From Law to Cyber: Navigating Defense Tech and Breaking Biases – Tech.Strong.Women. EP46

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.

Before I introduce today's guest, I wanna give you a quick update about what's happening here at Textron. com site, so you gotta go check it out. It's a great site.

We also have a recurring series called the Platform Engineering Show that airs every two weeks on Textron tv. And we have live webinars that you can attend, um, that go with that series. com and you can check out all the webinars and sign up.

And we are also gearing up for RSAC. We are hosting our DevSecOps event on Monday, so be sure to go to the Techstrong event site and save a seat. You don't really save a seat, but we'll know you're coming.

Um, it's, it is gonna be amazing this year. It is loaded with powerhouse folks from Meta and all sorts of big companies that I can't remember at the moment, but go check it out and you wanna attend on Monday. com and be sure to tune in every day to text Strong TV for great content.

Okay, so this is an exciting day. I'm super happy about this, this news. Um, you know, we talk about, uh, unicorns all the time.

In fact, we have somebody who's from Defense Unicorn today, which is a great name, but unicorns are, um, generally, uh, created by men. Let's just be honest. They're usually, I mean, last year I think there was less than one or less than 2% of funding went into women and from VCs.

So that's why this story is important. 5 billion in cash. Amper, um, is creating, uh, designing chips for AI and, uh, ones that don't require so much energy.

Uh, so it's a really techie company in a heavily male dominated industry. And Amper was co-founded by Renee James. She was not only the co-founder, but she was the CEO.

We are talking about a woman led business. So yay, Renee. Yeah, please come and talk to us on Techstrong Women because, you know, and not only that, she's middle aged, she's not, you know, a young spring chicken right outta Stanford.

Uh, so everything about this story is really, really amazing, uh, for women. And we need to get this story out bigger and better and people should know about it because, you know, if it was some guys who did it, the story would be big six and a half billion dollars in cash is amazing. So, yay, Renee.

Thank you Renee, for leading the charge and showing us how it can be done. Um, and with that I'm gonna say everybody, everybody talk about it, everybody share it, let women know that this has happened. Very cool.

Very cool. Thank you. Alright, well, we are here and we have a great guest today where I'm very excited to introduce Rebecca Lively.

Rebecca, welcome. Tell us about yourself. Thank you.

I'm super excited to be here. Thank you for inviting me. I appreciate it.

Um, tell you about myself is such an open-ended question. No, I did it on purpose. I could take that anywhere.

Uh, so I am, ooh, I don't know why that's such a hard question. I haven't done a job interview in a while. That's probably why.

'cause like when I was interviewing, man, like I had that question down pat. So I'll give you, I'll give you my job interview, answer, how about that? And then we can, we can go from there.

Uh, so I am, uh, sometimes I jokingly refer to myself as a recovering attorney. Uh, so I spent about 13 years actively practicing law every single day. Uh, and then realized towards the end of that time that what I really, really loved was looking at the business impact of decisions specifically for technology companies.

And when you're the lawyer in the room, you can give one type of advice, which is, yes, that's legal, or No, that's not legal, and you're not really looked to for more practical advice. Especially I was in the government, especially in the government. And so I would sit in these rooms where people were making decisions and think like, wow, that's really dumb, but it's a hundred percent legal, so I have nothing to say.

And I wanted to be the one at the table saying, that's really dumb nicely. And so I pivoted at that point to, um, to a, a tech role as the deputy for the 90th Cyberspace Operations Squadron, also known as Shadow's Edge software in the government. And a lot of people were shocked by this.

Like they did not understand what I was, why I was doing this, what I was thinking. But what's fascinating to me, or what's, what feels authentic to me, I think is a better way to put it, is that at like, what I really wanted to do when I left, when I finished high school and I started college, I wanted to write software. And so the fact that I kind of meandered into the legal path and loved it and actually thrived is as an attorney, it was almost like a detour.

And I felt like I was back home where I needed to be. And so I spent three years there and just kind of felt like an itch to try something different. I'd been with the government for a while and I left in 2023 and joined Defense Unicorns, uh, which is a startup focused on building defense, uh, DOD software for the DOD, basically making it easier to deploy software within the DOD and have Had A really, really fun time for the last year and a half living the startup life, which is just completely different in almost every way than the government life.

