AI, Open Source and Career Growth with Carolyn Nash – Tech.Strong.Women. EP44

Hi, everybody. Thanks for joining us for another episode of Techstrong Women, where we feature amazing women doing amazing things in tech. I'm Jody Ashley, executive producer here at Techstrong, here with my co-host Tracy Reagan, creator and CEO of Deploy Hub.

And in her spare time, she does a lot of work with the Linux Foundation. Before I introduce today's guest, I wanna give you a quick update about what's happening here at Techstrong. com.

Be sure to go check it out. I'm launching a series to go along with it on texturing TV with webinars and, um, biweekly episodes. So you definitely wanna tune into that.

We're gonna, we're getting that rolling in the next, uh, two or three weeks, so it should be ready for you when, after you see this episode. Uh, we have virtual events coming up. We're gonna be at CubeCon in London, come, uh, April.

So if you're around, be sure and check in and say hi. And if you're interested in doing an interview, reach out to Text Strong and, and we can hook you up with that. com, and be sure to tune in every day to Textron TV for all of our great shows and interviews.

All right, Tracy, what's on your mind today? Well, I think I would be mistaken not to say that, uh, deep Seek is on my mind. Uh, and in particular, you know, if it's true, what they're saying about Deep Seek, and they have a, they, you know, they have a different way of building these models, and couple of university students with $6 million was able to do it.

Um, we won't talk about, you know, the, the, um, the, the, the funding that went behind them, and if they shorted, um, Nvidia, that's a, you know, an interesting topic. But the, the, the really, I think the lesson learned here is we're always disrupted, right? We're constantly being disrupted.

And in this case, if what they're saying is true, um, it proves that our current VC model in our funding model for companies is not working in the us. Uh, SoftBank just announced there in talks with OpenAI to do a $40 billion round for OpenAI, which means that there's a lot of money not going to other smaller companies that might be able to disrupt open ai. Now, I understand that they're in there to make money and they're trying to build up the biggest company that they possibly can, but funding is a, a limited resource.

It, it's not infinite, right? It's not, there's not just this infinite amount of money, um, that's coming through the channels that people can get. When 40 billion goes into one company, it's at the risk of maybe losing out on a company that's small, that may have a great idea and that may be able to build something better.

Uh, and not always, you know, spend a whole lot of money doing it. I mean, $40 billion is a huge chunk of cash. So I, I have to use the term, the democratization of VCs, right?

If we're not looking, and we're not, if we're not really doing the research that we need to do, and we're just saying we wanna put as much money behind the guy that we think is gonna make it work, I think we're missing out. So, that's my thought today, and it makes me sad. Yeah, it's been a big topic, I think, and I think it's brought, been brought up on every episode of Techstrong Gang this week.

So it's, uh, it's definitely a big deal. Sorry. Um, well, I am excited to introduce our guest today, um, Carolyn Nash.

Carolyn, tell us a little bit about yourself. Hey Ladies, thank you so much for having me today. Um, so my name is Carolyn Nash.

I am the Chief Operating Officer at Red Hat, and I know you two are big fans of the open source world. And so, um, you know, excited to be here. Um, and, and part of Red Hat, you know, which is, which is really founded on open source principles.

We, we develop, and we, and we, uh, support open source software that fuels, I think it is 90% of Fortune 500 companies. So, um, at any rate, it's a pleasure. Just a little bit of it out there, right?

So, Carolyn, I really wanna first start this question off, you know, what are your thoughts about the, the potential of deep seek and is it really going to disrupt what we thought we had a future in building these massive AI data centers, you know, where, you know, from a, you know, from a personal point of view, not from a Red Hat point of view, where do you think this thing's going? You know, is this just really gonna disrupt how we see AI and demystify it? Yeah, it's, it's a great question and I, I mean, I have be honest, I feel like every couple of weeks or something that that is like, we didn't see that coming.

I mean, right? Like, AI is changing at the speed of light, and what we knew a month ago is different from what we knew six months ago is different from what we knew a year ago. So, Lord knows where this is gonna take us.

Um, but it is disruptive. Um, I think there's no question about it, but I think it's more of a question of what do we, um, you know, companies in the United States, other companies do about it? And does that fuel a new, I mean, I loved your point about VCs, right?

Like, does that fuel a new app? Like, don't rest on our laurels with ai. We have to continue to innovate and continue to think about how we can do this, and we can do this energy efficient, we can do this cheaper, we can do this faster.

