 from Houston, Texas, extracting the signal from the noise. It's theCUBE, covering Grace Hopper's celebration of women in computing. Now your hosts, John Furrier and Jeff Frick. Welcome back everyone, we are live here in Houston, Texas for Silicon Angles theCUBE. It's our flagship program. We go out to the events and extract the signal noise. I'm John Furrier with Jeff Frick for the Grace Hopper celebration of women in computing. G-HC-15, go to CrowdChat.net slash G-H-15, join the conversation, we'll be watching. Our next is Ogil Brovowski, who's the VP of Women Workforce Technology at Intuit. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you very much for having me. So you guys have 84 people here. Yes. That's a lot. What are you guys doing here? You're recruiting, you're talking to people, you're mentoring, give us the Intuit role here at Grace Hopper. So Intuit celebrates diversity and inclusion and what's a better way to celebrate diversity, especially women in technology, part of the diversity story than to be here. It's one of the best places to meet up technical talent. It is also an awesome opportunity to engage with like-minded individuals, gather ideas from thought leaders and frankly just re-energize with other female technologies. So very exciting to be here. It's one of those very rare opportunities to get more into it. Is there any corollary type of technical recruiting event that's like this? I can't think of any where you've got so many talented, focused people here, engineering, tech focused, all in one spot at the same time. Although I think every conference has an element of recruiting to it and networking, I think what's unique about Grace Hopper is just sheer brain power. And it's not just, it's certainly big emphasis on students and early career talent, but it's also mid-career women and I've had several conversations which I think gave us really good leads already to recruiting more senior individuals as well. And it's interesting because there's now a flywheel going on. You get the mid-career, as you mentioned. Now you have a new generation coming in. What's the dynamic and what's your observation? I mean, you had a great career. You had on the business side, you've been moving around into roles and seeing in different all aspects of the business to technology. What's your take as someone looking down at the younger generation coming into the workforce, the women? What is the observation? Can you share any learnings that have been magnified for you? I think it's super energizing. I think there is an opportunity for early career women to learn from mid-career and senior individuals and vice versa. And this is where mentorship and sponsorship programs are so important. And I always think of mentorship as a mutually beneficial relationship. Early career individuals, men and women, provide fresh perspective. And we certainly have something to offer to them as well from the learning standpoint. So it's a nice symbiosis. And I was going to say, I didn't do it following up on kind of the sponsorship mentorship. You know, there's kind of the informal mentorship that happens if you're lucky and you're fortunate and you can find someone. But do you guys have a formal program to try to help inspire people to get connected? Especially as you said, it's a mutually beneficial arrangement. So, Intuit's culture, and that's what's unique. I've been at Intuit for about a year. And what attracted me to Intuit is that culture of teaching. Leaders were actually teaching leaders. So although there may not be in all areas of the company a formal mentorship program, it is embedded in the culture. And I take a lot of time on a weekly basis to connect with technical women at all levels and provide ongoing coaching. And frankly, a lot of it is about sponsorship as well. A lot of times it's being in a meeting with other senior leaders and saying, have you considered a certain person, a woman, for a particular opportunity? I think that's what's really important in making an effort. And this reach out. What we specifically, I'm part of IT organization, what we organized on the IT side is technical women community. And we have a variety of technical speaking series. And then of course there is a broader technical women at Intuit that we're super connected into as well. One of the things we're really passionate about at SiliconANG on theCUBE is women in tech. Obviously, Jeff and I, over the past five years, interviewed some pretty amazing, we call tech athletes, Kim Stevenson at Intel, and amongst others, it's been fantastic. And now it's really become a movement. It really becomes a seed change. And the market is seeing EMC being bought by Dell, the old client server era is over. We're kind of marking a new generational shift at all levels. Amazon is winning it all, the cloud game. Now women in tech and STEM in particular, it's pretty clear it's happening. So my question to you is, the next step is, how to include men in the conversation, which we've been talking about at VMworld. We had talked with the folks at VMware about the inclusion conversation with men now. And so I have to ask you, what's your advice for us men? How should we handle this tsunami? Should we just be ourselves? Should we try to act differently? The word politically correct, people tend to hate. So there's all kinds of new dynamics going on. So the next level we see is how to include men. What's your advice? So I think first there needs to be understanding and full realization and acknowledgement that diverse teams that include diversity from the gender standpoint and of course from race and other angles build better products and create better services. And I think most men frankly are there. So there is this complete understanding. I just heard Blake Irvon talking about that