Hey, everybody. Welcome back to provide today. You know, one of the cool things about being in the RV community is that we're really part of the technology community at large. And whether you think silicon valley, whether you think Sas, whether you think Austin, Texas, there's a lot of different places that you say the word technology in your mind goes. And I wanted to spend some time today really spotlighting a group of people that really are elevating where our technology community is going, especially when it comes to New ideas, representation, diy, things like that. And that is the Women in Technology. And I realized that I don't have a lot of the answers for that. So I brought on somebody who has a lot more of those answers than I do, and that's Nancy Wang, founder over from AWP and current GM for the data Security Division of AWS. Nancy, Thank you so much for coming on the show today. Of course. Thanks so much for having me. Look, Nancy, first of all, I've got to say, your titles. You've got so many. It's like I had to like cut the list down. It's incredible. So with that said, I would love to hear just some more of your story, how you got into technology and really what inspired you to help found a team. Sure so I'm actually alluded to that quite well, Ben, by pointing out the many hats that I wear. And that really boils down to, I think fundamentally, I'm a very curious person. I like to know how things work. I like to take things apart. And that's really where the technology or Engineering Foundation in my childhood came from, which is started fixing cars with my dad, started building model airplanes and started competing model airplanes in high school. And eventually that took me into a career where you can build things, and especially with software, you can build, you know, countless number of things, especially now with generative AI, right? It's really opened the possibilities of what you can build with non hardware or non-linear forms, right? So that part is really, really exciting. And I think on the topic of path, I often talk about paths to various communities, whether it's women in tech, you know, LGBT, black, Hispanic folks in tech because coming from a person of color myself. Right and I also had a non I would say traditional background growing up in rural Wisconsin. So also from the middle of the country like yourself then, which is there's not really sort of this linear idea of get from point A to point B every number of years, right? You move up one step function and it's always up and up. In fact, if you had to characterize my career, it's probably been a few spirals, then a few zigzags, and here I am. So I actually started out my career working for the federal government, building health state.gov, which for me that really sparked the passion of being able to solve problems with large scale data sets. Right, and using data to inform better decisions, especially decisions that impact people. So one of the reasons I got invited and really passionate about building the health data.gov platform with then Todd park, who himself is an amazing entrepreneur, he built Athenahealth and is part of the Obama administration back in 2011. Is how do you actually build health care or combine health care data sets that can help? For example, hospitals determine how many hospital beds you need, right during various epidemics like the one that we just emerged out of. Right or how do you, for example, introduce new medical students out in the community, such that the access to primary care or OB/GYN care is equitable right across different areas of the country. So that really sparked the journey of finding out answers with data and using data to drive business decisions, which then of course, led to Google, where we brought gigabit and internet actually into various cities. I've been through Austin, in fact, I've even have driven a ditch, which through Kansas city, which is one of our first cities for Google Fiber. And again, it really that story around driving impact with technology. And so then that led, of course, down to data protection working at Rubrik and now of course at us where my team is responsible for protecting and securing the data that lands on disk in the cloud. Right so then you might ask, how does that translate into it? Right so it is really about, you know, my passion and the ability to bring a community together to solve a very targeted problem, which is if you look around. Right in fact, a recent McKinsey report says that for every one woman promoted into a director plus levels, you have two stepping down. Right? that's not great. That means you're not even sort of maintaining the status quo. You are taking steps backward. Right and that results in, for example, lack of role models, lack of people who've forged that path, who can tell you, hey, do this, but don't do that. Right? and so every time. It's almost like recreating the wheel. And that's the. Problem that Witte is uniquely positioned to solve because you know, I live and breathe that every single day and through the position and the platform that I have, I also have the ability to bring other women along the journey with me. So that they also become flywheel effects right in their own right and in generating this positive series of returns right for the community. Where, let's say by 2050, our goal is really for this problem to not even exist as a problem and we can move on to second order problems. But just want to share a little bit of my personal background and also where the inspiration and inception for it came to be. Well, it's really, really helpful, right. I mean, you talk, obviously, about the renewal rate and to people stepping down for every person that steps up. Well, kind of start there, right? When you think about, both on the entry level and advancement opportunities, what are some of the common barriers that you see women maybe uniquely face that we might not face has got? Yeah, for sure. I mean, I'll bring up an anecdote from one common process in job hunting, which is salary negotiation. You've