And, uh, but it, it, it will disrupt. But I, uh, believe, and I'm gonna take the optimistic, uh, stance on this, that, that, uh, that our companies are going to react and, uh, and come out even stronger in the end. Well, let's hope that is the case, is, you know, and now let's talk about it from a OpenShift perspective.

Mm-hmm. How is OpenShift adapting to these AI models, and how are, what are, what are you seeing from your customers in terms of what they're asking for? Yeah.

Well, I'll tell you, I'm gonna speak in terms of, uh, uh, open shift's number one customer, and that's me. Um, so, you know, it's, I think about Red Hat technology. I mean, I run operations, so that's including, you know, including it.

And, and we run with every single, every single Red Hat product and, and many of the IBM products, uh, for reference point. But, um, as I look at and I look at OpenShift ai, um, we're in a position where u we're using it. We're, we're no different than any other company as we're looking to do things faster, cheaper, um, safe safely.

And so with OpenShift and OpenShift ai, we're building, um, models and we're using them to change the way we run our business internally and how we support our customers as well. And we're not only, you know, using LLMs of course, but we're taking on something that's looking at smaller LLMs. And so basically we're taking them and creating a number of smaller LLMs that are really fit for purpose for what we're trying to use internally.

And that is all powered on OpenShift. And, uh, and the benefit of that is it really does address things in a faster, cheaper way. You're, you have to use less energy, you have to use less power, less GPUs in order to tap into these, these smaller models.

And that's exactly what we're talking about with our customers. 'cause again, we're, we're sort of our, our, our customer number zero, we call it our Red Hat on Red Hat. And, you know, from a, uh, from a security perspective on LLMs, I always felt that having those smaller models and having do models that have domain expertise, and if you can build a multi, uh, a a, what do they call a multimodal LLM system where those are passing information to them, there's, it is almost a way to encapsulate it and, and protect it better, right?

There's a better, it is easier to do security around a small LLM than a, you know, I don't know, a 40 billion parameter LLMI don't know what their opportunity, but Exactly. It's so huge. You know, That's exactly it.

And you think about, like, so say, like, let's talk about like internal support for any given company. You know, if you have something that's going in and, and you need whatever, I'm an employee and I'm trying to get some HR information on myself, right? If you think about safety and security and personal information, um, you wanna make sure you have a small, large language model that's really focused more on those, you know, HR type of topics as opposed to, and gets routed to the, the ask ar, you know, ask hr, um, uh, support desk rather than being routed over to help me understand this customer contract and the terms and conditions on this one.

And so it, it, it not only makes it work more efficiently, but it protects our data better. And, and with the regulations and, and so much that we have to protect, it absolutely is a safety mechanism for us. Kind of interesting that we, in, at the same time that we're talking about building Kubernetes decoupled architectures and getting away from the monolith we, in ai, it's all monolithic.

Oops, are we, you know, sometimes I think that we don't listen to ourselves with what we're saying. So I think it's, I think that model will be more interesting for enterprises to have small LLMs. Yeah.

Yeah. But then we have a lot of agents, aren't we? Like, you know, I'm, I do not like the idea of agents because I think it complicates the stack quite a bit.

And I understand that maybe we can't do it any other way, but there are other agents in the stack that we may not need. And I feel like there's quite a few, there's quite a bit being thrown into production, even to do security scanning, opening up a container in production to see what open source packages were used, maybe some of that we can start scaling back on and pulling from the, you know, from where it was created at the DevOps pipeline and start building more intelligence into that and have a DevOps LLM. Why not?

I love it. I love that concept. Yeah.

We do have to scale back too, because you mean, you think of it, it's, um, you know, you can build and build and build and build, um, but if we're not using everything we're building as well, I mean, we gotta do a little bit of cleaning, like cleaning out your garage, right? Like every now and then, you gotta go in and you gotta pull everything out, figure out what you're not using, what you don't need anymore, and then put it back into the garage, all organized and, uh, available for greater use. And you know what, it takes companies so long to do that, and they fight it and they struggle with doing it.

It's like, talk about hoarding mentality. Yeah. And, and it throws, you know, it creates just this great discussion around governance as well.

And, uh, yeah, because everybody is excited. Everybody wants to try these things. Everybody wants to do these things, but the more you create, the more, uh, how do, how are we making sure that as we're building and creating, that the experiments that don't work and that we don't want to continue with are actually getting edited back and removed.

Um, and it's just, you know, it's almost like the way it's governance, portfolio management, whatever you wanna call it, but making sure that, um, we're doing that in the right way. Yeah. I don't think we've figured that out yet, especially around security and at all.