as an example. Then it is a matter of frankly, I think it's individual basis. I would not recommend any force kind of- No prescription strategy. Prescription strategy. So just be yourself but be mindful of- Yes, it's be yourself but I also think it's consciously figuring out a ways to more proactively engage with women especially earlier in their careers. And it's almost like adopting some high potential individuals, men and women. And not just providing coaching and advice but being a sponsor. I think it is- Being a friend too. And I've been very fortunate throughout my career to have men and women. And frankly I've been fortunate to have more men individuals who pushed me in the direction that I probably wouldn't have pushed myself and say you would be great for this opportunity and encouraging me- Push you out of your comfort zone. Absolutely and that is critical because I think that's most women, this is where the barrier is. So to get to that, because you've said sponsorship now a couple of times. So when you think of sponsorship compared to mentorship, what are the two or three things that really define a good sponsor or a good sponsor relationship? What should people be looking for and they're looking for a sponsor? Or if you're a senior leader and you want to help kind of grow the next level of talent in your company, what are some of the specific activities that you see as being a great sponsor? First it's genuinely understanding a person, her, well his or her interests and strengths and development areas. And being very direct and transparent about what are some opportunities from the development standpoint. Secondly, which frankly, this is not that different from a mentor, but the biggest difference is to every opportunity be it leadership meeting, the collaboration session from the performance standpoint or if there is a certain opportunity, a new opportunity, a new role comes up, it is consciously sinking through. Yes, this person may not be 100% ready for something, but he or she would be a great fit, someone we want to invest in. So it's recognizing the talent and frankly pushing both from, let's give this person opportunity and encouraging the person to take that leap of faith. That's great. We talked to Renee Zock from Aetna at the VM Women event earlier this year at VMware and she talked about the other thing that she really focused on is trying to teach her mentees, her sponsors, the language of business and really just simple tactical things to make sure that they're successful and to stop touchy-feely, deliver the bottom line, speak in a language that's bottom line to really just give them really simple but concrete things that will help them be more successful and more importantly be perceived as more successful because they might not be tuning their own horn enough. I think business language, I'm glad you mentioned business language, business language is so critical for technologists. A lot of times we know our staff really well in detail and the technical side but how you convey that information, how you organize it in a form of business case and then as a sink concise way, sell it to your leadership, to your management as well as to some of your business stakeholders and customers, that's a skill that it's super important to focus on with female technologists especially. Olga, what is the coolest thing you've seen so far here at Grace Hopper and describe the vibe? So coolest thing you've seen so far, it could be an experience, could be someone's outfit, it could be a booth, it could be a personal observation and what's the vibe? So every year I am so energized by this event. I'm a little bit biased. For me the coolest thing so far and it is, so the theme this year for us is superheroes. So the cape, I don't know if you saw our capes and we have a whole kind of social media campaign around the superheroes and the capes. So that's super. No capes is our philosophy, just like the Incredibles. No capes. I also think I was also really touched by the kind of personal story that A.B.I.'s president shared today. And to me she's actually a really good model for transparency and vulnerability. Because a lot of, on a human level, we balance so much and women, we balance a lot, right? Men and women. And to share such a touching personal story and to demonstrate the strengths that she's here speaking at this important event, I think that's super impressive. That's great. So I wanted to follow up with Jeff and ask you one more question. What is the total team like into it now? You got 84 people out. Talk about the presence. And what are some of the conversations you had last night about preparing for this event? So I think the presence, we're focusing. There are several objectives. 84 attendees, it's a combination of presenters. So we have 14 people presenting. We had 65 submissions. And we, by the way, have a whole program around technical speaking series for women where we prepare them, we coach them. So we don't just send them kind of out in the cold. We really do position them for success. We also focus very heavily on recruiting top technical talent, specifically around early career. And a lot of women, developers, engineering. Product development, so engineering, design, product management and data. Data is huge for us. And a lot of individuals are here to interview, conduct technical interviews and assess talent. And frankly, Olsen Network with each other. All right. Well, thanks for sharing your insight and data here on theCUBE. We really appreciate it. We are live at the Grace Hopper Celebration Women in Computing, the GHC 15, that's the hashtag. Go to crowdchat.net slash gh15 and join the conversation we'll be watching. We'll be right back with more live in Houston, Texas at Grace Hopper Celebration after this short break.