 Here's your host, Jeff Frick. Hi, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at the VM Women at VMWare. Little side presentation running concurrently with VMWare 2015. Great presentation, panel discussion, and we're really excited to be joined by Sheryl Chamberlain, longtime CUBE alum, huge advocate of women in tech, and an esteemed panelist. Welcome. Thank you, welcome you. You should be here with us. Thanks for coming. We're here. That's where we go. So we met the first time ever we met. I was really talking about women in tech years ago at EMC. So talk about just kind of the evolution of the advocacy and kind of the escalation of people really grabbing hold of this issue. Yeah, to me, it's really about male advocates. It's always been about male advocates. If you think about the work that I was doing at EMC, all the programs that I had was about leadership and innovation, and setting the stage for what that is, and then realizing that it's not about just women, but recognizing it's about the partnership that we create with men. So when I would invite people to any of my events, I never told them that it was a women's program, but it was run by me and all my women friends, and you showed up to that as you do now. But now it's more about, it's more formal that males and men and the men in our community are the advocates that are taking this forward. That's how it's changed. Yeah, well, and I think part of it is the language of business, which is ROI. And clearly the studies show out that the diversity of opinions are going to give you more innovation, different points of view, different ways to solve a problem. So it's kind of neat that it's about women in equal opportunity, but it's the bottom of the line. It's about business, and if it wasn't, it wouldn't happen. I agree. But if you really think about what innovation is, it's about men and women working together from different backgrounds and different skill sets, different areas that they've worked in in their lives, and then bringing that together into the innovation that we're driving forward. I mean, I said this on stage, I'm an accountant, maybe not. I'm an auditor, maybe not, definitely. But all of these skills around what I do today in technology are related to the past experiences that I've had and how I bring this forward into what we do. So really, I think I was always in sales, but didn't really admit it. Well, we're all in sales. We're always been in sales. If you're not in sales, then you need to get yourself in sales. But you talked about taking the big swing, and I love some of the stories. I actually learned some stuff on the panel about really putting yourself out there and getting out of your comfort zone and taking a chance. So A, where did you learn to do that? And B, how do you help others who don't necessarily have that innate desire or ability or they're afraid to say, take that big swing, take a gamble? I have to say that I learned it from my father. When I was a little girl, maybe four or five years old, I'd say, hey, I wanna play and he'd say, I don't need to go play with you. Here's a ball, go to the park. If you have the ball, other people will wanna play ball with you. You're in charge because you have the ball and that's how you start to build the relationships. So for me, it was the sense that I could go anywhere that I want to and because I have the idea that I could bring the idea forward and bring other people in. But it has to be the one that's thinking about what we could do together and it's not what we do alone and that's what the new leadership level is. So that's really how I look at it. But also I just get very excited about doing things different than I've done before and I'm not afraid to challenge myself in those new places and that's what we need to teach other people is. If there's something that you're interested in, take a spot on a team that's already doing that so you're recognized as one of the players and then as being a player, people will believe in you because they know that you're there. Make sure you have a voice that you're not just on the team quiet, that people hear you and they know your point of view. So those are a couple of things that I could share. Well, and the other thing like you talked about is when you do new things, it's scary but you get on a steep learning curve and that's really when you have the most fun in your job and your career and anything is when you're on a steep learning curve and new things are coming all the time but you got to take that risk, you got to jump in. That's right and the steep learning curve is what keeps you fresh and alive and that's where the energy comes from. If you really think about it, it's what we're doing differently today that keeps us focused on what's possible. If you just do the same thing all the time, day in and day out and you're not learning, I don't know if you're really alive inside yourself. Well, the other thing we talked a little bit about with Lori a few minutes ago is there's bias and we're all biased for functions of who we grew up with and here we are, right, we've lived but we can change behavior and I thought that you had a really specific suggestion on the panel that people can adopt and that's to ask open-ended questions and listen and who knows what you might find out. That's right, well that's innate for me because I started college when I was 16 years old so I'm here, this very young person trying to learn from the world around me so I realized that by asking questions that people would teach me and that they would also be part of that community or that team that was teaching me and taking me forward so it is that sense of asking questions and having people be part of the world that you live in, like we are together, that's what makes a difference. And listen, right, that's why you have two ears in one mouth you're supposed to use them in that proportion which a lot of people don't quite get. So the last thing, you talked about paying it forward and really what does that mean to pay it forward? You're in a position now, you're a senior executive at a big company, you've had a successful career, what does it mean to pay it forward? How does that make you feel when you get an opportunity to kind of help some of these younger folks coming up? Yeah, paying it forward actually is what I prefer to do than paying it for myself but paying it forward you actually build a community around you of people that whose lives that you've touched, you've given them some direction, you think through what they're doing and it could be anything from a LinkedIn profile and looking at it when they're looking for a new job and say, well, the photograph that you have there doesn't represent you or looking through a little bit of information and then calling them and saying, I know this is what you wanna do but can you just tweak it a little bit and saying it a way that they learn and they don't feel that you're overly analyzing what they're doing, you become a partner and then sometimes those people move above you or beside you or around you so paying it forward creates the community and the power of the world that we live in. And it's good if they move up. Andry Brian Lilly at Equinex and he keeps track of all the people that have worked for him that are now CIOs and it's almost like he rings the little bell when a new one gets promoted. So Cheryl, thanks for taking a few minutes, great panel and as always, great to see you. Thank you, good to see you too. Absolutely, so I'm Jeff Frick, we're at the VM Women at VM World 2015, the side panel, I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching theCUBE, see you next time.