You know, we have sas, we have das, but we still have v vulnerabilities that make it to production, and we're not remediating them very fast. The whole idea of chaos engineering and being able to respond to this, uh, to, to respond to a problem or vulnerabilities, I think it has been underserved and needs to get more attention because it's not really about, you know, root cause analysis all the time. And especially as we start doing more AI work and we haven't figured out how to secure that.

We just gotta get really fast at fixing things. Yep. You can't prevent vulnerabilities, but you sure can react to them very quickly and, uh, and respond to them, uh, quickly and, and, and, and safely before, um, you know, damage is done.

Yeah. I don't think we, if I talk to our customers, I'm, I'm in the Boston office where our executive briefing center ist, and I'm talking to various customers, security is one of those top things. I mean, cost and efficiency and all of that has always been a topic, but security is, is more often than not something that really has to, you know, they wanna, they wanna discuss and they wanna find out what options they have.

Well, and what I think is interesting is just in the last few years, there was, there was a lot of push and pull. Um, we do a lot of security stuff here, and I would hear these conversations that people would literally argue about, but we should be able to prevent everything. And then everyone else was like, no, we can't prevent everything we've got.

We've gotta be prepared and we've gotta be agile and be able to work through it quickly. And I've seen that we can prepare for everything, just kind of disappear pretty quickly, especially as the AI has kicked in. Um, 'cause that's a tool that helps you respond really quickly, right?

Faster than ever before. But that argument is definitely kind moved away. Yeah.

No, it's Just not possible. It's not, It's not, it's not possible. It's not you, you can't, you just have to be prepared to react is is what it is.

And, you know, And I feel like there's a culture of complacency. Um, so for example, uh, deep seek gets released and then Wiz goes and says, Hey, we can see that, you know, a ton of data has been exposed. Um, but does anybody care anymore?

Does do they, do people really care? There was even an article I read, um, I think it was maybe it been the Navy or the Army that basically said, yeah, we know we should be watching for vulnerabilities, but if we need to get something out, we need to get it out. And I'll take the risk even if I don't understand what that risk is.

But it's a, it's a statement to say we're not doing, we're not serving the community in, in terms of security. We haven't figured it out yet. And the worst part, the worst part of all this is my opinion is we need investment to get it done.

But when you have $40 billion going to OpenAI, there's not gonna be a lot of investment in security or cybersecurity in any, any way because we've become complacent. Yeah, it's so true. And I, and I really appreciate your point about taking risks, because I think this is the, the, the balancing, you know, that we everybody's trying to do is how do you innovate at a crazy fast pace, but do it safely and take some risks, but take the right amount of risks in an area that is completely, you know, new to, to so many.

And, uh, and, and you know, I think, again, in internally even things we, we've created a policy like every company has, right? Everybody has their AI policy, but it's like version, I don't know what five or six right now, because we have to keep changing it. Like, oh no, we, we over rotated and now we're saying no to everybody.

Well, no, that's not the right approach, right? And so then you're trying to tweak it, but, um, you really, you, you really don't know, but you also have to take risks. And, um, but just knowing, knowing where to, to place that risk pendulum is, is really the important point there.

I think it's interesting though, how quickly companies, nations have responded to Deep Sea. Like, we've let all this AI come, and everyone's like, should we be worried? Should we not?

Months and months go by. I mean, this week Italy banned it, Ireland banned it, Congress, bandit, everybody from the government, from downloading it. Um, you know, I think I'm, I'm just interested, and you wonder now if we're just, we flew to the other end of the extreme, but I'd rather see the other end of the extreme.

Like Tracy was talking about all this vulnerabilities that people immediately noticed. Um, I thought, I just thought it was interesting. Every, every couple hours I'm hearing another company or another Com country that says, we're banning it for now.

We'll see how long that lasts. But I just think the response has been, I know, but I think the response has been really quick. Really Quick.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's culture right now, and, uh, not following rules, not following policy.

Oh yeah. Taking big risk is where we are in our culture. So that's where we find ourselves.

However, talking about taking big risk, you know, I was looking through your resume and you've made some big jumps in your career. Ha ha. I sure have.

How Did you do that? Talk to us a little bit about, you know, your background, how you, you know, climbed the ladder to become the COO of Red Hat. That's an impressive job.

And it's great to see a woman in that role, right? Because it's taken a long time for us to get women in C-level positions. Yeah.

Well, thank you. Thank you for that. Sure.

