 Hello, welcome to theCUBE's presentation of Women in Tech Global Events, celebrating International Women's Day. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE here in Palo Alto, California. You get two great guests, Sidney Paul, head of Solution Architects for Public Sector in Mexico for AWS, and Fernandez Menardi, who's also the head of Solution Architects for Public Sector in Brazil, both with AWS. Thanks for coming on. Appreciate your time. Thanks for the invitation. Thank you, John. So we're celebrating International Women's Day this week and this month and all, pretty much every day, I think we're going to be doing a lot of good stuff. But today's a special day in talking about people's careers, their roles, the gender gap is a big theme this year. These are all the topics that are going on and being discussed. So it's been a lot of fun. When learning a lot, I have to ask you guys with AWS, Sidney, we'll start with you. How is AWS addressing the gender gap in its technical teams? Because Solution Architects, they're technical and we need more women in there. Whereas how is AWS addressing the gender gap with its technical teams? Yes, for sure. Thank you very much. And let me start with a quick note about what is the situation in Mexico. Let me go first into a report published by IMCO. And this is talking about this gender gaps in the STEM career. So let me tell you that three out of 10 professionals who choose careers related with the STEM, with the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are women. So can you imagine this difference? It's really critical because for sure, we have few women and in the moment that you try to reach people to be part of the company, it's difficult. So it's important for AWS to be very, very supportive in this initiative and also to be supporting diverse teams. So that's why we are very supportive in bringing diverse talent in the company. And there's a lot of focus on getting people early into the pipelining is that's another big area. Do the studies show anything there? Well, basically it's that we are starting to push harder to bring more information to the ladies, to the women in general, and also to start developing the technical skills because it's really difficult. And in the moment that you try to do this, you start like seeing these behaviors or the statements about this is only for men, it's not for women. So we are trying to start breaking these points in general. Fernanda, we had a great chat about Latin America re-invent on theCUBE with your leader over there. And we're talking about the broader community and how you guys are partnering with external organizations and customers. How is Amazon Web Services AWS aiming to foster better balance and gender balance in technology partnerships in Latin America? Sure, so while the situation in Brazil is not different from the situation that Cindy was mentioning in Mexico, right? Our research shows that women only represent around 37% of the workforce, where in the country we have over 51, 52% of women as part of our population. So there is why always we can take this as from a gap perspective. Also we can take it from a opportunity perspective. There is such a huge unexplored workforce that we can bring out to be part of AWS in the technology world, right? So for us on AWS and Amazon, it's part of our day one culture. So we're still learning, right? And we're still trying experimenting to see how we can bring more women to the tech world. One of the things that we're investing in Brazil and in Latin America are the early in career talent programs. This is something that we have the opportunity to work with the students. And in Latin, it's a little bit different from the US. We have the opportunity to work with them for one year, sometimes for two years in a row while they are still in the university. And we prepare that talent really early in their career and bring them to be part of Amazon. So yeah, I'm super excited with those programs. I can talk more about it. But this is one of the initiatives that we are batting that will maybe be a game changer for us in the technology. Yeah, those are very interesting stats. 37% of the workers in country where women represent over half of the population. So definitely a lot of work to be done. I got to ask both of you. Amazon has a leadership principle that says that they want us to try to be the world's best employer Earth being Earth Day and all that sustainability as well. Diversity, inclusion and equity is a big part of that mission. And also Amazon is also known for a high performing work environment. So having the best diversity and inclusion as some say and many are saying is a force multiplier in performance. How is that going in your areas? Can you talk about how the culture that you're in, the countries that you're in and the Amazonian leadership principles tie together? Can you share your thoughts and experiences? Sure, I can get started maybe with that one. So although we have a new leadership principle, from my perspective, we have always had leadership principles that foster diversity and inclusion, right? Pick up, earn trust as an example, right? It says, listen carefully, right? And speak candidly. This is, for me, it's the baseline for any inclusion conversation, right? And also you have things like half backbone disagree and commit, like you are empowering people to actually have an opinion and bring back that opinion and be heard, right? So it was already there. I think the thing now is that we have a very specific leadership principle so that there is no room for interpretation, right? It's right there saying that there is a mission, a mission to be the best employer, right? And I'm very excited about it. Cindy, share your thoughts too. I like that comment because, you know, Amazon culture is known for, you know, debate than a line, okay? And now you got that cultural factor. Now it's in the leadership principle. What's your reaction? Yes, and let me add a comment on that about Fernanda's point is that this LP is giving us like the power to give this environment, to do this space to the team and also to be more creative and also to be more diverse. It's really important for us to have this space with a lot of empathy with them in the space to have a lot of fun. And it's important to keep all the time in mind that are we doing the right thing for our employees? Are we empowering them to be the best of the world? So that is something that is critical for us and well, that is something that we are right now working on it. Okay, so first of all, I'm very impressed by both of you are inspiring. And I can also tell you that being a solution architect is not an easy job, it's, but it's also in high demand. A lot of people want to, they need solution architect. It's one of the most coveted positions in the industry right now. So how do we get more women in that role? What's ideas do you guys have? Besides being great role models yourselves, how do we get more solution architects? Because it's super valuable and everyone wants to hire them. Fernanda, did you want to start? It's you guys. I think you touched on a very important point, John. It's about having good examples. Like I mean, it's about you seeing yourself in the role, right? You're believing that it's possible. It's for everyone. If you have a spirit where you want to build things, if you have this spirit of exploring new possibilities, if you like to experiment, well, then you have all that we need in a solution architect, right? It's just then a matter of learning technical, learning technology, technical stuff. But this is about having fun on your journey as a solution architect as well. And let me tell you something that we are also investing in