gone through the hard work of applying for that job, whether it's applying, sending your resume or being more involved. Sometimes companies also have written exercises, us does, and I know for certain positions at Google and various startups that I've interviewed for or been on the other side of the interview table typically is a part of the interviewing process. Right so you've put in at this point many, many hours in securing the job that you really want, right? You've gone in, you've gotten the offer. Now it's time to make sure that you are rightfully right and equitably compensated for the job that you're about to do, which could be long hours, you know, weekends, days, whatever. Right and it's often at that stage where I actually find myself coaching some of the women who come through my way in various positions. And I've been in the tech industry being like, you need to negotiate with me, hint, hint, you should negotiate with me. And just statistically, right, that is not something that I've had to do with male candidates as often. And of course, actually, if you take, for example, some of the inspiration behind this company based out of Seattle called a textile right, which is looking at job descriptions, looking at resumes and really picking out biased words that could be, for example, you know, start bias or could, for example, prevent certain subgroups from applying to roles. That's correlated, right? In the sense that I'm sure you've heard women don't often apply to positions that they don't feel 100% or usually more qualified for when, for example, I have had many early career software engineers walk into my office and be well, one cannot be a director of software engineering. It's like, you know, hold your horses. I love the ambition, but there are some steps that you need to fulfill beforehand, right, before we can have that conversation. Right and that's, again, part of the. So, for example, on my own team are eight of us, right? We have a woman at subgroup. And oftentimes we come together and put together lists of topics that would help benefit the women in the organization, such as, for example, how to advocate for yourself. Right? how to continuously build AI call it actually your continual promotion document, because promotion documents shouldn't actually be snapshots in time, right? Where it can be disjointed. You might be working on a project from three years ago that grew significant skills, but maybe it's been a long time, right? You don't exactly remember what you did or what the impact was. So that's something I have for all of my directs of my staff, which is they have a continuous promotion document where what they do through time, right? It's really that kind of running window. Everything is documented. Everything has a why they did something, what they did. And also later on, how do they measure success and eventual impact? Well, look, you talked a lot about some of the great things you guys are doing in it from a training skill set perspective. You know, with that lens kind of in mind, what are some of the skills you mentioned negotiating, obviously, what are some of the skills that you're seeing demand for in tech industry specifically? Absolutely so let's just take a look at the numbers, for example. So we as an organization have put our upskilling courses. And in fact, you know, speaking of macro trends that can't really change but actually might lead you down a better path is, for example, when the pandemic hit in 2012, it used to host large scale workshops or conferences in various tech hubs or cities across the US and also across the world as well. In San Francisco, Boston, new York, Washington, d.c. we also had events in Austin, Texas, as well. You know, Berlin, Paris list goes on and on. But of course, with the pandemic, no one was hosting those large scale in-person events where you could probably spread. He's right. With that said, you know, the path that we eventually took was, well, we don't want to stop our mission. Right of reaching more women out there in the community, upskilling those women. Right despite the pandemic, people still have a living, right? People still want to advance in their careers. So the fact that we decided to take was, well, how can we actually put this onto a global platform whereby the platform and us, right, 1 plus 1 equals 3 can reach more people around the world where we may not have in-person presence. And that's actually one of the best decisions that we've made to date, because I can tell you that, right, since we put those courses on Coursera as of 2020 was the launch of our first specialization real world product management. All of these by the way, for listeners can be found on Coursera witty. So that was our first specialization. And to date, there has been over 30,000 enrollees, right? So think about how many in-person events you need to hold to reach that number. Right and that's the beauty of the internet. That's the beauty of digital laser, right? Putting content out there and democratizing access to that content. And, you know, we didn't stop there. 2021 saw the launch of our second specialization, which is for folks who are interested in upskilling themselves in cloud technologies and becoming eligible. Right, to take the exam to become Cloud Practitioner certified, which is an AWS certification that is very much recognized in the industry and actually makes one more competitive in the job search. If you're looking for a technical cloud role. And most recently in the last or I would say march, so not quite two months, yet. In the last month we've also launched our third specialization, which is real world engineering management. And that is really important because that's really the true vision of the team in it, which is all technical roles, all roles that require technical knowledge, technical expertise. And that's really what we're focused on. And what I can share in this conversation is that we're now working on our fourth specialization around security, right? And these are all areas where we