 Okay, so hi everyone, welcome to Forza Azure Summit 2021. This is the panel for diversity and inclusion in tech. So this panel, we have invited a range of really important speakers today, and it will actually be hosted by Ms. Sherry Irm, who is the general manager for Public Sector Asia Pacific, Microsoft. Sherry's career spans a 22 year journey in the high technology environment because banking and finance, telecommunications, government and oil and gas industry, because various management and global leadership capacities involved largely in business and organizational transformation. So Ms. Sherry Irm, you may take it from here. Thank you very much. Good afternoon everybody. What a super honor for me to be here at Forza Azure. I'm actually really excited, very, very inspired that Asia's largest open tech developer community is started by a young lady. I admire her passion, how persistent it is for her to have that kind of vision to drive to where this community is today. So with that, I just want to start by saying kudos to brave women. And also thank you Forza Azure for broaching a very important topic today on diversity and inclusion in tech. As we all know, the start of this decade has a tremendous shift in what's happening in the world and we see a convergence of three very major trends. Number one, the digital acceleration has exponentially grown in all the markets around the world in the midst of a pandemic. We see job disruptions in the markets whether it's remote or physically. We see a range of calls for all of us to be moving with a greater voice in inclusivity, equity, as well as social justice. And more than ever, in the midst of such sweeping change, you and I and the organization has an opportunity to really make a difference here. Today, I'm super privileged to be joined by a distinguished panel of leaders, women whom I call captains of their respective field and more importantly, they are truly the change makers that inspire all of us to do more. We're gonna have a conversation around diversity and inclusion in tech. We're gonna touch on some very personal stories and more importantly, look at the biases, the discrimination or the barriers we see in the market today, in the world today and how we can all collectively push ourselves to think outside of the box and draw on all the empirical evidence that exists today to help us identify promising areas where we can look at investment, where we can direct our leadership voices and focus and more importantly, what experiment we all can conduct so that this will all serve as a remarkable engine of change. So with that, let me welcome my panelist, Ms. Dong Big Hung. She's an anthropologist with an experience in international development in her current capacity as chief of culture at the UNESCO. She's directly responsible for UNESCO's program with overall objective to safeguard the region's cultural heritage and foster its creativity. Throughout her career, she's expressed tremendous commitment to gender equality, cultural diversity, human rights and social development. And recently, she's actually explored the interconnections between culture, creativity and how that intersects with all that is going on in the digital world. So welcome, Han. Next on the panelist is Dr. Kirutika. She's a research scientist and a few of cognitive systems, learning and memory. Kirutika leads the education team at Science Centre Singapore and her dream and her vision and she's dedicated her passion to really make STEM accessible to the public, especially to the students and very importantly to the educators community. So welcome, Dr. Kirutika. Last but not least, the reason why we're all here today at ForceAsia, Ms. Hong is the reason why we're all here, right? So she's the founder of ForceAsia, chairs the annual ForceAsia Summit, organized this amazing open-tech summit in countries like Vietnam, Indonesia, China, Sri Lanka, all the way through to Germany. She's also a board member of the Open Source Business Alliance in Europe and serve as a VP of open-source initiative. Hong believes that free and open-source is not just a way to exchange code freely, but more importantly, a collaboration model that was set, example of how people around the world can come together freely to collaborate and solve world's most challenging issues. With that, welcome home. See friends, maybe I'll start with our panel discussion with a speed round. The recent events has been a very big reminder for all of us that persistent inequalities continue to pervade out society and economies. So as we seek more responsibility from companies and individuals in the whole issue of diversity, quality, I'd like to start with my first question to the panelists. What are your most passionate top of my topic when it comes to diversity and inclusion? Can we start with maybe Ms. Han? Yes, I mean, for me, because coming from the country sector, so inclusion of diverse range of sector into the tech scene is a very, very interesting topic to me. And this is something that we have begun to explore here at UNESCO. That's very, very exciting. Thank you, Ms. Han. Dr. Kirukita. So I think when we talk about diversity, the most important thing is to make sure that different people are represented during the development right from the beginning. We always hear of stories where there are products that are designed and then, you know, they misrepresent or misalign certain kinds of audiences. And one of the reasons why that happens is because the stakeholders, the diversity is not there right from the beginning. So having the diverse viewpoints on the table enables us to ensure that the wider population is represented when something goes out. I think that's an amazing, you know, very, very important topic when it comes to, when we're looking at, especially in the world of technology, where we hope to use technology to pretty much bring in the equality, the design phase and the product development phase is very, very critical. That's where, you know, you've dedicated your passion to helping stand in education. And that's where we want to kickstart from development phase to your point. So