 Hey everyone, welcome to the CUBE's special program series, Women of the Cloud, brought to you by AWS. I'm your host for the series, Lisa Martin. Very pleased to welcome Marshall Manns to the program, VP of North America Cloud Platforms at Converge Technology Solutions. Rachelle, great to have you on the program. Thank you for your time today. Thank you, Lisa, excited to be here. Tell me a little bit about you, a little bit about your roles with the audience gets that understanding. Sure. So my role here is to help our customers migrate to public cloud or adopt public cloud as part of their overall digital transformation strategy. I've been in this role a little over two years supporting our customers and our organization as a whole. My background in technology, I've actually been a woman in technology since 1989. I'm one of those rare breeds that from a very, very young age, I knew I loved computers and always wanted something to do with it. The last 10 years of my career really has been working with clients and companies in the industry with disruptive technologies, adopting new and emerging technologies. And cloud has been my focus for the last two years. But you're an OG, it sounds like, when you're coming to tech. That's outstanding. I am. It surprises a lot of folks. Doesn't it? Yes. Sometimes it surprises me as well, like how long I've been doing something and I'm sure the same for you. But you have such wisdom and such experience that I would love to be able to share with the audience. Talk a little bit about some of your recommendations. Be they tactical, be they strategic for those in the audience watching who really want to grow their careers in tech and climate matter. Yeah, I think our younger generations right now have, I think, a little bit of an easier path to take than some of us have with the amount of information that's out there, the access to information and the opportunity. I think one of the biggest recommendations that I can put out there is to always continue learning and find a mentor, find a sponsor. With being a female in tech, there weren't that many when I started out in the industry. I get amazed every time I meet another female and whether she's been in the industry for 20 years or two or five years. It's just exciting to see and listen to the stories. Of other people's paths in their journey. Mentor and your tribe, you definitely need your tribe. Absolutely. Something I didn't understand until a few years ago was the difference between a mentor and a sponsor. It's so incredibly important to understand differences between the two, how they can help you get leverage in the career path that you're on. But people need to know you have a network. It's there. You might not think you do, but it is there and think about those who are mentors, those that can be sponsors to help elevate you along your journey. Yeah, it's amazing. I think about I have three really good friends that we've grown up in the industry together. But sometimes even having those three really good friends, we went through many things by ourselves that we didn't have to. As you mentioned, it took me longer than I should to understand that I have someone that we can lean on. Sometimes just having those conversations and saying, is this what I should do? Is this something or did that just happen to me? And having that mentor and that partnership with someone that they may be in your organization, they may be outside of your organization, but definitely that you can have those candid conversations about what your growth or goal, what you'd like to strive for. Especially if it's something that may on the surface appear to be out of reach. If you have someone that is maybe not as invested in what you're trying to achieve, but can look at you and have that objective conversation, I think makes all the difference and makes all the difference in the world. It does. And it's a little bit about vulnerability, about raising your hand saying, hey, I'm very interested in this. I may not meet every single written criteria in the job description, but I have an interest and a passion. Can you help me navigate the path in order to get there? It's part of it's just really raising your hand. That's such a great point, Lisa, because in some ways we can't be vulnerable because we are underrepresented as women in technology. But at the same time, we have to have that ability to have those same conversations that I don't know everything. Can I do this? What do I need to learn? So it really is finding that balance. And when you have a mentor that can help you in that area, that's the way you can show that vulnerability without looking like you don't have strength. Right. There's a balance there for sure. Speaking of that vulnerability diversity, we talk a lot about diversity when it comes to technology. There's a lot of strength being made. There's also some challenges. There's some gaps. What are some of the things that you see from your lens, from your seat with respect to diversity and some of the challenges that are still out there? Yeah, I look at companies like AWS with much respect on where their diversity and inclusion goals, it's not just a checkbox. You can actually see that when it is part of the culture, the room looks diverse. There are so many companies that have the diversity and inclusion goals, but when you go into the room or you're sitting in a meeting or you have a board, it's still not seeing yourself in that room. I go to a lot of conferences, attend a lot of meetings, and it's still surprising to see the lack of minority representation leadership and the lack of women in leadership. While there's been amazing strides that we've seen happen, particularly, like I said, with companies like AWS, we've got a long way to go. I think you mentioned the difference between a mentorship and sponsorship. That's one thing within these organizations, particularly in leadership. There needs to be that sponsorship of the individuals in your organization that can help change what the landscape looks like at the top through your leadership. You'd be surprised how problems are solved differently, problems can be solved more quickly, and talk about innovation. When you've got a more diverse lens, there's more ways to innovate if you've got different people bringing different perspectives to the conversation. Looking forward to seeing that continuing changing of the landscape when I look inside the room and I count. I do the same thing, and there's so much value in thought diversity for organizations, and the data clearly speaks for itself. We can't have a tech conversation without talking about data, but data demonstrate that for organizations that have diversity emails, for example, in the C-suite, those organizations are more profitable. Bringing in different tracks of thought, different perspectives of thought diversity, diversity in gender, diversity in other things is so valuable, it's invaluable to organizations in every industry. It's invaluable, and it's funny because our industry tech right now, it's the new water, it's the gold mine, it's the asset, and it's funny that in this area that the data is almost ignored. The data proves itself, so it doesn't have to be a checkbox for these diversity inclusion goals. Because the data is there to prove that we're all here to be profitable. Follow that data. Exactly, and sometimes it seems so simple, follow the data. And we think the same recommendation holds true to any industry that, any company and any industry that needs to be a data company to be able to deliver what the demanding consumers want, follow the data, it won't leave you astray. So I want to get though back to talking about you and some of the impact