 Hey everyone, welcome to theCUBE's coverage of the International Women's Showcase for 2022. I'm your host, Lisa Martin. Pleased to be here with Anna Green, the head of Small Medium Business, SMB, for Asia Pacific and Japan at Amazon Web Services. Anna, it's great to have you on the program. Lisa, I am delighted to be here and really excited to be talking about what we're gonna be talking about today, which is diversity and women in technology. One of the great things about International Women's Day, Tuesday, March 8th, is there's always a campaign theme. This year's theme is breaking the bias. What does that mean to you and are we on our way to actually accomplish that? Look, breaking the bias really is about all of us being more self-aware in our workplaces. Really what it means to me is understanding that the communities and the employment, the employee population that all of us work in is diverse. And AWS is a great example of that, right? We are a global organization and our employees come from across the world. I am representing people from across Asia Pacific and Japan. They look, feel and think differently to people in other parts of the world. So really what breaking the bias is about is understanding our unconscious biases and thinking differently about how we approach conversations in the workplace to make sure that we're including everyone in the conversation. And honestly, Lisa, when you do that, you get much better business outcomes. I've seen that for sure. Definitely, there's some stats we can talk about later that I think really articulate that point incredibly well. But I want to talk about your background. You pivoted many times from lawyer to the CEO of ANZ Bank in the Philippines to now a leader at Amazon Web Services. Talk to you about your career path with all those different pivots. How did you get to where you are today? Yeah, I mean, honestly, I recognize that I don't have a traditional orthodox career plan, but that's by intention. I'm somebody who's always been really interested in the world around me. And I would say that my biggest driver is learning and being curious, which as you know is an Amazon leadership principle. So it's probably not a surprise that I ended up here at AWS. But really for me, when I've thought about my career and I have thought about it intentionally, I've been willing to put my hand up and take risks where I think probably others around me were not feeling as safe. And that's a function of who I am, but it's also a function of what I see women wanting to and needing to do more in order to sort of bring their career forward. So as you say, I started my, I had a pure technical lens when I started my career, which was being a lawyer. And I spent a lot of time just learning that and holding that skill set. But I knew Lisa, even then, that that was not what I wanted to do forever. I wanted to do more than simply sit in an office and negotiate documents. Even though that was an exciting career, there was more that I wanted to do. So off the back of that, I moved into banking and was able to learn and build some really important skill sets in terms of thinking about being a leader. And those skill sets include things like running a balance sheet, managing people, thinking differently about risk and compliance, which then allowed me to, I guess, run a bank and run the business. And then finally, how did I then pivot into technology? Well, it was a long conversation. If I'm honest with you, you know, there were conversations back and forth and I thought to myself, am I doing the right thing here? But what I could see for sure was that the world was moving to a technological context. And for me, not to take an opportunity to do a job like running a technology business across Asia, basically in Japan, it just wasn't a possibility for me. I had to take the opportunity. So here I am. And that's one of the most exciting things, I think, is that these days, every company has to be a tech company. Every company has to be a data company, a digital company. One of the lessons we've learned in the last couple of years. But another thing that we've learned is you mentioned skill sets, but it isn't just about those hard skill sets. What are some of those key soft skill sets that you think are really outstanding and really help to break down the bias? Yeah, again, really interesting. So as I'm talking to women, when they hear about my career journey, a lot of them are surprised. They're like, how could you move into technology? And I think the challenge is that a lot of women view technology simply as a coding context. They view it as something that only someone with technical skills can do. And that is simply not the case. So if you look at a recent study by Deloitte Access Economics in Australia, for instance, the soft skill intensive occupations are going to account for 2 thirds of all jobs by 2030. So if you think about that, having a pure technical skill set, certainly if you're going to do something like be a solutions architect or be a coder, it's really important that you must have those skills. But technology businesses are building and growing like no other. So we need all of those soft skills like project management, like P&L accountability and responsibility, like learning how to manage teams. These are core skills that have nothing to do with kind of fundamental technology. Understanding that business context is important, but there are a lot of women out there who could be working in technology now, but are a little bit scared to do so because they're thinking maybe they don't have the skills and I would encourage them to think differently. I