 Live from Miami, Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering IBM's data and AI forum. Brought to you by IBM. Welcome back to Downtown Miami everybody. We're here at the Intercontinental Hotel covering the IBM data, AI forum, hashtag data, AI forum. My name is Dave Vellante and you're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. Ritika Gunnar is here. She's the vice president of data and AI, expert labs and learning at IBM. Ritika, great to have you on again. Always a pleasure to be here, Dave. I love interviewing you because you're a woman executive that's had a lot of different roles at IBM. We talk about the AI ladder, you're climbing the IBM ladder and so it's awesome to see. And I love this topic. It's a topic that's near and dear to theCUBE's heart. Not only women in tech, but women in AI. So great to have you. Thank you. What's going on with the women in AI program? We're going to cover that, but let me start with women in tech. It's an age-old problem that we've talked about. Depending on what statistic you look at, 15%, 17% of the industry comprises women. We do a lot of events, you can see it. Let's start there. Well, obviously the diversity is not yet there, right? So we talk about women in technology and we just don't have the representation that we need to be able to have. Now when it comes to artificial intelligence, I think the statistic is 10 to 15% of the workforce today in AI is female. When you think about things like bias and efficacy, having the diversity in terms of having male and female representation be equal is absolutely essential so that you're creating fair AI, unbiased AI, you're creating trust and transparency set of capabilities that really have the diversity in backgrounds. Well, you work for a company that has a chairman and CEO that's a woman. I mean, IBM generally, we can see this stuff on theCUBE because IBM puts women on. You get a lot of women customers that come on. And not just because we're female, because we're capable. Well, of course, right, it's just because you're in roles where you're spokespeople and it's natural for spokespeople to come on a forum like this. But I have to ask you, as somebody inside of IBM, a company that I can say, the test to relative to most does pretty well. Do you feel that way or do you feel like even a company like IBM has a long way to go? Oh, I personally don't feel that way. And I've never felt that to be an issue. And if you look at my peers, my lead for artificial intelligence, Beth Smith, who you know, a female, a lot of my peers under Rob Thomas, all female. So I have not felt that way in terms of the leadership team that I have, but there is a gap that exists not necessarily within IBM, but in the community as a whole. And I think it goes back to you want to, when you think about data science and artificial intelligence, you want to be able to see yourself in the community. And while there's only 10 to 15% of females in AI today, that's why IBM has created programs such as women AI that we started in June because we want strong female leaders to be able to see that there is great representation of very technical capable females in artificial intelligence that are doing amazing things to be able to transform their organizations and their business models. So tell me more about this program. I understand why you started it. Started in June, what does it entail and what's the evolution of this? So we started it in June and the idea was to be able to get some strong female leaders and multiple different organizations that are using AI to be able to change their companies and their business models and really highlight not just the journey that they took but the types of transformations that they're doing in their organizations. And we're going to have one of those events tonight as well where we have leaders from Harley Davidson and Miami-Dade County coming to really talk about not only what was their journey but what actually brought them to artificial intelligence and what they're doing. And I think, Dave, the reason that's so important is you want to be able to understand that those journeys are absolutely approachable. They're doable by any females that are out there. Talk about inherent bias, humans are biased. And if you're developing models that are using AI, there's going to be inherent bias in those models. So talk about how to address that and why is it important for more diversity to be injected into those models? Well, I think a great example is if you took the datasets that existed even a decade ago for the past 50 years and you created a model that was to be able to predict whether to give loans to certain candidates or not. All things being equal, what would you find? More males get these loans than females. The inherent data that exists has bias in it even from the history based on what we've had. Yet that's not the way we want to be able to do things today. You want to be able to identify that bias and say all things being equal, it is absolutely important that regardless of whether you are a male or a female, you want to be able to give that loan to that person if they have all the other qualities that are there. And that's why being able to not only detect these things but have the diversity and the kinds of backgrounds of people who are building this AI, who are deploying this AI is absolutely critical. So for the past decade and certainly in those past few years, there's been a light shined on this topic. I think we were at the Grace Hopper Conference Satya Nadella stuck his foot in his mouth and said, hey, it's bad karma for if you feel like you're underpaid to go complain. And the women in the audience like, dude, no way. And he did the right thing. He goes, you know what, you're