thank you, Dr. How about home? Hi, Sherry. So may I say that I'm pretty glad to be here and it's like, it's great to see you all on the panel. Yes, I totally agree with that and Kira Tika. So diversity and inclusion is very important, not only in the tech sector, but everywhere in our society, right? In order to, whatever we do in the tech industry, we want to be a product. We want to get it into the user hand and we need to have the user viewpoints represented in the development phase. And without the diversity and inclusion in the way we work, in the way we develop, it's difficult to say that we can represent our user, we can understand the whole journey and the opinion of the user. So definitely to MSI again, it's really important that we ensure an inclusive environment in the tech industry. Thank you. Very nice, which is why you've been so passionate about championing open platform, open collaborations. So thank you. For us at Microsoft, I would say for me right now, there is so much we have to do in the arena of diversity and inclusion. But currently for us, one of our top of mind is how do we address the gender inequality? How do we also look at the space of people with disability? So if you look at the UN sustainable goal, for example, it talks about how gender equality is not only a fundamental human right, but more importantly, a very, very necessary foundation. If we are all looking to enjoy a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world, but yet in the arena of what we're seeing today, especially post-COVID, we're seeing how women work among the most hardest heat when it comes to post-COVID impact. And you're looking at a rate where the estimated job loss rate for women is twice higher than that compared to the males. And at the same time, we talk about Dr. Kirikika and Hong, you talk about how digital technologies today are going to be that backbone of the economies for us to build a resilient future. But if you look at World Economic Report, on Gender Report 2020, it is a very, very stark realization that how women is actually underrepresented in emerging tech roles. We have very glaring statistics, like only 12% are represented in cloud computing when the world is moving into cloud. And Hong, you talk about how without the right representation, you're not going to get the design phase and development phase right. In the same way, we know the involvement of data and AI, but there's only 26% of women representation in that field. So I would say, from that perspective, us at Microsoft are looking at how do we actually really bring in place the right programs and foundation pretty much for women in the tech world. I hold that for a second. Let me also maybe quickly share something that we're super passionate about. The WHO estimated that about 15% of the world population, that's close to about a billion people live with some form of a disability. And in Asia Pacific, we're looking at one in six people has faced some types of challenges or barriers to enable them to be fully participant in the economic arena in society. With this number, we are passionate about what can we do really to take inclusion for the people with disability. And it is very, very telling that by excluding this population of people from our jobs in a workforce, we're actually causing an impact of 7% to GDP around our countries. So maybe just a quick start to kickstart the discussion. I just want to focus a little bit on women as well as disability when it comes to inclusion. And start by sharing a little bit of what we are doing at Microsoft. At Microsoft, it is really our mantra to empower every person, every organization to achieve more. We specifically look at, how do we do Dr. Kirikita's point? STEM is a neighborhood where you start grooming pretty much talent in this arena. We're very, very intentional about how do we inspire young girls to one, pick up those subjects in their school, in education and then create programs where we can help them create, give them opportunities and environments for mentorship and sponsorship. So we have this program for what we call DGDG goals, basically going to schools and helping children equip them with the systems as well as the devices and the coaching to be able to learn and start coding from young. This is one example. The other one I'll talk a little bit later is women in AI. We see it with very, very passionate. We talk about how only 26% of the populations are actually represented by women, but this is going to perpetuate in the product development cycle if we do not increase the representation. So we'll be launching a program called women in AI, really providing the ability to skill and learn and as well as pick up certification in AI and provide that internship and mentorship to bring women actively into the working arena from that perspective. In the space of disability inclusion, we're looking at how do we drive inclusive hiring programs. And this may sounds like, hey, it's part of the hiring program, but I urge all organization out there to be considerate and to consider approach and inclusive hiring to ensure that you create environment and a platform where people with disability can have equal equitable opportunities in participating in this arena. And just a point of interest, recently we have this program called neurodiversity. This looks at hiring people with neurodiversity challenges and basically to demonstrate that we in the workplace can intentionally provide the right environment, safe environment to leverage and utilize diverse skill sets. I think in the picture, you will see that Phillip Javist is an engineer that recently landed his dream jobs with HoloLens. So he is experimenting or working with HoloLens despite his disability and equally effective in participating in this. So those are two arenas we want to really, really look into and invest into. And with that, let me turn the lens back to our panelists. You all come with amazing stories. You are trailblazer. Can we maybe start with a little story of how you started in the tech community, how you get involved and share with us something exciting that happened in that