 From Palo Alto, California, it's theCUBE covering VMware Women Transforming Technology 2019. Brought to you by VMware. Hi, Lisa Martin with theCUBE on the ground at VMware in Palo Alto, California for the fourth annual Women Transforming Technology event WT Squared, an event that is near and dear to my heart, excited to welcome back to theCUBE Pratima Rao Gluckman, Engineering Leader Blockchain at VMware. Pratima, it's so great to have you back on theCUBE. Thank you, Lisa. It's amazing to be here. And I can't believe it's been a year. A year. And so last year, when Pratima was here, she launched her book, Nevertheless, She Persistent. I love the title. You just did a session, which we'll get to in a second, but I'd love to get your experiences in the last year about the book launch. What's the feedback been? What are some of the things that have made you feel great and surprised you at the same time? It's been fantastic. I wasn't expecting that. When I started to write this book, it was more like, I want to impact one woman's life. But what was interesting is, I delivered around 20, 25 talks last year. My calendar's booked for this year, but every time I go give a talk, my LinkedIn goes crazy and I'm connecting with all these women and men. And it's just fantastic because they're basically resonating with everything I talk about in the book. I spoke at the Federal Reserve. Wow. I was like, this is a book on tech. And they were like, no, this impacts all of us. And I spoke to a group of lawyers and actually law firms have 50, 50 when they get into law, right? When they get into whatever, I mean, law, I'm not that familiar with it, but getting to partner is where they don't have equality or diversity. And it's resonated. So now I'm like, maybe I should just take the word tech out. You know what I mean? It's been impactful. And so last year was all about companies. So I did, you know, I spoke at Uber, I spoke at VMware, I spoke at Nutanix, I spoke at a lot of these companies last year. This year is all about schools. Fantastic. Schools of all different types. Yes. So I, you know, I've done a talk at San Jose State. I went to CMU. They invited me over Carnegie Mellon. I supported the robotics team, which is all girls team. Nice. And it was fantastic because these girls, high school kids were designing robots. They were driving these robots. They were coding and programming these robots. And it was an all girls team. And I asked them, I said, but you're excluding the men and the boys. And they said, no, when it's a combined boy girls team, the women end up, the girls end up organizing. The men of the boys are actually writing the code. They're doing the drilling. They're doing all that. And so the girls don't get to do any of that. And I was looking at just the competition. And I was watching these teams, the boy girls teams, and the girls were all organizing. And I thought, this is exactly what happens in the workforce. You're right. Yeah. We come into the workforce. We're busy organizing, coordinating and all that. And the men are driving the charge. And how old were these kids where this is actually high school? High school. So 13 to 17, where this is becoming part of their cultural upbringing. Exactly. And pretty and great. Yes. Yes, at a very young age. So that was fascinating. I think that surprised me. You know, you were asking me what surprised you, that surprised me. And what also surprised me was the confidence. Though these girls were doing all these things, I've never built a robot. I would love to. I haven't built a robot. And they were doing all these amazing things. And I thought, oh my God, they're like confident women, but they were not. And it was because they felt that there was too much to lose. They didn't want to take risks. They didn't want to fail. And it was that imposter syndrome coming back. So that conditioning happens way before. Imposter syndrome is something that I didn't even know what it was until maybe the last five or six years. And suddenly even just seeing that a very terse description of it, I went, oh my goodness, it's not just me. And that's really a challenge that I think the more it's brought to light, the more people like yourself share stories, but also what your book is doing is it's not just like you were surprised to find out, it's not just tech. This is every industry. But imposter syndrome is something that maybe people consider it a mental health issue, which is so taboo to talk about, but I just think it's so important to go, you're not alone. A vast majority of men, women, whatever, culture probably have that. Let's talk about that. Let's share stories. So that to your point saying, wow, I was surprised that these young girls had no confidence. Maybe we can help by opening up and sharing and being authentic. Yeah, so I'm looking at my second book, which basically says what the fuck happens in middle school? Because what happens is somewhere in middle school, girls drop out. So I don't know what it is. I think it's Instagram or Facebook or boys or sex. I don't know what it is, but something happens there. And so this year my focus is girls and young girls in schools and colleges, and I'm trying to get as much research as I can in that space to see what is going on there. Because that totally surprised me. So are you kind of casting a wide net in terms of like, as your nevertheless, she persisted feedback has shown you, it's obviously, this is a pervasive issue across industries. This is a global pandemic, but you're seeing how it's starting really early. It's starting very early. So tell me a little bit about some of the things that we can look forward to in that book. So one thing that's important is bravery, which Reshma Saujani, who's the CEO of Girls To Code, she has this beautiful quote. She says, we raise a voice to be brave and we raise our girls to be perfect. It's pretty telling. And so we want to be perfect. We want to have the perfect hair, the perfect bodies. We want a perfect partner that never happens. But we want all that. And because we want to be perfect, we don't want to take risks and we're afraid to fail. So I want to focus on that. I want to talk to parents. I want to talk to the kids. I want to talk to teachers, even professors and find out what exactly it is. Like what is that conditioning that happens? Like why do we raise our girls to be perfect? Because that impacts us at every step of our lives, not even our careers. It's our lives. Exactly. It impacts us because we just can't take that risk. That's so fascinating. So you had