 Hi, welcome to theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin, and we are on the ground at Google with CloudNow, which is a nonprofit organization of leading women in cloud computing and converging technologies. And I'm very excited to be joined by one of the keynotes. I should mention we're at their fifth annual top women in cloud innovations awards events. Joining us right now is Milan Thompson Bukovec, who is one of the keynotes tonight. Milan, you are one of the, you are the vice president, rather, of Amazon S3 and one of the keynotes for tonight. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you very much. This is your third time on theCUBE, so welcome back to theCUBE, I should say. It's great to be here. Talk to us a little bit about your involvement with CloudNow and what the audience heard tonight in your keynote. Well, CloudNow, I have a ton of respect for them, because what they're really trying to do is they're trying to bring the stories of different women across different technology sectors, and they're trying to bring them together for people to learn from. Today we had the theme of innovation, so my topic was how to cultivate innovation as a skill. And my main focus was to make sure that people understand that you're just not born with innovation. It's something that you develop over time, and the way to develop it is to experiment, to learn, and to keep iterating, and that is a philosophy that we hold very dear at Amazon Web Services. That's a great, inspiring message, so you're right, we're not born with innovation. When you talk to younger women who maybe are early in their tech careers, or some that might be at some crossroads, what are some of the points of advice, or maybe that philosophy, that you share with them to help them understand you're not born with this? What's been your path to being an innovator at Amazon and as a female in tech? I think the most important thing that I try to tell people of all ages, and these are men and women, is don't put yourself in a box. If you are good today at something, don't tell yourself over and over again the thing that I'm good at is fixing problems. The thing that I'm good at is overcoming obstacles. The thing that I'm good at is making teams work. That's great, continue to be good at that. But the more you say that, the more you can unconsciously say what you're not good at. Oh, I'm not the big thinker. I'm not the idea person. And when you do that, you're just putting yourself in this box, and that box will get smaller and smaller as you get more experienced. And so what I tell folks at any stage of their career is don't put yourself in that box. It is good to have the skills that you've developed over the last two, three, and number of years, but go take a chance and try something new. Be the leader of a new initiative. Get out of your domain and try something that is outside of your expertise. And you will learn something and you will expand what you know. And before you know it, you'll be saying, I'm good at that. I'm good at thinking up new ideas and making them happen. And you would not get there if you didn't tell yourself I gotta go try it. And I gotta try it enough and do it often enough to be better at it. I don't have a tech degree. My degree is from UCSD. I have a creative writing and US history degree. Oh, fantastic. How did you get where you are now then? Well, for me it was logical in my head. So let me walk through it with you. Absolutely. So I got out of college and I went into the Peace Corps. I went to Northern Mali. Wow, fantastic. And I was a forestry volunteer in Northern Mali. There weren't very many trees. So most of my projects were involved with getting money microloans like Kiva, another keynote from today's event. And I raised sheep and I worked with women's cooperatives. And the thing that I noticed in Northern Africa was that technology made all the difference in people's lives. And that technology could be as simple as having a bicycle or it could be as impactful as having a satellite phone. And if you looked around the villages in which I worked, the families that had even the smallest edge of technology had an enormous advantage that lasted over generations. Wow. So when I came back to the US, I was like, you know, I'm gonna get involved in technology because what technology does is it transforms people's lives. Absolutely. And so when I did that, I started working at Microsoft. I went back and I took programming classes at the University of Washington on nights and weekends. And I got a technology backbone that I lacked from my undergrad career. And I threw myself into some of the most hardcore server technologies because I was curious and I wanted to learn. And I didn't think I am in a box because of my background. I thought, what am I excited about? And what do I wanna evolve my understanding of how technology can make people's lives better? And then I just followed that path. What a great story that you really, it was life experiences that led you to where you are. And I like how you talk about don't put yourself in a box. One of my favorite sayings is a goal isn't worth having if it doesn't make you a little nervous. Try things. You never know how great you can be. Mylon, thank you so much for being on theCUBE. Third time lucky. It's been a pleasure to have you here. And I'm sure that the attendees of Cloud Now we're so thrilled to hear your keynotes. Thanks for having me. And if you know a woman that should be featured on our Women in Tech program and are filmed in our Palo Alto studios, please tweet us at theCUBE, hashtag women in tech. I'm Lisa Martin. You've been watching theCUBE. Thanks for joining us.