A Conversation with Jamie Thomas from IBM – Tech.Strong.Women. EP 17

Hi everybody. Thanks for joining us for another episode of tech strong women where we feature amazing women doing amazing things in Tech. I'm Jody Ashley executive producer here at Tech strong, and I'm here with my co-host Tracy Reagan Creator and CEO of deploy Hub and inner free time.

She works with the Linux Foundation where she sits on the boards of the open ssf and the CDF technical oversight committee. Before I introduce today's guest I want to give you a quick update on events happening at Textron be sure to register for the tech strong con 2023 virtual event on March 16th speaker submissions are still open and we always love sponsors Tech strong will also be hosting our annual devops connect devsecops day at RSA see in San Francisco on April 24th. Be sure to look for us on broadcast alley all week stop by and say hi.

com and be sure to tune in every day to text wrong TV for great shows and interviews. Okay Trace what's on your mind today? All right, so he when I say the word tiktok, what do you think?

Crazy weird videos. Well, I often think of you know, the US government saying if you're part of the government, you can't have it on your any of your any of your indices. Well, this popped up this week the US US companies and telling Qualcomm has kind of lead led the charge on this has invested over 40 billion dollars in Chinese AI companies.

Now I find that. Maybe somewhat potentially be a bit alarming for us. I know that the binded Administration is about just cut back our maybe put an executive order out there about investing in Chinese companies.

But you know AI is an interesting space on the first place and to have that much money invested in a Chinese company. I just think is a is certainly newsworthy. I mean if we can't, you know, if we're worried about watching something that just gives us funny videos.

How will we respond to AI software especially if it's medical or legal or has anything to do with government regulations? I think it's just an interesting a data point. Let's just call it that a data point Reuters reported it.

So, you know, if you're interested in the article, it recently came out in writers. Oh, wow. Yeah, there's so much going on with Tick Tock and AI it's kind of overwhelming my brain these days.

I can't keep up. Well, I would love to introduce you all to our guests today Jamie Thomas Jamie. Can you tell us a little bit about you and what you're up to these days?

Well, thank you ladies for having me on the tech strong program. And that article does sound fascinating Tracy. I'm Jamie Thomas and I am a executive and IBM my teams and Innovation team at IBM.

We're responsible for Designing the semiconductors and the systems for IBM's Hardware offerings. So the team works on our Z systems power and we also work on our Quantum Computing Electronics also responsible for War One manufacturing and IBM and my side gig if you will as Enterprise security, which is the CEO office for the IBM Corporation, and that's how I met Tracy because we sit together on the board of the open ssf Linux foundation. So it's a pleasure to be here with all of you.

Well, we're happy to have you Jamie and I know you have a super busy schedule. So we are honored to really to have you sit down with us and chat, you know you and I've had some interesting conversations about your role in the government and even like me in so many areas. I am very curious about what you think about that article.

I just broke on. Well, what it would say is that the the geopolitical landscape is definitely shifting as we've seen over the last few years with the concern about our supply chains in general. You know, what what are the supply chains both from a software perspective and certainly in my domain a hardware perspective where are our dependencies and in some cases are we overdependent in in certain areas?

So I think that one of the things that government is looking to do is make sure that the supply chains remain resilient and secure across a lot of different dimensions of the business business domains. If you will that are critical to the United States particular but I my perspective is this tends to shift and it continues to shift over the next few weeks and at last few years if you will and what I think we all have to do in businesses like mine is just really be prepared for ongoing shifts and think about what that means from a resiliency perspective. for our businesses Yeah, I didn't see it didn't say what kind of AI software was being invested in but I kind of have this suspicion that there'll be some core AI software that is going to be released.

But there's also going to be reusable software. Mm-hmm. So some of these algorithms for for this intense like pattern matching think about pattern map matching on maps and kind of rule based systems.

I think we're going to start having those will be part of our software supply chain. Yeah, absolutely. I think you know obviously artificial intelligence has already so prevalent in everything we do if I think about just our cyber operations, we don't survive on a daily basis without layers of AI and what I think we're all investing in the next generation of AI things like Foundation models Etc.

I do think that some of this technology is the next Battlefield if you will and so defining what the government needs to worry about from an intellectual property perspective and everything is probably a challenging thing to do because everything is is going to be more rooted in artificial intelligence as we go forward. Well, I kind of it's interesting how much we've heard from the US government in terms of Technology on the Biden administration's executive order on s-bombs his potential restriction of investment in China and the chip bill that got passed that was something that we talked about when we were in in Tahoe. And my question to you, then I'm going to ask it again.