So, you know, it's, um, I mean, I started my career quite a while ago, but, um, I, I actually started out in public accounting. So I was, I was an accounting major in college Scratch. I was an engineering major for a bar chapter.

And this, no, I can't, no, pointing is way more up my alley. But at any rate, I, I spent, um, a good bit of time on public accounting, which I absolutely loved. And I think it became a, a great foundation for my career.

Um, because I mean, I, public accounting, it sounds really boring, but the reality is, like what you do when you're in audit is you have to understand how data flows through processes for flows through systems to ultimately end up as a financial statement. So it, it actually is an incredible foundation for how you learn about how companies make money and build assets. Um, but at any rate, I went into, um, into finance and, um, after I left public accounting, and I was living in Silicon Valley at the time, and so thought tech has got to be the place I go.

I wouldn't go anywhere else if I'm living in Silicon Valley. And so, um, got into finance there and how I actually pivoted out of, of finance was when I was starting a family. And I have, um, I have twins, uh, they're now adult.

But, uh, at, at the time I really wanted to continue working, but I needed some more flexibility. So I went part-time and I talked to my boss about it, and he agreed that like, you know, the, the finance and accounting doesn't really offer you that much flexibility, at least it didn't at the time in the role I was in. So he flipped me into more of an operational role, more projects, things like that.

Um, that gave me a ton of flexibility, allowed me to raise my children, and, uh, but also gave me this great experience and exposure to the intersection between finance, between it, between the business. And I really just loved playing in that space, kind of building on all that old public accounting days. But, um, building in that space.

And really from there, it just opened up my eyes to so many more possibilities beyond the track I was originally on. Um, I got into data and analytics, I got into sales operations, um, and played it. That's Where I saw the risk.

I mean, you went from hp, I think you went from, wait, you went from Hp? Yeah. KPMG to hp to Cisco, To Cisco in sales operations.

Yeah. I started, It's very different than public accounting. Okay.

Very different. See, maybe I'm wrong. Absolutely.

Absolutely. Still got the dollar signs though. Yeah, yeah.

No, it was my time at Cisco was a wild ride. I mean, uh, Cisco is a great environment to really, they, they allow you, they encourage you to bounce around and try new things and continue to push yourself outta your comfort zone. I actually had a fantastic boss at Cisco, and his point was always Carolyn, when you start to get comfortable in a role, like if you start to come into that little circle of comfort, it's time for you to go look for something new, go take on a new project, just ask for more scope, get something, never get in your comfort zone and never be complacent about your, your, your growth journey.

Um, always be learning and growing and being just at a minimum, minimum mildly uncomfortable. And so it was really at Cisco where I took a, a tremendous amount of risk in, in leaving finance, yeah. Sales, operations, data and analytics, business services.

And, uh, and that I think gave me the confidence when I came, you know, I took a, um, I that gave me the confidence to leave Cisco after 16 years and go to Red Hat. And I thought, this is gonna be a new type of company, something that I was really passionate about. I mean, 'cause Red Hat's such a cool company, you know, built upon the whole open source communities and development model.

It's also an open source culture for me is just been a blast. And, and it's also a company that really encourages you, just helps you open up those opportunities. And that's where I actually bounced back into finance, believe it or not.

And, um, and, and grew my career in finance back up and to become CCFO. And then at that point there was some leadership turnover. And my, my boss at the time had asked me to take on it and security and a whole other things.

I'm like, sure. Right. Again, you don't wanna get comfortable.

And I can't say, since I've been at Red Hat, I've never been in my comfort zone. It's been always right on that outside of comfort, which is how I know I'm at a, a great place. So, um, so I, my, you know, my role as COO, you know, I paused it first, right?

As many of these things, like you got the little, I mean, who doesn't have the imposter syndrome? The little person sitting on your shoulder talking in your ear, like, Carolyn, you're not technical enough for it. Well, you know what?

I don't need to be technical enough for it. I need to be a great leader who can build super smart people around me who are willing to explain things to me, teach me, um, allow me to ask the right questions and dig into an appro appropriate amount of detail to make sure that I am driving the business forward in an aggressive and, and also safe way. So yeah, You need to do a Ted Talk and you need to write a book, honey, man.

No kidding. No, it's, you're inspiring to me because it's just, it's just amazing, like your energy and, and just the way your brain works. It sounds like you've had some really great mentorship and bosses along the way that have really supported, like, gosh, we don't hear the, they supported me through raising twins story a lot.