journey. So maybe we start with Dr. Q. Pika. Hi, okay. How did I get started in tech? So I think I always wanted to do something in science, right? So being an investment that's subject in school. And I was fortunate that there has always been opportunities for me. So at some point in time, during my university, I managed to get an internship at a research institute and then following that I landed a final year project that I enjoyed and then, you know, that led into graduate studies and final postgraduate and so on. But at some, maybe around five years into my postgrad, I decided to make a bit of a visit. And instead of focusing on doing research, I decided to move into the education field. And there were a couple of things that wanted me to make this change. The first one was the fact that I became a mother and I wanted to, it was very important for me that my kids grew up in an environment where education was moving very fast and STEM education was something that changed. So in the olden days, when we were studying science, when we were studying computing, we literally had to do things where, you know, the question and the exam paper would be name the three parts of a computer and you would have to say the three parts of the computer or the monitor, the CPU and the keyboard. I did not know how many of you belong to the generation. So literally that's how it used to be. And of course today, things are very different and you have tools out there that enables anybody to learn how to code and to get involved in tech and one of the tools. And I think that this is something that I would, I always like to say that my daughter, my younger daughter learns how to code before she learns how to read. And it's not so much of the ability of a child, you know, and sometimes say, oh, your daughter is smart, but that's not true. It's a fact that there are tools available today to make it accessible to someone that's very young and I was totally fascinated by that idea. And what was lacking was the fact that, you know, while there are tools available, people are not aware of these tools. Someone needs to go out and tell parents because we are, we are, we as parents, we as women. Okay, coding. I am supposed to be doing assembly language and you know, that's kind of what people have in mind, you know, pages and pages of jargon and hexadecimal numbers that make no sense to anybody, that's not what it is. So that's sort of how I pivoted and now I just want to bring out a couple of things that struck a chord with me based on what Sherry had shared a little bit earlier on specifically on women. And early when I was a staff at the Science Center, I had the pleasure of hosting a hackathon that was run by a bunch of students and they were trying to do some work on hacking old electronics to make cool stuff. I mean, students love to do projects like this. It was a student-fronted project and this boy whom we had known had got together all his friends and said, you know, we would like to use the Science Center. Sure. And what struck me was that out of that group were 25 students who were part of this hackathon. There were two girls and they had a lot of fun. The students had a lot of fun, I was observing them. And at the end of it, the kids were doing reflections and the girls stood up, one of the girls stood up and she was almost crying. And she said, ever since I was a child, I had never had the opportunity to build anything. I have never played with Legos. I had never built anything and today I built this. She was maybe about 15, 16, I'll give or take that. And I stopped and I said, what's happening here? 15, 16-year-old girl in a generally good school in Singapore never had the opportunity to build anything before. And so then sometime later, I watched this video which I think has been floating around in social media quite a bit where there is a girl child who is growing up and as the child is growing up, things happen in the way we speak to the child. Hey, princess, how are you? Don't touch that big tool, let your dad handle it. And these things make very subtle. It's not that as a parent, we don't want our children to go into engineering, it's just that as a parent from the very, very early ages, we have these little biases that implicitly sort of feed into our kids that, I'm a girl, I should be not doing, I don't know what, so these are things that I think I really want to change and that's kind of why I am where I am and I think I'm going to hand the time over before I start talking too much. Yeah, no, this is super inspiring, Dr. You know, you talk about the importance of advocacy, so many people are not aware of the opportunities out there for that shift and that change in this arena. So thank you, continue to champion that. And I really, really love your story about girls. I just had this impression, we did DJ Dope Girls and Sri Lanka and when we look into the eyes of some of these kids, they're like, oh, exactly the expressions that you just articulated about, how they've never built something, now that they've experimented it, they think that, wow, actually I can do it, I have much bigger dreams and I really want to be there helping the other girls, helping the other people who has never touched a computer, who has never coded. So I love your inspirational story and it is super important for us not to put that conditional, you know, lens on our community, especially as parents, spot on, you know, sometimes we put that unconscious bias and that condition on. Thank you for that, it's super inspiring and maybe let's turn to Han. As for me, I must confess that I'm not a tight person. I have been working in my whole career as an anthropologist with very limited knowledge on text but what has been really inspiring me and then to begin to explore these stories is, so I mean, I've been working most of my career in the country sector and in the country sector, we face a lot of challenges and I guess you all know it, there's like artists and heritage professionals have very low and unstable income. They are very little resources to support them. Country sector is a very poor sector, if I must tell you, on