I know that at East structure, obviously you support and partner with folks in a lot of these breakthrough industries. Would you mind talking about that? I just wanted to build on what Jamie and Vivian were saying to point out that today's technologies such as machine learning and AI and virtual assistant, the IoT, they all drive and they accelerate the expansion of data centers. And coupling that with the trend that we see and companies investing less and less in on-premise infrastructure and moving towards multi-tenant sites such as ours, we clearly see a significant amount of opportunity there. More of IoT apps and gaming and VR and AR like Vivian mentioned, they all rely on what we say edge data and edge computing, which in turn opens the possibility for edge data centers. And the way we envision ourselves and we position is to be the infrastructure operator's choice for these innovators to be able to build and design these technologies of tomorrow. Thank you. And Erin, I know having spoken with you quite a bit in the past, I know that you talked to so many great leaders across the board and different innovative organizations. And I'm really interested to hear your perspective on what you're seeing. Thank you. Thank you, Barb. And thanks for really spearheading this conversation. It's an important one to have. And yeah, what we've been seeing when I have my lens is looking at it sometimes from the perspective of an advisor to a lot of early stage technology companies coming at it from a lean startup perspective and just kind of getting a landscape view of a lot of the emerging companies in Canada. And what we're seeing is a fair amount where Canada has been, has been really good on the intellectual property side, but has left customer acquisition a little bit as a lower priority. And what we're noticing as a trend is Canada starting to see, okay, wait a minute, sometimes like our neighbors to the south and the US or other countries really focus on digital customer acquisition. And sometimes without a lot of intellectual property, they'll just grow these billion dollar companies just on really focusing on that customer traction piece. And so that's a trend I can see happening in Canada that things are shifting to where, to stay competitive in the global market, Canadian companies have to shift and really focus on that digital customer acquisition. Damia, you may have something to add to that, but also I wanted to just to ask specifically how Kojiko Pier 1 is evolving and preparing to respond to some of these trends that we're seeing in the marketplace. I think because it's so inherent in our DNA, if you go back to Pier 1 hosting, which was Canadian founded in Vancouver, really kind of created that peer to peer network and that explosion of supporting high demand, high connectivity demand industries, such as gaming. And so it's kind of already prebuilt into our DNA. And then as Pier 1 merged with Kojiko Data Solutions and we became Kojiko Pier 1, the DNA didn't go anywhere. So we're always looking at how do we work with emerging industries. We were very early in partnering with some great AI companies like Element AI and Montreal. The new companies that know from an early stage that they want to go global, we're one of those companies where we're Canadian, but we can take them global because that's how that's how our infrastructure is built out. And we think that's a great value proposition for these emerging industries. So as I say, I think it's already inherent in our DNA. We do it every day. We're always looking for the new industries that are starting up. And we're very fortunate that we tend to be in the mix in each of them. And we partner closely with the hubs and incubators across the country to keep fresh with what's coming. I would just add to that that, you know, IExpo technology made a big decision earlier this year that in order for us to be successful that we couldn't just focus on Canadian and US markets that we started an office in Shanghai in February. And so now we have an opportunity to launch our solutions and our software in truly global markets and really hedge our bets. And so really, I think one of the elements that Erin had talked about is in order for Canadian companies to really scale and grow, you have to look beyond Canada and into other markets. So yeah, so it's great to ensure that you have vendors that have infrastructure that can help you do that as well. Right. Angela, what about East structure? Yes, so we are also 100% Canadian company, but we do recognize that we need to help our customers go global. And we're enabling that via several strategic partnerships and try to bring that connectivity between both facilities to facilities in Europe and Asia and direct connect to all the major clouds, to all the major peering points so that we make sure that our customers grow and we're there to support them. And Erin, I feel like you're supporting a lot of organizations and leaders in these types of initiatives. Yeah, one way that we're actually focusing on how to resource and put capital towards this trend that we're seeing is we're actually launching, it's this kind of good timing here, is we're actually launching a new division that will really be entirely focused on rapid customer acquisition. It's a methodology that we've partnered with another company and they've done some tremendous things. And so this is where we're starting this whole venture right now to really get this very agile methodology out to companies. It's basically bringing kind of an agile engineering perspective into a very aggressive marketing approach that keeps the low cost and able to test rapidly to get the market traction that you need. So it's an exciting time for our company. That's how we're shifting. Amazing. And I don't know Vivian or anyone, if you had anything else you wanted to add before we sort of shift the conversation a little bit. I think the one thing I would be remiss if I didn't mention is the trend to more cloud and how we're now supporting more of a multi-cloud strategy where our customers, they still sometimes want to be in one of our data centers or using our managed hosting or private cloud, but we're also seeing more of a desire to look at what workloads can they put into the public clouds and so really partnering with them to go on that journey and to include that cloud conversation and to end as part of how we look at their workloads and having the expertise in-house to have those conversations so that it's never a one-size-fits-all when we think about how our customers need to scale and manage those workloads by geography, by load, by connectivity requirements, latency requirements. So it's a very nice time to be able to have that full hybrid conversation and including that cloud dialogue. I feel like Angela, at East structure, you're thinking about a lot of similar things to that, aren't you? I think that's something very similar and yeah I think it's