 From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of Women Transforming Technology, brought to you by VMware. Welcome to theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin covering the fifth annual Women Transforming Technology. The first year that this event has gone completely digital. We're very pleased to welcome back to theCUBE one of our favorite alumni, the Chief People Officer of VMware, Betsy Sutter. Betsy, welcome back. Thank you, Lisa. It's great to see you and it's great to be back. Love this time of year. Likewise, me too. And I've had the great opportunity and pleasure of covering WPQ for the last few years. So I know walking into that courtyard area in Palo Alto, VMware's headquarters, you feel the energy and the excitement and it's really genuine. And so knowing that you had to pivot a couple, eight weeks or so ago or more to convert what is such an engaging in-person experience to digital, hard decision, the right decision, but huge in terms of the number of attendees. Tell us a little bit about that process of taking we rise digital. Yeah, you know, it was a pretty quick decision. At VMware, we were starting to virtualize some other events. And so in real time, we said, let's go ahead and virtualize women transforming technology 2020. And so when we immediate flip to that mode, things started to really open up. The possibilities became pretty interesting. And so honestly, we did not imagine, you know, the people attending would grow from roughly thousands to over 5,000. And that's what digitalizing the event and virtualizing the event did. And so it was super fun to use technology to make it so much more inclusive and accessible for people around the world. I'm sure you've heard that we had over 5,000 people from over 500 companies represented from 30 different countries. So that was amazing in its own right. One of the things that I think was a great advantage knowing that this was the fifth one, but that you'd had the opportunity to build the community in such a strong tight knit community over the last few years, I think was probably a great facilitator of the event being so much bigger digitally. But when I spoke with a number of your speakers, everybody said, and I saw the Twitter stream, the engagement, it wasn't like they were watching the video. It was really interactive. And that is hard to achieve with digital. Yeah, you know, what I loved about the technology was that there were chat rooms and there were Q&A rooms. And so there was a lot of back and forth in real time, even while the speakers were talking, you could sort of multitask. And the speakers were really, really fun to interact with that way as well. And it's super fun to see people in their home environments. You know, it's just a little more information about them. And they seem a little bit more relaxed too. So it was tremendous. Watching Laura Dern, who is an activist and obviously a very famous actress in her own home talking to us about the issue she's faced as a woman in her industry, and then moving to another woman named Catherine Finney, who is the CEO of Digital Undivided in her home with all the activity. She had a four year old sort of in the background, was super fun and really landed their conversations with us even more solidly. It was a great day. I heard that throughout Twitter that people really felt that there was a personal connection. A lot of people talking about, I'm sitting here, zooming with Laura Dern, what are you doing today? And some of the things that she said about, you don't have to stay in your own swim lane, that resonated with me. And I think with your community very well. Absolutely. You know, the diversity, the eclecticness of the women that we're able to join from around the world and from many different industries, but you know, technical women, women in tech, was, it just up leveled everything. And it fit into the theme of the conference, which was we rise because, you know, you're trying to rise as an individual, but there we were rising as a collective for a full day. And the workshops were super fun. I mean, I participated in a number of them and I literally went through a workshop with, I don't know how many women, but you know, I was drawing on paper, then engaging on the screen, then chatting using the Q&A feature. It was a really dynamic day. I'm wondering now if we'll ever go back, honestly. Right. Well, I was already thinking, wow, you can take WT2 global and do regional events and there's so much opportunity right now. A tremendous amount of challenge, but on the same time, there is a lot of opportunity. In fact, when I was speaking with Charmaine McLeary yesterday, it was amazing that she was talking about, you know, right now, like the percentage increase and people actually reading email because they have more time, the commute time has gone. And so her advice to be really vivid in making yourself visual in terms of how you communicate and evaluate your role and how you can add new value during the challenging time. And I thought that was such a powerful message because we do need to look at what opportunities are we going to be able to uncover? There will be certain things that will go away to your point. Maybe we do digital because we can engage, we can interact and we can reach a bigger audience and learn from more people. Yeah, I think that's spot on. I couldn't have said that better. And it really, you could really feel it that day. And then the response from both the attendees, but even the keynote speakers, both Laura and Kathleen reaching back to us and talking about the experience they had, it was a pretty uplifting day. I'm still flying pretty high from it. And it was Cinco de Mayo. So there had to have been at least margaritas, skinny margaritas, maybe, you know, virgin margaritas, but something there to celebrate an accomplishment of doing something in a short period of time, but taking that community and being able to to push the energy through the screen is awesome. I'd love to understand, you've been the chief people officer at VMware for a while. The COVID crisis is so challenging in every aspect of life. We often talk about disruption, you know, in technology is a technology disruptor. You know, video streaming was a technology disruptor and Uber was a disruptor to transportation and the taxi service, but now the disruption is an unseen, scary thing. And so the emotional impact, people are talking and a number of your folks I spoke to as well said, it's hard to be motivated, but it's important to acknowledge that I don't feel so motivated today for managers to be able to have that check-in with their employees and their teams. Tell me a little bit about the culture of VMware and how maybe the We Rise theme is really kind of pervasive across VMware right now. Yeah, you know, one of the things that I believe and that I've seen in my years of being in the people business is that more and more people join communities. They join companies, but they join communities and communities come together based on, you know, their actions, their ideas, their behaviors and what I've seen in terms of VMware's response to COVID-19 has been pretty remarkable. I think at first, you know, we were in crisis mode, sort of going into triage mode about what we do to keep our people feeling safe and healthy, but now we're sort of in a mode of, okay, there's a lot of opportunity that this presents. Now we are very, very fortunate, very blessed to be in the industry that we're