 from the Silicon Valley Media Office in Boston, Massachusetts. It's theCUBE. Now, here's your host, Dave Vellante. Welcome to this special CUBE presentation. Meet the fellows of TechTruth. Kevin Grant is here. He's the co-founder and managing editor at the Ground Truth Project. Tori Bedford is here. She's a reporting fellow and also an associate producer at WGVation Boston. Folks, welcome. Thanks for coming on. So we've been talking all morning about what's going on at the Grace Hopper event, prepping for that. And I wanna, Tori, start with you and give you an opportunity to share a little bit about your background and what you do at GBH and then we'll get into the fellowship. So I work as an associate producer of Boston Public Radio, which is our midday live radio show with Jim Braddy and Marjorie Egan. And we have, it's a really amazing show to work on as a producer because you get to learn something new every day. We have all kinds of interesting people in all the time. It's like 25 minute chunks of talking about current events and arts and culture and news makers. And we have segments with local politicians that come in once a month and take questions from our callers and it's a really cool show. And we have Ground Truth co-founder Charlie Sennett in every once in a while. And so he'll call in from conferences or he'll come in to talk about world news. And so we've kind of formed a relationship and he's been kind of a mentor to me. So this is a really cool opportunity to work under him and the leadership of the rest of the team and the editorial staff. He bounces in usually Thursdays or Fridays, right? Yeah, he rolls in, yeah. From Tunisia or whatever it is. And Kevin, the Ground Truth is co-resident at GBH. So that's kind of cool. How'd that all come about and what's the collaboration with GBH? Well, so we love being at WGBH. Ground Truth has been there for about two and a half years now. We've sort of installed ourselves as a member of this journalistic community which has been awesome. We came out of Global Post which is an international news site or was based in Boston. So Ground Truth emerged from that. GBH has been a great home for us to build a number of fellowship programs including this Women in Tech project which we're really excited about. So the Women in Tech has got such energy. We were just proud to be covering this since early on. We sort of noticed the lack of Women in Tech and we said, wow, let's start profiling them on Women in Tech Wednesday. But Tori, you probably had an opportunity to do a number of these. You get visibility on, maybe these guys have done hundreds of fellowships. Why Women in Tech? Why did that interest you? This subject really interests me. I think where you have any kind of topic of Women in X or something that's kind of gendered where there's a field that's not diverse enough or not represented enough. I think a lot of the coverage, even like in journalism around this topic and that's kind of included in the whole sphere of Women in Tech really doesn't represent Women in Tech. So there's a lot of people who are not Women in Tech or don't represent kind of a diverse gender spectrum writing about these issues and writing about representation. I think a lot of times that can cause miscommunication and that's something that's always bothered me. So when I saw this, I thought, this is a good opportunity to maybe bring my perspective to it as a young woman who's really interested in technology because it's such an important thing. Technology is all around us. Technology is everything that we're, and it's kind of moving civilization and humanity forward and that needs to include everybody's voices. Well, what I love about this collaboration is you guys bring a journalistic discipline to what we do at theCUBE and I'll interview a lot of Women in Tech like Camille Fournier who was a superstar rock star coder for Rent the Runway or Hillary Mason, one of the first data scientists but we'll be talking to them about their jobs, right? Not necessarily about Women in Tech. We touch upon it and sometimes we'll explore it but you're going to go deeper and look at some of the issues and you're going to go long form. So talk about some of the areas that you're going to focus on for this initiative. First I just want to say that I think it's really cool that you're not just asking women about Women in Tech because they are professionals working in this field so they should be asked about their job so that's good because even we're repeating the phrase Women in Tech over and over and it's kind of already like, it's like a buzz phrase, you know? It doesn't, what does that even mean? Like, why aren't they just people? That's kind of part of the reason why I was interested in this. So some of the things that I'm looking at though, because I do think as long as there is a disparity that is a worthwhile question to ask and to explore, I'm looking at some of the ways that, you know, women have dealt with a lot of harassment and there's kind of this imposter syndrome going on where a lot of this is very insidious and it's very hard to prove and so a lot of women are saying like, well there have been these things in place for so long, now let's kind of reframe the environment and so a lot of women who are not just trying to achieve the things that men have achieved or get to their level but say, let's kind of change the game and see things that work for women better, like maybe they don't need a nine to five schedule, maybe that doesn't work best for them or maybe it does or maybe you don't want to have to negotiate for a salary because that's not, that doesn't seem to be effective and I think tech is kind of on the forefront of that and I think that when these businesses help women and kind of communicate people's needs, it helps men as well, it helps families and just kind of people generally. So that's something I'm exploring and then I'm also kind of looking at going back to childhoods and looking at women who, I've talked to a lot of women who wanted to follow one path and followed another and maybe they are successful in the tech sphere but they wanted to be coders or they wanted to be engineers and now they're doing something else and they feel like there was a kind of a cultural push. There's like, there are so many hurdles that women have to overcome from a very early age that are coming from marketing and coming, like messaging and everything around you and I think that it's interesting to