a session here about persistent and inclusive leadership at WT Square at 4th Annual. Tell me a little bit about that session today. What were some of the things that came up that, you just said, yes, we're on the right track here. So I started off with a very depressing note, which is 2085, that's how long it's going to take for us to see equality. But I talked about what we can do to get to 2025 because I'm impatient. I don't want to wait until 2085. I'll be dead by then. We know you're persistent. That book title. You know, my daughter will be in the 70s. I just don't want that for her. So through my research, what I found is we need not only women to lean in, you know, we've had Cheryl Sandberg talking about how women need to lean in and it's all about the women and the onus is on the woman, the burdens on the woman, but we actually need society to lean in. We need organizations to lean in. And we need to hold them accountable. And that's where we're going to start seeing that change is doing that. So if you take VMware, you know, I've been with VMware for 10 years and I always ask myself, why am I still here? One of the things we're trying to do is we're trying to take this seriously. This morning, Ray O'Farrell talked about, like on the panel, he said, we are now, our bonuses are tied to, you know, diversity and inclusion. Like we're, we have to hire, you know, not just gender, right? Like underrepresented communities as well. We need to hire from there. And they're taking this seriously. So they're actually making this kind of mandatory in some sense, which, you know, it kind of sucks in some ways. That it has to be that way, but at least they're taking, they're putting a stake in the ground and tying it to executive compensation. Yes. It's a pretty bold move. Yes. So organizations are leaning in and we need more of that to happen. Yeah. So what are some of the things that you think could, based on the first book, I know you talked about the second one, that you think could help some of the women that are in tech that are leaving at an alarming rate for various reasons, whether it's family obligations or they just find this is not an environment that's good for me mentally. What are some of the things that you would advise of women in that particular situation? First thing is that it's to be equal partnership at home. A lot of women leave because they don't have that. They don't have that support. And having that conversation or picking the right partner. And if you do pick the wrong partner, it's having that conversation. So if you have equal partnership at home, then it's both their careers that's important. So you find that a lot of women leave tech or leave any industry because they go have babies and that happens. But it's just not even that. Once they get past that, they come back to work. It's not satisfying because they don't get exciting projects to work on. They don't get strategic projects. They don't have sponsors, which is so important for their success. And people don't take a risk on them and they don't take a risk. And so these are some of those things that I would really advise women. And actually talked about that. Talked about how to get male allies, how to get sponsors, like what you need to actually get people to sponsor you. Talk to me a little bit more about that. We talk about mentors a lot, but I did talk this morning with one of our guests about the difference between a sponsor and a mentor. I'd love you to give Sarah some of your advice on how women can find those sponsors and actually really activate that relationship. So mentors talk to you and sponsors talk about you. Okay. And the way to get a sponsor is, A, is you do great work. You do excellent work, whatever you do, do it well. And the second thing is, B is brag about it. Talk about it. Humble bragging. Yeah, humble bragging. Talk about it, showcase it, demo it, and do it with people who matter in organizations. People who can notice your work. Building that brand. Exactly. And you find that women are over mentored and undersponsored. Interesting. Yes. How do you advise that they change that? There was a Harvard study on this. They found that men tend to find mentors or also sponsors. So what they do is, like if you just take Pat Gelsinger, he says Andy Grove was his mentor, but Andy Grove was also his sponsor in many ways for his career at Intel. He was a sponsor and a mentor. What women tend to do is we find, like even me, like I have female, I have mentors who are not in my organization. And they do not have the authority to advocate for me. They don't, they're not sitting in an important meeting and saying, oh, Pratima needs that project. Oh, Pratima needs to get promoted. And so I'm not finding the right mentors who can also be my sponsors, or I'm not finding the sponsors, right? And that happens to us all the time. And so the way we have to switch this is, you know, mentors are great. Let's have mentors, but let's laser focus on sponsors. And I've always said this all of last year. I'm like the key to success is sponsorship. And I see that now I'm in an organization where my boss is my sponsor, which is amazing because every time I go into a meeting with him, he says, this is about Pratima's group. This is about Pratima's group. It's not me asking him. He's basically saying it's Pratima's group, which is amazing to hear because I know he's my mentor and sponsor as well. And it's funny when I gave him a copy of my book and I signed it and I said, and he's been my sponsor at VMware for like 10 years. I said, thank you for being my sponsor. And he looked at me and he said, oh, I never realized I was your sponsor. So that's another thing is men themselves don't know they're in this powerful position to have that impact. And they don't know that they are sponsors as well. And so we need women to focus on sponsors. I always say find sponsors. Mentorship is great, but focus on sponsors. I like I think it's an important message to get across and something I imagine we might be reading about in your next book to come. I know. Yeah. We'll see. Start of young Pratima. Thank you so much for stopping by theCUBE. It's great to talk to you and to hear some of the really interesting things that you've learned from Never the Lushie Persistent. And we're excited to hear about book number two and that comes out. You've got to come by the studio. I'd love to. Thank you. Thank you. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE from VMware at the Fourth Annual Women Transforming Technology Event. Thanks for watching.