in and a lot of what we do and build and provide for our customers and partners fits into this new business model of working distributedly. So there's been some highs and some lows as we've navigated. First and foremost, we've just put our employees first and their health and safety, making sure that they're comfortable is just been top of mind for us. We just did a small sentiment survey, six questions, because about two weeks ago I realized, I wonder if we really know how people are feeling about this and one of the things that came through, I'll say this out of 32,000 people within 24 hours, over 10,000 people responded to this six question survey. They wanted to tell us how they were doing, but over 70% said they felt, if not at the same amount of connection but more connection with each other working in a distributed fashion. And I think COVID-19's brought that to life, that we're gonna work in a new way. It's a new business model and so we're doing it at VMware. And then we're really pleased that we can offer that to our customers and partners around the globe. You know, I'm glad that you talked about the employee experience because obviously with any business, customers are critical to the lifeblood of that business, but equally important, if not sometimes more impactful to the revenue of an organization is the employee experience and being productive day in and day out. And that the employee experience is, I think, I don't know, you can't have a good customer experience without a good employee experience. And to see that focus is key. So it must have been really nice for the VMware employees to go, they're wanting to know how I feel right now. That's huge for people to know the executive team genuinely cares. Yeah, you know, Lisa, we have really amped up our communications. We have done more town halls, whether it's to our management community, our leadership and executive community or to the whole company. Yesterday alone, I think I did six town halls and two Ask Me Anythings just to make sure we know it's on top of people's minds, what's important to them. And that's kind of the new normal. And it's so much easier, right? I'm not trying to get to places. I'm just kind of clicking on a button and I'm all of a sudden talking to the employees in India. And you know, when I talk to my colleagues in other industries like Beth Axelrod or Tracy Ballo that are in the, you know, the Marriott and the Airbnb industries, their challenges are so different and what they're facing in the short term, in the medium term. VMware is in a position where we can really help these businesses. And at the core of that is really how well our employees are doing. And so that's been our focus. One of the things that I also talked about yesterday with Joe Miller, the CEO of B-Leaderly was the difference between a mentor and a sponsor. And I had never even understood that there were two different things until WT2. And so I thought, you know, we all know about mentors. We talk about that all the time, but I, she was really, I think it's important message for your audience and ours to understand the difference. And she said, people are often over mentored and undersponsored. And so I thought, well, I want to understand that VMware's culture of sponsorship. Tell me what's going on in that respect. Yeah. Well, and I agree with everything that you said on the mentorship side. And so what we've instituted on the mentorship side at VMware is reverse mentorship. So every executive at VMware has a reverse mentor so that they can learn something that they might not be thinking about. And whether it's a reverse mentor who happens to be a fewer, a man who happens to be a woman, or if you want to engage with an underrepresented minority, or if you just want to learn about a different aspect of the business, we're big on reverse mentoring. On the sponsorship side, we do do that. And that's a really important aspect to any company's culture if you're trying to cultivate talent. And sponsorship is really championship, right? And I know I champion a lot of people, a lot of the talent around the company. And it's very different than maybe coaching, advising and interacting in that venue. It's more about what's the right opportunity for this person when I'm in the boardroom or when I'm in the executive staff meeting, actually advocating for that person. And I'm fierce about that, especially for women right now at VMware. And it's just important. And a lot of people are starting to adopt that mindset because there's a lot more power and influence in having sponsorship behind you than having mentorship. I completely agree. Are you saying that, you know, we often talk about the hard skills and then the soft skills. And I always think soft is the wrong word, but I keep forgetting to look it up on the source to get a better word. Because right now I think more important than ever, looking at someone who might have all of the hard skills to be on this track, the C-suite, the importance of authenticity and empathy, I think now are under a microscope. We talked a lot about that too with some of your guests. Tell me a little bit about those kinds of conversations that came up during the interactive sessions with WT2. Yeah, well, you know, this is one of the blessings that's come out of COVID-19 in this pandemic is that people are starting to see because everyone's impacted by this and not just in one way, but in multiple ways. So there's really this once in a lifetime opportunity, at least as far as what I've seen in my lifetime, to seize this heightened level of compassion and empathy for all the people around you in terms of what we're doing. At WT2, I saw it a lot in terms of the quality of the conversations that were happening virtually and sometimes with the keynotes and the guest speakers with the audience. There was always a lead-in with compassion and empathy in terms of all of us, all of us, no matter where you are in the world and no matter what you're doing, adjusting to what we're calling this new normal. And there's a new business normal, but the new normal on the personal side, I think is going to take a little bit longer, right? In terms of what people are managing. But in the business world, I think people are starting to rebound and rebuild. They're honing those skills and they're going to be wiser and better because of it. But at the heart of it all is, as you said, a lot more compassion and empathy, because never before have we all kind of gone through something quite so traumatic as COVID-19. Tremendous and surreal. And we are all in the same storm. And I think there is a level of comfort there that I know I feel with knowing, okay, everyone is going to be feeling this roller coaster at some point, some days you're here, some days you're here, over all in this, whether you're in your role or Pat Gelsinger or an individual contributor role, we're all in the same sea. Betsy, congratulations on a successful fifth WT2, first digital. I'm so glad that theCUBE and myself was able to participate digitally. It's always one of my favorite events every year. And I look forward to seeing you again soon, which I assume will be digitally, but I look forward to it. Lisa, thank you so much. And thanks for all of your sponsorship and mentorship with WT2 over the years too. Take care. All right, you too. For Betsy Sutter, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's coverage of women transforming technology too. Thanks for watching. See you next time.