think your background with your pivots is a great articulation of, you can take so many different backgrounds, law, banking, into tech. There's probably a fair amount of overlap there, but you also have, you have in and of yourself thought diversity because of your background. I think that's another important thing for women to learn how important that thought diversity can be in any sort of job that they do, whether they're in a technical field or maybe they're in finance or operations or sales for a technology company. You guys talk about builders at AWS. Talk to me about what a builder is, what's that definition and what are some of those key skill sets, hard and soft that those builders exemplify? Yeah, so we are very build focused at AWS because we're building on behalf of our customers. But what that means is that the trades that make you a builder are exemplified by our leadership principles. So things like being curious, as you've just pointed out, Lisa, that these are a tenants of being a good builder, pursuing continuous learning. So whilst you may know that you're good at something, you're not scared of trying something else. You're not scared of training and learning about something else, being able to look around corners and take calculated risks. I mean, whilst it may sound like my career journey has been pivot, pivot, pivot, actually, if we're honest, these have been very intentional moves that I've made with my career to try to learn, as I said, to try to grow. And I've been fortunate and have been intentional also about building that leadership profile. But that's because I'm really fundamentally interested in how business and how people are connecting across the world. And as I said to you, in a building context, really that's about learning about how to build and run digital businesses. And that at the end of the day is, I guess the key message that I would send to everyone out there, getting involved in a career in technology is not a bad move. No, it's definitely not a bad move. I love the curiosity angle. That's one of those things that I'd love to hear. How do you encourage that? One of the biggest challenges, if we look at the stats of girls in STEM programs from primary school to high school to university, as we see the numbers going down, we see them going up in university. And then of course, when we're in, we're looking at the raw tech numbers, the number of women in technical positions is quite low. To your point, there's many other opportunities besides technical positions. How do you encourage women to not be afraid to raise their hand and ask a question, even if they think maybe this is a dumb question? It's such a, I think, you know, honestly, we need to see more women in leadership roles. And I think it's incumbent upon the organizations that are running our businesses, that they make this a priority. Because you can't see, oh, sorry, you can't be, what you can't see, Lisa. And so it's great for us to talk about it. But once we start seeing women having active business-led conversations, that's where we're really going to see the dial shift. I have a 13-year-old daughter. And she's deeply interested in everything on her computer. And what I try to do is encourage her to think differently about the type of roles that she could have if she was interested in, say, for instance, graphic design. She loves drawing, singing. There are so many ways you can do, although, you know, YouTube videos maybe not, but, you know, ways in which you can engage with technology to pursue a career that's interesting to you, regardless of your gender. So maybe the first part is making sure that we are talking about female leaders and what they're doing. I think also what we can do is start building programs where we're involving women in building skills and certification skills. So here at AWS, we've got this amazing event which we've built called She Builds. And I'm an active mentor for that. And what that's all about is kind of connecting women in the tech community and those who are interested with programs that really speak to, you know, the way that women are thinking about their roles. So we have like-minded peers. We have senior leaders. We have certification skills programs, all as part of that. And we also have male allies. It's really important to include our male allies in that conversation. And you will have heard about things like male champions of change. These are very important conversations because again, what we know from statistics is that women are not as likely to build networks and sponsors as men are. And that's not a statement of this mal-intense. What it means is that they just learn differently and think differently as they're building their careers. So if we're starting to get men involved in the conversation in a more meaningful way, it's a conversation that's inclusive. And that's really what I wanna drive. So I'm not sure I answered your question but I certainly got to a couple of points that I was interested in highlighting, which is it's a conversation that has to happen at a grassroots level, at a leadership level and across the organization in terms of metrics, data, understanding where women are and how to build and grow them. Right, but one of the things that you said that I was about to say was we can't be what we can't see. We need to be able to elevate those female leaders like yourself so that more younger women and even women who maybe have been in Techfield for a while can see the opportunities, the leadership. But you also brought up another great point and that is, and this is something I was gonna ask you about who are some of your