How long will it take and how much money there was another article actually that a company out of Japan that is a government funded company that builds tips. They claim that they were going to need about 57 billion dollars to build a new chip manufacturing plant. I was shocked but tell us some of the things you told me about the chip Bill and how quickly you think we're going to be up and running an independent.

Well, I do think the chips Act is particularly important for the resiliency of the United States and for other Supply chains around the world Europe Etc. Really when you look at the landscape of Chip production today. There's three main fabricators in the world.

There's Intel here in the United States. There's tsmc and Taiwan and their Samsung and Korea. Those are the dominant players.

If you will that are producing fabricating these chips and it is true that a very large chip facility definitely can consume a hundred billion dollars in investment what we saw during the supply chain situation is that we were very dependent on Taiwan. There's so many of the world's play of chips, whether they were for automobiles or it offerings if you will we're coming from Taiwan and so it became a huge bottleneck and I opener to really the state of Chip production worldwide that then calls governments. I think to step back and say what are we going to do about this?

In fact many believe that the semiconductors are far more important than the oil supply you may have seen some of these articles written that our dependency on semiconductors is As strong as our dependency on oil we saw that the automobile industry lost billions of dollars by not having the chips to actually finish production of those cars. So this bill is very important. I do think that whether we continue to obviously there's going to be interconnected Supply chains for a while.

We're going to work with Asian companies and many of them are actually building a fabrication capability here in the United States. Look at what teams in Taiwan are doing Intel is announced their intention to have an independent fabrication facility. So they can work with other partners outside of Intel to create chips Etc.

This is going to be very very important for resiliency going forward. Is there a concern that you have around the geopolitical situation between Taiwan and China? Well, I'm not I can't profess to be a government expert when you read the articles though.

They're continues to be a lot of separate saber rattling. Yes, whether China's intention is to you know, take over Taiwan or blockade Taiwan. I can't profess to have a crystal ball into those situations, but it is clear regardless of that that the the Taiwan fabrication facility became a significant bottleneck to operational Fidelity for a lot of different Industries now and I can say even for my industry here we had to do a lot of additional work to procure the commodity base chips that we need actually having my desk my the the processor for the the Mainframe the Z processor is packaged inside of this.

This is the chip here. The thing that runs the Mainframe our tip is actually produced by Samsung that specialized chip is produced by Samsung in Korea. However, like many other it complex it offerings.

The Mainframe is dependent on many many different commodity chips. And so we were also a part of that supply chain trying to Garner the supply that we needed as we ship that new machine last year. Now a hundred billion dollars investment to get so now the 57 billion sounds like okay.

I'm not really it's really not that much. It is quite a lot of money. I mean, I know that when you look at the Samsung and the tsmc factories, there's there's hundreds of billions of dollars of investment there and those countries if you look at not only those companies but those countries have chosen to make a stake in that domain sometime ago and they're reaping the benefit of that that investment decision and I think the North America chipset was a recognition of the ecosystem that they've been able to build and with that that I said those companies as well are interested in working in North America and being a part of the ecosystem as we go forward as well.

So it's going to be interesting to see how this plays out. now in chip manufacturing, is there proprietary technology around chip manufacturing that the US owns or or that Taiwan owns or that gets in our way of well you Yeah, great question. And actually I can say that at IBM.

We're very lucky to own a lot of that intellectual property. So IBM being one of the oldest firms around in terms of the construction of chips for obvious reasons because the Mainframe itself has been around for a long time. We invested in intellectual property around ship fabrication from day one.

And years ago, we did on our own fabrication facility, which we divested of a few years ago, but we maintained our intellectual property in chip fabrication technology and we have in fact licensed our technology to other players. So we have licensed our fabrication technology to Samsung some time ago, and we did license it to Intel a few years ago as we let up to the construction of the North America chips Act That is a heavy investment for IBM an intellectual property around fabrication of chips. So while we do not own a Fab we're very invested in that area and we do offer a lot of Partnerships with other players as we work together to improve the ecosystem here in North America.

Well, I think this is going to be a space to watch over the course of the next you know, I'd say even three years considering our geopolitical environment right now, and however, China made see appropriate to either. What their relationship will be with Taiwan moving forward? Right?