the ministries, on the NGOs working on country are generally very poor, artists are often struggling. They are very limited opportunities for networking with other people to receive new skills, to learn new things. We see with our own eyes, heritage having damage at a very fast speed and then if you are from the consumer users point of view, you also have certain limited access. I mean, it would have access to more mainstream country products, for example, than the products are produced by more marginalized indigenous groups. And then when COVID took place, it started about a year ago, we see all these challenges are getting worsening, very, very fast. And at the same time, we also see that how fast the country sector start using digital technology to maneuver and to try to make the sector better, to gain a little bit more income by putting things online and things like that. So that's when we really see that, okay, maybe there could be a great ways to bring the partners from the country, from the technology world and also bring new business models in to really explore something, to make the country sector a better place for everyone to be. So because of that, we initiated this initiative called TechCon, Tech for Country, but then if you say it is like TechCon, the digital, the challenges that face by the sector. So with this, we aim to provide a platform for all these different partners from different sectors to come together, to learn from each other, to network, to build capacity and to develop solutions to support the country sector. So we started with this first idea-torn, very great honor to partner with Fox Asia for the first idea-torn. And we see some interesting figures I was going to give you. So when we did the idea-torn day, when Krutika actually gave a very seminal workshop, so we have 443 participants joined and half of them are women. About 50%, no, 40% of them are young. They are at the student's background and they come from 31 countries. Some of them are from areas that we would consider kind of a bit of the frontier in the technology world, like Bangladesh, Mongolia, Nepal, Uzbekistan. And then people come from backgrounds like country, they are artists, actresses, curator, film producer, tour guides, they come from technology side, software, cloud engineer, web developer and they are students, professors, researchers, entrepreneurs, government officers. So we really see a very diverse range of people and so we are kind of also very hopeful that how with this approach that we are taking by bringing different sectors together, we can kind of encourage this inclusivity and diversity for the tech world, but of course also for our country sector as well. So that's how we kind of started and it's still a very early process in terms of UNESCO in the parallel session. We are also having other activities at the global level or looking at AI and especially like, yeah, so I am very excited to hear about the Microsoft initiative on women and AI because we also file very much of the same evidence that you have just stated earlier. So yeah, so that was the process that UNESCO is working on with experts to develop recommendations for ethics in AI and a lot of that was one of the main principles is related to inclusion and diversity. Very, very nice. Thank you, Han. You talk about how, hey, I'm working all my life in culture and not really intact, but honestly, we have a Satya Nadella said that culture eats strategy for breakfast. So culture is so much, so it's such an important fabric of our society and something that as every one of us make choices, this basically builds a culture and the culture basically shapes our world. So thank you. First, thank you for the passion and the work that you've been doing. And in this arena, especially when you talk about, hey, we work with farmers in the ruler area who are not very exposed to technology, who has very little economic actually opportunity. This is really the era where we get to open up technology platform to give them two things, right? One technology to AI and technology to help the farmers increase their productivity, increase their ability to drive more sustainable production. But more importantly with technology, now they can have an openness to the whole marketplace, to the whole ecosystem. So your work in the respective culture, I mean, this is about farmers, the same thing goes for fashion designers, for artists, they do not need to be limited to a small physical constraint of pretty much where they can sell or market their products and solutions, but pretty much open the whole global ecosystem to them. So thank you. Continue to champion that work. Maybe let's hear from Hong. Yes. So my journey to tech, to be honest, I got a little bit related to what Kirutika said about access to tooling. So I actually did not get into tech until I was 20. Yes, I grew up in Vietnam and as you said, even the people who live Singapore feel that they don't get access to the right rule in country like Vietnam or India, even more difficult at the time when I grew up, but I got into tech. I must say again, even though I said it so many times in every conversation, it's all about open source. So my first interaction with open source was at the time when I did a translation freelance job in a conference where we talk about free technology and where I also met my partner, Par Mario, who explained to me open source. And after that, I got the initial idea. I started to connect with the local lean-up user group. Yeah, I went to submit up at that time. I remember that they did like every close-day meeting where they show people how to install different like open to OS or line of mint in their machine. And I get to the group, I start to connect with them and I realized that people in that group I just so fascinated about what they are doing. At one point when I come there, I never have like tech background before but when I come there, I remember one member said that with me for three hours, explained to me how to use the terminal. And it got me very excited when you use the terminal, everything like so very fast, it can download software so