 From the VMware campus in Palo Alto, California, it's theCUBE, covering women transforming technology. Hi, welcome to theCUBE. Lisa Martin on the ground at the third annual women transforming technology event at VMware in Palo Alto. And I'm joined by an author and a senior VMware engineer, Pratima Raul Glockman. Welcome to theCUBE Pratima. Thank you, Lisa. It's great to have you here. So you have been an engineer here for about 10 years. You knew from when you were a kid, I love this engineering. You knew you wanted to be that. You fell in love with your first programming class. It was like a Jerry Maguire, you complete me kind of know what I'm imagining. Tell me a little bit about your career in engineering and specifically as a female. Okay, so I was raised, born and raised in India. And I grew up in an environment where I was gender blind. You know, my oldest sister played cricket for the country. Wow, and it was a man's game. You know, a lot of people kind of talked about that, but it wasn't like she couldn't do it, right? So I was, I always grew up with this notion that I could do anything and I could be whoever I wanted to be. And then I came to the United States and that whole narrative stayed with me, the metatocracy narrative, like you work hard, you know, the society, you know, the world will take care of you and good things will happen. But it wasn't until 2016, was when I had this aha moment. And that's when I suddenly felt, and suddenly I was aware of my gender and I was like, okay, I'm a female in tech. And there's lots of challenges for women in tech. And I didn't quite realize that. It was just that aha moment. And VMware has been a great company. I've been with VMware for nine years. I started as an engineer and I moved into engineering management. We had Diane Greene, who founded the company. The culture was always metatocratic. But I think something in 2016 kind of made me, just thinking about my career and thinking about the careers of the women around me, I felt like we were stuck. But at the same time, we focused on the women that were successful. For instance, Yan Bing Li, who's our senior VP and general manager of storage business. And we were talking about her and I said, and this is what I said, I said, but there are some women who are successful, despite everything that we're dealing with. And I just want to know their stories and I'm going to write this book. And the moment I said that, it just felt right. I felt like this was something I wanted to do. And the stories in this book are inspiring. Inspiring stories of these women, just listening to Layla Ali this morning, her inspirational story. And this book has around 19 stories of these executive women and they're just not role models. I mean, every story offers strategies on how to thrive in the tech world. So interesting that first of all, I love the title for team of this book. Nevertheless, she persisted. So simple, so articulate, and so inspiring. So interesting that you were working as an engineer for quite a few years before you realized, kind of looked around like, whoa, this is a challenge that I'm actually living in. Yan Bing is a CUBE alumni. I love her Twitter handle. So you said, all right, I want to talk to some women who have been persistent and successful in their tech careers as kind of the genesis of the Botardos about maybe of those 19 interviews that range from what C levels to VPs to directors. What are some of the stories that you found that kind of blew your mind of, wow, I didn't know that you came from that kind of background. So when I started off, I said, I was very ambitious. I said, I'll go interview CEO women. And I did a lot of research and I found some very disturbing facts. Fortune magazine lists Fortune 500 companies that they ranked them based on their prior years fiscal revenues. And from that data, there were 24 women CEOs in 2014. That number dropped to 21 in 2015. And it dropped again in 2016. And but it went up slightly in 2017 to 32 women, which is promising. But back in 2018, we're down to 24. So we have very, very few women CEOs. And when I started off, I said, I'll talk to the CEO women and I couldn't find any CEO women, my network, my friend's network. And so I dropped one level and I said, let me go talk to SVPs. And when I looked at VMware and VMware's network, Yan Bing was one of them. So she's in the book. And then I reached out to contacts outside of my network. So I have some women from LinkedIn. I have Google, I have Facebook. I have some women from startups. So I have around four CEOs in the book. And what's great about this book is it's got a diverse set of women. They have different titles. I've got directors, senior directors, VP's, senior VP's, GM's and CEOs. And some of them have PhDs. Some of them have a master's degree. And some actually don't have formal training in computer science. And I thought this would be interesting because a woman with any background can relate to it. And so that was helpful. And so that's kind of how I went off and I started to write this book. And when I interviewed these women, there was a common theme that just kept emerging and that was persistence. And they persisted against gender bias, stereotype threat, just the negative messages from media and society. I mean, like Leila Ali was talking