right. Any backtrack on that. And that was sort of another inflection point. But you talk about the women in AI program. I was at a CDO event one time. And IBMer had started the Data Divas breakfast and I asked, can I go? Yeah, you can be the data dude. Which was, so you're seeing a lot of initiatives like this. My question is, are they having the impact that you would expect and that you want to have? I think they absolutely are. Again, I mean, I'll go back to, I'll give you a little bit of a story. You know, people want to be able to relate and see that they can see themselves in these females leaders. And so we've seen cases now through our events like at IBM, we have a program called Grow which is really about helping our female lead, female technical leaders really understand that they can grow, they can be nurtured and they have development programs to help them accelerate where they need to be on their technical programs. We've absolutely seen a huge impact from that, from a technology perspective in terms of more females staying in technology wanting to go in those career paths. As another story, I'll give you another point of view, Dave. And that is, when you look at where it starts, it starts a lot earlier. So I have a young daughter who a year, year and a half ago when I was doing a lot of stuff with Watson, she would ask me, you know, not only what Watson's doing but she would say, what does that mean for me mom? Like, what's my job gonna be? And if you think about the changes in technology and cultural shifts, technology and artificial intelligence is going to impact every job, every industry, every role that there is out there. So much so that I believe her job hasn't been invented yet. And so when you think about what's absolutely critical, not only today's youth, but every person out there needs to have a foundational understanding, not only in the three Rs that you and I know from when we grew up of reading, writing and arithmetic, we need to have a foundational understanding of what it means to code. And, you know, having people feel confident, having young females feel confident that they can not only do that, that they can be technical, that they can understand how artificial intelligence is really going to impact society and the world is absolutely critical. And so these types of programs that shed light on that, that help bridge that confidence is game changing. Well, you got kids, I got kids, I have daughters, you have daughter, are they receptive to that? So, you know, I think they are but they need to be able to see themselves. So, the first time I sent my daughter to a coding camp, she came back and said, not for me mom. I said, why? Because she's like, all the boys, they're coding in their Minecraft area, not something I can relate to. You need to be able to relate and see something, develop that passion and then mix yourself in that diverse background where you can see the diversity of backgrounds. When you don't have that diversity and when you can't really see how to progress yourself, it becomes a blocker. So, as she started going to girls start programs, which was something in Austin where young girls coded together, it became something that she's really passionate about and now she's Python programming. So, that's just an example of, yes, you need to be able to have these types of skills, it needs to start early and you need to have types of programs that help enhance that journey. Yeah, and I think you're right, I think that is having an impact. I mean girls who code obviously, does some amazing work. My daughters aren't into it. I try to just send them to Coder Camp too, and I don't do it, but here's my theory on that, is that coding is changing and especially with artificial intelligence and cognitive software replacing human skills. Creativity is going to become much, much more important. My daughters are way more creative than my sons. I shouldn't say that, but- I think you just admitted that. But in a way they are. I mean they've got amazing creativity, certainly more than I am. And so I see that as a key component of how coding gets done in the future, taking different perspectives and then actually codifying them. Your thoughts on that? Well, there is an element of understanding like the outcomes that you want to generate and the outcomes really is all about technology. How can you imagine the art of the possible with technology? Because technology alone we all know, not useful enough. So understanding what you do with it, just as important. And this is why a lot of people who are really good in artificial intelligence actually come from backgrounds that are philosophy, sociology, economy. Because if you have the culture of curiosity and the ability to be able to learn, you can take the technology aspects, you can take those other aspects and blend them together. So understanding the problem to be solved and really marrying that with the technological aspects of what AI can do, that's how you get outcomes. And so we've obviously talked in detail about women in AI and women in tech, but there's data that shows that diversity drives value in so many different ways. And it's not just women, it's people of color, it's people of different economic backgrounds. Underrepresented minorities, absolutely. And I think the biggest thing that you can do in an organization is have teams that have that diverse background. Whether it be from underrepresented minorities, where they come from, because those differences in thought are the things that create new ideas that really innovate, that drive those business transformations, that drive the changes in the way that we do things. And so having that difference of opinion, having healthy ways to bring change and to have