 from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. It's theCUBE. Covering Women in Data Science Conference 2018. Brought to you by Stanford. Welcome back to theCUBE, our continuing coverage live at the Women in Data Science Conference 2018. Hashtag WIDS 2018. I'm Lisa Martin, and I'm very excited to not only be at the event, but to now be joined by one of the speakers who spoke this morning, Mala Anand, the executive vice president at SAP, and the president of SAP, Leonardo Data and Analytics. Mala Anand, Mala, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you, Lisa, I'm delighted to be here. So this is your first WIDS, we were talking off camera about, this is the third WIDS, and 100,000 people they're expecting to reach today. As a speaker, how does that feel knowing that this is being live streamed and on their Facebook live page, and you have the chance to reach that many people? It's really exciting, Lisa, and it's inspiring to see that we've been able to attract so many participants in such an important topic for us. More and more, I think two elements of the topic, one is the impact that data science is going to have in our industry, as well as the impact that we want more women to participate with the right passion, and being able to be successful in this field. I love that you said passion, I think that's so key. And that's certainly one of the things I think, as my second year hosting theCUBE, you feel it when you walk in the door, you feel it when you're reading the hashtag WIDS 2018 Twitter feed, it's the passion is here, the excitement is here, 150 plus regional WIDS events going on today in over 50 countries, so the reach can be massive. What were maybe the top three takeaways from your talk this morning that the participants got to learn? Absolutely, and what's really exciting to see is that we see from a business perspective that customers are seeing the potential to drive higher productivity and faster growth in this whole new notion of digital technologies. And the ability now for these new forms of systems of intelligence where we embed machine learning, big data, analytics, IoT, into the core of the business processes, and it allows us to reap unprecedented value from data. It allows us to create new business models, and it also allows to reimagine experiences. But all of this is only possible now with the ability to apply data science across industries in a very deep and domain expertise way. And so that's really exciting, and moreover to see diversity in the participants, diversity in the people that can impact this is very exciting. I agree, you talked about digital business, digital transformation opens up so many new business model opportunities for companies, but the application of advanced analytics, for example, alone opens up so many more career opportunities because every sector is affected by big data, whether we know it or not, right? And so the opportunity for those careers is exploding. But another thing that I think is also right for conversation is bringing in diverse perspectives to analyze and interpret that data. To remove some of the bias so that more of those business models and opportunities can really bubble up. Absolutely. Tell me about your team at SAP Leonardo and from a diversity perspective, what's going on there? Yeah, absolutely. So I think your point is really valid, which is the importance of bringing in diversity, and also the importance of diversity, both from a gender perspective and diversity in skills. And I think the key element of data and decision science is now it opens up different types of skills, right? It opens up the skills. Of course, the technology skills are fundamental. The ability to do data modeling is fundamental, but then we add in the deep domain expertise, the add in the business perspectives, the ability to story tell. And that's where I see the ability to story tell with the right domain expertise opens up such a massive opportunity for different kinds of participants in this field. And so within SAP itself, we are very driven by driving diversity. SAP had set a very aggressive goal by 2017 to be a 25% of women in leadership positions and we achieved that. We've got an aggressive goal to be a 30% of women in leadership positions by 2020, and we're really excited to achieve that as well. And very important as well, both within Leonardo and data analytics as well, by diversity is fundamental to our growth. And more importantly, to the growth for the industry, I think that's going to be fundamental. I think that's an really important point, the growth of the industry. SAP does a lot with, with, we had Anne Rosenberg on last year, I saw her walking around. So from a cultural standpoint, what you've described, there's really a dedicated focus there, and I think it's a unique opportunity that SAP doesn't have, they're taking advantage of it to really show how a massive corporation, a huge enterprise, can really be very dedicated to bringing in this diversity. It helps the business, but it also, to your point, can make a big impact on industry. Absolutely, you know, culture is such a critical part of being succeeding in the business, right? And I think culture is an important lever that can help differentiate companies, right, in the market. So of course it's technology, it's value creation for our customers, and I think culture is such an important part of it. And when you unpeel the level of culture, you know, within there comes diversity, and within there comes bringing a different diversity of a skills base as well, that is going to be really critical in the next generation of businesses that will get created. I like that, that's it. Especially sitting in Silicon Valley where there's new businesses being created every probably 30 seconds. I'd love to understand if we kind of take a walk back through your career and how you got to where you are now, what were some of the things that inspired you along the way, mentors, what were some of the things that you found really impactful and crucial to you being as successful as you are and a speaker at an event like WIDS? No, absolutely, it's really exciting to see that for my own personal journey, I think that one of the things that was really important is passion, right, and ensuring that you find those areas that you're passionate about. I was always very passionate about software and being able to look at data and analyze data from doing my undergraduate in computer science as well as my graduate work in computer science from Brown and from there on out, always looking at any of the opportunities, whether it was an individual contributor that I did, it's important to be passionate and I felt that that was really my guiding post to really being able to move up from a career perspective and also to looking to be in an environment and an ecosystem of people and environments that you're always learning from, right, and always never being afraid to reach a little bit further than your capabilities. I think ensuring that you always have confidence in the ability that you can reach and even though the goals might feel a little bit far away at the moment. So I think also