look at where you come from and how you got to where you are. So I love when you were talking about the whole women in tech thing and sort of becoming this echo chamber. I have to make you laugh. I was interviewing at this event Naomi Tutu, Lara Logan and Annika Holicum and she was a bass jumper and her parachute didn't open and she landed. I may have told you this story and broke like 22 bones in her legs and they said she'd never walk again. God knows how she lived. So here I am at this event and it was like, I had no notice. These three women showed up. He said, we're going to interview you and Lara Logan said, we don't want to make this about women and you had these three like super powerful women that have gone through these amazing experiences but her point was, we're more than women, right? We are leaders. We've overcome adversity. We're inspiring young people around the world. So it's a key point that you're making. Yes, it's this larger question of like, do you want to own this as part of like a representation of your gender? And often there's not enough of represent. There's not a diverse representation. So you would be the only one like when there isn't the only female CEO in the room and then they are asked all of the female questions and they have to respond on behalf of all women. That's a lot. And so you don't want to be asked about the female perspective when you're the only one. But then when you're part of a larger group, it's like, yeah, this can be, I can be representing. I don't want to have to just be like hiding behind my initials pretending like gender doesn't exist as well. I think this is a valid question. I think it's fair to ask about women in tech. I think it's fair to ask about all kinds, like a full spectrum of genders in all professions and make sure that there is diversity because diversity is so important. But just as long as you know, we have a problem with it will be a valid question. I just think it needs to be treated with nuance. We have to be, we can't just be like, so as a woman representing all women ever, what do you think? You know, it needs to be more than that. It needs to be a little more respectful, I guess. It's easy to stare outside, but nonetheless there's a problem, Kevin, right? The women are underrepresented in technology. That's so unfair. Explain that to me. How do you feel about that? Okay, but so your role as the ground truth is to explore some of these sensitive issues and expose them, right? That's right. I mean, that's where we feel most at home actually as journalists and as- Making people feel uncomfortable? Yes, indeed. But that is part of our role is to ask these tough questions and to get into terrain that may be uncomfortable in some ways and part of that is the gender imbalance in the technology industry. So we are glad and proud to be in this space. One of the sort of overarching thoughts I've had in approaching this comes from one of our correspondents, a really talented reporter based in Istanbul named Lauren Bond. Now, Lauren has an organization she co-founded called Foreign Policy Interrupted and the entire idea is what she calls to change the ratio. This is to make it normal for women to be on the air and in print and online talking about foreign policy. It should be balanced, right? And so she is a pioneer in changing that ratio and we hope that ground truth is a pioneer in sort of normalizing the changing of the ratio of women and men in tech, in media, in any space, any place around the world. So thanks, sorry. No, I don't mean to interrupt but that's the ultimate goal I think is just that you're not special. You know, you're not like highlighted as a woman in tech which is, it's this weird intersection where you want to show younger women that this is a model and you wanna show that this is a path that they could possibly take but you want it to just be normal. You want there to be, I think somebody we were talking to recently had said this, that you want people to not have to be exceptional. You want women to just be able to go into work and do their job and go home at a normal time and live their lives and just those women have to be included as well. Not just the exceptional special women but that just be treated as people equally and be able to just do their jobs. Bob's commenting earlier, it's changing but to get to the new normal, there's still, we have a ways to go. Like we'll do, let me say, we do 100 events a year let's say and I do many of them personally and some of the events, there'll be many, many women. In fact, we just did an event recently in every segment that had a woman on. Great, it was kind of normal. A woman? At least one woman. Okay. And sometimes two. Wow. Usually one guest or two. But there were a lot of times there was a man and a woman on but every segment had a participant from the female side so it was great. And it was kind of normal and then we didn't really even notice it until the end and we commented, great, this is Czech. And then I think I was telling you a story earlier about other events where there were none and it was quite obvious. So it's not normal yet, right? There's, you go to these events and especially in tech and you go to these companies and it's still probably 10 to 15%. So normal is what, 50-50, right? That's the population. Yeah, it's also weird that we're talking about half the population still. We're not talking about LGBTQ plus people. We're not talking about, we're not even talking about people of color, diverse religious backgrounds, regional, diverse, like, this is half the population that we're trying to figure out now in 2016. And I think it's great. And I think that we should be, this is good and we should be celebrating that and this is the Grace Hopper Conference's celebration of women in computing and that's really wonderful. And I think that that's how we can move forward but yeah, we're kind of, we have a lot of ways to go. But I think that's wild. But I think it has taken a long time. I mean, tech started arguably in the 40s and 50s and here we are in 2016 talking about, but I think we are at a tipping point actually. It feels that way. And these mega trends, they tend to start early like on an S-curve and then they accelerate really fast. I don't know, Kevin, what your thought is, but I feel like we're on the really steep part of that S-curve. I mean, everybody is hopping in to this topic now and we've been on it for years and we're really proud of that. But we have some