 Live from Stanford University, it's theCUBE, covering Global Women in Data Science Conference, brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. Welcome back to theCUBE, I'm Lisa Martin, live at Stanford University for the fourth annual Women in Data Science Conference, hashtag WIDS 2019. We are here with Kavita Sanghwan, the director of technical programs, artificial intelligence and machine learning at Intuit. Kivita, it's wonderful to have you on the program. Thank you, pleasure is all mine. So Intuit is a global visionary sponsor of WIDS and has been for a couple of years. Talk to us a little bit about Intuit's sponsorship of this WIDS movement. Sure, well Tech Women at Intuit has been an important part of our culture. It was founded sometime a couple of years back from our previous CTO, Taylor Stansbury. He was the founder and sponsor for it, and it has been getting the continued support and sponsorship from our current CTO, Mariana Chessel. We highly believe that diversity and inclusion and diversity in thoughts and diversity in employees is an important aspect for our company because that kind of helps us to deliver awesome product experiences and seamless experiences to our customers. This is our second year at WIDS, and we are proud to be part of this event today. It's growing tremendously. I mentioned it as a movement in three and a half years. This is the fourth annual, as I mentioned, and Margo Garrett is one of the co-founders who chatted with me a couple of hours ago and said they're expecting 20,000 people to be engaging today alone, the live stream of the event here at Stanford, but also the impact that they're making. There's 150 plus regional events going on around this event in 50 plus countries. So you and I were chatting before we went live that you feel this palpable energy when you walk in. Tell me a little bit about your role into it and how you're able to really kind of grow your career in this organization that really seems to support diversity. Sure, I had the technical program management for two data science organizations. So it's all about data, data science, AI, machine learning. We apply and embed AI and machine learning across all of our product suites and also try to apply AI and machine learning in different other aspects as well. Some of the focus areas where we are applying AI and machine learning is making our products smart, security risk and fraud space, where we are several steps ahead of the fraudsters, also in customer success space, and also within the organization, the products and services our employees use to make their experiences amazing. I have been with Intuit for almost three years now and it has been an amazing journey. Intuit is such a, it embraces diversity and it's because of its diverse, durable, innovative culture, I think Intuit has been in Silicon Valley as a strong force for over 35 years, yeah. So when we think about data science, often we think about the technical skills that a data scientist would need to have, right? It's the computational mathematics and engineering, being able to analyze data, but there's this whole other side that seems to be based on some of the conversations that we've had as important but maybe lagging behind and that is skills on being a team player, being collaborative, communication skills, empathy skills. Tell me about, from your perspective, how do you use those skills in your daily job and how does Intuit maybe foster some of those communication negotiation skills as equal importance as the actual data itself? Yeah, it's very important for us, as we hire a top talent in our organization to empower and grow that top talent as well, and we do that by providing them opportunities to learn from different sessions. We host around executive presence, negotiation skills, public speaking skills, in addition to advancing them in their technological space. As you rightly said, it's very important for us to operate in a team setting. You know, a data scientist has to interact with the product manager and data engineer, business person, a legal person, because there's questions about security and privacy, so there are so much interactions happen in a cross-functional space. It is very important for us to be a team player and having the ability to have those conversations in the right way. So Intuit invests heavily, not just in the technology space to advance women, but also in all the other ancillary spaces which are equally important to be successful as you advance in your career. So as our viewers understand Intuit, I'm a user of Intuit as well for my business, who understand it to a degree. What do you think would surprise our viewers about how Intuit is applying data science? So it's important to know that we operate with the customer's mindset. Everything we do starts with our customers, and it's very important for us to build a culture which reflects the values and the talents and the skills of our customers. And that is why I said it's very important for us to have diversity in our teams. Our most opportunity areas for investment in AI machine learning is the smart product space, where we are heavily investing to make our products intelligent, customize it according to the needs of the customers, and making them more, giving them great insights for our customers to save them money, make them do less work, and build more confidence in our product suites. Confidence, that word kind of reminds me of, another word that we hear used a lot around data, and I'm making it very general, but it's trust. So that's something that is critical for any business to establish with a customer, but if we look at how much data we're all generating is just as people, and how every company has a trail of us, what we eat, what we buy, what we watch, what we download, where does trust come into play? If you're really designing these things for the customer in mind, how are you delivering on that promise of trust? It's very rightly said. I mean, just to add to that sentiment, it has been shared in some articles that we have accumulated so much of data in the last two years, which is more than what we have accumulated in the last 5,000 years of humanity, and it is really important to have trust with your customers because we are using their data for their own benefits. Intuit operates with the principle and the mindset that this is our customer's data, and we are their stewards. So we make sure that we are one of the best stewards for their data, and that's what we reflect in our products, how we serve them, build intelligent products for them, and that's how we start to gain trust from our customers. And I imagine being quite transparent in the process. That's true, yes. So in terms of your career, I was doing some research on you, and I know that you love to get back to the community by being a champion for women in technology, encouraging young girls and STEM towards building that community. Tell me a little bit about your career. As we are here at Wids at Stanford, there's a lot of involvement in the student community. Tell me a little bit about your background and what some of your favorite things are about giving back to the next generation. Sure, I actually, when I graduated from my engineering, I was one of the four women students out of the maybe the class of around 50 students. So I think it stuck me right there that there is a disparity in the industry, in the education system, and then in the industry. I felt the same thing in my different companies where I worked. And that always led me to a point that I actually, rather than just being observing this from far, why can't I be the one who moved the needle on this? And that led me to a point where I started collaborating with, within the company, started forming teams and started working with the teams who were already there to move the needle in technical women's space. I think if I reflect back in my journey, a couple of things that stand out for me is passion for what you do. And I'm really passionate about what my goal is and I try to line up my work according to that. And that's why this women in tech, something which is close to my heart and I'm passionate about kind of always comes forward whenever I do something. The second important aspect is I've always thrown myself into situations which I've never done before. For example, we were offline talking about the hackathon which has developed her. You know, I had never done any hackathons before because I was so passionate about doing it. I just threw myself in and I ran that hackathon. And then the third thing is being persistent about what you do. I mean, you can't just do one thing and then drop it and then come back after a few weeks and then do it again. You have to have that consistency of doing it only then you start moving the needle. So I think when I reflect and look back, I mean, these three things stand out for me and that have applied in my own personal career as well as everything I do in my life. How do you give, and the last question, how do you, seems like you sort of had that natural passion, I love this, this is what I want to do, you were persistent with it. How do you advise younger girls who might not have that natural passion to really develop that within themselves? I think experiment and explore. You know, once you try to find, when you try to do different things, only then you find out where your passion lies. And just don't be scared of throwing yourself in a situation which you have never dealt before. Always try to find new things and throw yourself in an uncomfortable situation and try to get out of it. It helps you become super bold and gives you confidence and that's the way to find what you actually naturally passionate about. I like that, I like to say get comfortably uncomfortable. Last question in the last few seconds is I just want you to have the opportunity to tell our viewers where they can go to learn more about Intuit and their data science jobs. Yes, you can always go to Intuit.com and Intuitcareers.com and learn about the great opportunities we have for Intuit at data science. Excellent. Well, Kavita, it's been a pleasure to have you on theCUBE this afternoon. Thank you for stopping by and also for sharing what Intuit is doing to support WIDS. Thank you, it was my pleasure. Thank you so much. We want to thank you for watching theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin live from the WIDS fourth annual WIDS Global Conference at Stanford. Stick around and be right back with our next guest.