So I have a story to tell about, uh, uh, oh, so I saw that she and I, I, I'm always, you know, um, stalking women on LinkedIn for this show. I can attest to that. And I, um, I saw her, you know, I had known about, uh, defense unit court from the open SSF.

I looked through their profile and I found her, I reached out on LinkedIn and I said, Hey, I'd love for you to do this. And she said, um, why don't you reach out to me on, I think it was March 4th, something random like that. And so I put it on my calendar, right on my calendar, yes, March 4th.

And, um, I said, okay, so I put it on my calendar, I, so I can reach out to her on March the fourth. And she said early March. So I just put March the fourth.

Well, I find myself on March the fourth at the open source, uh, security Policy Summit in Washington, dc And I'm sitting there and, you know, I, maybe I got distracted, decided to look at my calendar, and I saw that I was supposed to reach out to her. So I did. And I did be Small vet, just a Small vet.

There were 70 people. It gets better, it gets better. And this was right before I was going on, and for the most of you who don't know that I have severe hearing problems.

And so I have these hearing aids that are connected to my phone. So if my phone rings or I get a text, it talks to me. I have, I'm like a cyborg.

So I'm completely connected to my phone and I'm on the panel discussion. I get up on the panel discussion and I forgot to like, turn my phone off. Well, first my niece calls me and I'm sitting there talking on the panel, And then, and then I get a, a text or a, a message from, uh, Rebecca that says, um, we're in, we're in the same room.

And so I'm on the, I'm on the stage and I'm looking around, we're in the same room, she's in here. This is really a weird experience. I'm still trying to talk on the panel and trying to, you know, and then I get down and I, I finally sit down like, where are you?

And she's like, second from the right. And I'm looking around and I, I even asked somebody, do you think you could, do you think you see her? So I finally did find her, but it was a very surreal experience That Day that I was supposed to connect with her.

I did in person. That is so funny. I've had the, uh, Tracy experience with the Bluetooth ear things because I didn't know she had 'em.

And I'm standing there with her, we're having drinks, and I'm like, who Is She insane? She's like, talking to somebody, what is going on? And she's like, oh.

And she explains it to me and I'm like, oh my God, you freak out. Like, Yeah, because all I have to, I thought you were, I just have to tap it. I can tap my, my hearing aid and it connects to my phone.

So if somebody calls me, I go, Hey, what's going on? Bonkers? Well, I thought I was bonkers sitting up on that stage looking for her.

I couldn't imagine who she was out the stage. So anyway, that's how I met her in person. So Rebecca, tell us what you're up to right now.

It's an amazing story. I, I love that you became an attorney, you went to work for the Air Force, you focused on cyber. You couldn't be, your resume couldn't be in a better place right now and your skill level and what you offer.

So, you know, tell us a little bit about, you know, in my, in my mind, I really do believe that space is the New War, the New Warfare Theater, right? That is where we're gonna, we're gonna really see attacks. I think this is the, the, the next, this is the area that we have to focus on.

Um, what do you think about that and what should we be doing about it? So I think space is absolutely, you know, we just, I guess now a few years ago stood up a whole new domain, a new armed service focused on space. So space force within the Air Force.

And I do think it's, it is incredibly important. It's also something that I think has a whole community advocating and rallying around it. And we're organizing for it.

And we're, we're building space things and we're sending people to space, and there's more to be done. I also just don't care. Um, and I, I say that not because I don't care, but because other people can care.

I am obsessed with the cyber domain, uh, and I'm, I'm obsessed with how underserved it is in terms of that. So like, if you look, there's, there's several domains of warfare. There's land, there's sea, there's air, there's space, and there's cyber.

So those are the, the five recognized domains. Four of them have an armed service organized around them, and one of them does not. And so the result of that is cyberspace as a war fighting domain is neglected across the board, in my personal opinion, which I get to say whenever I want now.

'cause I no longer work for the DOD. And so if you are, if you're the Air Force, you care about winning in the air, and that is what you need to care about, and that's what you should be prioritizing. But until you dedicate people to a cyber force, you really aren't going to have that same impact in cyberspace.

So like, when I think about what we need to be able to do in the future, I do care about space just to be clear. But like, I really care about how we're gonna do things in cyberspace personally. Uh, but you also asked me what I Me too, What I'm thinking about right now, and I will say, it's kind of funny when I joined, so I, I kind of did like a YOLO application to the Air Force when I ended up starting there as a civilian back in 2010.