quickly and you can actually see, you give a command and something happened in the background and it's got me very excited. And of course, not only that interaction get me into tech but several like throughout the year of that year, I realized that there's so much learning opportunity that open source can offer me. And whenever I meet an open source contributor, they talk so passionate about what they are doing. I met so many people who contribute to project for over 20 years and feel so excited. So when you go to do the workplace, a lot of things going on and sometimes don't get trust with your work. But as soon as you ask them to ask about their open source project, they can talk to you hours and hours non-stop. And I think that this is something that's really cool. And open source is not only about software, it's about open collaboration. Without open source, I would not be where I am today. I got not only for Asia, the reason why I started for Asia, I want to show people, I want to show women out there that actually opportunity, there's so much knowledge, so much resources in this like tech world that people willing to share and it can empower you to grow your own career. Even I did not study in tech, I'm now working fully in tech industry and also God let some, I would say that proud achievement because I make post-Asia sustainable and like over so many years and I got invited to join the board of director of the open source initiative. This is the organization that safeguard the definition of open source based in the US. And I also got invited on the board of open-source business alliance because they actually want to hear, want to understand the perspective of women. And I also recently got appointed to join the IEEE Standard Association. So all these opportunities would not come if I have not make my way into the tech industry and open source community in the first place. And I also want to second what Hatton said earlier in the hackathon that we organized a few months ago. So we see women coming from Cambodia, coming from Mongolia places that really difficult to access, coming from Myanmar that the current time is changing so much. So internet has enabled us to do many things that we could not imagine before and software technology is not only about coding at what Kegutika said, there's so many potential for us. And I really think that in the conversation it's really important. It also a pathway, the approach to raise awareness to more people. Seri, if I may, I just want to mention one more program of organization that we're doing because we also contribute into this journey by organizing our own coding program. CodeHeat, we've been running this program for many years already. So the whole idea is to get mentors, the people like more senior in the community to have the younger students and develop to contribute to open source and learn a new skill. And last month, I think just last month, our last season we got two women winners. In the roots of every season, every time we have three randomized winners. And the last one, we have two women coming from India and I'm very proud that we encourage and engage more female student and young developers into open source. Wahong, I'm super, super inspired. You're really our hero here. It's just amazing to hear how you started with an innocent approach into a conference, tried something and got super excited about it. And then that just paved the way of such an admirable journey right now. And I think a lot more people should hear about your story and your journey and your spot on, right? Today we are in this arena where the physical boundaries have all been dismantled. We have an amazing opportunity right now to get equal access to the community out there. And I think one of the most powerful thing that you said is how it's not just about coding, it's about open collaboration. How do we really need to break down the walls so that we can enable and encourage people to collaborate, make the voice out there very active. And as women, I really think that we have such an amazing opportunity to be each other's allies, to help one another. And I would also say in my experience, maybe just a quick opportunity also to talk about, you talk about how you did not study tech but you're now full career in tech. I did not study tech as well. I started my, I graduated with a business degree and I started my journey with this company called Wilson Technologies. Back then in those era, is the authority is the tech icon that is building communications network, internet backbones, switching devices, signaling networks to enable the mobile and physical data communications. So I got into that role, Wilson basically starting to do proposals. I'm just putting proposals together, but I really have an appetite to kind of like, digest all types of information. So I read and read and read and read and learn. I just want to say that that really kickstart my journey into tech. And one of the biggest thing, I think Kiritita said that very well, is, don't put the limitations. I really did not start my school days on engineering topics, but today I'm very deep into technology, into the architecture and know more importantly how the systems are work and how technology can make a difference for people's life and our society. So that is super powerful and I encourage all the women out there, do not put a constraint, do not put a lead for yourself. You have many allies out there who's willing to help and support your journey. And more importantly, what Han and Hong is doing to create that open platform where women from all over the world can actually have an opportunity to code, have an opportunity to double into the tech world. The world that is in the making today is super digital, right? Digital is going to be every part of it. I would think one of the biggest thing is about courage, taking that courage that first step, just like what Hong did. And more importantly, having that continuous growth mindset, always wanting to acquire more information and with open system, there's a lot of knowledge out there that you can freely acquire. So with that, maybe let me just turn