And even before this came about the geopolitical landscape clearly we saw with covid-19 a very strong dependence on factories in China and as they went through waves of covid-19 and shut down and reopen those factories. You could see the impact that it was having on Industries here aside from the chip situation even in Taiwan. So it's it really says that we have to be very thoughtful about Supply chains and making sure that we have options and resiliency as we go forward in the future.

I mean I can tell you here at IBM when the covid-19 situation first happened. We were like many other firms and we needed masks for our field workers for workers that had to go out and help clients repair machines and whatnot. And we didn't have the mask.

So I'm proud to say that my team figured out a way to manufacture. For the IBM company in a very short order because we had that we had the ability to do manufacturing we were able to do that. But that was another case and point.

We did not have masks here in the United States either right to deploy at scale. I think that covid-19 taught us how globally connected we all are. And what we really do have a global economy.

We have problem in one area. I mean wheat is still a problem because of what ukraines going through? All right.

So it's a we are almost definitely connected and it would be a different kind of a you know, World War Two and World War one we did have this. I don't think you're this interconnected great. Another world war with impact all everybody and in a very different way in terms of products and services that we've become so accustomed to Absolutely.

I think we'll never go back to the way we were before where we were more regionalized the independent interdependency. Is there for good reasons a lot of this interdependency Has Lifted millions and millions of people around the world out of poverty. So there's been really good outcomes for it along with it.

And then there's other things. We probably need to think about more thoughtfully as we go forward to make sure at least you have different options and we learned a lot of that in covid-19 where manufacturers move things perhaps from one country to another country and they took advantage of whatever resiliency they did have because it was a factor of illness in those countries shutting down the factory and not necessarily of course a geopolitical situation. Or maybe there's a silver lining that maybe it was a wake-up call, right?

Yeah, I think so. I think it was a wake-up call. I would say Tracy before covid-19.

I think we took our supply chains for granted. It was like the plumbing you wake up in your in the morning you expect your plumbing to work. You don't really think about it.

We also took advantage. We also took for granted the freight was going to be fairly cheap, you know that we could get things from point A to point be very quickly and then when all of the air flights stop because there was in fact no one flying on these airplanes a lot of the Air Cargo was also disintermediated and then we also saw the challenges with shipping where the ship's piled up so deep and some of the ports that you couldn't get the products off the ships. So I think we took a lot of things for granted before covid and hopefully don't forget we will not easily forget.

Hopefully the learning lessons from all of that because I think there's a lot of good learning from it. I agree. I mean, I think we all became supply chain experts and understanding in a way that no one expected to my husband used to say it's really easy to turn the spigot off, but it's really slow to turn it back on and get in everything moving again and coverage showed us really quickly with all that.

Backing up everywhere, you know truck drivers. We didn't have to get stuff out of the ports and the ports were buried and it was yeah, I think I think I try and be a cup half full because I can't get through stuff that's really negative. Like covid was without hearing the positive and I think a lot of positive came out of it.

I think we learned about baby formula and we learned about the supply chain. We learned about masks and other supplies that we need and gloves and all that sort of stuff. It's Definitely.

I can't imagine what kind of challenges IBM faced, you know. Sounds like you guys did a really good job. The math thing is amazing.

That's really I love that. I love it. Thank you.

Get all those very proud of what the accomplishment being IBM. Of course, they tested these masks like you would not believe so I'm convinced we had very effective Mass. So I if I get one of them I hold on to it because I think it's probably a good good mask.

So let's shift for a bit. I mean the other thing that we learned recently this had nothing to do with covid, but we have something called log for J. That created what is definitely a security Awakening around open source, for those of you don't know Jamie is the fearless leader chair of the open source security Foundation open SSL under the Linux Foundation.

She is the chair of the governing board and she has recently been reelected to that position and she was uncontested. Nobody else wanted to take it on because she does such a great job Jamie. Why don't you tell us a little bit about the open ssf and what they're up to?

Okay. Well, first of all thanks to Tracy as well for being on the governing board and being a participant in many of our committees. We really appreciate her participation, but I think when we join this this board a little over a year ago, we had no idea what was in front of us because we formed this new governing board in November of 2021.

And then right after that log for Jay happened in December. And look for Jay was an earth-shattering event for the IT industry because it was a risk to the open source software supply chain and look for Jay had been out there for 20 years. Probably it was a very widely used logging facility used in software widely.

I know in IBM it was one of one of our most used components. So it was therefore in many many of our offerings as it was for many many organizations. So we all had an embark on a patching effort if you will to pick up the changes required to remediate log for Jay and get that deployed across all of our offerings as did any organization that was using those offerings across the world.