And it was a cyber job, and I was Air Force, and I really didn't know what I was signing up for, to be completely honest. It was a, a wild ride and it ended up being amazing. But I imagined it would be about putting software on airplanes.

And so like, I showed up and I'm thinking, all right, like, we're gonna be putting software on airplanes. And that was completely definitely not what I did for 13 years in the Air Force. Um, in fact, like I, I am almost embarrassed to admit how little I actually know of the different, like airframes and the, the actual air part of the Air Force's mission.

Um, but the, the work I've been just genuinely privileged to do lately at defense unicorns that I'm, I'm super excited about, is about putting software on airplanes. And like, I, I feel like it's this return to what I imagined I'd be doing. It's this kind of like cyclical thing of like, oh, like I'm finally doing that thing I imagined.

Um, and so when I think of the cyber domain and how it should be its own part of, of warfare, and I, I think about the challenges that we're gonna face in the next 10 years with near peer adversaries, I think about the need to rapidly update software everywhere, um, because we have to move faster than people who are coming at us. And it's just so difficult to do. Like, it should be easy, it should be boring, it should be an afterthought.

And literally it consumes sometimes just tremendous amounts of time and effort from people and still is ineffective and too slow. So I wanna make it faster and better. Well, I do too.

We are sisters in that, uh, in that goal. I do too. You know, you know, the, most of the numbers coming out of different studies shows that the government's taking about 185 days to get a software release out from a vulnerability response to a vulnerability.

When it only takes a 10 days for a, a, you know, hackers to exploit it, that's a very big advantage that they have on the government. But, you know, private industry's taking a hundred days. So it's not just the government, it really isn't.

Um, and there's, I have so many, you know, ideas of why it takes a long time, but what frustrates me about this, that number is all the freaking bragging people have done about how many, how that they do continuous delivery, continuous deployments. They do multiple deployments in a, in a, in, in a day. Well, obviously that must have been BS if it's taking them that long to get a vulnerability out or there's so much noise, developers are ignoring it and people aren't making it a priority.

I wanna believe this first one wasn't true, because I hate to believe that the second thought is, is true. What do you think? Ooh, I think, I think it's easy to say that you do continuous deployment to a central repository and maybe, maybe you even quickly address vulnerabilities to that central repository.

It is a whole lot harder to actually get those deployments to edge and disconnected systems. So if you're in a cloud environment, I hope it's, it probably is 185 days and that hurts my heart. But if you are on an edge environment, like you need to actually get that envi that update from wherever it's actually been deployed to, because most people don't actually deploy.

They, I'm not saying they shouldn't, I'm just saying they don't to their edge systems. So that might be part of it. Um, so I think maybe continuous deployment wasn't always or isn't always what people think it is.

Like it's not to the system, it's to the place where you can pull for the system. Uh, I also think, I think that sometimes those things aren't prioritized. And so, yes, you're deploying live to a new system, but you're doing it on a backlog that was defined and set six months ago.

And so that's, I think the noise. I, I think the noise has a lot to do with it. There's, you know, just so many, you know, if you're using something to automate pull requests and vulnerability comes along, you just get so many of 'em.

It's just, it becomes just noise. It's sort of like, you know, when we were compiling CNC plus plus code, everybody would, you know, not, we would turn down the, uh, the, the warning flags so we didn't have to look at them because there were so many, you know, a lot. And my code was always memory problems.

And so, you know, so we're doing, we're sort of turning down the, um, we're, we're turning down the, the notifications by just I think blocking a lot of them out, which is under understandable, according to Sonotype, we could have 512,000 vulnerabilities in 2025. That's not all vulnerabilities. Not all of 'em are created equal either.

I'm not saying you shouldn't Yeah. Patch vulnerabilities, especially when there's a patch available. But if your vulnerability only exposes you to insider threats, for example, again, you should absolutely patch it, especially once there's a patch available.

But do you need to drop everything to make sure that like your four internal employees can't exploit this vulnerability? Probably not. So like, I think that's an important thing.

And when you're, when everything is a priority, nothing is a priority. And so if you are trying to be like vulnerability free or anything like that, like, it just becomes a lot more difficult to understand what's most important. Yes, it is.