in the interest of time to a second question. You're doing a lot of things out there, like it or not, the reality is that ask you a lot of work for us in the arena of diversity and inclusion. Like to hear what are the barriers that you actually experience, the biases and the discrimination and maybe some of the good success of how you overcome those challenges. I don't know, Han Hong, Dr. Curititta. Okay, maybe I'll go first. I think when we talk about challenges, there are actually two challenges which I think we face that gets people, not necessarily women, but everyone away from technology. And I think somewhere we need to address these two issues. The first, of course, I think I mentioned this right at the beginning, is that this is too hard for me. Now we all know that technology is important. We all know that we can't, none of us can live without our smartphones. We have FOMO, if you're missing out, if we live without our smartphones. But we don't think that we have the ability to create with the technology that we have in our hands. We want to be consumers because we see. Again, a bit of a plug towards what we do at the Science Center. We always believe that everyone should be a creator of tech and not a consumer of tech. And many of the stuff that we do is actually geared towards bringing up that kind of a mentality. And it's doable. And of course, again, the tools that are available, that amazing set of tools that are available that helps us to make this happen. The other thing, which is also a little bit concerning to me, is not that it's too hard, but should I do it? And the question comes because, but when we really think about it, I feel that this is a bit of an 80s mentality. So, okay, I'm not a coder. I'm not an engineer. Why should I learn how to code with Python, for example? Is it even relevant to me? And then if we kind of, again, take a step back again, I did say that none of us can live without our smartphones. But at the same time, can we just think of any job? You know, open thing where technology does not help us? Let's consider, say, farming. Okay, fine, the most lowest tech job that you would think of and it's been around for, but we all know that every day we read newspaper articles of about how farming is going high tech. You know, people that are using IoT and robotics and farm bots, you know, to get your farming easy. And of course, to solve certain challenges and the farming community as well. Let's think about cup entry, for example, all right. So when you're a carpenter, do you need to use technology? I mean, all I'm doing is cutting wood and screwing it together. What do I need to know how to code for? And I just recently read this article about this Indian guy who actually is a carpenter who makes bespoke furniture and he's using augmented reality to make his furniture more interesting and enhancing. And really, if you think of any job in the world, you know, human resources. I heard a story about how, I can't remember if it was Shopee or some of their company where they were using, they're hiring HR people who need to know how to do big data analysis because they need to crawl LinkedIn to find headhunt people. So really every job needs tech. So don't tell me that I'm not working in technology. You are working in technology regardless of what you do and tech can help us to make and do our job better. And I think that is one of the biggest challenges that we need to address. It's not teaching technology to technology people. It's teaching technology to people who feel that they don't need to do technology. And to me, that's a little bit synonymous to say in the early 90s, you know, people used to go for courses to learn how to use Microsoft Word. And you had to be, have a certificate in typing or a certificate in this to get hired. And now it is nobody bothers with stuff like this. And I think maybe two, three years down the road, nobody's going to bother with whether you are micro-certificate in Python. You're supposed to have it. I'm sorry, it's like reading and writing. You just have to do it, you know? Yeah, so that's what I wanted to share. Absolutely, absolutely. I love the fact that you're talking about everyone should be a creator and with the tools and the technology on our hands, the perception that, you know, I can't do it. This is one of the biggest challenge, absolutely. And thank you for continuing to advocate that. How about you? Yes, so I just want to continue what Kiru just said. Yes, okay, Kiru, I totally agree with you, Kiru. So technology, I think all the industry would benefit from technology and everyone should learn. And it's all about the mindset from the beginning. If we have more models like you, who encourage the children right from the start, that would be so good, right? So we need to do more advocacy, more outreach. But another thing that I see as a challenge, I work with many corporations, many companies, and I also see that the ratio in career development on the leadership level. So you still see a lot of main, like, it seems like, so if you look at report from the industry, there's still a lot of main that holding emotional position in cooperation. And of course, I'm pretty glad to see that Microsoft doing a lot into this direction as Sheri already shared earlier. And I also see, besides, this is the first time I got to met Sheri, but before that I've been working several years with a senior. And I just see that a senior is a good role model, a way for people looking that women can also advance in their career and there's opportunity in the leadership for women. And this is like the society has been moving a lot of pressure and raised awareness across the industry and companies started to make good effort to change this. And this is something that we're very happy about. So connected that, I want to say that we need more role models. So we need women to inspire other women. And this is great to have the panel for discussion so that companies out there take this as an example and do more, make more effort similar to Microsoft's 3A environment where women feel comfortable. You mentioned about you have the program