do see women and underrepresented groups, frankly, being less represented than other contingents. And by upskilling folks and providing access to content in a very cost effective manner. And an easy to access, you know, really self-paced way we have been able to, based on our testimonials we see online, out of the 30,000 plus enrollees, we've seen hundreds of new job offers, promotions, for example, people landing their dream role with their native u.s., for example, because we cover interviewing right the correct answers, how to think about interview questions also as part of this specialization, Nancy, I love that you bring up the certification realm of technology, right? Maybe uniquely, the technology industry is so heavily focused and so heavily, heavily impacted by certifications, whether it's platform specific, whether it's skill set specific, things like that. But I want to step back even further than that for a second and talk about more on the recruiting and kind of job awareness side. Right one of the things that we've struggled with as an applied technology community is really letting people know that these careers exist. Right and a lot of times it's because we're failing people in college. We're failing people in high school. What are some of the ways that as a technology community, we could do a better job on the front end of even recruiting and driving awareness for these careers? Absolutely which is why, you know, ADA, which works with great partner organizations such as girls and tech girls who code because you're right. Right it is AI mean, again, applying my analytical brain to this challenge is a top of funnel problem. Right? and so if you're able to drive traffic to top of funnel. And these are making sure that, you know, you have the right cohort studying stem, which not to drive a tangent. But that's also why I'm on the board of directors for Penn Engineering online, which is a very, I would say, focus initiative from Penn School of Engineering on how do we provide more quality, you know, Ivy League education online. And that's why Penn is one of the actually, I believe, the only Ivy League institution to have our masters of computer information technology degree, the full degree on Coursera. Right so that's part of the effort and frankly, my personal philosophy around making education accessible, right? So that's really your top of funnel. Now with that said, it does focus. I would say it's a middle funnel problem where, you know, these folks have the right degrees, they have the right background and training, they're entering the workforce. But it's really capturing that middle funnel through a population where they've been in the workforce now for, you know, maybe 5 to 10 years, depending on, again, different individuals. And they're now reaching the senior product manager, the senior engineering levels, but they're maybe looking at their first. People, manager job or even their first manager of managers. And I'll tell you, Ben, you know what? I became first a manager of managers where I was no longer managing individuals. Right it was a big mindset change. And no one really tells you, hey, here's a handbook, read these five pages and you'll know what to do. It's been a lot of trial and error and I'll say a lot of error as well on my part. And that's how you learn. But look, if I can pay it forward to other people in the community and help them prevent making some of the errors that I myself made and learned the hard way, I consider that success is helping other people get to where I am five, 10 years earlier in their career. Well, Nancy, look, I feel like there's a million different questions that I could ask, especially right now amidst maybe some of the layoffs and organizational changes and things like that. I'll save that probably for another episode. It's a tease. We got to get you back on. But really, to land the plane here, how can women get involved on both the executive and leadership side, but also plugged in and more of the top of funnel with awb? Absolutely great question. Then I would say for women looking to upskill themselves and continuously learn some of the newest tech trends out there, we try to keep all of our courses up to date with the latest examples and case studies. Check us out at Coursera witi or our homepage at advancing women and TikTok and for executives who want to give back. Please reach out to me. I read and answer all questions, you know, daily. And that's a great way, for example, to form executive or what we call ambassador communities. So whether it's hosting small group mentoring circles, giving a workshop or a masterclass, for example, on something that you're really passionate about that you believe can help others. There's so many ways to get involved and also with organizations in addition to it as well. But I think the fact, I'm trying to say is get out there and actualize on helping other people advance in their careers. Nancy, look, I appreciate the time today. We 100% have to have you back on. Really, the voice that you have in the community is unparalleled. And personally, Thanks for me for really all that you do for the community really help everybody that that, you know, might feel underrepresented transparently from guys like me who sometimes might, you know, accidentally not say or do the right things. I'm so grateful for your leadership and really an example, for someone like me to follow. But until next time, Nancy, we appreciate you coming on. Of course. Well, then, you know where it is the first step. And I think you're doing absolutely the right thing by seeking out voices like mine. And I'm happy to provide a list of other voices as well that can help provide guidance in this area. Well, look, I'm going to take you up on that. And if you want to take her up on that as well, I'll put a link to some of that contact information and some of those people you can reach out to below underneath the episode. But until then, we appreciate you so much for joining us today on pro live today. Make sure you tune in next.
