 Welcome to JSA TV and JSA podcast, the newsroom for telecom and data center professionals. I'm Laura Nolan. Here with me is Tabada Madarin, Chair of Suboptix Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging Working Group. Tabada, welcome to JSA TV. Hi Laura, thank you very much for inviting me to this interview and hi everybody for joining us as well. Let's start at the beginning. Why was Suboptix Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging Workgroup created in the first place? Well, first of all, I would like to talk about Suboptix Association. Suboptix is a non-profit association that was established in 1986 and is active in the international undersea communication industry and best known for the convention event that takes place every three years. Widely considered to be the global summit of Sumerian Cable community. And in the Suboptix conference in 2019, the association got a broader approach, more objective, you know, and because they got a new elected committed and instead of only focusing in the event that happened three years, they want to offer more activities to the members and to the community. And they involved in education. They created a fund for education. They also have online resources. They create like a new platform using hybrid where all the members can access all the information, presentation, because the association has 30 years, all the documentation that the people can access videos and conference like these or workshops and webinars. And they also created working groups. That's where they created diversity and inclusion working groups, along with other working groups, technical working group as well. And I have been working in this working group since the creation in 2019. And I have the honor to share the group since the beginning of 2020. The working group was created especially to foster innovation and to attract diverse talents to the industry. We want to promote culture and ethnic equality, respecting and evaluating differences, including but not limited to age, gender, ethnicity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, and on the represented markets. Today we are 12 members active working in this wonderful working group. And we belong to different companies in the industry. Let me ask you about mentoring. So the mentoring group. This is the group's second round of your mentoring program. So can you tell us more about the mentoring aspect? Yes, actually, well, the first edition was really a success. And we have 31 participants. But before that, when we created this mentoring program in association with the Suboptic Association, we have the support of the association. And we want to promote and develop cultural alignment, cross functional integration through the industry and develop career development for the subsea industry. And the crowd was created to encourage the expert to share the experience that they have to share with the new generations of workers that they're going to be replacing the experts today. And the DIB aims to make a mentoring easy. So that we create like a framework to help the mentors and the mentee. Also, we are the team, the committee, the Suboptic Mentoring Program Committee is supporting the program by we are pairing the teams, the best match we think we are considering language, time zone where the people is OK to experience what they are looking for. And then so they can spend quality time together. OK, and we provide a handbook. We create a handbook with easy steps so we can guide them to use it. And I think we receive very good feedback about using that tools from them. Tabata, you mentioned you're getting a lot of feedback and success from the program with 16 mentees completing the first round, the first initiative. What are some of the stories that you're hearing about how it's helping the participants in the program? What are you hearing? Well, we receive a great feedback from the participant of the program. And we have networking sessions that we participate and allow them to express what their feelings are, what their experience. And also, suggest any improvement that we can make to the program. And I can share with you one quote from a mentor, for example, that we received. And let me read it really quickly. And this is from Eve Rilish, Product Marketing Manager for Autical at Cisco. She's a mentor. This mentoring program was terrific. I got to use all my business skills to guide my mentee on this journey, as well as help out with some simple solution. Sometimes it is just take them until they voice their concerns or weakness. And this program is designed to help them. So we bring more folks into the sub default as some of us live it. With filling the gaps and optical transport with smart young people and addressing the diversity needed to change the environment in this program is a huge help to all. Let's all keep it going. Wow, that's a powerful testimonial. That's wonderful. And just a testament to the great work that the program is doing and going in for round two. Let's take a step back for a moment. So as you mentioned, your experience and you've got more than 23 years experience in the telecom industry. How do you think everyone in the industry can pitch in to support the future of the industry? Well, actually, I really believe it is in the interest of the entire industry and society at large to support the recruitment, development and encouragement of young minds. So we are facing a big challenge today. And that support guidance and imparting information are crucial aspect of career development. But taking the time to share experience can be difficult. Especially when the market is a busy and professional. And we are, you know, a stretch and stress and working. And so during this busy time, it is a challenge to find the time to help others. But if recent times have touched us anything, especially with the COVID, with everybody happened, it's important of society. And that it is only by working together that we can all achieve success. I really encourage all the people in this industry to join the program. And when I'm talking about the industry, I'm talking about a lot of broader companies because maybe before 20 years, before in the past, we thought about telecoms, about the companies who communicated. But now we are the telecoms. We are the data centers company. We are the hyperscale and OTTs, the content providers, all together power the Internet. So we need to work together. And that's what's about to create this mentors program. And everybody can be a mentor. Everybody. Because we have different kind of mentee. The mentees are in the middle of their career. The mentees are entering a career. And also we wanted to grow this program to go to high schools, to go to the STEAM program. So we have to let them know that we are here powering the Internet. That this is a community that are welcome them. And we want to teach them what we can offer. Wonderful platform that you have. I want to talk about where our listeners can go to learn more. So we talked about getting involved. So where can they go to learn more about the mentoring program or the working group? Where should we point them to? Well, they can go to the web page in subapp.org. And also it's directly, they can write to our email. I hope you can see the address there. We send them as an email and we write back to you. We have forms that you quickly fill in with your information and we put you in the program. So we are promoting the program for the second edition in the next two months. And we hope we can start in January and December or maybe in January to start the year. And well, contact us. And we have a LinkedIn group as well for mentoring programs if you can join us as well. Find us there. Thank you very much for these opportunities. Absolutely. Well, lots of places to check it out. Get involved, take a few moments and just browse around the working group's mentoring and give what you can. And we appreciate your time so much Tabada for sharing with us and sharing with us this opportunity for our industry. Thank you. Thank you very much. And thank you viewers for tuning into JSA TV and JSA Podcast. Happy networking.