That is the problem. So critical and high risk vulnerabilities, uh, might get mixed into low, low risk vulnerabilities. And if you're a developer, you know, you got other things to do.

So yeah, we have some work to do in this space to help automate the process. And I've been, I've been watching the agentic AI sort of, uh, market. Uh, it's still very, very expensive for those transactions.

Um, but boy, I believe that in the future we are going to fix this with smarter systems. And the other problem is cybersecurity has so many sides to it. You know, you have networking, you have threat, you know, threat detection, you have cloud endpoint security, uh, you have supply chain security.

So every, every department has its own job to play in this process. So when we see things coming out that you have like a cybersecurity AI agent, well, what does it actually do? What, you know, what pro part of the problem is it solving?

It's a very, very, uh, confusing space right now. And, but I do believe that AI will help us get out of this, this problem. Yes.

But AI will also help the people who are generating the exploits that go after this problem. So like you, you're, your AI defenses have to start moving faster because your AI offense is going to start moving faster. Yes.

And boy, when I learned about jailbreaks, I'm like, LLM jailbreaks is probably the easiest and funnest way to hack, right? And, and that more and more developers and I, I think we'll be looking at how to, how to prompt for jailbreaks. And those are, those are easy.

That's an easy way to break a system. So we have, we do have a lot of work to do in this space, but we're just getting started. And I, I'm an eternal optimist and I, I do believe that this will get us out of the, get us out of this, you know, situation we're in where we're having to deal with so many vulnerabilities with not very good, um, tools to address it.

We're just trying to use what we currently have in DevOps. I love your optimism. I am an internal pessimist, which is probably why I'm like, oh, well, we better learn to do that fast because we're just gonna learn to break it even faster.

We will, we will. So, you know, every, pretty much every woman we have on this show, they have a story to tell about, um, who may have inspired them to go into technology. I think it sounds like you kind of forced gumped your way into it because you were, came from a a from a legal perspective, but was there somebody saying, Hey, go back into it.

That's what you wanna do? You know, it's, it's funny. I feel like there was a lot of things that were almost fighting my path to technology.

But if I, like, so when I was growing up, my mom worked at a career college, like the kind of college that you go to if maybe you've struggled after high school and you wanna learn some like skills that you can move maybe from like a manual labor type job into a more admin type job. And I used to go, uh, after school to hang out with her until she could take me home. And so they were trying to like look into different and new programs at this school.

And one of the things they were talking about is like, should we do a coding class? And like, what would that look like? And so they decided to do a pilot coding class, and it was gonna be at the end of the day, which is when I was already showing up.

And mom was like, well, can we have my high school student daughter come? And the owner of the school was the one who was running the class, and he, he said, if she can keep up, she can come. And so I go to the class and I, it was a couple of their like higher performing students, a couple of the instructors and me, and I loved it, and I aced it.

And at the end of the class, and this, my mom loves to tell this story because she felt insulted, but she also felt proud at the same time. She said that the guy who was running it said he was trying to figure out if it would be a good fit for the school. And he said, how many of the students are at like this person who's taking its level?

And he kinda like, did his hands down low, how many are at like your level and how many are at Rebecca's level? And like, worked his way up to, to basically say that he thought I was the best student in the class. And that was kind of when I realized that it was something I was good at and it was something I really enjoyed.

I loved the feedback that you get from writing code, like the, the fact that you can objectively disagree about it, but at the end of the day, only the computer or the compiler can tell you whether or not you're right. Um, and also that you can do all sorts of broken things that get you a right result for all of the wrong reasons. But that's a, a different story.

So I think that experience definitely was part of it. And that was my mom a hundred percent. Um, beyond that, it just became kind of a drive.

And the fact that I even went to law school was I, and I love that I went to law school to be clear, and I really enjoyed being a lawyer, but it was kind of like a, almost a whim that became 13 years of my career. And it How did You, how did you take that? How did you take that right turn if you knew you really liked programming?

What, what, what caused you to take that turn? So it, I was, uh, finishing co I was in my, I wa I think I was in my early senior year of college and I took a database administration class and database administration and SQL specifically is the absolute worst. Uh, I hated everything about it.

Like I couldn't believe how in elegant and painful it was. I couldn't believe this was how we did work. And I just had this vision of myself and my future and it was bleak.

