 Welcome to Security Matter. On behalf of CRIs, I'm Eric Gutierrez, your host for today. Big thank you to Andrew Lanning for letting us be a part of. We'll be talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion within the security. With me for the session today, I've got Vinny, Tanya, and John. I'll let them introduce themselves. Hey, thank you so much, Eric, for the warm welcome. Glad to be here. My name is Vinny Nanavati. My pronouns are she, her, and hers, and I share my pronouns to signal inclusiveness and as an important gesture to generate allyship, belonging, and psychological safety for all kinds of gender identities. I was born in India, grew up in New Jersey, and for the past 22 years, living here in Austin, Texas, with my husband and our two sons, I've been fortunate to work at three iconic brands in my career, 18 years at AT&T, five years at Dell, and for the past approximately nine months at ATT as Director of Diversity and Inclusion. I'm also a published author and public speaker. I've been engaged with employee resource groups for 25 years and found my calling on life in the field of diversity and inclusion about eight years ago, starting with leading efforts around diversity and inclusion at Dell. My comments today will be really around my extensive experience in D&I across a few different industries, from tech, telecommunications, startups, name of few, and I'll not be speaking on behalf of any past or current employer, both to be here. Thank you. Next, hello, and my name is Tonya Turner. I'm HR Director here at Salto Systems in Atlanta, Georgia. HR is something that is not necessarily new to me. I've been doing it for approximately 23, almost 24 years. I have been at Salto Systems for approximately four years, a little over four years. And when I think about today and about diversity, equity, and inclusion, I think a little bit about that this is all a part of my role. It is definitely a part of the employee experience, a sense of belonging, a sense of feeling included, heard from different perspectives the whole night. And so I look forward to having a conversation with everyone today. And thank you so much for having me. My name is John Demorowski. I'm the Chief Operating Officer at Sage Integration. Eric, thanks for having me today. I'm a 25-year industry veteran. I've made acquisitions in the business. I love to winter camp and hike in the Northeast part of the country and around the world. I love the travel. I love spending time with my children and my two puppy, Aussie Doodle, both less than one year old. I'm thrilled to be here. I got involved with the Women in Security Forum a handful of years ago and look forward to participating in panels like this to create more awareness for the community and for the industry. Awesome. Thank you all. I'm a big numbers guy, so I figured I'd kick off with a couple of data points and then I've got a question for Benny, but let me put out a couple of interesting data points, I think both from employee side and then from a company or a corporate state. So nothing specific here. I just found a couple data points that I thought were pretty interesting. So pretty recently, there was a Harvard Business Review study where 78% of employees who responded said that they work, they currently work at an organization that lacks diversity in leadership position. So the other piece that I thought was interesting, kind of a more positive trait or attribute here was higher representation in C-suite positions, specifically of women in this case, results in 34% greater returns to shareholders in public companies. So I thought that was pretty unique. One's a bit negative, one's much more positive, but I figured just to set the stage of some metrics there. So Benny, why is diversity important in general? And then maybe a little anecdote as to why it's important specifically for security as well. Great. I love it. And thanks so much for sharing those data points that were phenomenal. The biggest gain from diversity and inclusion in general as well as in our industry is to propel our organizations forward and at the end of the day increase the company's bottom line. These studies from McKinsey show that gender diverse organizations are 24% more likely to financially outperform less diverse companies while 33% of ethnically diverse companies are likely to do so. Data also shows that inclusive companies have a 2-3x higher cash flow for employee, two times more likely to be innovation leaders in industry. Eric, who doesn't want that? Exactly. And so we know companies who invest in DNI see more opportunity in their industry to bring people with diversity of thought, diversity of perspective, diversity of background, diversity of skills, diversity of experiences. We're assuming that the security industry is in the same space. So why is DNI important? Well, the world has become a more connected place. Organizations are recognizing the wider the team member perspective they can get, the better the products and services are from broad customer perspective. Having diversity helps company venture into new territories and grow in ways that they haven't before. I say this often, but it is my favorite quote. Diversity is being invited to the party. Inclusion is being asked to dance. My voice is heard, a sense of community. And then I say that belonging is dancing like no one's watching, right? So DNI is no longer this siloed conversation or the right thing to do or that HR initiative or a nice to have. It's really a must have and organizations need to transparently communicate what they stand for. You know, all of us in this pandemic, we've got a rare glimpse into our lives in our homes and COVID's been affecting us all around the areas of mental health and stress and anxiety for loved ones. This has been bubbling up a lot lately. And the pandemic has also thrust a massive remote work transformation globally. So this remote work allows access to talent and skills and employees that are not able to relocate, right? Inclusion has never been more important, right? As we work remotely and connect