good company now. I mean, I think you're right that there is something happening here but we don't want to be too optimistic because already in our work so far, the interviews that we've conducted, women who have been in the tech space for decades are saying that even today they are getting harassed, they're being made to feel unwelcome, that they are not able to achieve the things in their careers that they want to be able to because they are women, they believe. So I'm excited that we're able to be in this place right now. And yet I'm also aware that I think we're finding that the problem is very severe and it's massive and so we have a lot of work to do. And you're talking about, in the United States, this is not, right, this is local, right? That's right, yeah. You hang out the coasts a lot. Indeed, indeed. I think it's interesting too that you're talking about as a trend that is improving because I think it ties into a larger cultural question that we have to kind of, we have to figure out a different way to perceive gender in our society at large because computing you're saying started in the 40s and 50s. That's when women were computing. Women were doing most of the computing and it wasn't a desirable job at the time. And then when they started to be able to have careers and make money from it and it became a desirable job, that's when it becomes a man's game. So it's like this sort of other issue that we have as a society and as a culture where we believe that something that is desirable then goes into the field of men. So it's like we can say more women are coming into computing and tech jobs and that's wonderful, but we need to be able to figure out what our other issue is where we have these gendered perspectives of what's good and what's bad. Well, what about compensation inequality? I mean, that's like- It would be nice to get to see that. That's the big one. And I was, I ran a panel the other day of a data scientist. And about 25% of the panel were women and of course I went right to the women issue. And then afterwards we were at a reception and I started asking them questions about compensation. I said, do you feel like you're compensated the same as your male counterparts? And they all said, no. Well, what are you going to do about it? Well, I think I'm going to speak up about it. But so a lot of it is just, as you were saying earlier, just trying to be assertive and fight for yourself, right? That's why I teach my daughters, right? That's great. So, but there's economics and women are paid less than men, generally. So they come in and actually now, against the law in Massachusetts, to ask what your previous compensation is, right? That was just passed. So it won't come into effect, I believe, for another year or two. And so part of that is that when you answer, they say, oh, okay, well, I don't have to pay you more. So there's not some kind of band of compensation that you put people in. And then something that I'm looking into is, you know, like Ellen Paz, the former CEO of Reddit, she kind of was trying to change the way that we look at those things. And I think that's what's really interesting about this recent legislation as well is like, maybe, you know, you can put in place some laws or some regulations or change the rules or change the environment, because maybe the issue is not women, maybe the issue is the environment, just maybe. I don't know. Yeah, well, it's probably a combination of a lot of things and public policy can certainly help shape. Private companies as well. And I think the tech sector is really on the forefront of kind of changing the way that we think about workplaces. I mean, yes, but I find it's very bifurcated. I don't know if you've seen this in your studies. Like I say, I mean, I always use IBM as an example, because I think, and not the, you know, CalTow then, but I think they are unique and heal it back to a certain extent. Larger companies tend to be more sensitized to this issue. Startups, not so much. And even, you know, rising star smaller companies, not so much. It depends on if you have an HR department or if you hire women. There you go. Or if a woman started the company. I mean, there are many more women, you know, companies, startups founded by women that I encounter these days, and they tend to be more sensitized to the issue, but. It's just a matter of perspectives. Like my fellow fellow, Karis, who Stad is working on, she's kind of looking at how we've seen research that shows that when you have a diverse workplace, it is better for the company. Just, you know, financially and the employees are happier and things are generally better. So why hasn't everyone jumped on that, even if it's just for a financial reason? It doesn't make any sense. It's that our biases are holding us back. Well, you're right. I'm sure that I've seen data that suggests, you know, diverse companies are more successful, et cetera, different perspectives and easier to find opportunities and so forth, but, okay, we got it close. I'll give you the last word. Things you're looking forward to at the event. Any final thoughts? I think there are so many amazing panels on such a diverse range of topics, which is really exciting because there are so many, like again, when we talk about women in tech, like that can mean a huge span of things. And I think they do a pretty good job of covering that. There's some hackathons, there's some gaming panels. There's a lot of keynotes with really cool people in venture capitalism and CEOs and engineers and coders and there's even some stuff looking at culture and perception of what is ideal. You know, there's an author, Susan Kane, who wrote that book, Quiet, about how introverts can be valued for what they can bring to situations. There's a lot. I'm really excited. It's gonna be good. Awesome. Oh, I just wanted to add, if I may, that going back to the issue of compensation, right, and doing this entire project, it's not just up to women to advocate for themselves. It's also up to all of us, including men, to advocate for women and with women together. So there is something about collaboration and working together that's so essential to achieve the kinds of things that we want to do. Yeah, and create value for all. Okay, great. Thanks very much. Thank you. You guys for coming on. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. Good luck at the event. Appreciate it. All right, thanks for watching everybody. We'll see you next time. This is The Cube.