 From Santa Clara, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley, it's theCUBE, covering Technovation's World Pitch 2018. Now, here's Sonya Tagare. Hi, welcome back. I'm Sonya Tagare here with theCUBE in Santa Clara, California, covering Technovation's World Pitch Summit 2018, a pitch competition for girls to develop apps in order to create a better positive change in the world. This week, 12 finalist teams are competing for their chance to win the gold or silver scholarships. With us today, we have on Amy Kim, the Chief Operating Officer for Iridescent. Amy, congratulations and welcome to theCUBE. Oh, thank you. So, can you tell me more about Technovation? Yeah, so Technovation is a program for girls where girls identify a problem in their community and they build a mobile app in a business plan to help solve that problem. So our girls, this past year, we had almost 20,000 girls participate from all around the world. We had about 115 different countries registered this year. So we've had really big growth and we are in a ninth year of operation for this program and Iridescent, who's our mother organization, we're about 13 years old. So how did you get involved with all of this? Yes, I actually started off as a mentor and a volunteer here at Iridescent. So I used to volunteer for a Technovation team when we used to do a small program in LA in San Francisco where girls used to come, physically come to the studio and do the Technovation program and also I used to be a mentor for our Curiosity Machine program, which is the Hands On Engineering Design Challenge program and competition. So I was a volunteer for about four years and then I came on board as a staff member about four years ago. And what have you noticed has been the change from when you came on to now? Yeah, so I think one thing we have done at Iridescent strategically is grow the program globally and we did that by making our programs free and all of our curriculum accessible and then what we've really relied on is training our volunteers. I think you've talked to some of the mentors, some of the regional ambassadors. So really train the trainer model has really helped us grow and then we're able to reach more girls at a lower cost. So most of the money that we are able to raise we're able to serve more children and serve more kids. And what method do you think that that's really helping getting these girls like noticing Technovation? Is it online? Is it through mentorship? Yeah, actually a lot of it is word of mouth. We actually were featured in a documentary called Cold Girl about two years ago. And that has helped us get a broader reach too but really it's one girl who participates or one volunteer who volunteered with us and all our A's are regional ambassadors in each of their countries. They really do a great job promoting for on our behalf to get more girls an opportunity to be a part of this program. And what are you most excited about for this year's competition? Yeah, I mean that's a little tricky because we always get a little attached to every team and we really try hard not to pick a favorite but I think one thing we've seen this year is we updated our curriculum last year and I think the curriculum has really shown to be really strong and the more and more countries can adapt it and I think just seeing what the girls can accomplish if you guys, what you'll see is that the girls are tackling really hard problems and like they bring their own unique perspective so just seeing how they approach the problem is to me very exciting. And so what are these girls judged on for their pitches? Yeah, so they're mostly judged on a few criterias. One is the actual technical ability of their apps and how well do they solve the problem that they are trying to solve and also what is their business plan? Like is this a doable thing? Does this business already exist? What is unique? So there'll be a little bit of public speaking also how they present themselves and actually an actual technical ability of their apps as well. That's great. And so what do you hope Technovation will bring for the greater girls in tech community? Yeah, so I think I'm a chemist by training and I was the only woman in my PhD program and I think one thing that really comes up a lot is that women oftentimes don't have mentors who don't have a community and I think really for these girls I hope that they as they grow and as they go to college and they pursue their career that they have a community that they build from here that they will carry on through their career. And what success stories do you have from past Technovation winners? Oh that's a tricky question because we have so many. So I think we have a, sorry, I'm trying to remember her name. We have a student who participated about four years ago and she built an app to help Alzheimer patients and what she has done is she has actually created a startup and it's been featured in New York Times before. And so we have stories like that but we also have stories like in the slums of India where girls don't have internet, they don't have power every day so what they will do is they will code actually on post-it notes and then when the power will come on they will turn on their internet and they will be able to code it on App Inventor all together in that one hour. So we have success that really varies and the way how we count our success is really the fact that the girls had an opportunity that they may not have had otherwise that's really how we count our success even if they don't become technology entrepreneurs. Like our goal really is that they try to tackle something hard, they learn through their failures and they persisted is really our goal. Well that's wonderful and we're so glad to be here at Technovation and thank you for having us on. Oh thank you so much. And thanks for being here. I'm Sonia Tagare and this is Amy Kim and we're at Technovation's World Pigeon Summit 2018. Stay tuned for more.