 From Palo Alto, California, it's theCUBE, covering VMware Women Transforming Technology 2019, brought to you by VMware. Hi, Lisa Martin on the ground at VMware in Palo Alto, California, at the fourth annual Women Transforming Technology event, or WT squared, one of my absolute favorite events to cover, and I'm pleased to welcome, from one of the sponsors, Jennifer Cohen, the Vice President of Operations at Toyota Research Institute. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you, Lisa, I'm really excited to be here, too. This is such a great event, it's morning time, you and I both have a lot of energy coming from, even before you walk into the keynote here, the collaboration, the positive spirit, the energy, all of these women talking about, and men as well, past experiences, you walk in and the energy of WT squared is palpable. This is your fourth year, so you've been here now at all four? I have, and that's why I keep coming back, because the energy here is so good, and because every year I walk away with tips I can use at work, and in my personal life, championing diversity. And diversity inclusion, one of the tracks here, as well as tracks like helping emerging leadership, the younger generation, which is key because the attrition rates in technology are so, so high. Tell me a little bit about Tech Toyota Research Institute, Tierra, what you guys do, and what made it important for Tierra to sponsor WT squared this year? So Toyota Research Institute is a subsidiary of Toyota. We're working on really exciting things like autonomous driving, robotics, to help elders age in place, and material sciences. So it's really exciting, next level stuff, and it's thrilling to kind of come into work every day on things that we've been hearing about in the world, and now they're real world things, not just the Jetsons, you know? Yes, and so you were here, as I mentioned the last three years, but last year, when you were here, you were saying a minute ago, you leave this event every year with really useful kind of, we'll put it into tech terms, actionable insights. Absolutely. Tell us about your conversations at TRI that where they said yes, this is an important event for us to sponsor. Absolutely, so when I came back last year, I had brought a couple of folks from TRI to attend the event because I've been attending since the beginning, and as I said, every year I find something that I can bring back to the teams, if not multiple things. And our chief diversity officer, or excuse me, our chief of staff, who's also our diversity inclusion head, she was very passionate about also supporting this event. We're involved with Grace Hopper, we have a women's employee resource group, we're really putting our effort and our time here, and they were glad to sponsor, and what was so exciting to walk into that room full of energy today and to see the TRI's logo up there, it was amazing. And I'm sure that you mentioned that there's about 12 of your folks that are here that probably feel as great that it's not just a logo, this isn't just branding, this is actual, we're here, it's a focused concerted effort that TRI has, and in fact, when you joined TRI in the last couple of years, one of the things that inspired you was there's a chain of female leadership here, which is not common. No, it's definitely not common in my career, so one of the reasons I started at TRI was because of my manager, her name is Kelly Kaye, she's our EVP and CFO, and she's an amazing leader, and so in having the opportunity to go to another company, I wanted to go to one that makes a difference, like TRI, working to improve the quality of human life, and I wanted to work for somebody that I really respect and could learn from, and it's been pretty rare in my career to have women female leaders to report to, so it's been amazing, and that I think shows in the role that I have, the role that our chief of staff has, Kelly's role, and the fact that we're here today, it all flows through. So let's talk a bit more about flow, as the VP of operations, tell me, for example, last year's WT squared, what were some of the learnings that you brought back and used in your team, whether it's your management style or even hiring the next generation? So a few things that I've learned, and not all of them are from last year, I'll be honest, and not all of them are ones that I've just applied at TRI, but some of them are things about management. Patty Vargas was here a couple of years ago talking about wins and challenges and really highlighting wins in every team meeting. That's something that I took back and while it's not necessarily diversity, it's been transformational for me as a leader and really helpful to my teams. Then some of the other things I learned were about, and especially a few years ago, about saying to HR, I'm not accepting any candidates until you have a diverse candidate pool. That's made a really big difference, and it's hard to say and it's hard to stick with because it is hard to find women in technology. However, sticking with that has really helped in my career hiring folks to have a more diverse team. So sticking with it, you've been in technology for a long time. Tell me a little bit about your career path. Were you stemmed from the time you were a kid knowing I love computer science or was it more zigzaggy? A little zigzaggy. I was actually a history major. Okay. But I always loved technology. Back when we had TRS 80s, I loved technology. And so I actually started doing that to put myself through school. And I loved it so much it's what I've stuck with. So I've been in technology for 25 years, starting as help desk and systems administrator and moving my way up in my career over time. And every so often they still let me touch something technology and figure a firewall or something like that. So I can keep a little bit of that skill set but it is core to who I am and it's core to why I made it 25 years. So. That's a milestone. Congratulations. Thank you. By the way, 25 years in any industry, the technology industry, I was reading some reports the other day, upwards of 45% attrition, which is higher than any other industry. What had been some of the secrets to your, obviously I'm imagining persistence, but 25 years is a long time to stick with anything but you clearly have a passion for this. But I'm sure it hasn't been easy. Give us a little bit of an understanding and maybe some of those more challenging times you encountered and how did you just kind of with that internal resolve say, no, I like technology. This is what I want to do. So it's always tough being the only woman in a room that's happened the bulk of my career, although thankfully not at TRI, but it has happened across and I actually was the only woman at one company and I thought it was going to be a great opportunity and I love the technology that they were doing and I was excited to do infrastructure and operations and support it. And it was really a bad experience and it wasn't, I imagine purposeful, but it was not great. And I was there a very short period of time when I realized it wasn't going to work and I had to take a real hard look to why I want to keep doing this for a living. And I do, I don't want to give up technology. So the right thing was to give up that company, right? And the right thing was to make sure that I stayed in what I loved, but not in the wrong spot. And so I think being stubborn and persistent and not being