I have talked to many stakeholders in various different Industries, and they said love for Jay ruin their holiday that year and it ruin their their ensuing a New Year's and and weeks after that just getting all that taking care of. I think in general most organizations did a very good job. But once again, there was a big learning experience from that and what Tracy and I know they're saw as part of the Linux Foundation as we became extremely popular because the open ssf became a natural committee if you will to provide insight into how to solve this problem going forward.

How do you solve this for the next incident that may occur? How do you make automation more effective? How do you make open source developers more effective in producing software that is secure out of the gate.

And that's what we've been embarked on in the last year is how how can I organization and the organizations that are participating in open ssf really make a difference in ensuring that open source remains secure and effective for generations of developers going forward. We did get quite a bit of attention from the US government and the White House the openness of members a few of us were invited to the White House a few times last year as the White House looked intently. And what should the policy be for open source security going forward.

Um, if you follow the US government and sisa and many of those organizations there been hundreds and hundreds of paper a pages of paper actually devoted to open source security and what needs to be done across Industries to make sure that Industries are resilient and safe from ransomware cyber attacks Etc. It's a very very hot very hot topic. And as Brian bellendorf, who is I guess she's relate him to the CEO of the open ssf.

He causes the calvary. We are the calvary we are there to fix the problem and I don't you know, I when we talk about long for jail often feel bad for the guy who wrote it, you know, there's one person who's been supporting literally millions of lines of code for companies around the world for the last 20 years. It's one person.

And I think that we learned something from there kind of like covid that is probably a weak Link in the system and remember some companies. They didn't have the ability to easily rebuild some of that software. So that software.

I mean we some of the financial organizations we work with had retired applications that are still in use but they're only there to fix bugs on a very rare occasion and to have to rip it apart and try to replace packages. What's not an easy cast? So it was a hard lesson.

Yeah, and I think it taught everyone a perspective. We actually were talking a little bit earlier about Tracy which is open sources allowed us to be very productive. We're getting a lot of product productivity out of Open Source, but we can never take it for granted rates.

So those of us who are in organizations where we're consuming a lot of it. We do have an obligation to make sure that we're active participants that we're helping the communities be effective and that where we can that we have contributors that contributing back into these projects. One of the things that opens the surf is looked at is the health of various open source projects to understand how many committers are there?

And obviously how we can continue to provide Automation in terms of tools to help those groups of developers be more effective because they are volunteers. They're volunteer army. And there is something called the scorecard.

Yes want to tell us a little bit about your scorecard the obviously one of the things that we focused on in openness and surface developing a scorecard which can render some perspective to consuming organizations about the health of a particular project. And I think it also gives us insight as a governing board as to how we can further help. There are open source projects where I think frankly we as organizations have to consider if you want to continue to use something if it has very limited contributors or another option is whether you as a larger organization can help improve that aspect of the scorecard if you will.

So I think those scorecards are a very important the consumer reports for open source. It's not going to be a perfect, but we can continue to fine tune it based on input from our our stakeholders and hopefully it can be a tool that's useful to a lot of organizations particularly those organizations who are in financial services or retail or the energy sector or whatever. It may be that are just consuming software products and that's not their day job sulfur production is not their day job.

And I'm hoping that you know, we are okay. There's a potential for companies to say like this cyber resiliency act that this is you know, maybe we should just back off on using open source. I'm hoping that they can say using open sources the best way to secure our software right because they've already got especially around foundations like the Linux Foundation.

It's got hundreds of Open Source projects under its umbrella and if we can establish some easy ways for projects like the one I work on artillas or like older ones like Jenkins to be more secure and the Linux Foundation can help us and the open ssf can be that kind of that that guide. I think that open source will be consumed for years to come especially when the economy takes it down turn. Yeah, absolutely.

I think open source from certainly from our standpoint here at IBM is always been hugely important. We were early we were early involved in Linux. And of course now we own red hat.

So we do have a significant responsibility open source from that vantage point, but I do not think it's going away. I think it's up to all of us in the industry and people like you and others that are so involved in the Linux Foundation to make sure that we take the right steps to enable it to be secure going forward and certainly we don't feel we feel that there's nothing inherently different about open source than closed source. On a security from a security perspective a lot of the a lot of the opportunity to achieve ransomware or to actually hack into systems is all actually caused by naive human mistakes on a daily basis, right?

