 Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. I'm going to hear today. Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of the Grace Hopper Conference here in Orlando, Florida. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We are joined by Josie Gillan and Laurel McClay. They have just launched a new collaboration, Twinovate. Tell our viewers about Twinovate. You are identical twins. I, first of all, should say this. Yes, we are. So, Twinovate, one in, what it is, is Laurel and I are actually mirror twins, and I'm left brain, I'm right-handed. Laurel's right brain, she's left-handed. So what I am is I'm in my previous background as engineering leadership. I've worked at companies like Salesforce, Atlassian, Cloud Error. But Laurel and I saw an opportunity with our diverse viewpoints to start a collaboration together. So I'm the left brain twin. I'm logical. I'm problem solving. And I love nothing more than to get that code compiled. And I'm the right brain twin. So I'm creative, language, any of that messy human emotional stuff. I'm a career coach back in New Zealand. And so I love nothing more than helping people with their identity, their uniqueness, and looking at some of the behavioral challenges which might be holding them back. So we looked at the two of us together and we thought, wow, we've got some great stuff and what are we truly passionate about? We're truly passionate about women, particularly in STEM, being able to contribute themselves fully in a way that works for them to not only their own legacy, but the legacy of who they're collaborating with. Now you are here at Grace Hopper. You're running a workshop and before the cameras are rolling, you were talking about an apology epidemic. Explain what you mean by that. Well, if you think about an epidemic, it's something that spreads and often it spreads without people even realizing it before it's too late. And so what we realized was that women in particular were using language like just, I'm sorry, it's only me. If someone gives us a compliment, we say, oh, I bought this, this old thing, I got it on sale. And what we realized, well, the message of that was saying was, I don't count, I'm invisible, please put yourself before me. And the challenge about this epidemic is a lot of people don't realize they're saying it. Yeah, and there's some great example. This is really resonating with people. So I'm actually on a Moms and Tech Facebook group and I asked for some stories. And one woman talked about softball practice and she practices at the same field where men practice. And what she noticed is every time the women dropped a ball or missed a pitch, they would say, sorry, sorry. And she turned around and looked at the males and the males never, never did that. So why are we apologizing? And we have created this cool little sheet we call Apology Bingo. That's available on our Facebook page. And it helps people to look at the many times that they might say these words. One of the words that I have realized, I say all the time, is actually, and even though actually may not sound apologetic in itself, it's absolutely, it's a qualifier, it's great. And so we're talking about apologizing over explaining and qualifying. And that makes you appear a lot less confident and really can have career limiting impact. Well, I want to talk about the career limiting impact, but I also just want to ask you about, so it's one thing to understand and acknowledge and becoming aware, become aware that you are using this kind of language. How do you eradicate it from your vocabulary? So what we talk about in the workshop is little shifts and big calls. So the little shifts are those small things that you can do to catch yourself. And that's at the language level. So for example, there's a great Gmail app called Just Not Sorry. It's a Chrome plugin. And so what you do is you add that to your Gmail and it will show and underline some of the language in each email, which is apologetic. But then I call it the big calls. And that's really two things. The first thing is, do you want to start a revolution? Because let's face it, when you turn up previously apologetic and maybe not too troublesome, let's just say, and you start kicking out your unapologetic language, there are going to potentially be some people around there who don't take kindly to that. And they may call you angry or apathy. Or even worse. Or even worse, exactly. So I feel it's about people learning and doing some personal development work on themselves to get the courage to do that. Not saying that everyone needs to start a revolution, but for those who feel inspired to do it, and for everyone, I believe it is a symptom of the, I'm not good enough, self-worth. And we have an interesting take on self-value, don't we, Dorothy? We do. Being an identical twin is very interesting because what we've found is I might get really quite sniffy at Laurel, and she said to me, why are you so sniffy at me? And it was like, well, I see things in you that I don't like in myself. And so we have decided, let's turn it around. I want to acknowledge in Laurel things I do like in myself and accept the things that, the bad with the good. Right, right, and we could all learn from that. I mean, this is just, that's a lesson in