important that we recognize that as the world is going through this digital transformation, we also need to build our organization to be able to adapt and make sure that it was high performing and then we ask in an agile way to be able to keep up with the customer demands. And I know at East structure we do enable, this is how we function, we enable a lot of knowledge sharing. It's a very open organization. We're encouraged to take training regularly to make sure that we stay ahead of the curve, that we know what the trends are, that they're coming to be able to have that meaningful conversation with our customers and truly bring that value as. Yeah, Angela, you're onto a fantastic point and the culture of the company, the level of employee engagement, the ability for them to really feel creative and empowered is so critical to be able to take advantage of what we're seeing in the Canadian market. Absolutely and I'm happy to see that that's shifting away from the hierarchical organization and more towards like a team, a network. Absolutely, you know that's a great segue into the next part of this conversation and you know when we talked about setting up this panel and bringing all of you together first of all I'm so honored to have you all here and it just strengthens all of us to have, you know, to be able to fill a panel with such, you know, leaders and with great thoughts and great examples of work that's being done in the industry. You know, we wanted to create a panel of women across Canada, women, female leaders across Canada, but in doing that we didn't want to just focus on diversity. We wanted to start the panel with, no, let's actually talk about what's happening and, you know, your unique perspectives on the marketplace. But now we do want to highlight a bit of, you know, what is it, how are organizations responding to the need for diversity and how are opportunities being raised and elevated for female leaders to really rise and what are the opportunities for them in the tech and telecom industry. And so I just wanted to sort of segue into that part of the conversation. And Erin, you might be a good one for us to start with because of a lot of the work that I know that you're actively involved in right now. Can you tell us a little bit about it? Sure, sure. I can, and I should say that our, so the company, our team is Purpose Five and we are a women led organization and I don't say a woman led organization, but a women led organization, meaning we try to make sure that our over 50% of our technical team and our executive teams, women were a small company, so it's easier to do at this stage, but that's the, you know, part of the DNA that's a part of our company that we'll continue to grow with. But inside of that, we actually incorporate inclusive design and behavioral design into the software we build, into the data driven websites we build. It's a really interesting lens to come at also in the digital marketing campaigns that we do. So we kind of bring that, so inclusivity is a whole term that's being used. Sometimes people use that alongside accessibility, but it's even, it's bigger than that. It's actually understanding brain types and which, which aren't exclusive to, that don't go down gender lines every time, but there are, there is some fair amount of research on that, that for instance, most, most, I don't have to tell you guys, most tech companies are, you know, 90% men, most software, most websites are built, you know, typically with a certain brain type and it happens to be, there's a lot of men in that, in that industry, and that's who's building the software and building the websites. Well, turns out that works really well for about 50% of men's brains and about 25% of women's brains. What that means is the other 50% of men find most software and websites not intuitive, whereas 50% of men do find them intuitive and, but on the flip side, 75% of women find most websites and software not intuitive for them because it actually wasn't built for their brain type, with in mind. So the difference of inclusive design is actually including more brain types in the mix as you build out software, as you build out websites, as you build out those communication and digital campaigns. What's important about that is 85% of all purchases online are made by women. So can you imagine trying to get, reach 85% of all purchases and leaving out 75% of them and the interesting psychology that we've discovered with men and women and this is broad strokes, I realized I don't want to get in too much hot water here, but broad strokes is that typically when a man approaches a software website and finds it that is not intuitive, they will push that away and say, well, that software has a problem or that website is a bad website. Whereas on the other hand, a lot of women with the 75% of women, they would say, oh, I'm just not very good at technology. I'm not very good at computers. They can't understand how to use software or navigate a website intuitively. So they step away from technology versus saying, no, no, that isn't built for me and I need to go build something that actually works for me. So that's a huge difference and it's kind of the approach of it's where I really became a huge advocate and helped launch Victoria Ladies Learning Code, which is now Canada Learning Code. And that was a huge effort to really help that shift in mentality and transformation of having women come out of being just consumers of technology and actually become creators of technology. So that's a big effort that I was on for a while. And now I've kind of shifted that lens to work what I call deeper in the funnel. So that was kind of top of funnel for beginner friendly technology. And now I'm working really focused and even with Vivian. Thank goodness on some really neat projects, which is more for senior level women in technology. So we're looking at how can we best support these women leaders that are already running or managing really large enterprises or their founders or CEOs of small to mid-sized companies and what do they need there? So we're actually launching this big event called Flip the Switch, which is a women in tech mastermind that's coming up at the end of this month. So it's pretty exciting. We're bringing in some of the best speakers in the world to come in and help these women and mastermind their companies over a weekend. So but there's lots of opportunities going on. There's so many diversity initiatives right now across Canada. It's really exciting to see and it's exciting to see the government of Canada really invest in diversity initiatives right now. That's a shift we're seeing too. So it's so interesting to hear you talk about all this, Erin. Thank you so much for sharing that. I feel like we could have a whole hour just hearing about all of this and your perspective and I know you've been so involved in a lot of it. And Vivian, did you want to talk about how you guys have sort of maybe