for women in AI, right? So if you look at Asian landscape, a lot of countries, they have the Pacific culture that make women tend not to be so comfortable to be around men. So if we could create an environment specifically for women, make them feel comfortable doing what they are doing and also a great opportunity for me. Like in the in the Fox community, of course, I did not, luckily, I did not experience discrimination while working with the Fox Asia community, but I also have a story from other people. And at the end it's all about the misperception, misunderstanding, because the way some people communicate might not be served as appropriate to some other people. So the cultural sector, cultural factors, I also see as a barrier and this is something that we need to tackle as well. And this is linked to Du Han, who really an expert in cultural and you perhaps, you know, I'm really inspiring to see all the team members in your office, actually women coming from everywhere, perhaps we can chime in and share with us the story there. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Hong-Fuk. And yeah, I completely agree with the challenges that Hong-Fuk and Kirutika had just mentioned and previously shared as well. And before, just very quickly, I would like to point out to the links that my colleague, Misako Ito, just put in on the on the chat there about a video, the link to a video that UNESCO has made on gender and AI. So maybe after the panel, you are very welcome to have a look. And so in terms of challenges, I'm going to shift here a bit. Of course, yeah, we hear the challenges about how women can, yeah, a relation to tech. And I would like to maybe bringing maybe the challenges for people who are not the tech people. But now, as you see, everything is digital now. You cannot really miss the trends anymore, because I mean, if we are not on it, then you would be very behind. And we have already seen how technology has made great implications for cultural and artistic expressions. You start seeing AI producing artwork. I think you all know about this artwork, the next Rembrandt. I think Microsoft was involved as well, right? So and eventually, I mean, if I think it's a great experiment, by the way, but then it also raised certain questions about future of the arts, whether a human would be making it, or we will be having machine making it, and then also rise and remuneration of artists as well. And so if everything was being put in the hand of the tech, and so what would be the for the country sector, what would our artists, what would our heritage professional have the role in it? So I think the access to for the country sector, and with this, I think would be equally important for agricultural sector, for health sector, for all these other sectors as well, not just the country sector, to how to have access to all these tech opportunities, how they can also be trained in all these tech skills. Of course, I mean, if they had opportunities to learn STEM from their young age, and later if they become become an artist or they become a heritage person, they already have that STEM knowledge in them, but then a lot of the countries do not have opportunity to offer STEM to young children. And so they would grow up, they would become artists, they are struggling because artists own struggle, and then they have to try to maneuver on this digital world, and if they are not fast enough, and then some tech person would come in and run away with it, right? So how to really provide access to the country sector, or to any outside sector, to learn about all these skills and knowledge, about all these financial opportunities, all the infrastructure and equipment, and more importantly, I think the opportunity to really work with the tech people, because at the end of the day, it's not really you compete, country sector compete with tech sector to see who would produce the nicest artwork, right? But I think the future I think is I really would like to see the stronger collaboration between the sector and who would provide this kind of collaboration, because to be honest for me as a country person, when I look at all these topics that Hong Kong is organizing under this summit, a lot of them look like foreign language to me, because I'm not really a part of this world, you know? And I could say that probably 99.9% of people in the country sector would feel the same way. So where do we start, begin to pave the way to start including other people? They would never replace the tech people, that's for sure, but then how they can start beginning the common language so that they can work together with the tech people. So I think that that is something that we would really like to explore further. This is super exciting. I feel like we get so much to talk about, but unfortunately, time is running out. So maybe just a pause of a second and I want to sum up, you know, all the great insights that our panelists have provided. Any questions from the public chat group that we need to address? Yes, Sherry, I think that we have a number of questions. Do you see also the share notes? I saw quite a number of questions already. Ah, somehow, oh yeah. Shall we take maybe one, two questions? Let's see. I'm super, super excited given we have so much great insight from here. I am scrolling through the chat. Sherry, so it in the share notes, the question. So if you see on the left side, you see notes and there is the option share notes. People have been putting their questions inside there. Oh yeah, okay, got it. So how about you? You know, a lot of questions on diversity, half of young women. I think we can, Sherry, I think that we take one or two, yeah. Yeah, so people are still typing, but I think there is an easy one we can start for us. There are so many technologies. I do not know how to start. What do you recommend for students who are in school? That's the question for Kiru. Yeah, that's my favorite question. Thank you for asking. Well, so for students who are in school, there is a suite now and a suite is a growing suite. So there is, it's certainly not an exhaustive list. So for starting out to code, I think