 Hey, welcome everybody. Jeff Frick here with the Q. We are on the campus at Stanford University, the Graduate School of Business, a beautiful facility. They had a new, the Night Center, I think it was called, built a couple of years ago. And really, one can argue, this is the heart of Silicon Valley. So many fantastic companies have come out of this place. All the way back to Sun, who people don't necessarily know, that was the Stanford University Network. And all the way up into Google and Yahoo, and a lot of companies that people are more familiar with. So we're excited to be here. They had a great little program here today, really on the future of innovation, a number of panels we wanted to run out for the folks that weren't fortunate enough to be able to attend and get you some of the insight, get the smartest people we can find and ask them the questions you'd like to ask them. So we're really excited to be joined by Fern Mandelbaum. She's been a fixture in the Valley for a very long time. She's done a ton of things, long resume, a lot of boards. But right now, partner and co-founder of Vista Venture Partners, and also a lecturer here at Stanford. Fern, great to see you. Yeah, great to see you, Jeff. Absolutely. So you ran a panel, really, on diversity. With women in technology and also underrepresented minorities, a really great panel, something that's been talked about over and over and over. But as Professor Strober said, she's been talking about it since 1972. What's the story? Why aren't we making progress? What do people need to do to kind of move this ball down the field? I think we are making progress. I think the fact that there's so much focus right now on diversity and particularly inclusion, you will see change. It doesn't happen quickly, right? We have to build awareness, and that's what companies are really doing. We're reporting data now. People are really committing to this and taking action. Yeah, we cover Anita Borg, and we'll be at the Grace Hopper event in October. We're excited, our third year. And two years ago, Anita Borg introduced this concept of a scoring sheet and they asked people to score themselves. Where are you on this journey? And even though the results won't necessarily be what you want them to be or what you wish them to be, at least it's a step. It's putting a benchmark down. It's putting something you can measure against so that you can start to make progress. You know, if you even think about Anita Borg and the conference, right? I don't know. It was 400, then 800, then 1600 people, right? They're doubling every year. Now there's 16,000. Right, they're at capacity. Right, right. There are so many people, so many fabulous women that are going to that, but if you notice this year, how many men were there, right? This is a conversation now that is not just amongst women. And that's what needed to happen. We need to speak about diversity, all aspects of diversity, and have everyone in the conversation. Right, and they actually had a panel, I guess it was a little bit of controversy a couple years ago where it was a man panel. Basically we need males to help support. So who are some of the people that are helping? And it created a little bit of a stir. It was a little bit of a hiccup within the thing, saying, you know, we need everybody to pull the rope in the same direction if we're gonna make progress. It is so critical. Mentoring sponsors, advocates need to be women and men. Recently my daughter told me a funny story. She literally got down on her knee and asked a guy, she has all women mentors. And she got down on her knee and asked a guy with like a bag of gummy worms or something if he would be her mentor. And I just love that she looked at it in a lighthearted way but that we all need to understand that we can learn from each other. This conversation about diversity and inclusion needs to be amongst LGBTQ, African-Americans, Latinas, women, men, white men. You know, it's everyone needs to be a part of this. Right, right. And then the other thing that you brought up in the panel and we talked to Lori Nishinza-McKenzie from the Clayman Institute, talking about, you know, we're all biased, we have bias, we live every day, we see things, we're brought up by our parents, our friends, our school, our family. So we have bias, so really the key is not to say don't be biased, it's really to kind of recognize, be aware and try to work through the bias that we all have just naturally. I think the term unconscious bias, it sounds like a disease. And I prefer blind spots. It's not a disease, we all have it, it's neurological, it's built in, it helps us, it makes us, you know, it's a defense mechanism in some ways, but the issue is exactly what you said. The more we're aware of what we do and how it affects other people, the more we can change, right? And for all of us to know, like when I go into a company and I talk to them about the biases that exist, I point out my own first. You know, it's not like you're bad, I'm good, we all have it. Yeah, and you talked about kind of the three As, or actually more than three As, you know, action, awareness, accountability, because we need to get beyond just the conversation and as came up in the panel. It's the series of day-to-day activities, the little tiny actions that in some actually move the ball. Without those, it's