No, we don't. I mean, I could go into a lot more, but I, I mean, I've had some exceptional mentors, sponsors, bosses, and not only had they, um, you got me through my early years with my twins, and, um, but in addition, I, I mean, my current boss is amazing. He helped get me through the loss of my husband.

My husband passed away two years in the midst of a lot of leadership changes here. And, um, and just really, uh, yeah, I'm, I'm still here and I'm still charging forward. And it got me through one of the most diff the most difficult time in my life.

Um, and it allowed me the space to do what I needed to do and, uh, but also welcome me back and brought me back up. So I, I am really grateful for my leadership and my, my people, my tribe, um, my, my personal board of directors who have I feel like have surrounded me, you know? And that's, um, yeah, it's really, uh, it, it, you know, I'm like, oh, I'm getting emotional.

Ah, what a really like, to have great people around you is, that's why I have my energy, because I have great people, um, around me. And, you know, and Carolyn, I'm so sorry to hear you went through that. Thank God you have the entourage around you to help you.

We all need that. We really do. Thank you.

Thank you. I really appreciate that. And, um, you know, and, and, you know, 35 years and most of that in tech, being a female is also, you know, quite a journey as well.

And again, I, I feel myself lucky that I've had, uh, you know, a amazing female sponsors around me, amazing male sponsors around me, people who, um, you know, who have just pushed me and, and flick that little imposter off my shoulder. And, uh, and I also think I've been, uh, I'll get, I'll pat myself on the back to say that I think I choose my companies and my bosses very wisely. And, uh, my choices along the way, and most recently being at Red Hat has been, uh, you know, one of the best decisions, career decisions I've made.

I love the open source community. I'm sure it is amazing place to be a company that it's o an OA company built on open source like Red Hat. You know, I'm, I'm a big open source band.

That's why in my, in intro, it's always, Tracy does a lot with the Linux Foundation, but boy, open Source has taken a beating recently. You know, we're getting blamed for a lot of security issues, which probably is correct. But, um, we've known this for quite some time, right?

And maybe it's open source that's gonna get us out of this problem. Um, but I feel like there's a lot of stuff being written and we're not doing much with it. Adoption of these security tools and for open source will be a challenge.

Um, how do you guys talk to your community about, about security? How do you navigate that? Yeah, uh, I mean, it's a, it's a very important thing.

But you know, the thing with, with Red Hat is, you know, when you think about the open source and, and we, you know, we live and breathe and the, in the open source, but it actually creates, I mean, our whole open source development model is taking these projects in the community, but bringing them and hardening them into enterprise supported products. And, um, and that's part of the beauty of it. I mean, when there have been some of the bigger, larger vulnerabilities out, um, red Hat's been one of the first ones, and the Red Hat and the Red Hat community has been the first ones to raise their hand and say, we've identified it and we figured it out.

Because I think that is the power of open source, is you are not only in a enterprise grade hardened product, but you have access to the community, um, that has that, that is using it along the way. So, I mean, I think it's a benefit. I mean, I'm, I, I, I for sure have been, um, living and breathing it.

And, and I, I also, you know, going back to the culture piece of it, I believe, you know, you can talk even more generically about security, and you can talk about security in the enterprise from a non-technical standpoint. And I believe the open source, um, culture really starts to weed out these things as well. You know, when you are taking ideas and inputs from all different places, you're also getting people to raise their hand to say, I have a concern.

And like at Red Hat, even internally, we have company-wide mailing lists where people frequently debate and discuss different topics, controversial topics, but they, things that bubble up that, like we as a leadership team, we're always monitoring it because some of the really like, woo, okay, that's an interesting idea, or that's a really valid concern, or we might need to dig into that a little bit more. That's open source too. And that's kind of the same, like, you know, you talked about in your personal journey, being able to, to take a risk and staying, staying outside of a comfort zone or just staying just a slightly outside of that comfort zone circle.

Um, companies are doing that with open source, right? There's, they may have, it may be pushing them a little bit, but I'm hoping where it pushes them, they can't get away with writing software without open source that, you know, that cat out of the bag, it's not gonna happen. It would take a lot of coding.

It would take a lot of work, and they wouldn't be able to keep up on the, what, what's new in AI without it. So how do we as an open source community, make them feel okay about continuing to step out of that circle of comfort saying, okay, I'm only gonna use these particular packages, I'm not gonna try to use anymore. I know these are secured.

Uh, how do we do that? How do we bring open source back into conversation that people don't say, oh, there's a security issue with it from a bi from a broad community perspective. I know it's a big question, but Yeah.