And so it's those mistakes that often open the door and then allow others to take advantage of perhaps vulnerabilities that are in the software. So there's a combination of things that we need to to think about. Yeah, an opening that door could be so easy it they're so it you know, you're going through your emails and you see something that you think you're supposed to you should read and bingo you're married looking at any your PC, which has happened to me more than once I have to admit it's such an easy thing to do and I think the human touch is probably the easiest way to open the door.

I don't think we can ever have tamper proof software we could strike to get there. I don't know if we'll ever be 100% There's no way to put a plastic top or cap on top of our our software like you can and bottle of aspirin but it is the human touch that opens the door. Absolutely clicking on those links is so easy to do even by accident right when a text comes in and you you know react too quickly or whatever.

It may be or you know, we see lots of naive Behavior around passwords, of course continues to be a common Vector password equal password is not a good idea password equal spot. The name of your dog is probably not a good idea. But those are all kind of things that we can Endeavor to train people about make them more aware that these are are not a good protocols to even in their private life to keep them saves safe as well as you know in an organization.

slowly So Jamie you have survived in this technology world as a woman for quite some time and you have succeeded in it, what is your secret Well, I'd like to say that I you know, I had a lot of Secrets but I I believe the things that's really been compelling to me. It's really all been about the people. So what's really encouraged me to move from one position to the next or take the next risk?

If you will, it's just the opportunity to solve these really complex problems. When I started in in IBM is a as a software programmer. I certainly never believe that I would actually be involved in Hardware or Supply chains or manufacturing.

So it does demonstrate the journey that you can take and you can't really plan that Journey out. But what really continues to inspire me is working with really smart people in the context of creating Innovation and then understanding how that Innovation can affect so many Downstream consumers and clients and things that they can do with it. Um, I had my little model quantum computer over here somewhere a little this is a little models that looks good.

You know, I think that's another example of such cool Innovation on the horizon where once we get this machine to production capability will be able to solve problems that aren't even solvable today with classical computers. Wow, and that's really what keeps me engaged. There are times Tracy where you know, you really get frustrated and you're like, how can I deal with some of these folks I have to deal with but then this inspiration that comes from something like this keeps you hanging in there.

I would say that one of the challenges I do find is there there are very few women. I was so glad to see some of the women on the openness of the Linux Foundation because our very few women leaders and technology and that is something we need to do. I think to inspire the next generation of women.

Why is it why is it fun to be here? And what can you do with this kind of? A career path when I was reading a little bit about what you're up to in your spare time, and it sounds like you you support that you walk the walk you don't just talk the talk.

Can you tell us a little bit about that? Well, in addition to the openness of which has been an amazing opportunity to work with the Linux Foundation. I'm also the board chair for the largest community college in this region Wake Tech Community College and it's when the largest in the United States, it's got 75,000 students.

We have about eight campuses. We're rich here in terms of support from the community. And this is a very much of a growing area because I'm in Research, Triangle Park, North Carolina.

But that is been a significant give back from my perspective because I feel like the community college is really helping a lot of individuals who would otherwise be stranded who would not have an opportunity for Effective life effective career. We're really motivated to understand and how to get kids that didn't do well in high school at all that perhaps didn't even succeed in basic math and English into a viable role that allows them to have an effective life here in our community. And then we have a lot of transfer opportunity if they're in it disciplines or associate degree disciplines to transfer to the other universities in the region and get their bachelor's degree and and go on for that from there.

So we think of it as a ladder. One of the most inspiring things is to hear about kids who were part of the Foster Care Program who really grew up without parents in many cases and to hear their success stories that when they get to the Community College and are able to get a Nursing degree or perhaps they become automotive repair mechanics, which is a very lucrative job in our region or I met this one gentleman who got his it degree at the community college which NC State and eventually became I got a master's degree in analytics. So it's just it's just so encouraging to hear these stories and the journeys that these folks are taking.

Are you seeing more young women go into stem at the at the at that college. I'm saying that it for women. I believe that it could be larger still because we still need to inspire women earlier on that stem is a career path of them.

Certainly when you look at nursing and those kind of areas is predominantly women, right and that's a big part of what the community college does. But I think in it disciplines cyber and other disciplines, they're still not enough women, but what I can tell you about the Community College population is that it's very diverse. And so when we think about diversity in terms of reaching that Community, I think we're being very successful and that is and when I go to graduation, look at everyone walking across the the stage, that's really what inspires you that you're giving a lot of people really significant opportunity.

So, you know, we've interviewed. I don't know how many of these interviews we've done but almost in every case. The person we interviewed started as a software programmer.