there were a couple of platforms. My favorite one for the very, very young kids, the four-year-old in us, is actually Microsoft's Codu platform, which is a little very visual programming thing. So my daughter actually learned her first code in Codu, that's K-U-D-U. And then there is the open source option. So we've got Scratch, which is from MIT Media Lab, very commonly used in schools to teach kids how to get started in coding, as well as computational thinking. There is also, so when we talk about coding, we also should not sort of ignore the hardware options that are around there as well. So my favorite board in that order is actually the Makey Makey, which is a very simple board to interface any kind of code to a physical environment. And that's really excites kids. We have the MicroVet, which has really grown in popularity over the last three to four years. And then following that, we have the Arduino program. There are a lot of block-based coding opportunities where you actually can code without coding in that sense, without really writing any syntax, other than Scratch. And the block-based environments have actually moved very far. So something like Scratch can only get you to a toy product, in a sense. But there are tools like Tunkable. My favorite is actually Tunkable. Tunkable is actually an app development environment. And at the end of the day, you can actually do a functional app that you can export onto an Android phone and distribute it so that you can share your app with your friends. And literally anyone can use Tunkable. So there are really many tools there. There's just so much. And I just, sorry, we have three more minutes. And I wanted to get one close. But before I go there, I would say go to Lincoln.com, right? That is a whole series of what we call digital foundations. And to Han's point, everybody needs to kind of like embrace tag. Doesn't matter if you are an artist or you're a taxi driver or you're a teacher. So I would encourage you to go to Lincoln.com. We're giving a lot of free courses, basically, and you get certified. So you get a journey into tag, not just awareness and knowledge. And also watch out for maybe my Lincoln, where we get to publish a very, very large initiative called Women in AI. We're giving skilling certification program for free to encourage women. And I, you know, there is a very, very good question on the panel on the lease for all our panelists to close with. It says, what is the one change you want to see now? That's very practical. So I love to hear from that. For myself, the one thing I want to see now is the rise of women in AI, because it starts to grace point, you know, from the development phase. If we are able to release a large pool of women in, into the tech world, you're going to see a change in the end product that's, that's designed. You're going to change and see a change in the representation of women in, you know, top leadership in, in organizations. You want to see a change in those statistics that needs to move. So I would say women in AI, watch out, you know, click in, pick up the courses is for free. You get certified and then, you know, move into economic or employment opportunity. So maybe a hunt and home and just one thing you want to see as we closed for change now? Yes, I mean, I would definitely send my artist to go when train at your women and AI course. So thank you very much for, for notifying us about that. And for us, for, for me, and for, for, for our work here at the country unit at UNESCO Bangkok, we would really like to see how we harness the digital technology to, to make your sector more resilient and more sustainable. And we would really like to see that as equal partnership between the tech partner and the country, country partner. So that's, that's really the biggest aim for, for our program tech car. Love the partnership. Yes. So the same for me, I also want to see more partnership between forced Asia and other organizations and companies to run more programs for women to learn about open source technology and contribute into different open source projects. Yes. So we do in the programs for many years already and we invite companies and partners like the Genesco to, to join hands with us and bring more women into open source. Thank you. For me, the, what I would like to see is to encourage more people to attend events and programs like forced Asia. That's where you get to learn what is out there and to actually lose that inhibition that stops you from getting on board technology. Thank you very much. I'm super inspired. Thank you. You know, we all talk about advocacy, you know, taking away that condition, that, that limitations that sometimes we put on ourselves and be exposed in events like this to, to know that there is a wall of opportunity awaiting for all of us. And all of us can play a big role in changing and shifting the diversity and inclusion index and the world. This is a very powerful mission for everyone on this, you know, forum. We want to see change. We want to see change for a more inclusive and better society, you know, for our generations to come with that. Thank you so much. Our great panelists, you're all superheroes continue to be role model out there, you know, to inspire more to come. Thank you with that. Thank you. And I hope you enjoy the panel. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for that opportunity. Sherry and Kiru, I know that we are running out of time, but there's still quite a number of questions on the channels. I wonder if we can type the answer so that people can get the answer for the question. I think there are a few questions related to Microsoft and a few for related to Tech Cool. So I would really appreciate so the audience can get the answer if we type the answer. And continue to reach out to us. I am sure we are all, you know, on Lincoln. Continue to reach out to us and we'll be happy to take questions. After this, we will all go in and ensure that you get the answers. Thank you very much. Thank you. And thank you for the great opportunity and congratulations. You know, we're all super inspired by the work of FOSS Asia. Thank you.