 Hey everyone, welcome to theCUBE's coverage of the International Women's Showcase for 2022. I'm your host, Lisa Martin. I'm pleased to welcome Nancy Wong, the general manager of data protection and governance at AWS to the program. Nancy, it's great to have you. Thanks so much for having me, Lisa. And I really hope that this is hopefully the last year that we'll be celebrating International Women's Day all virtually. I agree, I agree. Well, we're going in that right direction globally. So let's cross our fingers. Talk to me a little bit about your role at AWS and what you do there. Sure. So as a jam of AWS data protection and governance, a lot of, we tackle quite a few problems that are biggest customers face, right? When they think about how do I manage my data, right? Especially in this digital world. And speaking of the pandemic, how much data has been generated by consumers, by devices, by systems, right? And servers, how do you protect all of that data? Especially we hear about cyber crime, cyber attacks, data breaches, it's really important to make sure that all of our customers have a coherent strategy around not just management, right? But also protection and really how you govern your data, right? And there's just so many awesome conversations that my team and I have had lately with CISOs or Chief Technology Officers on this topic as it evolves. Data protection is so critical. It's one of my favorite topics to talk about cybersecurity as well. Talk to me about what it means though if we keep this at a bit of a different level to be an operator within the big ecosystem that is AWS. Yeah, and that's actually one of the favorite aspects of my role, right? Which is, I get to innovate every day on behalf of my customers. So for example, I love having one-to-one dialogues, love having architecture conversations where we brainstorm, right? Those type of conversations help inform how we deliver and develop products. And so in an operator role, right? For the women in the audience today is it really gives you that perspective into not just how, what type of products do you want to build that delight your customers but also from an engineering, right? And a bottom line perspective of, well, how do you make this happen, right? How do you fund this? And how do you plan out your development milestones? What are, tell me a little bit about your background and then what makes women in technology such an important initiative for you to stand behind? Absolutely. So I'm so proud today to see that the number of women or the percentage of women enrolled at engineering curriculums just continue to rise, right? And especially as someone who went through an engineering degree in her undergraduate studies, that was not always the case. It's, so oftentimes, you know, I would look around the classroom and be the only woman on the lab bench or only woman in a CS classroom. And so when you have roles in tech specifically that require an undergraduate degree in computer science or a degree in engineering, that helps to, that only serves to really reduce the population of eligible candidates, right? Who then, if you look at that pool of eligible candidates, who then you can invest and accelerate through the career ladder to become leaders in tech, well, that's where you may end up with a representation issue, right? And that's why we have, for example, so few women leaders in tech that we can look up to as role models. And that's really the problem or the gap that I'm very passionate about solving. And also Lisa, I'm really excited to tell you a little bit more about advancing women in tech, which is a 501st and three nonprofit organization that I started to tackle this exact problem. Talk to me about that because it's one of the things that you bring up is, we always say when we're having conversations like this, we can't be what we can't see. We need to be able to see those female leaders to your point, there aren't a ton in comparison to the male leaders. So talk to me about advancing women in technology, why you founded this and what you guys are accomplishing. Absolutely. So it's been such a personal journey as well, just starting this organization called Advancing Women Tech because I started it in 2017. So when I really was just starting out as a product manager, I was at another big tech company at the time. And what I really realized is looking around. I had so many, for example, bosses, managers, peer leaders who are really invested in growing me as a product manager and growing my tech and career. And this is right after I'd made the transition from the federal government into big tech. With that said though, looking around, there weren't that many women tech leaders that I could look up to or get coffee or just have a mentoring conversation. And quickly I realized, well, it's not so much that women can't do it. It's a fact that we're not advancing enough women into leadership roles. And so really we have to look at why that is. And we, from a personal perspective, one contribution towards that angle is upskilling. So if you think about what skills one needs as one climbs a career ladder, whether that's your first people management role or your first manager or manager's role or obviously for bigger leaders when they start managing thousands, tens of thousands of individuals, well, all of that requires different skills. And so learning those skills about how to manage people, how to motivate your teams effectively is super, super important. And of course on the other side, and one that I near and dear to me is that of mentorship and executive sponsorship because you can have all the skills in the world, right? And especially with digital learning and AWIT is very involved with Coursera and AWS and producing and making those resources readily available and accessible. Well, if you don't have those opportunities, if you don't have mentors and sponsors who are willing to push you or give you a step ladder to those roles, well, you're still not going to get there, right? And so that's why actually, if you look at the AWIT mission, it's really those two pillars working very closely together to help advance women into leadership roles. The idea of mentorship and sponsorship is so critical. I think a lot of people don't understand the difference between a mentor and a sponsor. How do you define that difference and how do you bring them into the organization so that they can be mentors and sponsors? Yeah, absolutely. And there's, these two terms are often used today so interchangeably that I do get a lot of questions around, well, what is the difference, right? And how does, let's say a mentor become a sponsor? So maybe just taking a few steps back, right? When you have, let's say questions around compensation or, hey, I have some job offers, which ones do I consider? And you ask someone a question or advice, well, that person's likely your mentor, right? And typically a mentor is someone who you can ask those questions on a repeated basis who's very accessible to you. Well, a sponsor takes that a few steps forward in the sense that they are sponsoring you into a role or into a project or initiative that you on your own may not be able to achieve. And by doing so, I think what's really differentiates a sponsor from a mentor is that the sponsor will actually put their own reputation online, right? They're using