humanity. And one other point I want to make though, with the people who might not appreciate this, we're not, we're not dropping manners here. Clearly we are not suggesting that you're no longer courteous. What we want to say is, save, sorry, for when it really counts. For when you need to apologize. So in terms of the career limiting factors that we were talking about, what is sort of unintended consequences of this apologetic behavior? Well, I can talk to that. In some of my roles in the past as an engineering leader, I've really focused on maybe more building up my team, collaboration, and sometimes my management may not agree with the way that I'm doing it, right? Now, rather than having a healthy dialogue about why I'm doing it this way and maybe coming to some kind of general agreement, I have in the past tended to say, I must be wrong, he or she must be right. And the ironic thing is with my experience, I meant to bring that in. I meant to bring my experience in. I've had in reviews that you don't have enough of an opinion. So really I think that was certainly career limiting for me and something I'm learning how to do much better. So at Twinavate, you're empowering women in STEM. You are making sure that they feel included, making sure that they feel like they have a voice at the table, making sure that they are, as you said, not apologizing for being women in the workforce. Do you go in and do you work with individuals? Do you work with companies who say we need to help our workforce deal with these issues? Absolutely. So in this workshop, we just had an hour and it was a packed audience, it was fantastic. So something that I'm really clear about is it's such a privilege being in front of a room. So we want to make sure that it's just not the talking heads that people look at their own situations and we give them examples, both professional and personal, because let's face it, that's a big part of it, isn't it, when people are apologetic in their own world. And so they'll work together at the table to be able to come up and discuss and we share that as a room. In the workshop capacity, it's something that we will deal with people one-on-one because that's when I've done this whole, I think one of the reasons I am good at uniqueness and identity is because I'm an identical twin. And so I can work with people and nail their specific challenge in a heartbeat. So for me, it's about sharing that power of group, but also giving the individual attention so people can walk away knowing the stuff that's particularly relevant to them. Okay, all right, so how, I mean, I think one of the other questions I would have for you is that you're based in Silicon Valley, you're based in Auckland. Is the tech industry similar? How would you describe the different tech industries in your respective countries? Look, it's been so interesting because I do quite a lot of work in New Zealand and Australia and not just in technology, but also in engineering, which is the other part of STEM, of course. And it's more flipped the other way because I understand the challenges in New Zealand and Australia. I've been having wonderful conversations on the floor here in the last couple of days and saying, is it true that when you turn up, or someone turns up to your offices, that they immediately assume you're the receptionist and they just go, oh my goodness, absolutely. You know, is it true that you have sometimes direct reports who don't like what you say and they'll literally say it's because you're a woman? I'm like, yes, so I feel that this is a global, this is a global epidemic. It's a challenge. It's a challenge. They're facing everywhere. So what is next for Twinabate? Where do you go from here? I mean, you're here at Grace Hopper, which is obviously a receptive audience, a vast audience for the message, but what's next for your collaboration? Well, as Josie said, we were really quite surprised about how strongly it resonated yesterday and we've got some great feedback. We've both got children, but we're both lucky enough to have fathers of those children that are very, very supportive. And so, hey, we've got this great opportunity to see more of each other. I'm coming back in March. We're coming back next year for Grace Hopper. So I'll be coming to the States twice a year and Josie's coming down to New Zealand and Australia at least once a year. And we're just having very limited partnerships with people who want to work with us and we'll look at some public stuff too. And maybe a book in the words? Or maybe the... So I've already written a book but I wrote it about I was being unapologetic at the time and this is what I'm really passionate about. So by the time I come back in March, my unapologetic book, which is literally about unapologetic careers and lifestyles will be in our hot little hands and Josie's contributing to that with a particular 20 of eight chapter that we've been working on. Excellent. Well, Josie Laurel, thanks so much for joining us. It's been a pleasure having you on the show and Josie, you're a cube alum, I should have said too. There you go. Exactly. Great to see you again, Rebecca. Great. Well, best of luck to you both. Thank you so much. Thank you. We will have more from the Grace Hopper Conference just after this.