virtually, technology really is a blessing in today's age where we're able to see each other, you know, from New Jersey or Texas and whatnot, no matter where we're located. And it does mean that we have to work harder to ensure that those who have not been visible or have not had the loudest voices are not forgotten. And then finally from a talent, you know, there's powerful societal benefits from accessing traditionally diverse and underrepresented talents such as women, seniors, you know, those who feel excluded due to their location, those in rural areas, and those from maybe lower economic status. Accidents in these talent pools, it allows for diversity of thought, much more creative work, you know, this culture of inclusion and belonging, and you get higher innovation and higher quality work. You know, remote work also enables people with disabilities to enter the workforce at even greater numbers. D&I efforts can propel better candidate experience, right? Some of the trends that we're seeing, Eric, are, you know, candidates yearning for work that has meaning. You know, we're finding that D&I can propel better employee experience, better engagement, higher bottom line result. And from top talent all the way to our essential workers, any one of these top to bottom can get poached away to organizations that are living those values and cultural norms. It's really important for us to all pay attention to diversity and inclusion. Getting the key takeaway that I want everyone to take back is this COVID and pandemic has certainly redefined work not only here in the United States, but globally. And it's becoming even more clear that diversity and inclusion is a business imperative. We need to think of it like we do any other areas of our business. There is so much great work happening across the communities that we all serve in. And for many, many organizations, we're just getting started on this journey. Awesome. Thank you, Vinny. I appreciate that. There's some great points there. I have another question I think I'll come back to for you in a little bit. John, you mentioned before 25 years of experience specifically in the industry, but I think just even overall experience, life experience. So what have you learned in that time about diversity? That can be as broad of a question as you want it. Go ahead. Great question, Eric. I think, and Vinny really, really hit a lot of the key points and gave us a great opening here. So thank you for that, Vinny. I think, you know, as leaders of businesses, driving the acceptance of diminishing discrimination has to be a topic in every executive meeting and then down through your department. But above that, just being a good global citizen, right? Do the right thing. We've acquired businesses over the last couple years where female employees have made less than their male counterpart doing the same exact job and being a good employer, making those corrections. You know, hiring a diverse workforce gives you perspective that you don't get if you hire everybody that looks just like you. And those perspectives as Vinny, Vinny let us down the road on is makes you more productive, makes you more profitable, makes you more efficient. I think what it does for everybody is as a company and a community, it leads to a richer life experience by having a more diverse workforce. And then again, touching on the highlights, the productivity of it. So what I've learned along the way is, you know, is to drive this behavior through departments and through your leadership team, like everything else, we've got KPIs around their sales, around their operations, around the financial part of the business, need to drive key performance indicators around diversity, equity and inclusion. And you know, some of those and probably the number one that we measure in KPIs is retention, right? Are we retaining the women and the minorities in our workforce? Which means we're hiring diverse, we're giving similar equity, fame equities, and we're including them. And then stressing that this has to happen through all departments. It just can't happen on the executive level. It has to happen throughout the company. And then make sure that each department and your executive team is practicing a non-bias culture. And as you make acquisitions, it's not, it seems like it should be common sense, but it's not. So right, you're changing culture and the change culture as kind of Vinny led us in the pre-screening here, you need to change the language. So you also ask, you know, what are some of the challenges in this? You know, one of the KPIs we set, as we're looking for people and we're using recruiting staff, is three out of every four resumes needs to be a minority or a female. But what does that do? What's that challenge? It's a longer lead time to recruit. But it's a KPI we'll stick with and it'll take longer to recruit. And I think that goes back to being a better global citizen and making and doing the right thing is as simple as it comes down to. So thanks for the question. Yeah, no, that's a great point. I think, you know, being able to understand that you may have a bit longer to fill that role of position, but, you know, hearing all the stats that I and Vinny threw out there, you know, there's going to be some business rewards to that, right, along with that sense of belongingness and things like that that we mentioned early. So for Tanya, I guess, question, I mean, you've been doing the HR thing for a little bit. So I'm sure you've seen some things change, seen initiatives, you know, come and go in that regard. You know, what would you say is some of you, when can you see that, you know, a DEI initiative is working? When do you see progress within a company? You know, what does that look like on your end? Dealing with a lot of people, you know, at these business? Oh, I really piggybacked on what, you know, John and Vinny were saying. From an HR standpoint, working at various and diverse companies, what I would suggest is that, you know, a lot of these DEI programs and initiatives, they can never be successful if you just don't start, right? It's