willing to give up the stuff that I love because the environment wasn't right was a huge part of why I've made it this far. And my daughter is a computer science major and so I really want for her not to have to go through those things. So part of the reason I come here today while I'm excited about WT2 is I want to make sure that she has a far easier time of it than I had going up. So was your daughter always interested or did she kind of following in mom's footsteps? She wasn't in the beginning, actually. She didn't want anything to do with it. And my mom's a CPA and I didn't want to do anything. We always like that as kids, right, no. Maybe a cool aunt or uncle, but never the parents. Exactly, but as she took coding classes, she actually did Girls Who Code, the seven-week immersion camp, she found like me that she loves it. So I think she'd like to not compare it to mom because she doesn't want to be her mom. Of course, of course. But she absolutely has that same passion. She loves to code and see the output and see the changes it can make in her life and potentially others. So is she in undergrad currently? She is. Do you have any feedback on the diversity in her classes? Yes, she does. And I wish I could give you something inspiring, but unfortunately, it's for four girls to 40 guys. Okay, so maybe she has that, maybe it's a DNA thing where she has that, some people might say stubborn is bad, however. I think you're a great example of how that can be, you know, sort of flip that coin and look at it as persistence. What keeps her saying, I don't care that I'm four of 40? I'm not sure. I think it's similarly the same thing that it's something that she's passionate about. And also she's had, everybody's been lovely to her. She's had no mistreatment, so she's definitely loving it, but does notice that she's one of four out of 40. But would you advise, and I don't like to say the next generation like your daughter's generation, but it's the generation of us women who are in technology now with the attrition rates. If they're in a situation, how would you advise them to recognize like the experience that you should with us? This is situational. This is industry-wide. I'm not going to make a general decision. What would your advice be to them in terms of making that decision to not leave? So I would say, actually a mentor of mine told me when I was years ago at a company says, do you like the work or do you not like the work? Do you like the people? Do you not like the people? If you don't like the people, you need to go somewhere else. But if you like the work, if you don't like the work, you're in the wrong industry. And I liked the work and I always have. So I would say if you like the work, find the right opportunity and see what change you can do in the company that you're at. If you're at a company and things aren't right, a lot of times you can talk to your manager, each other's ways to see if you can fix it. And if you can't, it's okay to go somewhere else and do what you love. I love that. It is okay. So one of the things that I'd love to dig in on as well is you had gone to TRS, HR and said I'm not going to be looking at any candidates until you- I actually did that previous companies, but that is my stance since then. I'm not going to look at any candidates without a diverse pool. Okay. And so what does diverse mean to you? What do you say to them? I know you can find this. Yes. Well, diverse. I don't want to dictate it. I just don't want to have the teams all be the same person. And I think Joy is talking at the keynote right now about how important it is that we be careful of bias and that we look at those things and that we are having the people who build the technology be well-rounded because this technology that's built here in the Valley goes all over the world and has to serve everyone, not just the folks who build it. So I think it's having that same mindset going into hiring. One of the, and that's so important. And there's also debate of is it a pipeline problem? I just read Emily Chang's book, Rotopia, and where she kind of documents where that pipeline problem was created many, many, many decades ago. And a lot of people will say it's a pipeline problem, but the majority that underrepresented, which isn't just women, it's people of minorities as well, who say it's not a pipeline problem. And even if we look at AI, there's so many exciting possibilities. All the autonomous vehicle work that TRI is doing, for example, that will impact everybody in the future. It's facial recognition. And there's probably people in the baby boomer generation that have iPhones with facial recognition. But the things that Joy was sharing about the biases sort of these models are being trained on, really it gives me goosebumps. It's mind blowing. But more people need to understand we need better data and more diverse data, not just that, to train the models, to recognize more. But there needs to be lots of different data sets. So this inclusiveness, when I think of diversity inclusion, one of the things that I thought of when Joy was talking about inclusivity is, it's inclusivity of different data sets, of different technologies, so that ultimately going forward, we can start reducing these biases and this technology then is all for good. And I think one of the things that we've done is for our company, we actually had an all hands doing unconscious bias training. We are absolutely committed to making sure that we're thinking about those things. On the idea if it's pipeline or if it's not, I think it's a combination, because the fact is my daughter is in a class with four girls and 40 men. And that's not necessarily, there's no judgment there, but that's the reality. So there's pipeline, but I also think we can demand as hiring managers to have a diverse pool come to us. And diversity isn't just, I speak to women because that's my story, but there's other kinds of diversity inclusion. We have our LGBTQ plus ERG, sorry, it's a lot of letters to get out at once. We have our women and allies ERG employee resource groups where we're supporting that at TRI, but I think we see people out there in the world all trying to push forward on this. I think if we come out of these conferences and take those actions, that's how overtime it's going to get better. So that's my personal thought. I love that last question. What are you looking forward to taking away from WT squared four inclusive innovators as the thing? Well, being in a company doing innovation, I'm really curious to see what's presented today. And I know that we've heard studies that talk about women run companies and with women on boards that profitability and innovation go up. So I think that the more inclusive we are, the better all of our technology that comes out of the valley is going to be. So I'm looking forward to the, whatever thought leadership is here today that's different from, in each year that there's something different here that I learned. It's not the same thing. It was pipelines four years ago, right? Like this last year, it was a lot about women's leadership. So I'm really excited to see what comes out today. Well, Jennifer, I thank you so much for sharing some of your time on theCUBE with me today. And I think a lot of people are going to be able to learn a lot from you as well. We appreciate your time. I appreciate your time. Thank you. Oh, my pleasure. Lisa Martin on the ground with theCUBE. Thanks for watching.