 From San Francisco, it's theCUBE, covering Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference, brought to you by Girls in Tech. Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown San Francisco at the Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference 2018, about 700 people, mainly women, some men. I think they brought in a school bus load of girls to participate. And really it's a two-day single track conference, a lot of just presentations by senior executive women telling their story, how they got to where they were, giving some inspirational advice, and we're psyched to be here. Adriana runs a great, great conference, it's a super organization, and we're excited to have our next guest. She's Wendy Howell, the Chief of Staff for Cisco Services. Wendy, great to see you. Great to see you, thank you for having me. Absolutely, so you're here instead of Cisco Live, which I think is great for you. What do you think about this event? Why are you involved in Girls in Tech? Yeah, so I discovered Girls in Tech probably about three years ago, and saw Adriana speak on just some interview. I don't know who she is, but I love her and I love her message. So fast forward, I attended my first catalyst about three years ago, found out that we had two VPs that were on the board at Cisco, which I didn't know. So what's going on here? Let's do something with these guys. They were trying to put together a global partnership, and we really, they just couldn't get it over the line. Well, what's the problem? Funding, okay, well, let's fund it and let's just go. So we signed a global partnership two years ago with Girls in Tech. We've done, I think we've sponsored overall with Cisco about 15 different events, Catalyst Conference, Amplify Women's Pitch Night. We've done eight Hacking for Humanity events globally. It's just, it's an amazing organization. It's the right organization at the right time. You know Adriana, she is amazing. She's a force of nature. And so I liken myself to be a mini Adriana for Cisco. It's the time to get more and more focus on getting women in tech. And especially making sure that we have role models for the young ladies that are coming up in technology. Right, right. That's funny, that's how we found Adriana as well. I think she was on at an IBM event many, many moons ago and said, you know, we got to get involved. It was random. The Pitch Night is really fun. You know, that's just a great event. And one of the ones for a couple of years ago was really taking off the little like tile-like device. That's right, that's right. Which I can't remember the name, but it's not tile. And in fact, I saw one of your interviews, I think with Sandy Carter. I don't know whether it was the last year or the year before. I just stayed volunteer as well. Good, good. The sponsorship list has really grown this year and it's a who's who corporate logos, which is great. We're looking at it over across the way. And we talked about it a little bit before we turn on the cameras about how some of the bigger tech companies specifically, because kind of a tech focused event, obviously, can be not only more involved, but a little bit more thoughtful, a little bit more organized, a little bit more coordinated in the way that they put resources behind events such as girls in tech. So I wonder if you could talk to kind of what, your experience is there, what are you guys doing? How are you trying to have a little bit more purpose and organization behind your efforts? Right, and again, originally the partnership, it came together quite fast after we sort of said, hey, let's just go do this. So in our first year, we really were focused specifically on events and let's do events together to really get our name associated with the brand of girls in tech, which is global and phenomenal and 100,000 plus members, et cetera. This year in our second year, I think we're being a little more thoughtful and we really want to continue to show the ROI for our organization. So we're really focusing more on the recruiting aspect and there's some new cool things coming out on that front from girls in tech. And I really want to just say, hey, it's great to have our name associated with girls in tech, but what's it doing for us? What are we doing for the women that we're supporting? Let's hire them into Cisco, let's hire them into AWS. So that's a real key focus area for us this year, plus the events, because this is, not only is it great for us, but I get to bring my team here and they come away feeling fantastic and amazing and I get all psyched, watching all these young ladies walk around. Many of them, I'm like, I wasn't even thinking about things like this when I was your age, back in the day. That's right, this dune day, thankfully. So that's interesting in terms of how do you measure your ROI and the investment? Clearly recruiting has got to be a big piece, right? You can never get enough people and even the machines are going to take everybody's job, everyone seems to have a lot of open recs and can't fill the people. So is there anything else that you look at besides just hiring, or is it the number of people that come through the process? How do you measure? Because we know it's not only just good and the right thing to do, but there's real business benefit to participating in diversity programs. And I mean, every large organization right now, over the last three years, has come to that realization. This diversity, it's not just a buzzword, it's a thing. I mean, we know that there is greater ideas that come out of it, more diverse ideas, bookings. I mean, there's real relatable, tangible feedback that you can get from it, right? So recruiting is a big one for us, but also we look at the impact. Every quarter we sit down with Girls in Tech and we get an impact report of what are you, what have you done, Cisco, and what has it done for Girls in Tech and what has it done for us? How many people have we had attend a hackathon? How many dollars have we supported with? How many people are going through a boot camp? So that's sort of the way we look at it as well, the impact report also. Right, and do you find it's a higher kind of ROI in not so much a small organization, but these are relatively small events compared to Cisco Live and a lot of the big events that are in the industry. Is it just a more focused return? Is it a better return? How does it kind of fit in within your whole strategy? I would call it more focused. It's more of a niche, but it still provides us and we're growing, right? So we're only the second year in and I truly believe that if we continue our focus in this area, I can see a strong, high trajectory if you will. So just a pitch for companies like Cisco that aren't involved with Girls in Tech, who you may compete with, you may not compete with, you probably partner with out in the ecosystem. What would you tell them about this organization and why they should get more involved? Yeah, I mean, I think there's a couple things. So number one, Adriana herself and the brand of her and the brand that is Girls in Tech now. If you think about it, I mean, 11 years now, so going from one chapter to 62 plus, hopefully 75, I think, by 2020 is the goal and now 100,000 plus members. I mean, being associated with this brand is fabulous for your business, but it's also the right thing to do because again, I go back to my, super passionate about the next generation of female leaders and these role models that the younger folks are seeing, you can't, I mean, you can't even put a price on how valuable that is for them. It's so funny to talk about the role models. We interviewed Maria Clave who runs Harvey Mudd years ago at Grace Hopper and that was such a big part of her theme, right? Is it are there people or there women that the younger gals can look up to and see, oh, she looks kind of like me or I can be like her one day and it's such an important thing. And she talked about, you know, Zuckerberg and jobs and kind of the male kind of tech rock stars, if you will, are tech rock stars, but they're not necessarily the ones that some 14 year old, 13 year old or 25 is gonna look up to and say, hey, that's me in a few years if I work. So it's such an important piece of the whole component. My friend, a buddy of mine, she's the founder of Austin Women Magazine and she has this catchphrase that's fabulous. She goes, the female role models, if you can't see it, you can't be it. So if I'm a 24 year old young lady just graduating and I don't see anyone else who looks like me, then what do I do? So that's why I love this event in particular. It's like my passion events, yeah. All right, well, Wendy, your passion comes through and thanks for taking a few minutes of your time with us. Absolutely, thank you for having me. Absolutely, all right, she's Wendy Howe, I'm Jeff Frick. We're at Girls and Tech Catalyst in downtown San Francisco. Thanks for watching.