just a conversation. Yeah, I think of them as acts of inclusion. They can be as small as mentoring someone different thing yourself. In a meeting, making sure everyone speaks. Not just about how their day is going, but about an important issue. Taking turns, planning the group outing, right? You know, I hear all the time in companies, we always go and do acts, and not everyone feels included. Right, right. But then larger acts of inclusion are things like committing to interviewing two minorities. Whatever that minority may be. If it's a group of women primarily on a team, be committed to hiring men. You know, if it's mostly Asian men, you know, talk to Polynesian women. You know, whatever it is so that you're committing to finding the best people you can, but different perspectives. Right, and you brought up a great point again in the panel, it comes up time and time again, that this isn't just the right thing to do. There's positive business outcomes, diversity of opinions, and problem solving, it generates better outcomes. No one. So I work with a lot of companies. You know, I have a venture fund, I teach at the business school, I teach in the engineering school, and I work with companies on this. And unless I talk to the CEO or the partner in charge of a venture fund and they tell me they're committed to this because it will make their business better, I'm not going to work with them. To just do it because you should do it, that will not create change. Right, right. There are business reasons to do it. Will it also feel better? Will you create an inclusive culture? Will people be happier? I absolutely believe so. But the reason to do it is it's good for business. And do they get that? Is that a hard thing to communicate or they have thinking about it? I mean, what's kind of the feedback you get in this process on your advising these companies? So some people believe it. Those that talk to me believe it. When I go into a company, I don't expect everyone to just see me in high five. As a matter of fact, often people really don't like me because I'm bringing up some really difficult topics. My goal is for them to talk about it and to have this be part of the conversation, not to be a taboo topic, right? This is a good thing. It's like, how do we hire people? Who do we want as part of our company? We're building for the future. Not everyone agrees. But you know what? If we change one by one, two by two, four by four, you know, you will see more and more change. Right, right. And to follow up on that from kind of your perspective, so you're out talking to companies and you're also in the classroom. So as you kind of compare and contrast, there's a brand new class actually out here having lunch right now. The younger generation coming through the next couple of classes that are coming out of Stanford. Do you see a change in behavior? Do you see a change in kind of acceptance? Or even then, is it still birds of a feather but just a different flock than maybe the traditional flocks? How we kind of separated things? I think it's really cool that the business school has a class called Entrepreneurship from Diverse Perspectives. Your class. Right, my class. And we bring in the most awesome speakers, but they're not all white men. They're, I mean, you know, think about all the incredible women around here. Absolutely. You know, Amy Chang, Amy Pressman, Julia Hartz. I mean, I can go on and on. They're phenomenal women venture capitalists, right? You know, Patricia Nacosh, Maaha Ibrahim, Aileen Lee, Amirico, like I, you know, I have a wait list for people to come to my class. We need to highlight those people, right? We, there are so many awesome people running these companies that people at the business school need to see, right? I can do it like them. But I'm also teaching a class this year called Building Diverse and Inclusive Organizations. You know, for, it all comes down to your manager, right? And so if we can have great managers leaving this school and all schools, understanding how to build this into their organizations, so it's not about just attracting these people, it's about retaining them, having them thrive within your company. So if the people leaving here know how to do that, understand why it's important from a business perspective, and I would argue societally, but from a business perspective, they will build those into their organizations. And even if they're not running a company, if you go to a company, who matters to you? It's your manager, right? I have a company called Better Up, which is a coaching platform for managers, right? We need to train managers on how to be inclusive, how to create these cultures within their companies. Yeah, well, it's a positive wrap. There was some conversation in the panel, is it kind of a positive looking future or a negative looking future in some of the other conversations about AI and machines and robots and this and that, but you got a positive outlook and it sounds like things are going in the right direction and a refreshing, great class of kids coming through to move this along. I think we will move along. All right, awesome. Well, Fern, thanks for taking a few minutes out of your day and stopping by theCUBE. Yeah, sure thing. All right, reporting from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE. See you next time. Thanks for watching.