It involved cubicles and SQL code and I went home and I had a glass of wine again with my mom. So I guess maybe she's the, the reason for everything. Um, and she said, we've always liked to argue you should go to law school, which is the worst reason to go to law school, which is the absolute terrible reason to go to law school.

And I, I went, I had a couple glasses of wine. I was like, well, I'll just see when, like the application deadlines are. It was the last day to late register for the lsat.

It was the last day to apply for St. Mary's law school, which is where I went to law school, which was in my hometown. And it felt like fate.

I was like, I, I have to do this now. And so literally with a couple glasses of wine in me, I wrote my personal statement, I applied to law school. I, I applied to take the lsat, and then it just, it all happened.

And I, it felt, again, it just, it felt like the path made itself for me, but it it hadn't been in the five-year plan or the four-year plan or the six month plan before that. Yeah. It's funny you say that about, um, database administration because when I was in, um, New York and I was programmer on Wall Street, I really wanted to get outta programming.

And DBAs were getting paid a lot of money. And most, many of them, not most, but many of them were women and women, women were getting hired in particular in this space. And it was like, you know, I think I'd rather be a waitress.

I, because I was doing some, I was waiting tables at night, I was like, you know, I have more fun waiting tables than I would doing sequel. It seems to me like one of the most boring and organizational is like, I just couldn't do it. And that's what got me into, instead of doing sql, I started looking at make files and writing make files for doing bills.

That's how that's was like, okay, I'm gonna go into what at the time was called software configuration management, which is now DevOps or supply chain, whatever you wanna call it. But it was because I didn't want to go into being a DBA. That's for me.

And, and maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but I think it's true for more people that are willing to admit it out loud. I just wanted to make a lot of money doing something I was good at. And DBAs were the ones who were making all the money at the time I was finishing college.

And yeah, it looked like a bleak, sad path to like just nothingness. That's pretty dark for DBAs. It's, It's, but you know, I think, you know, I've, I've looked at, at data engineering jobs and they're, I think that they're really important, but they're kind of the same.

They're, they're, they're, they're kind of gritty, low level, not low level, but I can't even explain it. It's that managing data, it requires a certain mindset and a certain skill, and if you don't have it, it's painful. Let's just put it that way.

Yeah. I think for me it was the inelegance of it, like some of the workarounds that were just generally accepted, like, this is how it's done. And I can't, I, I wish I could remember like specific examples, but like, I know like joining tables and keys and like all this stuff and I just remember thinking like, this could be simpler.

And we've just decided collectively to not have it be simpler. And, and again, like this is my naive like 20-year-old brain, so we even knows, but like that was sort of like, this is painful. Which isn't to say it's not an amazing career and it's not absolutely necessary.

It just definitely a hundred percent for sure was not for me. Yeah. I think that programmers minds are different from data engineers minds.

And by the way, there was an article that came out, um, about, you know, the kind of the loss of jobs in the tech industry. Um, we talked about it actually on tech Strong gang. And one of the things that the article did say though, that was, um, there were more programming jobs that didn't require a college degree and that they were looking at, you know, two year college certification programs to bring in programmers.

So your mother's program, your mother's classes were way ahead of their time, right? Oh, for sure. And you know, it's, it's funny when, when I used to hire for the government specifically, like I work to have all of our positions changed from ones that required four year degrees to ones that where it was like a nice to have for that exact reason.

Like some of the best software developers I've ever worked with are computer science majors for sure. But I've worked with also really incredible ones who don't have any formal training or any, like what is the, like secondary education type training who are completely self-taught. Because the, especially in things like software development, like what you need is reps and sets more than like the abstract training of it.

Like you need to be obsessed with a problem and have a, an unending desire to solve it and the skill to do it. And if you have all those things, like a degree isn't gonna make you objectively better than the next person. No, it certainly doesn't.

And some of the best programmers I've met along my career were music majors. That's fascinating, Isn't it? Because music has a, a kind of a structure and you do, you learn a kind of functions, right?

You have, you have pieces that repeat itself and parts of it get interjected in different pieces of music. And so there's some similar thing in the brain about, in the logic of music is similar to the logic of software. So just because you're, yeah, just because you're a music major doesn't mean that you're not, you don't have the, the, the logical skills to put together some functions around software.

It's very, very similar. Music does that with a lot of stuff. My, the young lady, Tracy, you and I have talked about, she just went up into outer space.