conflict, absolutely essential for progress to happen. So how did you get into the tech business? What was your background? So my background was actually a lot in math and science and both of my parents were engineers. And I have always had this unwavering need to be able to marry business and the technology side and really figure out how you can create the art or the possible. So for me, it was actually the creativity piece of it where you could create something from nothing that really drove me to computer science. Okay, so your math engineer and you ended up in CS, is that right? Computer science, yeah. Okay, so you were coded, did you ever work as a programmer? Absolutely. My first years at IBM were all about coding. And so I've always had a career where I've coded and then I've gone to the field and done field work. I've come back and done development and development management, gone back to the field and kind of seen how that was actually working. So personally for me, being able to create and work with clients to understand how they drive value and having that back and forth has been a really delightful part in the thing that drives me. You know, that's actually not an uncommon path for IBMers, predominantly male IBMers in the 50s, 60s and 70s and even 80s who took that path, they started out programming. I just kind of think of some examples. I know Omer Perra, who was the CIO of Etna International, he started out coding at IBM. Joe Tucci was a programmer at IBM. He became CEO of EMC. It was a very common path for people and you took the same path. That's kind of interesting. Why do you think so many women who maybe start in computer science and coding don't continue on that path and what was it that sort of allowed you to break through that barrier? You know, I'm not sure why most women don't stay with it, but for me, I think that every organization today is going to have to be technical in nature. I mean, just think about it for a moment. Technology impacts every part of every type of organization and the kinds of transformation that happens. So being more technical as leaders and really understanding the technology that allows the kinds of innovations and business transformations is absolutely essential to be able to see progress in a lot of what we're doing. So I think that even general CXOs that you see today have to be more technically acute to be able to do their jobs really well and marry those business outcomes with what it fundamentally means to have the right technology backbone. Do you think a woman in the White House would make a difference for young people? I mean, part of me says, of course it would. Then I say, okay, well, there's some examples. Think about Margaret Thatcher in the UK, Angela Merkel in Germany. It's still largely male dominated cultures, but I don't know, what do you think? Maybe that in the United States would be sort of the tipping point. I'm not a political expert, so I wouldn't claim to answer that, but I do think more women in technology, leadership roles, CXO leadership roles is absolutely what we need. So politics aside, more women in leadership roles? Absolutely. Well, it's not politics, it's gender. I mean, I'm independent Republican, Democrat, conservative, liberal. More women leadership, absolutely. Yeah, well, companies, politics. I mean, you certainly see women leaders in Congress and the like. Okay, last question. So you've got a program going on here. You have a panel that you're running. Tell us more about that. Well, this afternoon we'll be continuing that from women leaders in AI, and we're going to do a panel with a few of our clients that really have transformed their organizations using data and artificial intelligence, and they'll talk about their backgrounds in history. So what does it actually mean to come from one of the panelists, actually from Miami-Dade, has always come from a technical background? And the other panelists really etched in from a non-technical background because she had a passion for data and she had a passion for the technology systems. So we're going to go through how these females actually came through to the journey where they are right now, what they're actually doing with artificial intelligence and their organizations, and what the future holds for them. I lied, said last question. What is success for you? Because I would love to help you achieve that objective. Is it some metric? Is it awareness? How do you know it when you see it? Well, I think it's a journey. Success is not an endpoint. And so for me, I think the biggest thing I've been able to do at IBM is really help organizations, help businesses and people progress what they do with technology. There's nothing more gratifying than when you can see other organizations and then what they can do, not just with your technology, but what you can bring in terms of expertise to make them successful, what you can do to help shape their culture and really transform. To me, that's probably the most gratifying thing. And as long as I can continue to do that and be able to get more acknowledgement of what it means to have the right diversity ingredients to do that, that's success. Well, Ritika, congratulations on your success. I mean, you've been an inspiration to a number of people. I remember I first saw you, you were working at Pitchiano's group and you were up on stage and said, wow, this person really knows her stuff. And then you've had a variety of different roles and I'm sure that success is going to continue. So thanks very much for coming on theCUBE. Thank you so much, Dave. You're welcome. All right, keep it right there, but we'll be back with our next guest. Right after this short break, we're here covering the IBM data in a AI form from Miami. Right back.