that's a good segue into what you two have worked together on? Yeah, I think you know it's so interesting like you know for me it's been a journey about how do I give back and how do I contribute you know to supporting women, to providing women with platforms. Both women leaders and those aspiring to be and it's been an interesting journey. Just this year I signed up as a casual volunteer to help organize a business symposium for the largest computer visioning graphics conference. And I ended up running the conference because the first draft of the agenda had no diversity whatsoever and so I you know subtly put back in front a new agenda and it had a range of different speakers. But what was really interesting for me in that journey was I found that there are still some systemic supports that are needed for women and to be able to have the platform to speak, to be able to have the platform to speak, to present their points of view. You know if I had just wanted to finish the agenda it would have been really easy because there are a lot of amazing male speakers out there and a lot of them are raising their hands saying I want to spot and so my sort of insight was you know we need to encourage women to raise their hands to say yes I want to take a spot I want to speak I have things that I want to share and two is to encourage those. We do need to provide a little bit more support, a little bit more of a nudge to folks to say you know what we really would value your opinion in this in this platform and so we had a 50-50 you know very diverse folks from different countries you know gender parity at the event and what that enabled was that there were different points of inspiration for different people. Not everyone liked the same thing but as a result of diversity you created a lot more creativity in the conversation and there was something that the audience in its entirety could find inspiring in different ways and so diversity is critical because if we don't have it we don't innovate we don't stay creative and we we stay with groupthink and I think in an innovation economy that's the the death of it so I think it makes business sense. And Angela I have the honor of working with you almost every day and you're such a great example of a female leader who just really gets in and takes charge and knows what needs to be done so I'd love to hear your perspective on. So I think um leaving aside the so many well researched studies that say that gender equality and you know leadership level executive level is linked to higher profits in the company I think what we've done at this structure and we're not fairly young company um we recognize that having a diverse team um brings such a tremendous value I mean you have a variety of points of view and and backgrounds and experience that you can draw on and I'm I'm very um lucky to be working in an environment that's so inclusive where we have um I think almost half of directory level positions are female and that's just we're just moving in that direction it's a very um it's a very nice place to work in as a women to fail including so I use the same level um and something that I wanted to point out um it's the trend that as the technology evolves we can see this rising demand for for um employees in the STEM related fields and half of the workforce that that we possible for that is women and that's not something we're about to ignore right. True good point good point. Jamie how about it coach a copier one we're uh we're in a really unique spot with respect to the tech industry when I joined I we have three general managers globally and I joined as the leader of Canada and Asia Pacific and became the third woman so we have a female GM for EMEA a female GM for US Latin America and then myself for Canada um an APAC and then two months ago we actually announced our new global CEO uh is a is a female so we uh we're really lucky in that our senior leadership team just organically has diversity um and then we're working we still need to work through the through the middle we don't have full diversity um top to bottom but uh but we're lucky in that we we have a great mix of creativity and different types of thinking when we get together as an executive leadership team and and then myself as a mother of two daughters my daughters are eight and ten both have already been in coding clubs at school and so just to see how um in Canada we're so quickly embracing that STEM conversation uh with our children and women and little girls are just as included as as boys in um in having that just part of their vernacular and part of um of what they're learning and what they're focusing on I think that's going to make a huge difference as we uh as we look forward over the next 10 to 20 years on what our our technology workforce will look like if we just keep doing what we're what we're doing especially in the early years yeah I completely agree with that Jamie as well in education opportunities even for my own children and young people starting out in their careers and I know that we've chatted before in the past Jamie about and just how a culture within an organization breeds the growth and breeds the opportunity almost it's it's um it becomes just kind of inherent in the organization and actually that's what I'm hearing from all of you really and did anyone else have any closing comments they wanted to make before we wrap things up any final words of inspiration anyone wants to leave us with no pressure well this is an exciting I mean just to hear everyone check in I'm hearing you know coast to coast here of all these different companies and wow I mean how remarkable that that we are in we are very fortunate to be in the time that we're in and the opportunities are in front of us right now um whenever I have the opportunity to speak with younger women who are are considering a career in tech I always tell them leap in there's so much opportunity and possibility you cannot go wrong I I even say things like you know write your own ticket like you get to say how your career goes you get to say what you create and bring to the world and technology could not be a more opportune place to to play in beautifully spoken thank you Erin and so I just wanted to thank you all again so much for joining us today it really is inspirational I not just to me but to I'm sure all of the people who are tuned in and who will watch this down the road on demand so thank you Angela Adam Jamie Leverton Vivian Chen and Erin Athene and this wraps up our latest virtual CEO roundtable come meet us in person join us may 14th and 15th at telecom exchange in New York you can find out more at the telecom exchange dot com to feature your thought leader here next time on our monthly virtual CEO roundtables email us at pr at jsa.net thank you so much for tuning in to jsa tv the newsroom for tech and telecom professionals and jsa radio your voice for tech and telecom until next time thanks so much for joining