She went to college with my son. She's an aerospace engineer from cu. She was training all the SpaceX astronauts and she just went up and she played her violin floating in the air on the spacecraft.

'cause she is like a ingenue violinist. You know, music is important to all of these STEM things. It's so important.

And the more people understand that, then that's a whole nother conversation about schools and what they teach and what they don't. But music, I mean, it's amazing that the number of people I know that are super smart, technical engineers, programmers, whatever. So many of them are also incredibly accomplished musicians.

My husband being one of them. It's crazy. And Mitch is an amazing musician on like five different instruments.

And what does he do? He is been a CTO for how long he programs he writes, he does all of it. It's crazy.

Well, there is a, there's a structure to it. There's a structure to music, there's a discipline to music. Um, there is a way that your brain is being trained, right?

When you're learning music the Other side of your brain. Exactly. And all of that sort.

Now art in general is amazing. Right? Right.

And if you're an artist and you can, you know, I was a a a straight A students and in junior high I got kicked out of art. I refused to draw my hand. I wanted to just draw horse heads.

And I told the art instructor, shouldn't art be more freeform? Where you could just, you know, draw what's in your, how old were you? 11, 12.

I was like, I don't wanna draw my hand. They sent me, they sent me to the, the, uh, to the, the principal, which I was horrified. And I sat down and he said, Tracy, the only, the only class I can put you in is eighth get grade algebra.

I was like, okay. Yeah, he, That does, honestly, that sounds so much better to me. This is a, a me problem.

But like I, I struggle with the con like the piece of art where you have to abstract away like almost like the image that you think you see versus what you need to like, I don't know. And like I can just, drastic figures and art was so painful to me as a result. Like, 'cause everyone I was used to, and this is maybe what it really should have been, was a lesson for me.

Like I, I was naturally good at a lot of things to the point that like if I wasn't naturally good at something, I didn't enjoy it when I was in like elementary and middle and high school. I wish I would've pushed past that because like what I've, I've learned since then is that if I'm the dumbest person in the room, I'm in the right room. At the time I definitely didn't think that way.

So art was so painful to me because you want me to draw my hand, like I'm gonna trace it and I'm gonna draw some really bad knuckles and like then I'm done. And then I'll do a horse head too, which will also look like a dog. Oh no.

I could draw a perfect horse head. I just couldn't draw my hand. Yeah.

I was like, draw a self portrait. Here's a stick figure. That's all you're getting.

I'm done. And, and Rebecca, I totally relate. 'cause as a kid growing up and unfortunately I haven't really gotten past it, I was really good at like all sports and any sport I tried that I wasn't, I I'm done if I, and, and it's hard for me 'cause if I don't pick things up quickly, then I kinda like okay, onto the next.

And if, you know, I probably could get good at more stuff. I get a little more effort. But it's like at this age, I don't have time.

I just wanna move to something else. I actually took on. So I'm sorry I've gotten over like you did During Covid.

I was uh, week on, week off in person because we were trying to do all sorts of social distancing and teams and it was lots of fun. So every other week I largely didn't have a job. Like I had maybe a few hours of work, but my work just wasn't conducive to being remote.

Mm-hmm. And so I decided to learn to bake and that is not something that I'm naturally good at. Did you join the sourdough craze?

I did not. I did not get a sourdough order. I decided to make, I, I bake, I made like a cake and it was good.

And I was like, what's the most difficult thing to bake? And the answer is macaronis the little like, oh yeah. And then flour cook, they are impossible to make and they require like a precise humidity in your home.

And like an eye to detail. I made probably a thousand of those cookies before I got them. Right.

And there was something about, I think partly about just the time where it was such a weird time in everyone's lives for lots of different reasons. But like the fact that I had enough time available to make thousands of macaroons is itself remarkable. But like there was something kind of magical of going from just destroying batch after batch after batch to like watching.

And I'm still, I'm definitely not great at them. I can't get the shape right. Like I can't get anything right.

But I can get 'em right enough that like I felt this weird sense of accomplishment like more than, more than some other things I've done that I should be super proud of. Like I'm super proud of that. And it's from that Is because you are a engineer at heart and I know a lot of engineers including myself, who love to take that challenge.

I've been working on Martha Stewart prop overs now for the last six weeks. I think I'll finally have them down. But it's an engineering task, right?