about just even the messages she got from her dad, right? Someone who was so close to her who basically said women can box. And that didn't stop her. I mean, she persisted when I was listening to her. She didn't use the word, but she said she was believing in herself and all that, but she persisted through all those negative messages, right? And she said no one can tell her what to do. Yeah, her confidence is very loud and clear. And I think that you do find women, and I imagine some of them are some of the interviewees in your book who have that national confidence. And as you were saying, when Muhammad Ali was trying to talk her out of it and trying to, as she said, he tried to get me to think it was my idea, but she just knew, well, no, this is what I want to do. And she had that confidence. Did you find that a lot of the women leaders in this book had that natural confidence? Like you grew up in an environment where you just believed I can do this, my sister's playing cricket. Did you find that was a common thread or did you find some great examples of women who wanted to do something but just thought, can I do this? How do I do that? What was that kind of confidence level that you saw? I was surprised because I had a question on imposter syndrome and I asked these women, so Telly Whitney, who's the CEO, she was a CEO, ex-CEO of Grace Hopper. Yes, founder of Grace Hopper. I asked her about imposter syndrome and this is what she told me. She said, I feel like I'm not good enough. And that actually gave me goosebumps. I remember I was sitting in front of greatness and this is what she was telling me. And then I asked her, how do you overcome it? And she said, I just show up the next day. And that actually helped me with this book because I am not an author, I mean, I am an author now, but two years ago when I started to write this, that was, writing is not my forte. I'm a technologist. I build teams. I manage teams. I ship products. I ship technical products. But every day I woke up and I said, I'm feeling like an imposter. It was just her voice, right? Yan Bing also feels the same way. I mean, she does feel times where she feels like, oh, you know, I'm lacking confidence here. Majority of the people, actually all, pretty much all the women, there's one woman, Patty Hatter, who didn't feel like she had imposter syndrome, but the rest of them face it every day. Dahlia Malki, who's a principal engineer at VMware. It's very hard to be a PE. She said that she fights it every day. And that was surprising to me, right? Because I was sitting in front of all these women that, you know, they were confident, they've achieved so much, but they struggle with that every day. But all they do is they persist, they show up the next day, you know, they take those little steps and they have these goals and they're very intentional and purposeful. I mean, just like what Layla said, right? She said, everything that I've done in the last 20 years has been intentional and purposeful. And that's what these women did. And I learned so much from them because 20 years ago, I was a drifter. You know, I just kind of drifted. And I didn't realize that I could set a goal and I could reach it and I could do all these amazing things. And I didn't think any of this was possible for me. But I'm hoping that some girl somewhere can read this book and say, you know what? This is possible, right? This is possible. And, you know, role models, I think we need lots of these role models. We do. I think, you know, imposter syndrome, I've suffered for it for so long before I even knew what it was. And I'll be honest with you, even finding that it was a legitimate issue was, okay, I'm not the only one. So I think it's important that these women and you, through your voice and your book, identify that this is something I face every day. Even though you may look at me on the outside and think she's so successful, she's got everything. I'm a human. And Leila Olly talked about that, of having to revisit that inner warrior that sometimes she goes silent, sometimes the pilot light goes out and needs to be reignited or turned back up. I think that is just giving people permission, especially women, and I felt that in the keynote, giving us permission to go, ah, you're not going to feel that every day. You're not going to feel it every day. Get up the next day to your point, keep persisting and pursuing your purpose. Is, in and of itself, so incredibly empowering. Right, but also imposter syndrome is good for you. And I talk about that a little bit in the book. And, you know why it's good for you is you're getting out of your comfort zone. You're trying something different and it's natural to feel that way. But once you get over it, you've mastered that, right? And Leila talked about it too today. She said, you get uncomfortable to the point where you get comfortable. Yes. So every time you find that you have this imposter syndrome, just remember that greatness is right around the corner. Yep. I always say, get uncomfortably uncomfortable. Yes. And I love how she said that today. So one of the big news of the day is VMware with Stanford announcing that they're investing $15 million in a new women's leadership innovation lab at Stanford. Phenomenal. Yes. We're really going to start studying diversity and there's so