that you've been able to have in your career. Talk a little bit about some of the specific success stories of problems that you've helped solve related to cloud computing. Yeah, this last, I'd say 16 to 18 months for us as an organization has been amazing for me as well as my team. Some of our, you know, the majority of our success, we couldn't be, I couldn't be here having this conversation without my team. And for us as an organization where our heritage is legacy data center. And we've got customers that we've had a 10, 15, 20 year selling relationship with that now via our acquisition strategy and growth strategy, we're going to them and saying, let us help you with your cloud journey. And it's something that they haven't known our organization for in the past. And so when we go in there and meet with CIOs and CEOs and ask for them to trust us, to take them on this cloud journey. And many of our clients are what you term greenfield that they've got very little activity in public cloud. And so it's a disruption, it's an internal disruption that can be a very emotional journey that has to start with trust because you transform so much of the business. And so each and every of our wins, particularly when we have, when we have wins with brands that are recognizable, particularly when we have wins against competitors that have been in the cloud space and that's all they do. For me, I take that as a personal stamp of endorsement because we've shown and demonstrated to those clients that we're the right ones to take them on that journey. And we've created that trust. So for me, we've had some incredible wins with our clients and those conversations can get tough sometimes. We're in the middle of a migration and the operational change that'll happen and sometimes there's tough conversations to say, you think your organization is here, it's not, it's here. And we're not calling that out to say you haven't done something. We're calling that out so that your journey ends where you'd like it to be, where we've all agreed for it to be. And so when we have that final party or have that final sign off at the end of the project, that's a personal win for me. I enjoy solving problems and taking customers on those journeys. Solving problems and helping customers navigate the journey, whether it's the journey to cloud, the journey to digital, the journey to being more competitive than their competitors is just that, it's a journey. It's a multi-phased, multi-step process. And to your point, underpinning that has to be trust between the organization and the people that are working to get them successfully on that journey. It does and it's funny. Some of the conversations we're starting out, our approach, our team is very prescriptive and we'll get a lot of customers that just want to go, go, go. And I'm road racing as my hobby. And so the old adage, sometimes you've got to go slow to go fast. And we talk to our customers and there's a lot of interviewing and they just want to deliver. They just want to jump in and we're like, we know this may feel like we're going slow but if we can really truly understand what that business outcome looks like, if we can uncover how you can leverage your investment and your movement to cloud, many customers are looking at it from a total cost of ownership. Can I get out of the data center? If just moving out of the data center, if we do those interviews with your different teams and then we can understand an area where we can improve a customer experience, make an offering that's been a cost center for you, a profit center for you, those are things that we're looking for. So we really get to know our client's business. So it's not just about the technology or the destination. It's, what do you do when you get there? And so having those deep conversations with our clients is the approach that we like to take. It's really about to your point. It's about technology but also processes and people. We can't forget the people part of this. Talk to me a little bit from the people perspective about how you see cloud evolving in the industry. Where are people involved? And what are some of the things that you're excited about in terms of the evolution of your role? Yeah, in some ways for both our team internally and when we're working with clients, people in operations tend to be the things that are minimized. It tends to focus a lot on the technology. And we like to tell folks, you have to operate in the cloud and operating requires people in process. And so the people we know individuals with cloud skills are very much high in demand. And so how do you attract those skills? How do you retain those skills? Or how do you upskill the individuals in your organization? There's so much opportunity to bring people along. We go back to one of your earlier questions and what's the evolution or roles that people can look at in the cloud. Individuals that are in organizations right now where there hasn't been much public cloud adoption, taking those initiatives, going back to another comment of learning, AWS provides so much free training and so much opportunity for individuals to upskill themselves to have growth in technology. And cloud is an area, we're going through a recession. Cloud is an area that is still going to be one of the places that organizations look for answers to say how do we drive innovation, right? How do we advance what we're doing from a profitability standpoint and can we leverage cloud to do that? So upskilling and investing in yourself in those areas there's a great opportunity for that. There's a huge opportunity in upskilling and investing in ways to improve your own skills. My last question for you is if we think back the last few years, talk about some of the changes in tech innovation, in the workforce that you've seen and what are some of the things that you think are on the horizon? Yeah, so there's still a great opportunity to exploit cloud in general. I mean, we see so many companies, software companies looking at SaaS business models, subscription models that's still changing if we think about cloud economics and how we purchase today. There's still an evolution there. But I think for me being a self-proclaimed tech nerd everything that's happening with AI and ML from an advanced analytics standpoint, the good and the bad. I mean, I think we've got to look at the social responsibility behind this when you talk about models and models themselves being diverse. If there is a diverse background building those miles the intentional bias gets built into some of those. But then I look at the advancements. I mean, it's exciting. We're working with one of our clients where autonomous taxis is something that they're trying to bring to market. These are things that we saw in cartoons growing up that are reality and becoming reality in this day and age. So that's through AI and machine learning and just all of the new services that companies like AWS continue to bring out so that people can be innovative and develop. It's exciting for me to see that. Across the board, so transportation from AI and ML what we saw that came out from COVID and testing and the data and just the advancements of that. So there's so many different ways to apply that technology. There is. The horizon I think is clearly bright. And thank you so much, Rochelle, for sharing what you've done, your experiences, how you're helping to make that horizon even brighter. We appreciate your insights. We appreciate your time. Thank you for joining us in the program today. Thank you, Lisa. Rochelle Manns, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's coverage of the special program series Women of the Cloud brought to you by AWS. Thanks for watching.