being around a really solid team of mentors and being able to constantly learn. So I would say a constant continuous learning and passion is really the key to success. I couldn't agree more. I think it's that we often, the word expert is thrown around so often and in so many things. And there certainly are people that have garnered a lot of expertise in certain areas, but I always think, are you really ever an expert? There's so much to learn every day. There's so many opportunities. But another thing that you mentioned that reminded me of we had Maria Clave on a little bit earlier today and one of the things that she said in her welcome address was in terms of inspiration, don't worry if there's something that you think you're not good at. Absolutely. It's sort of getting out of your comfort zone and one of my mentors likes to say getting comfortably uncomfortable. That's not an easy thing to achieve. So I think having people around, people like yourself, you're now a mentor to potentially 100,000 people today alone. What are some of the steps that you recommend? How does someone go, I really like this, but I don't know if I can do it. How would you help someone get comfortably uncomfortable? Yeah, I think first of all, building a small group, I would say of stakeholders that are behind you and your success is going to be really important. I think also being confident about your abilities, right? Confidence comes in failing a few times, it's okay. To miss a few goals, it's okay to fail, but then you leap forward even faster. Failure is not a bad F word, right? Absolutely. I think a lot of leaders like yourself will say that it's actually part of the process. It's very much part of the process. So I think number one thing is passion. First, you've got to be really clear that this is exactly what you're passionate about. Second is building a team around you that you can count on, you can rely on that are invested in your success. And then thirdly is also just to ensure that you're confident, right? Being confident about asking for more, being confident about being able to reach close to the impossible is okay. It is okay and it should be encouraged every day and no matter what gender, what ethnicity, that should just sort of be one of those level playing fields, I think. Unfortunately, it probably won't be, but events like WIDs and the reach that it's making today alone, certainly I think offer a great foundation to start helping break some of the molds that even as we sit in Silicon Valley, are still there. There's still massive discrepancies in pay grades. There's still a big percentage of females with engineering degrees that are not working in the field. And I think the more people like yourself and some of your other colleagues that are here participating at WIDs alone today have the opportunity to reach a broader audience, share their stories, their failures, the successes and all the things that have shaped that path, the bigger the opportunity we have. And it's, I think, almost sort of a responsibility for those of us who've been in STEM for a while to help the next generation understand nobody got here with a silver spoon, some, but on a straight path. It's always that zigzaggy sort of path and embrace it. Yeah, I think that's key, right? And the one point here is very relevant that you mentioned as well is that it's very important for us to recognize that allow for an environment where you can embrace the change, right? And in order to embrace change, it's not just people that are going through it, but people that are supporting it and sponsoring it because it's a big change. It's a change from what was an environment a few years ago to what is going to be an environment of the future, right? Which is an environment full of diversity. So I think being able to be ambassadors of the change is really important as well as to allow for confidence building in this environment, right? I think that's going to be really critical as well. And for us to support those environments and build awareness, build awareness of what is possible. I think many times people go through their careers without being aware of what is possible. Things that were certain thresholds, certain limits, certain guidelines, two years ago are dramatically different today. Oh yes. And so having those ambassadors of change that can help us build awareness with our growing community I think is going to be really important. I think some of the things too that you're speaking to there are boundaries that are evaporating and we're seeing them become perforated and sort of disappear as well as maybe some of these structured careers. There's a career as this. They used to be pretty demarcated doctor, lawyer, architect, accountant, whatnot. And now it's almost infinite. Especially having a foundation in technology with data science and the real world and social implications alone that a career in this field can deliver just kind of show the sky's the limit. Yeah, absolutely. The sky's truly the limit, right? And I think that's where you're absolutely right. The lines are blurring between certain areas. And at the same time, I think this was this opens up huge opportunity for diversity in skill set and diversity in domain. I think equally important is to ensure to be successful you want to start by driving focus. So how do you draw that balance and for us to be able to mentor and guide the younger generation to drive that focus at the same time, leverage the opportunities open is going to be critical. So getting back to SAP Leonardo, what's next in this year where we're in the March of 2018? What are some of the things that are exciting you that your team is going to be working on and delivering for SAP and your customers this year? SAP Leonardo is really exciting because it essentially allows for our customers to drive faster innovation with less risk. And it allows our customers to create these digital businesses where you have to change a business process and a business model that no single technology can deliver. So as a result, we bring together machine learning, big data, analytics, IOT, all running on a solid cloud platform within memory databases like HANA at scale. So this year is going to be all about how we bring these capabilities together very specifically by industry and reimagine processes across different industries. I like that reimagine. I think that's one of the things that you're helping to do for females in data science and computer science is reimagine the possibilities. Not just the younger generation, but also those who've been in the field for a while that I think will probably be quite inspired and reinvigorated by some of the things that you're sharing. So Mala, thank you so much for taking the time to stop by theCUBE and share your insights with us. We wish you continued success in your career and we look forward to seeing you at WIDS next year. Thank you so much, Lisa. I'm delighted to be here. Excellent, thank you. My pleasure. We want to thank you. You are watching theCUBE live from WIDS 2018 at Stanford University. I'm Lisa Martin. Stick around, my next guest will be joining me after this short break.