their own political capital in order to make sure that you get into that role, you get into that room, right? And that's why it's so key, for example, especially if you have that relationship already with a person who's your mentor, you're able to ask questions or advice from to convert them into a sponsor so that you can accelerate your career. Great definition description and great recommendations for converting mentors to sponsors. You know, I only learned the difference about a mentor and a sponsor a few years ago at another Women in Tech event that I was hosting. And I thought it's brilliant, it makes perfect sense. We need more people to understand the difference, the synergies and how to promote mentors to sponsors. Talk to me now about advancing women in tech plus the power of AWS. How are they helping this nonprofit to really accelerate? Sure, so from an organization perspective, right? There's many women, for example, across the tech companies who are part of advancing women in tech. Obviously Amazon, of course, as an employee has a very large community within who's part of AWIT. But we also have members across the tech industry from startups to VC firms to, of course, Google, Microsoft and Netflix, you name it. With that said, you know, what AWS has done with AWIT is actually very special in the sense that if you go to the Coursera platform, Coursera.org-class-AWIT or AWIT, you can see our two Coursera specializations, four courses each that go through the real-world product management fundamentals or the business side, the technical skills and even interviewing for mid-career product management roles. And the second specialization, which I'm super excited to share today, is actually geared towards getting folks ramped up and prepared to successfully pass the cloud practitioners exam, which is one of the industry recognized standards about understanding the AWS cloud and being functional in the AWS cloud. This summer, of course, and I'm sharing kind of a sneak peek announcement that I will be making tomorrow with the University of Pennsylvania, is that we're kicking off a program for the Masters of CIS program where the computer information systems masters students to actually go through this Coursera specialization, which is produced by AWIT, sponsored by AWS and AWS training and certifications has so generously donated exam vouchers for these students so that they can then go on and be certified in the AWS cloud. So that's one just really cool collaboration that we are doing between AWS and AWIT to get more qualified folks in the door, in tech jobs and hopefully at jobs in AWS. That's a great collaboration. What are some of the goals in terms of metrics, the number of women that you want to get into the program and complete the program? What are some of those on your radar? Absolutely. So one of the reasons, of course, that the Masters of CIS program that University of Pennsylvania caught my eye, notwithstanding I graduated from there, but also that just the statistics of women enrolled. So what's really notable about this program is it's entirely online, which as a university creating a master's degree fully online, well, it takes a ton of resources from the university, from the faculty. And what's really special about these students is that they're already full-time adult professionals, which means that they're working a full-time job, they might be taking care of family obligations, and they're still finding time to advance themselves, to acquire a master's degree in CIS. And best of all, 42% of these students are women, right? And so that's a number that is multiples of what we're finding in engineering curriculum today. And so my theory is, well, if you go to a student population that is over 40%, 42 to be exact, percent women, and enable these women to be certified in AWS cloud to have direct interview prep and mentorship from AWS software development leaders, well, that greatly increases their chances of getting a full-time role at AWS, which then we can help them advance their careers to further and further roles in software development. So is this curriculum also open to women who aren't currently in tech, to be able to open the door for them to get into tech and STEM fields? Absolutely. And so in my bad and remiss in mentioning, which is students of this master's in CIS program are actually students not from tech already. So they're not in the tech field, and they did not have a degree in CIS or even engineering as part of their undergraduate studies. So it's truly folks who are outside of tech that are 42% women that were getting into the tech industry with this collaboration between AWS, AWIT, and the University of Pennsylvania. That's outstanding to get them in from completely different fields into tech. How do you help women have the confidence to say, I want to try this, because if we think about every company today as a tech company, it's a data company. It has to be to be competitive. The pandemic taught us that everything we're able to do online and digitally, for example, but how do you help women get the confidence to say, okay, I'm going to go from a completely different field into tech? Absolutely. So if we define tech of course as big tech or now the main companies, right? I myself made that transition, which is why it is a topic near and dear to me because I can personally speak to my journey because I didn't start my career out in tech, right? Yes, I studied engineering, but with that said, my first full-time job out of college was with the federal government because I wanted to go and build healthdata.gov, right? Which gave folks a lot of access to the healthcare data droves, right? That existed within the US government, the CMS, NIH, CDC, so on and so forth. But that was quite a big change from then taking a product management job at Google, right? And so how did I make that change? Well, a lot of it came from the mentors that I had, right? What I call my personal board of directors who gave me that confidence. And sure, I mean, even today, I still have imposter syndrome where I think, am I good enough, right? Should I be leading this organization, right? Of data protection and governance, but I think what it boils down to is inner confidence, right? And goes back to those two pillars of having the right skills and also the right mentors and sponsors who are willing to help sponsor you into those opportunities and help sponsor you to success. Absolutely. Great advice and recommendations. Thanks for sharing your background, Nancy. It's outstanding to see where you started, to where you are now and also to what you're enabling for so many other females to get into tech with the AWIT program combined with AWS and UPenn. Exciting stuff. Can't wait to talk to you next year to see where you guys go from here. Absolutely, Lisa. And what I'm really looking forward to sharing with you next year is the personal testimonials of other women who have gone through the AWIT, the AWS, the UPenn program and have gotten their tech jobs and also promotions. That sounds like a great thing to look forward to. I'm looking forward to that. Nancy, thanks so much for your time and the insight that you shared. Thanks so much for having me, Lisa. My pleasure. For Nancy Wong, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's coverage of the International Women's Showcase 2022.