From a, I know, and I immediately go into, was this by Red Hat? Come on. I was like, no, I know you're trying to go broad on me.

Um, but that, I mean, but I think that is, it is understanding what is it that you're using it for? And is, are you accepting a level of risk in the open source, um, in the open source community that you are comfortable with? What is, you know, a small startup company is different from a governmental agency or a banking, I mean, I, I think it depends on where you are in the continuum, but, but if you're one of these larger companies that's trying to stay, um, and keep yourself more secure than maybe your mom and PS need to be, that is where you need to still embrace the open source, but make sure it is enterprise wide grade, uh, open source, and that it's, it's hardened and has the security that you need necessary to make your regulators comfortable to make the, the various agencies comfortable.

Um, but, but open source is, um, we've proven that it is secure. Absolutely. And I, you know, I think more and more, um, some of the tooling that is being developed, open source tooling, by the way, this being developed will, will help solve this problem.

Um, and I'm hoping that, uh, we start embracing more and more through the DevOps, uh, you know, pipeline, adding more tooling and consuming the data and getting smart about it, because I love open source and I would hate to see it go away, even though I don't think it's going away in any more than the mainframe ever went away. And there's legacy open source out there, and there's new being written every single day. And we have to be outside of our comfort zone and start and consume it because it's the only way we're gonna really build, um, innovation in this country is to accept it.

Mm-hmm. Right? It's just, I mean, it's, it's tied right there with ai.

I mean, open source AI is, is an incredibly powerful tool. It is incredibly powerful. That's just gonna unlock a ton of innovation, I think, unlike anything that we have seen before.

What do they say? This is, this is gonna unlock more than, than, you know, the invention of electricity. Uh, it really will.

But, uh, I think, I believe that AI powered through open source is just gonna be exponential. I would agree. And it's way beyond our comfort zone right now.

It is so beyond it, but we have to go there, right? We, we really do have to go there. Yeah.

And, and we have to, I mean, go beyond the, you know, what's gonna happen in six months. You don't, I mean, you just have to keep pushing the boundaries and pushing the boundaries and, and, and doing what's, what's, uh, you know what I was gonna say, what you're comfortable with, not what you're not comfortable with. But, but you, you can't, you can't, you no longer can do a year long roadmap.

A roadmap doesn't make any sense here. It's gotta be just fast innovation, iteration and learning. And again, I don't wanna, I don't wanna lose sight of the governance component of this, um, because it is, um, it, it's something left unchecked could be, could be quite scary.

So I know we're gonna, we probably we're gonna run out of time. Oh, we're good. We're good.

So tell us what's new? What, what's new and what's, what's happening at Red Hat that we might wanna know about or that you can share with us? Is there, you know, what's exciting?

They shouldn't tell anyone. Yeah. I won't tell anybody.

We wanna know what's exciting at Red Hat that the team is super, super jazzed about. Oh My goodness. Well, I mean, we were just, I'll tell you, we've been talking about it.

I, I think the thing that is coming out of our mouths in every single meeting, in every single investment decision, in every single, you know, just, um, interaction we have is, is around ai. And it is how do we, you know, bring our customers to the next level? And again, I'm looking at how do we bring ourselves to the next level, uh, but, but doing so in a way that, you know, other companies just haven't thought of.

I mean, we had just had something really cool a couple of months ago. We were looking at some of our models and, um, some of our LLMs and we actually had, uh, somebody from our team go and load up inclusive language, um, standards into our LLMs, right? And so you think about things like that, um, ha just all of a sudden now, you know, something that we were a little bit nervous with about ai, now you load up into those standards, this is inclusive language, and, and all of a sudden it just changes the game a little bit.

Um, the other thing that I think is really cool is just skills development. And I think a lot about people and, uh, and where are we gonna go? And we talked about, we don't even know what's gonna happen in two months, right?

Six months a year. Well, we have to assume that every single role we have will not look the same in two years, in three years. So a lot of people talk about, well, does that mean these jobs can go away?

Well, what we believe is we really have to reskill for, for these, um, for these shifts that are gonna happen. And so we've been creating a good bit of training curriculum and looking at, okay, what are the roles and the skills that we have today? What are the roles and the skills that we are going to, we anticipate that we're going to need?

And let's take that, create curriculum, create experiences, projects, um, innovation days to help people move along that continuum so that they will be ready when we get there, not if we get there. And I, I just think that's been really cool, something we're real excited about here. Um, so that, that's just Has been had work with universities.

Mm-hmm. Very much so. I, uh, it's, um, yeah, we have some local partnerships and, uh, so we work very closely with them.