trainings. Training is online for the women that has these interests, that they want to learn more about the technology. They want to have a deeper knowledge about the technical stuff. So we are supporting these initiatives and that is something that they can do by your own and in your own piece. And this is an important role because they need the leadership as head of solution architect. That's a good thing. Is there any ways that you found that's the best practice for identifying or advice for people to know if they have what it takes or they have an affinity towards technology. Sometimes it's math because cloud is great level, levels it out. I mean, the cloud is new as more jobs open now that didn't exist years ago, couple of years ago. So anyone can rise to the top. Yeah, I think that's the beauty of the cloud. There is so much space. When we say technology, I think this is such a broad word, right? It means so much, right? It can be someone that likes to develop code. It can be someone that likes to work with infrastructure. It can be someone that likes machine learning or databases or someone that is inspired about applications for the education world or to research genoma or cure cancer. So yeah, I don't think that there is like any more like a specific profile. I think it's very open for everyone to explore what they love doing. And even from a technology perspective, AWS is working to simplify access to the technology. If we take our services on machine learning, for instance, they are for people, for business people, right? You don't have to know much about algorithms, right? To use some of the AWS services. So I think we're experiencing the democratization of the technology and with that, more opportunity for people to join us. A lot of people are changing careers into cloud. So Cindy, I want to ask you guys also, if you can share how the mentoring process works there. Is there mentoring? How does that work? Do you match people? Do you guys have you found a nice formula for providing some mentoring and some pathways as people come in? Yes, we have one way to do it. We have many ways, but one is very important is that we have user groups. That is the way that we have a community with internal and external people. And we share advices, guidance, best practices for the people that is interested in this matter. So for one side, as I already mentioned, we have training online that you can reach. We have a lot of pre-courses. Maybe you can start jumping into artificial intelligence, IoT, whatever you want to go out and dive deep in them. But in the other hand, we have this option to have this kind of support. We have AWS Girl Children User Groups. We have AWS Women Columbia User Groups. Girls in Argentina, we have many of them. We have four hundreds of user communities. So that is the way that we can keep in touch. Any other programs? I mean, Amazon Web Service and Amazon has very strong representation of women. There's a lot of pockets of women groups and all over the world. How does it come together? Because you also have customers in the user groups. You have partners in the partner network. You have technologists learning. So you have this ecosystem of people. It's not just AWS. How are you guys extending that gap into those areas? Exactly. And those conversations are getting more and more constant with our customers, right? So we used to talk about our technology. We used to talk about business problems. Now we talk about diversity. We talk about improving representation and improving the sentiment of inclusion within our customers as well. And one of the things that I can read, we have been working with a number of our customers in Brazil, just to mention Nubank, one of our customers there in building programs together between AWS and the customer, where we train people and we expose that people to the market, even if it's inside AWS, inside Nubank or any other partner in that ecosystem. So we are building talent not only for us, but for the entire ecosystem to benefit from. Okay, so I have to ask you guys, how did you guys get into the tech? Cindy, what was your way? Did it just jump at you? Did it grab you? Did you kind of discover it early? When did you kind of get into the tech? That's a good question. I was remembering this moment that when I was seven years old, I just started like working with cars and also with that kind of companies, electrolytic companies. And in that moment, I said I want to be part of this technology work. And after that, in high school, I have the opportunity to touch a computer. In that moment, I say, this is the thing that I want to do in the rest of my life. Yeah, that's it right there. You get the diction, you taste it. Fernanda, what about you? What's your story? How did you get into it? What was the moment? Was it an exact moment or did it just surround you? Yeah, I think I was always curious about how things work. I was not thinking about a career in tech, honestly. I was thinking about becoming a lawyer, but at some point in time, it just clicked, right? And I had actually to fight my way into the technical world literally, because I had this very, very important university close to my house, like maybe 15 minutes from my house, but at that point in time in Brazil, that particular institution was not accepting women. And believe me, it was not like a hundred years ago, like it was... Yeah, you're young, it's just recently. Yeah, so I had to move out of my hometown back to the cities, to Sao Paulo, which is our biggest city in Brazil, to find a place for me on an university that would take women. So yeah, I had to fight my way into technology, but I'm very proud of that, that I was able to. Yeah, you know what's great now is you have YouTube, you have all these resources. These videos are going to be going everywhere. We're going to put this out there. There's communities where people can learn and see people like themselves in positions of leadership and technology. So more and more contents being out there. And I think hopefully no one will have to fight to get into tech if they like it, they're in it. One of the leaders at AWS, she said, we're in a nerd native environment now. The young generation is natively technical. And I believe that, I see that. I think that's going to be a really exciting trend and seeing leaders like yourselves out there is really wonderful. So thank you for spending the time with us here on theCUBE. Final question I'll ask you is, what's next for you, Cindy and Fernanda? What's next in your journey? Okay, I think the next for me is to keep pushing the women in Mexico to keep stalling and also to start thinking in what is the next step in my career? Where should I go? So I think that is the point that I want to do. Cindy, what's next for you? I feel I'm just starting. So much to do, so much to do. I mean, there is a big business for us to make happen in Brazil right now. And we are looking for talent. So if the video is going to go on YouTube, I would like everybody there to know that yeah, we are looking for talents in Brazil with opportunities all over the world actually. And yeah, that's beauty, beauty and beauty. And there's some great Twitch channels by the way too on some developer program is tons of programming. It's all out there. Congratulations and we're looking forward to following up with you both in the future to get an update and thank you for spending the time and sharing your stories here on theCUBE. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay, theCUBE presentation of Women in Tech Global Event Celebrating International Women's Day. This is the beginning of more programming. We're going to see more episodes from theCUBE. I'm John Furrier, your host. Thanks for watching.