 Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering Grace Hopper's celebration of women in computing, brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of the Grace Hopper Conference here in Orlando, Florida. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We're joined by Pamela Rice. She is the head of technology, strategy, and innovation labs engineering at Capital One. So thanks so much for joining. Absolutely, it's great to be here, it's really good. So you've only been at Capital One for nine months. That's right. You're new to the job, new to the company. Yeah. Tell our viewers a little bit about why you chose Capital One and what your first experiences were. Yeah, absolutely. So I'm leading technology strategy and innovation and what that means is looking at how we can use emerging technologies to set our course for really creating better and differentiated products for our customers. We know that customers' expectations are changing drastically and technology is really rapidly accelerating. So using things like IoT, machine learning, streaming data, these are all ways we can connect with our customers better. And it's funny, when I first walked into Capital One doors to interview nine months back, they had been talking to me for some time and I'm like, okay, I'll talk to you. I didn't have high expectations. But I walked into- Because it's a- You thought it was a buttoned up kind of- And I've been part of FinTech and startups and I'm like, rapid, let's change the world kind of thing. And I walked into the building in Richmond and I asked the person, because I could immediately see that teams were working on things together. There was a sense of real purpose and energy. It was like you could feel the energy in their walls. They were using buzzwords like machine learning and I was like, wait a minute, I must have gone to the wrong place. And I went back to the front desk and I'm like, is this Capital One? And I really did that because it felt like a tech company. And the walls were bright and shiny and people were running around and it was a little bit of a hectic pace to it. And I just thought immediately, there's something to this place that looks different than my expectations of a bank were. So what is Capital One doing right in the sense of bringing this technology buzz into a financial institution? Yeah, I mean, I think that it's safe to say that to Capital One really understands that customer expectations are changing so fast and technology is changing so fast that they have to invest heavily in technology to really reach their customers and go where their customers are going to want to go. So looking at, and part of my job is looking at strategy, where do we think technology is going to go and how do we make big bets now so that we can meet our customer needs in the future? And I think one of the things that holds true for me is that our internal moral compass, our fiber, our DNA comes out when we talk about how we get there. We want to get there together with diverse teams and that's why it's so important for us to be here because the way we build products is the way that we will connect with our customers and we want our customers, all of our customers to feel connected to our products, not just one segment of the community. So talk to me a little bit about the process of designing a new product for your customers and with that diverse team behind it. You know it's funny because in the old waterfall ways and an idea would be born in some board room or some shadow room and then all of a sudden engineers would get a spec on their plate that would say, hey, go build this. And oftentimes they were so disconnected from the customers. We've taken that and pivoted it totally around so that we have whole teams that are filled with designers, with design thinking, with product, with engineering and they can connect with the customers in a way that really optimize towards getting a product out to market faster. And by the way, that life cycle from the time an idea is born to the time you could get something in customers' hands that needs to shorten as well so that you can focus on innovation. If we're day to day activities takes you months, if not years to get out to market, you have no time for innovation. So part of my job also is optimizing how we get things out to market faster and in a streamlined way and empower that team to connect with the customers better. And see what the customers like and what they don't like and then iterate. Exactly. What are some of the most exciting things you're working on now? Well, you know, it's hard to say that there's one, just one thing. We have so many really big milestones underway. It's no secret that we have a heavy migration to the cloud. We were one of the first financial institutions that really doubled down and said we're all in, we're going there. And in fact, I think there's going to be more and more financial institutions that start going there because it's such a time saving. If I don't have to worry about all these racks and all this hardware, I spend more time connecting with the customers. Again, operational efficiency in connecting with their customers. We have a high DevOps mindset, meaning we disconnect that bridge from engineer to throwing something over the wall and we combine a team that has everything it takes to get something out to the customer and then fix something if something goes bump in the night. We also have a high culture that is, we have a goal of getting into microservices more. So instead of these big monolithic applications, really focusing on these small micro elements that have functionality that is enabled to the customer so we get things out the door faster. So when you talk about diverse teams and you're talking about a lot of cross-functional teams, so you've got teams with engineers and designers on them working together, but you're also talking about racial diversity and gender diversity. Absolutely. So how do you make that happen? You know, it's a tough problem. And I've been asked a lot of questions about how do you have diversity programs that actually work? And I will say, it is not just one program. When you're focusing on diversity, you can't just think about it from a program perspective. You have to think about it at your DNA level. Like every conversation, every way that you think about who should be promoted or who should get an opportunity or economic parity, all of these things that you should be questioning, hey, am I thinking about this through a diversity lens? And so even in conversations I have with my team or somebody should bring up something as innocuous as man-hours, I correct them. I say it's not man-hours. These are people-hours. So even if you can have those small hints, you need a program, absolutely, but you need diversity included in every conversation you have, whether it is about who's going to get promoted, who's going to get a bonus, or how we talk about people and where they spend their time. And as a woman engineer, and I hate saying a woman engineer, you're an engineer. You're a human being engineer. But you also are a role model to the younger women here at Grace Hopper. What is your best advice for them if they want to have a career as an engineer? You know, it was funny. Yesterday I was on a panel and over 700 people came. I was just so honored to be part of that experience. And my role in technology and being an executive now in technology really has shifted quite a bit. And I feel like it's my job to give back to the community. There's nothing more empowering for me personally than to see somebody helped by words of advice or being connected to somebody else. And I think that my biggest words of advice are really to know that you deserve it. Know that you deserve this career. Know that you deserve to dream big. You deserve a loud voice. You deserve a seat at the table. You deserve the whole table. You deserve whatever you want to dream. And if you have voices in your head or external voices that are telling you you can't have it, quiet those voices and believe in yourself because there's nothing more powerful than believing in yourself. And we are all here believing in you because these engineers deserve it and I would just tell them to believe that. That's great advice. Thank you. Pamela, thanks so much for being on our show. It's been really fun talking to you. Thank you so much. We will have more from Orlando and the Grace Hopper Conference just after this.