mentors? And I imagine it's not just all females, it's gotta be men as well because you should point out it's incredibly important to have the men as allies. Yeah, absolutely. And certainly I wouldn't even be having this conversation with you now if I didn't have some amazing allies, both men and women, by my side as I've tracked this leadership journey. Certainly, Phil Davis who is the head of our commercial organization, Greg Pearson. These are people who have taken time out of their careers to sort of talk with me about how we can help to build and grow women leaders. And to me, that's impactful and I feel that that's an authentic engagement because there is a recognition in technology that we need to do more around this issue and I see senior leaders like Matt Garmin leading into the conversation. So for me, that's very inspiring. But I couldn't have answered that question without telling you that the people who probably inspire me most in the organization and within my network are those young women out there who are female founders. Now, I'm going to have to say a couple of names because I get the opportunity Lisa. I've got a part of a networking, a women's networking and mentoring organization. And we have women here in Singapore like Ping Ping Han who is building out an environmental education and sustainability digital business. We've got Francesca Chia who is building Go Get. She's already built it which is an on-demand workforce platform which has over 250,000 people online that are helping people in Malaysia to work and has helped immensely during COVID. So what we're seeing with these young women is that they're actually building the digital businesses of the future. And it's not about, I mean, what I'm seeing them do is invest their time and energy in building, as I said, kind of programs and models that are sustainable. So they're building businesses not just for the bottom line but also to help the communities in which we operate which to me is deeply inspirational. Absolutely and the female founders need much more visibility than they're getting and obviously much more funding. One last point that I want to bring up because this is really important is that there's some data that I know that you have about performance, company performance when there are females at the helm. Talk to me a little bit about that and how can we help get that word out there so more organizations understand the potential they have when they've got that thought diversity. Yeah, it's such a wonderful point and it's so well made now across media but I feel like we need to double down on it because this is not a piecemeal conversation about doing the right thing. Sometimes we view it that way and of course it is the right thing to have equity and diversity in our workplace. But in fact, there's so much data around how a diverse workforce creates better outcomes for business. So in 2020, we had a McKinsey survey that found that companies with more than 30% of women executives were more likely to outperform companies with this percentage. So there is now a huge amount of data that's starting to show us what a diverse and this is not just about gender, this is also about diversity across various lenses, culture, ethnicity, minority groups, et cetera. So and for me, Lisa, it's just common sense. So if you're building a business that is trying to reach the most number of customers, it really is intuitive that you need to have all of those customers represented around the table. If you only have a single point of view, you're not gonna represent all of those customers out there and increasingly those customers are expecting to be represented as part of your conversation in your business. So it totally makes sense from a business lens to build and recruit a diverse workforce. I couldn't agree more. One, I'd like to have one more question. Talk to me really quickly and briefly how are you building your teams to promote effectiveness through that diversity that as you just described can be so leading edge? Yeah, so what I'm doing is being intentional in my hiring practices. So this is something that all leaders can do. And that is really thinking carefully about filling the roles in my organization where I'm given a role to fill, making sure that I'm looking at that diverse candidates, not just the same candidates who might have applied before. And that means sometimes throwing the net a bit wider than what you might usually have and thinking differently about the candidates that are applying. So for instance, in my team, we have 50, 50 men and women. And we all come from very diverse backgrounds. We've got Indian, we've got Singaporean, we've got Australian talent, which means we've got a gender and cultural mix which is actually, as I said, bringing a very different lens to the conversation when we're trying to solve customer problems. And what I would say is collaboration and respect is the cornerstone of the way that we should be building teams. And diverse perspectives mean that our teams and the outcomes that we build are going to reflect the complexity of both the cross-cultural and the diverse gender lens within which all of our customers are doing business today. Anna, thank you so much for joining me today talking about the intentional credits that you've made in your career, how inspiring those are to others and also how we're making progress on breaking the bias. My pleasure, Lisa. It's wonderful to join you and thank you always to theCUBE for bringing us so much interesting data. For Anna Green, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's coverage of International Women Showcase 2022.