 Welcome to ITU Telecom World 2016 in Bangkok, Thailand and I've got the great pleasure of being joined in the studio today by Astrid Tuminez, who is Regional Director Corporate External Legal Affairs at Southeast Asia for Microsoft. Astrid, thank you very much for joining us in the studio. It's great to be here. Now, I'd like to start off by talking about the session that you were involved in. In fact, yesterday I understand that here at ITU Telecom World it was about ICTs and SDGs and the link between the two, and it's a subject that's very much close to our hearts. Perhaps you could give us a few of the key takeaways from that session. Yes, absolutely. So a lot of the discussion yesterday is centered around what ICT companies could do in order to help the world get closer to realizing the sustainable development goals or SDGs. As you may know, there are 17 of these SDGs, and my own company, Microsoft, has aligned itself with eight of the goals, including education, health, work, gender equality, and so on. And one of the insights there is that the SDGs are aspirational, but they do give us a guide on what we as companies could do with our resources. And one of the critical innovations today in the world is really cloud computing. And with the public cloud today, so many of the barriers to education, to commerce, to communication have fallen down. And I think it's very important to underline that cloud should not be leaving people behind. It should be a cloud that is trusted, inclusive, and responsible. And what do we mean by that? A trusted cloud is one that allows for innovation and all the fantastic things you can do with connectivity these days while also being secure, providing security for the privacy of citizens, and also protecting against cyber criminals, because there is a dark side to connectivity and what we do on the Internet today. An inclusive cloud is one that empowers those who are marginalized. So we may be talking about out-of-school youth or women or people who are in rural areas and all of the things that the cloud can bring through mobile devices is something that could include them in development. And finally, a cloud that is responsible is a cloud that takes care of the carbon footprint. As you know, cloud is all about gigantic data centers, and they can consume as much electricity as small states. And so for us specifically at Microsoft, we have been operating carbon neutral since 2012, and 44% of the electricity we use in our data centers are from renewable sources. Now collaboration is a key topic here at ITU Telecom World, as it is, I'm sure, generally around the globe. I wanted to find out how is collaboration important to your work at Microsoft, and perhaps you could share some examples of it. Yes, so perhaps the collaboration that I would really like to emphasize is public-private collaboration. So if you take, for example, the problems that we have today with cybercrime, we can do so many wonderful things with our connectivity and with the Internet and with cloud computing services. At the same time, lurking in the system with cybercrime, it's got, it victimizes a lot of people. Now solving that requires collaboration with policy and regulation from the government, education and awareness from the ICT companies, as well as technical solutions that can be demonstrated, and then scaled. The other type of collaboration that's really important, I think, is with what people call CSR. Now I'm aware that there's plenty of skepticism and even cynicism about corporate social responsibility. But I think when it is practiced in the best possible way, society and government can leverage the resources that the private sector can bring to the table. So again, talking about Microsoft, we have three major resources. One is our people, second is our money, and third is our technology. So our people, when they pursue their passions in working with nonprofits, for example, or teaching computer science to girls, that is fantastic and they can do that in whatever country they live in. With money, it's about the grants that we give, very serious grants in order to help nonprofits in particular, but also academic research. We need to understand these key dynamics going on in the world today and how technology is empowering people and what the dangers are as well. And then finally, with technology, I am talking about both cloud computing services that's donated for free by Microsoft to academic institutions and also to nonprofits. And that is something that when deployed and consumed in the most intelligent ways can really bring people's productivity, their insight, and their overall contributions to a different level. Now one of the side events here that's happening are the GemTech Awards, encouraging gender mainstreaming in technology. And also, of course, we've been, as ITU, have been very involved in encouraging girls in to get involved in the ICT sector and girls in ICTs. I just really wanted to find out from you, from your perspective, why is it tough for women to get into the tech industry and what do you think could be done to redress that balance? Yes, so it is no news to anybody that the tech industry is very male dominated. And I think in part it is perceived as a culture of engineers. And if you look back to the 80s, there were actually more young women studying computer science than there are today. So there is an enormous amount of maybe perception blockage when girls see that that's mainly for men, or when you are in it and the culture can be so macho. And there are plenty of examples about that that journalists have covered. Even among startups in Silicon Valley, women have left because of this culture that's overly male and can be very discouraging. So what can we do? I think here again, I think the tech companies, governments, universities, we all can contribute to, first of all, encouraging young girls, exposing them to as much problem solving experiences, science and mathematics, because all of that can be a lot of fun. And what we do in Microsoft is programs that introduce girls to digital literacy, to computational logic, to computer science, and at the same time exposing them to the wide range of careers that you can have in the tech industry. Because the perception that you absolutely have to be an engineer is not true at all, because tech companies actually work a lot with government, they work a lot with nonprofits, they work a lot with all sorts of sectors and industry, and so the opportunities are enormous, and the opportunities to do good, to bring your passion and bring ICT as a tool to make what you do better, to make what you do have more impact in the world. That is the promise of ICT, and it would be quite tragic if half of our human capital, the female part, is excluded from contributing to that. Do you think there is a chance for gender equality and mainstreaming in technology? Yes, there is a challenge in gender equality. I mean, the numbers kind of speak for themselves, and so if you look at senior leaders in the tech industry, it hovers around 28 to 30 percent, and so the tech industry is not unique in some ways, so if you look at women's pathways to leadership, corporate world or in government, you will see that there is a vulnerable time when there are high drop-out rates, and that's around the time when women start having children, and corporations that are serious about nurturing, cultivating, and deploying female talent should be sensitive to that face because that is when support is needed, and what happens then if you do provide that support, the women carry on, they should not be faced by this choice of either or, so again, the world today is a very competitive place, talent can move anywhere, and I think the talent that educated women, ambitious women, and there are more and more of us, including here in Asia, if you look at the numbers in education, entry into the labor force, there are more women, and we have invested in them already, therefore we need to reap that investment, and the tech industry has got to be very much a part of that. Finally, you're attending here this event, ITU Telecom World. I wanted to ask you what's the value of attending events such as this? Well, this is actually my first time at ITU Telecom World, and yesterday I arrived and went to lunch, and was extremely fascinated that at the lunch table I had government officials from Hungary to Valu, somebody from Tonga came over, one person from London representing the commonwealth telecom industry, so there was just tremendous diversity and viewpoints, so that's one of the things that I got immediately yesterday, and in my own panel we were representing several tech companies as well as think tanks, and we were moderated by a professor who was a force of nature, and I thought that dialogue where you have an academic posing strong questions, provocative questions, and really getting everybody to answer in authentic ways about what the reality is, what the aspirations are about what the reality is, and what can we do together. I thought it was a very fertile conversation, and so my sense is at ITU World Telecom, those are the kinds of conversations that could happen, and we move forward with better ideas. Well, that's wonderful. Thank you very much for sharing your ideas with us today, and we wish you the very best of future with all your projects. Thank you.