really recognizing that there is a need. This is not a new program that has come about. This has always been in the HR practice, right? What has kind of made it kind of rise to the top is the fact of what's going on in our environment, what we have experienced from a pandemic perspective. So when you're launching these programs, you know, we talk a lot about data drift, right? We talk a lot about making sure that we have these touch points, but really it's just getting out there and looking at the business and just like John said, being a good citizen. So if you are a community advocate or if you are a change champion, if you are a business that wants diversity when it comes relative to your recruiting metrics, leadership development, succession planning, promotion, hay concerns or hay disparities, you have to be intentional. You have to be consistent. You have to be relentless and you have to have resilience because some of the programs that we or I have seen that happen or come about in an organization, they have failed because we just let it go by the wayside. So we need to consistently be showing those data metrics. We need to have hard conversations. We need to challenge early and often. We need to talk about stop starts and continues, but more importantly, when I think about diversity, equity and inclusion, even here at Salto, starting a business resource group or an employee resource group is something that's worth a mention. In our industry, there are not a lot of women that are represented in leadership. In our industry, there are not a lot of women that are of leadership. So starting the BRG back in 2020 and it has taken an amazing journey to give women more of a voice about who could be in leadership if that desire to do. If you want to be in your current position and get roots, you could do that too. It's all about diversity of thought. It's about where people are, meeting them where they are so they can be long. And I love what Benny said. Diversity is about being asked to the dance, right? And then you get invited to the dance is the inclusion piece. And then the belonging piece is just dancing like nobody is watching. And that to me is the employee experience I want everyone to have because that's the experience that I have from the development to the conversation to the exposure. I want that for everybody at all levels. We have never just arrived in these leadership positions, right? We had somebody who had given us an opportunity and that all came from some of these programs that we put in place that we need to continue to challenge and fail often and fail fast if they don't work and pivot and change. That was perfect. You said one word that really, really resonated with me and that was intentional. I think being intentional. So I like John's example, I think the easy answer for John would have been to see these changes, not throw up the pot, right? He acquired a new company. There's already a lot of change, but it goes more to what John was saying, doing the right thing. And that was making it right, even though they maybe didn't know that they didn't have the proper equity with their account. I think that's really, really important is being intentional. I think that's really what will set companies apart as they start deploying some of these E&I strategies. Vinny, I want to go back to something you mentioned before. It was the sense of belonging. I think that's really important. I think we hear a lot about these initiatives, but I think the ultimate success is when your employees feel that they do belong. I think that runs together. So how has the essence of belongingness, I guess, has it changed in your career, let's say, or just in general? And then kind of a two-part question, what are some of the differences or similarities in that change that are worth keeping an eye out on and keeping a beat to the ground and seeing what's happening? Thank you, Eric. I love the word belonging. I think that's kind of the apex of it all. Listen, as human beings, we have an emotional need to be an accepted member of the group and this inherent desire within ourselves to be something bigger, to be part of something bigger. And historically over time, not just in the past few decades, belongingness is a word with limited definition, and that definition is starting to expand. And all kinds of people that fall outside of the definition that are being able to speak up more and more. And I think it's a big part to thank the World Wide Web for. So you see people and now you're looking at the word belonging and you're looking at any other word and you're seeing what these folks are not included in the definition of this word. And then they start to become included and more and more we're starting to see that happen across societies. So I think this definition of belonging has been expanding to include more and more over time. We're seeing large significant strides with underrepresented voices being heard in organizations. So we heard from John who had met empathy. So values around empathy and relationships, these are critical to making belonging and inclusion real. In the workforce, employees want to fit in. They want to feel like they belong and have a sense of security, feel more comfortable and confident. And when we get to that level of confidence, we're starting to feel that we're more accepted. We started telling in the field of diversity and inclusion, it really is quite effective. And as we know, it is one of the oldest forms of teaching. So once upon a time, when I was growing up in New Jersey in high school in the 1980s, it was era of the Dot Busters in America. So there was anti-Indian sentiment. It was rampant everywhere and both snowballs and profanities were being thrown at us. So one beautiful autumn morning, the leaves were turning rustic and gold. We woke up and this is before, you know, the, what do you call it, Halloween. Our front door was broken. Garbage and lead bags were ripped and thrown across our front yard or tree was wrapped in toilet paper. And at school in the hallways, I would see girls crying and boys were