And, and I mean, our belief is you gotta go get the great university talent. Um, they're getting, you know, uh, not only are we importing talent from the universities, but we're partnering on a lot of projects with them while they're in university. Um, and, and investing in that because, uh, again, that's where the innovation is coming from.

It seems like the university system can be really slow to put together curriculums and get new classes offered. Yeah. Uh, I think that's my biggest frustration with, with some of the students that are coming outta university is that they're, they're somewhat prepared, but they're not prepared for tomorrow.

Yeah. Well, we are, we do, um, you know, we have various internship programs where we bring them in, we give them projects, but we, you know, we give them loose projects because what we're seeing out of these, um, you know, university minds is that they can approach a problem in a very different way than historically we probably would've thought. So we do believe in the practical experience, but you know, we've also been investing into those to make sure that it's not necessarily just a traditional classroom experience for this type of innovation.

Yeah. I think we learned that with SEAT versus OpenAI, right? And it was a couple of universities, the students had thought about it differently with the less money, and they were just motivated.

Yeah. And we're also trying to get, uh, you know, we are, we are partnering with, um, some of the local high schools and middle schools and, and trying to, you know, just ensure that we are, uh, getting the word out on the importance of STEM to, uh, the younger folks. So we, we often host like middle schoolers coming in here and, you know, we'll do a little pitch on what is Red Hat.

But what we will talk about a lot is just, um, what STEM roles look like in a high tech company. And even if maybe you're not, you know, maybe you're not an engineer, well, still there is a career path for you in stem. Um, and we show them what that could look like at a Red Hat.

And so we break out into smaller groups. What does a product manager look like? What does an engineer, what does a software developer look like?

So that we're trying to also spark that excitement. We give them projects to do that excitement, that sense of innovation at the very early age. And, you know, in addition to just getting, um, middle schoolers there, um, we, you know, we focus on underserved communities.

Uh, we certainly wanna make sure that we're getting our young girls really excited about this and that we don't I was gonna say that reaching out in middle school, that really does help young girls Yeah. Maybe redefine who they are and how they could participate in a, in a world where they believe it's dominated by men, which it is. I'm not, you know, we're not gonna deny it.

Yep, yep. It is, it is dominated by men. Um, but, you know, that is, that is shifting and, um, and it is, it's shifting and it's, it's getting better and the environments are becoming more inclusive, and I feel like, you know, voices are being heard.

And again, it's one of the, the, the great things that I love about where I am at Red Hat because that is, we, we very much try to create that environment where you can show up as your authentic self and your voice can be heard, and you can use that to push Red Hat forward. I think men always show up with, with their authentic self. I don't think they know how not to, 'cause they're, they, they've been, they're allowed to.

I mean, they don't worry about putting on makeup at 14. Right. You know, they don't worry about getting facelifts at 55.

Right. They're totally, They're worrying about that more and more, more than you think. Well, maybe so, but women all, They're just not as vocal about it.

They're not as well, They attack amongst themselves like we do, you know, you don't really know that the Botox is going in and, uh, come on, let's face it. It's a, it's a thing. You See that macera on there when you Well, you do.

I've seen the makeup closely, I think. Well, and there's a lot of painted nails, which I love. I think it's fun.

Um, back to the conversation about job elimination. I think when we're talking about these kids, especially college age, I think the incorporation of the AI is what's gonna help. But it's also terrifying to these kids that they hear all this, you know, older folks saying, well, AI is gonna take all of our jobs, and then we wanna make sure we're encouraging them and saying, no, it's not, it's just gonna evolve what they look like.

We just have to push that. 'cause even my kids, they're in their twenties, early thirties, and, you know, we've had that conversation, is AI gonna eliminate all these jobs of our friends and people we know? And we just keep telling 'em, no, it's just gonna change what they look like.

We still need humans. Yeah. We still need humans and people who understand AI and yeah.

And I, you know, I have two kids in college and that's something that I, I'm like, you gotta understand digital skills. You need to understand critical thinking. You need to understand the way the human mind works, right?

Like, you need to understand these things because these are the important skills that will be necessary in a world going forward that will have ai, you know, it just, it, it looks different and you've gotta be prepared. And it's not just a college, it has to be lifelong learning. Um, you have to be keeping yourself up on this all the time.

And we all do. And, and, you know, you just don't think that your growth opportunity is learning in the job that you have today. It's not, I mean, it is.

