 From the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona, it's the queue. At the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, here is your host, Jeff Frick. Hi Jeff Frick here. We're on the ground at Phoenix Arizona at the Phoenix Convention Center. We're at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. It's the 14th annual conference here, over 8,000 attendees, a lot of great energy, a ton of tracks on education, actually a job fair. Satya Nadella gave the keynote earlier today, so we're out bringing you the story, trying to get the smartest people we can find, ask them why they're here, why it's important, and we're really excited here to have Desi Gosby. I keep writing it R, Deb Gosby. She's a chief architect for mobile for Intuit. Welcome. That's right, thank you. So mobile is like the hottest thing in tech right now, cloud mobile social. So what are you working on? How is Intuit's mobile strategy changing in these exciting times? Yeah, I mean mobile is a huge part of Intuit's strategy. We've got 20 plus different mobile offerings across the company, and the team that I work with basically is responsible for building out all of the infrastructure that goes into all of our applications to make sure they were really delivering an awesome experience for our customers. Over time, what we're seeing is more and more of our customers are doing the work that they need to do using these mobile devices, whether it's the phone, tablet, we're looking into wearables. It's starting to get more ubiquitous with the Internet of Things. So yeah, it's a huge part of our strategy. Yeah, and this whole concept that regardless of the device, regardless of the way I access the information or I don't want the same experience, even though probably from a delivery point of view, a six inch iPhone versus a 12 inch pad versus a laptop, not quite the same thing. Yeah, that's right. They're customers and they want to do their work wherever they are, whenever they want to do it, no matter what device it is that they're on, and we've got to be there and we have to be able to deliver the right experience at the right time. And I've always been impressed with Intuit for years. They're constantly sending you notes. We're having a user survey. We're having a user event. Come on in. Let us watch you work with the tools, and I imagine now you're probably getting to automate that a little bit more on the mobile side. Yeah, it's definitely been a journey just basically figuring out what are the ways and techniques that we can apply to get our experiences into our customer's hands as quickly as possible in the case of mobile. It's not about coming into the lab necessarily and watching what it is that people do. It's like getting the device into their hand, the experience in their hand, and then sort of watching behind the scenes, what it is that they're doing in their actual environment, and then using that and that information to make the experience better. Right. So yeah, so a lot of things that we're doing to basically push that forward. So let's shift gears. Talk about the conference. So you said you've been here coming for a number of years. How many times have you been? So over the past, I'd say seven years, I've been three times. Okay. And the conference has changed a lot. So this is the first time I've been in about three years. Okay. The last time that I was here, the conference was about a third of the size that it is now. And I have to say, just the size, the number of women that are here, the types of content, and the speakers that are here, it's just amazing. And just the people that we're meeting, it's fantastic. And why are you here? I mean, why have you been coming on and off for seven years? Why is it important to you? Why is it important to end to it? I mean, it's a huge opportunity for us to get in contact with amazing technical talent. You just get to meet interesting people. You get to find out more about interesting research. You make connections that you would have necessarily made before. Even just yesterday, I was starting on the poster sessions and talking with some of the amazing PhD candidates. And I've made a couple of connections for my own team, for research that we want to basically bring in and partner with our team. And we otherwise wouldn't have had the opportunity to actually do that. And that's just going to make what it is that we do better. Right. You're the second person that we've had on that have really said access to really top flight talent is really unmatched at this show, which is great. That's why we like to come out and learn what's going on. Because we've never been here before. But we're said you guys got to be out there. So we're glad we're here. So let's talk shift gears a little bit and talk about your journey. Because I think we've explored a number of times. It's good for girls coming up, young women coming up to have mentors to see, oh, I can do that. This is a person that I want to follow, emulate, et cetera. So what can you share about your story both in college and then also in your professional life that is relevant? Yeah. Mentorship has been great. And that conference we've talked a lot about also sponsorship. They know that that person is going to go out of their way to basically create opportunities for you. And I was really fortunate to basically in college. I actually started out in electrical engineering. But through the internships that I actually had, I had a really great mentor and sponsor who went to the same school that I did, who really took an interest and watched what it was that I did and said, hey, I really think that you should spend more time in computer science. You're good at it. I think this is something that you could be successful at. And so he was great at coaching me and helping me to see the different things that I could actually do. And then that translated when I started to go into industry as well. I loved it. He was right. I really loved computer science and the things that I could do, the things that I create, the sort of immediacy of being able to write some code and actually see it working immediately and getting it into customers' hands and develop the right sets of mentors and sponsors when I was at IBM. And they've been, when I was at IBM, they were great basically helping to sort of realize my potential, pushing me where I needed to go. And that's translated all the way to Intude as well. They have a great CTO, Taylor Stansberry, who was the reason I am the actual chief architect for Mobile Ad Intuit. And Sharon, I know my boss who has been a great sponsor as well. So you touched on something very interesting there. You talked about kind of the creative feedback loop that you get when you write some code and you see what you do. And I don't know if people that aren't involved in technology really understand kind of this mystery of code. But in fact, it's a vehicle for creation. I wonder if you can share kind of what that feels like when you're able to execute on an idea and put it into play and then actually see it. Yeah, it's amazing. And I've talked about this before where the part of the reason why I'm an engineer is that if I can see it, if I can think it, I can dream it, I can do it. I know that especially now given that it's so cheap to basically do computing, the tools are almost a commodity in many cases. If you see something and I get a lot of inspiration from anime as an example, you can actually go off in a couple of weeks and actually build and get it done and build it, whether it's building a robot that's going to do something automated in your home or just a piece of code that's going to improve your productivity. And it's just an amazing feeling to be able to see that and then put it out there also for other people to actually see and use. So before we wrap, now you mentioned you had some great mentorship, you had some great sponsorship. I'm going to put you on the spot for a minute for young girls and families with young girls and young women. What would you say to them? What advice could you give in a little snippet? Maybe they'll call you and ask for you to be their sponsor, but right here, what advice would you give to really young women who are not sure if they want to pursue this? Maybe they're a little apprehensive. What would you share from your experience? I would say just persevere, try it. If you feel the first time, try it again. That happens to all of us. If you stick to it and expose yourself to multiple things, you'll be amazed at the things that you can actually create and do. We need more women in tech. That's great. Persevere, right? Can't be more simple. It's not easy. Nothing that's ever worthwhile in life is, right? Because if it was easy, everybody would do it. Thanks for taking a few minutes to stop by. I'm Jeff Frick. We are at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing here in Phoenix, Arizona at the Phoenix Convention Center.