getting mad because their families also had similar experiences. So I finally had the courage to approach my principal and I shared the bullying that my family and others from our community were facing. He was really cool. He listened with empathy. And I asked, you know, is there anything you can do? And he responded, yes, we can. And then he invited me to speak in front of the student assembly with faculty and share my story. And I was like, you want me to do what? And then he just said it very quietly, like, tell them your story. So that Friday, the assembly, you know, we were there and it was a good dialogue, right? We discovered that we all had a lot more in common than we did differences. But my favorite question was, one kid gets up at the very end and he said, your English is good. And then I responded, so is yours. So listen, I'm really thankful to my principal. He gave me a platform to share my voice and make me feel that I belong. And so with respect to, you know, an eye for the future, it's good when people don't need to hide, you know, who they are, their cultural traditions and be more transparent and don't feel like they need to change their identity. And that progress and that uniqueness is what can differentiate and make that workplace so cool, more interesting, more fun, more like a family. And I love the KPIs that John talked about. And Tanya, you mentioned one of my favorite words, BRGs. You know, I feel that business resource groups, employee resource groups, affinity groups, these are the secret sauce of an organization, and they can serve as a catalyst and a hallmark for an inclusive workplace. When I was leading DNI work at Dell, I was single-threaded owner for culture and engagement and our award-winning 11 ERGs, DNI education, DNI communications for the company. And under my leadership, we were able to double members from 12,000 team members to 24,000 team members globally. We drove higher engagement, global diversity, and fostered a more inclusive workplace. So, you know, you might wonder, well, what's a value problem? Why would I want to be part of an ERG, either as a member or a leader? And what I call these, right, opportunity to connect with others, right, engage, give back to that community, and flex muscles in your career, right, to develop new competencies. And then finally, the opportunity and where I find it the most important is to give back to the business, right, the customer. So, you know, ERGs, BRGs, opportunity to impact products, sales, recruitment. And I feel like, you know, those employees are the most engaged, loyal, and they stay in companies because of our ERGs, and they contribute to massive and meaningful work. I think we all want to be an environment where we can grow and thrive. And with that, I just wanted to close this question with a poem, Eric. It's from Emily Dickinson, and I find it to be quite transformative. The central theme is that, you know, you want others to feel like they belong, and that way you have lived your life in vain. And so here's how it goes. If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain. If I can ease one life to aching, or cool one pain, or help one fainting Robin unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain. Belonging is so powerful, no matter who you are in your organization, or where you are, you, me, all of us, when you reach that apex of belonging, we feel we are appreciated. And I'd like to encourage all of us to go out there and live our lives. So I think that's a great segue. I think, you know, your story there is a perfect segue. So I think, you know, as we kind of get towards the end here is what can we, and by we, I mean, you know, us as individuals, we have women in security, we have all these different, you know, what can we do to advocate for more de and I, and there's people that understand it's important to people that don't. So, you know, what are some of the things that we could do to kind of help other colleagues, organizations really understand it's important. And that could be, you know, John, Tony, if you want to take that one. Erica, Tonya, if you want to go first, feel free. I'm just going to take a quick second is just, you know, when I think about this thing that we say at the table, let's continue building the table. Let's not just make it one table. Let's continue to extend the table. Make sure that people matter and that they get to be heard, seeing value, and more importantly, to have the courage to tell them that they are seeing her value. That was great. That was great, Tonya. What I would say is continue with communications similar to this. I did something similar a month ago in Denver at a PSA Tech conference in a similar setting to just bring awareness and communications to maybe organizations that don't have diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, or maybe they don't have anything formal and get them thinking about it. You know, it's interesting as Tonya talked about more women and minorities starting to get promoted into more senior roles and more board seats in companies. You know, you rarely had men in the past ever talk about imposter syndrome, but now when I have counterparts, colleagues say to me, I didn't get that board seat they gave it to such and such or such and such. I'll just say, dude, you had a 200-year-old head start, work harder and you'll get the next one. So it's interesting as we start to become more diverse and more inclusive. All the positive things that Vinny and Tonya shared that it does in a positive way to impact an organization and an executive team and a board of directors. Perfect. That's great. Well, I think we're ready to wrap up here. I really appreciate all of you hopping on, you know, giving us some perspective. You know, I do feel that this will make an impact. I agree, John, I think we just need to keep doing more of these and get the word out, get different perspectives. So I think in summary, thank you once again. Hopefully, we can do this again. And I love what Tonya said. Let's just build a bigger table. I love it. Thank you, everyone. Take care.