I myself started as a program. I think that is the entry-level job, right? You really can't even do testing properly unless you have some background in soccer programming.

And one of the previous episodes we did talk a little bit about Microsoft's co-pilot and how that and and I predicted that that may be away from more women to start getting involved in software programming. That it's going to change or disrupt that entry-level position and we might see to your colleges that have it to your program and certification and programming that use tools like co-pilot any thoughts on that. Well, I think that any tool or approach that enables individuals to be effective earlier is good.

So we certainly and I certainly believe that apprenticeships are fundamental and and improving this for many individuals and not just women. Because it gives you an entry point without having to go to school for four years. You can get into the workforce.

And then if you choose to go back and then get a higher degree, that's up to you. So I think anything that enables us to tap into that skill earlier is really really important and and we'll make a difference. It's really about creating this ladder of opportunity and many individuals don't have the luxury of just stopping and going to school for years without working and so to really get more individuals involved.

I think that's important in terms of the socioeconomic aspect of it. Now. I believe a lot of want women have chosen not to go into some of these fields in the last few years because they're seeing other fields more attractive.

We have to do a better job of inspiring women back into software programming in my view. Because we're able to demonstrate the problems that they can solve how they can really change the world through programming the kind of things that we've we've seen in movies like hidden figures where those lady changed the world. They helped us fly to the moon and those kind of things that really is the art of the possible with these jobs, but we have to make sure we're inspiring young ladies when they're 10 11 12 Etc.

I feel like they should make that movie required viewing in every, you know, Middle School class in America. You know, I remember when I watched it. I didn't know any of that.

It was just so empowering to to see that. So I love that. I love that you're doing that and I love that you talk about it in terms of not just women but diversity in general and how important that is and and it's so nice to see an environment of really strong Community College.

I mean that seems like a format we could roll out across the country people don't necessarily need a four year degree to succeed. Right and and it's sometimes like you said, it's a starting point to higher education. Maybe they can find that in a lot of companies will support and pay for that once they start working so I think that so it's a great program and and I'm nice to hear about what you're doing there.

Do you remember what they call those women? No. Baby, do you remember what they called them?

Yeah, they were the computers right? Yes. There are the computers.

Ironic. Yeah, and I only know that because actually read hidden figures the book the book. I highly recommend the movies amazing.

The book is even more amazing. It's so well written And it really was something that many people do not understand is that the computers were all women back in those days because all the men were off at War and so it was the women that actually took up this skill group and it was predominantly women until the men found out how much fun it was and they all got into it. So the peak of women being in soccer programming was probably in the mid 80s coming out of college and it's been declining ever since so that is something we have to turn around.

I am hopeful when I look at domains like Quantum when I work with our Quantum team Quantum is such an interdisciplinary area where chemists are working with programmers who are working with Engineers who are working with Quantum physicists that it tends to be like I think computer science was in the early days where you had these moonshots, right? It was about getting a task accomplished whether it's a social security system or the moonshot or whether it was another good example is the UPC code or creating the Airline reservation systems. All these things are really big moonshots.

And I think that Quantum is a bit like that right now you get this interdisciplinary team of people that are building machine, but you have to build in the context of what kind of problem you're trying to solve with it and chemistry and those kind of problems are at the Forefront. And so I see a lot of women involved in that particular domain that's pretty exciting to me. That's amazing.

I'm glad I'm so glad to hear that women are are part of that. And we need to get them on Tech strong women right a recommend some folks for you and and just stay away from Quantum algorithms. Otherwise your audience might you'll have to go into practice differential equations and physics.

I don't know may not be too bad to show a woman nerding out I have to do that that is for sure. Some of those ladies can certainly do that. Well, Jamie, thank you so much for being with us today.

What a great great background on IBM and the things that you've been up to and how you guys just plowed through covid and came out the other side with all sorts of great new stuff. That is so important to everyone around you and around the world and we just really appreciate you being here. Tracy you got anything to wrap this up for me with no.

I just want to stay. We thank you so much for doing this call for us. We could probably do another easily do another hour with you so much knowledge to share and you know being an example for women that are you know, maybe watching this because they know who you are from Wake Community College.

I hope that they they have a minute or have someone to look up to and say hey I could do that. Well, thank you. Thanks for having me ladies.

It was a real pleasure, and I look forward to maybe coming back in the future. Thank absolutely present. All right, well everybody thank you so much for being with us today for another episode of tech strong women.

Stay tuned for some more great shows here on Textron. Thanks. Bye.