Absolutely. Yeah. Uh, so it's lifelong learning and, and pushing the boundaries of those skills that will always be needed.

And we always need good critical thinking. So I'm the one who, who goes off the track here. Um, before we finish, we've only got a few more minutes, I wanna hear about the Elizabeth Nash Foundation.

Oh, Thank you so much for asking Matt. I didn't even see that one. Um, so, um, I mentioned I lost my husband, um, and, uh, he had cystic fibrosis.

He ended up passing away of something else, but cystic fibrosis. And his sister also had cystic fibrosis and passed away. And after she passed away back in 2003, we started up a nonprofit, um, foundation aimed at improving the lives of people with cystic fibrosis.

And we, we kicked it off originally with, um, scholarships for people, uh, based on, you know, a whole variety of things. But people with cystic fibrosis, we, um, uh, invest in research, specific research for it. And, um, most recently we're, we're taking an additional amount of scope where we've created, uh, a fellowship program.

And what we're trying to do is, there have been so many medical innovations, uh, with cystic fibrosis that fortunately people are living and they're living longer lives. But what's happening is other things are coming up that they're, they're starting to lose their life to other things, but they're also aging. You know, it's like new aging issues for people with cystic fibrosis that does not look the same as it does in a healthy body.

So we've created a fellowship program where we are focusing on addressing the whole person with cystic fibrosis and making sure that as they age, they have the right healthcare and the right culture within the healthcare to make sure their needs are being addressed and they can live a long, healthy, and meaningful life. That's awesome. That's great.

Thank you for sharing that. Um, I appreciate you asking. It's, uh, it's been a labor of love and I'm really proud of what we've been able to accomplish and, uh, yeah.

More, more great things to come. And because you've been through it, you have the insight that's needed to be able to create a map of what can help people. Yeah, Yeah.

You really wanna take the very patient, you know, a, a person first, right? You can start with the medical, or you can start with the, the researcher. You can start with this, but we're gonna try and start with the patient, right?

Start with the human being first. It's, it's their experiences that are really driving our work. And from what you've told us today, I think it defines who you are.

I think you're very person focused. Absolutely. Thank you.

I try to be. Okay. So before we get cut off, is there a book recommendation that you can give to our audience?

Oh, um, So we have a little book club going on in my team here and, um, the one, so we're just finished up, uh, think Again by Adam Grant, uh, for all your Adam Grant fans. It's just such a great book. I mean, we talked a lot about taking risks and thinking differently, and, uh, a great book highly recommended it.

If you haven't, I haven't read it. Um, the other one by Andrew McAfee. McAfee is, um, the Geek Way.

So that's a really, really good one too. You asked for one, I gave you two, but yeah, I'm gonna give You one for your book Hub. You have one?

Uh, we do, it was a book that I can't remember, one of our guests recommended it, but it's called The Logic of Failure. Oh, okay. It is really, really good.

It is. Um, one of, you know, I read it, the, the, I don't remember who gave it to us. Might have been, might have been.

Was it? No, we always need to remember, we always forget. She said she read it more than once.

And you know, I just got it on my phone and I read it pretty quickly and then I was like, I gotta read this again. Because there's so much in it, in how the mind thinks and so many good exam examples of how the logic of failure works. It's a really good one.

But is like, based on the acknowledgement that failure isn't a bad thing, it's a good thing, and that, you know, but how you reactive, there's really No, it's really, um, how we do, how we make decisions, how emotion can get involved in making decisions, how we don't follow the logic as far as we need to, to understand of successes at the end. Okay. Okay.

Kind of similar to the Geek Way, you know, some, some parallels there about Fastest Making Basket to read The Geek Way though. I'm gonna, I'm gonna read, I'm gonna download it on Audible and listen to it this afternoon. Yeah, Write it.

This is our question at the end of every interview, so we have quite the book list. I should like compile it Tracy and, and write a, write who, who recommended it for us. But, uh, Put a blog out there.

I love it. Updated. Yeah, absolutely.

Well, thank you so much. This was just a wonderful, wonderful time. Thank you for Well, I know you're super busy and we appreciate you carving out this time to, to join us and, um, I know our audience is gonna love it.

So thank you again for being here. We really appreciate it. Thank you Both.

This was, uh, this was a lot of fun. Great conversation. I really appreciate it.

Well, we enjoyed having you. It's really insightful. And everybody remember, stay out of your comfort zone.

Exactly. Thanks everybody for tuning into another episode of Text Strong Women. Stay tuned for lots more great programming on Text Strong tv.

We'll see you next time. Thanks.