many different gaps that we face. Wage gap, age gap, gender gap, mothers versus motherless gap. And one of the things that was really interesting that I've heard this before, but the press release actually cited a McKinsey report that says companies with diversity on their executive staff are 21% more profitable. Yes. And that just seems like a no-duck kind of thing to me for organizations like VMware and your other partners in this consortium of WT squared to get on board to say, well, of course, thought diversity is so important and it actually is demonstrated to impact a company's profitability. Right, yeah, and that's true. I just hope more people listen to it and internalize it and organizations internalize that. And what VMware is doing is fantastic. I mean, I'm so proud to be part of this company that's doing this. And Shelly talked about change, right? She said, I think right now, the way I feel about this whole thing is we need to stop talking about diversity and inclusion. We just need to say, enough is enough. This is important. Let's just do it, you know. Just make this part of our DNA. Yes, exactly. Just make it, why do we have to fight for all this, right? Like it's just pointless. And men have wives and daughters and mothers and it impacts society as a whole and organizations and we have so much research on this, right? And what I like about what the Stanford Research Lab is doing is they're actually working with women from all the way from middle school to high school to the executive suite. And that's amazing because research has now shown there was a report in March, 2014 by a senior fellow at the Center of American Progress called Judith Warner. And so she documented just with the rate of change like I talked about all the percentages and the number of women CEOs, just with that rate of change, the equality of men and women at the top will not occur until 2085. Oh my goodness. That's 63 years from now. That means all our daughters will be retired by then. And my daughter was born in 2013 and so she won't live in a world of female leaders that's representative of the population. And so that realization actually really, really broke my heart. And that made me want to write this book, right? To create these role models. And what Stanford is doing is they're gonna work on this and I'm hoping that they can make that transition sooner. Like we don't have to wait until 2085. Like I want this for my daughter, you know? In the 20s. Exactly. It has to be accelerated. And I think all of us need to do that, right? Our daughters should be in their 20s, 30s when this happens, not when they're in their 70s. And retired. And retired. I mean, we don't want that. And we don't know how that number's gonna get pushed further, right? Like if we don't do anything now. Right, 2085 becomes what? I know. It's insane. In this spirit of being persistent with the theme of this third annual WT squared being inclusion in action. You're a manager and a people hiring role. Tell me about the culture on your team and how your awareness and your passion for creating change here, lasting change. How are you actually creating that inclusion through action in your role at VMware? So what I do is when I have to hire engineers on my team, I talk to my recruiter, I have a conversation. I'm like, you know, I need more diversity. It's just not women, right? I want diversity with the men too. I want different races, different cultures because I believe that if I have a diverse team I'm going to be successful. So it's almost like I'm being selfish but that is very important. So I have that conversation with my recruiter so I kind of have an expectation set. And then, you know, we go through the hiring process and I'm very aware of just the hiring panel, like who I put on the panel. I make sure to have at least a woman on the panel and have some diversity. My team right now is not really that diverse and I'm working hard to make that because it is hard to, you know, the pipeline has to get built at a certain point and then you start getting those resumes but I try to have at least one female on the panel and during the selection process, the first thing I'll tell them is, let's get the elephant out of the room, age, gender, whatever, like let's take that out. Let's just talk about skills and how well this person has done in the interview. And that's how I conduct it and you know, I've had fairly good success of hiring women on the team but I've also seen that it's hard to retain women because they tend to drop out faster than the men. And so it's constant. It's just constant work to make that happen. Yeah, I wish we had more time to talk about retention because it is a huge issue. So the book is, nevertheless, she persisted. Where can people get a copy of the book? So you can get it on Amazon. That's, I think, the best place to get it. You can also get it from my publisher site which is Frees and Press. Excellent. Well, Pratima, thank you so much for stopping by and sharing your passion, how you're persisting and how you're also helping more of us learn how to find that voice and pursue our passions. Thank you. Thank you. We want to thank you for watching. We are the Cube lot on the ground at VMware for the third annual Women Transforming Technology Event. I'm Lisa Martin. Thanks for watching.