It's hilarious. And you Know, it's funny 'cause this is like on the topic of women, I think I was resistant to learning to bake and I was actually resistant. Part of this led to me buying my first ever standup mixer.

And my resistance to that more than anything had been that like I didn't wanna do the traditionally like house wifey woman thing of being into baking. Like my resistance wasn't, I didn't like eating sweet things 'cause I absolutely do. And I didn't like being in the kitchen.

I just didn't wanna fit into like the stereotype. And, well, once I needed the standup mixer for the engineering challenge of the macaroons that I had to bake, it just became a whole different thing. And now I lean into loving that and I don't really care that it's stereotypical, stereotypically female.

But I did have just a flash just now when you said Martha Stewart of thinking Oh wow. A podcast of three women talking about baking. Like it doesn't get any more.

Oh here we go. Like, But you know, I think what's important is that for women to understand that we do, you know, these skills, cooking in general is an engineering task, right? Especially if you make Mexican food.

Oh my goodness. And basic those women are chemistry Project. Like It's a chemistry.

Yes, it's a chemistry project. And if you're good at that, you probably could be really good at programming. So, um, most of the, I think most of our viewers are already in tech, but if you're talking to other women who are needing to, you know, find employment, hey if programmers are gonna be recruited from two year, two year certification programs and you like to bake or do music, you may have more skills than you realize for this industry.

It's true. And it's also fine if you don't want to do it. Like I think there's like, one of the things as if we're gonna, again talking about women, if as a woman, the thing that has taken me forever to realize is if I do not like things that are stereotypically female, that's fine.

And if I do like things that are stereotypically female, that's also fine. And same with like, like development is a, is a very male heavy field. Some people don't wanna be in a male heavy field.

They don't feel at home in a male heavy field. I personally would like to make it a much more equal and even field. But I feel fine in a room where I'm the only woman to, Yeah.

So it would be nice to have, uh, you know, rooms with at least, I don't know, maybe 30% women. Wouldn't that be amazing? 10 people through, I would say no.

I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't love the bathroom lines of tech conferences though, because right now that's something that I really like. Screaming right through to the front when there's a line out the men's room makes me feel really good. So I'm willing to give that up though to have better representation of females in tech.

That's hilarious. Yes. You guys should read the book.

Salt Fat Acid Heat. It's an amazing cookbook. It is.

Our daughter loves that. She's obsessed with it and she loves to bake and she did not get that from me either. Rebecca, you are my, I'm adopted.

Maybe we're related somewhere because I grew up doing exactly that. Like my mom, my parents were much older when they adopted me. So my mom was very much the traditional, like they were in their mid forties and my dad was the breadwinner.

My mom took care of six kids and various iterations. We were very far apart in age and I had no desire to copy my mother. So like I never learned to cook because I was more interested in how my dad was outside fixing the cars, which was came in really handy when I was, you know, teenager and into college.

'cause I could diagnose my car problems and no other girl I knew could do that. You know, we'd be driving along and I'd be like, oh, that's your alternator. You know, My husband got such a hard time for calling me when his car wouldn't start.

I don't know why it's not fair. But like, he called me, he's like, I don't know what to do. And I was like, oh you should, you have, you popped the hood.

He is like, no, where's the hood release? And I was just like, Yeah. And as I, as I got older, I did the same thing you did.

I'm like, I discovered some stuff that's more stereotype stereotypically women stuff. Um, and you know, I do a lot of that stuff now, but I still, you know, I just kind of was like, I I wanna be like, I wanna do the boy stuff. 'cause it's way more interesting than cleaning the house and cooking for five people.

And that's, you know, raising, I have my two little, I have three kids and my two youngest are sons. And I love, uh, one of the, the most hilarious experiences I had with my little son because I don't wanna, no one wants, let's not kid ourselves. No one wants to clean the house.

Like no one wants to change diapers. It's just that like, women agreed to do it for way too long as like the only people. 'cause I would love, I would love to be married to a housewife who wants to clean up after me and like, make me dinner and teach my kids diapers.

They don't exist, but like equal partnerships do. So the thing that was hilarious to me when we had our last son and my kids are really spread apart too. And it was, it was a little bit of a negotiation.

And one of the things I remember saying is like, I just don't wanna change another diaper. I'll, like, I don't mind having another kid. I never wanna change another diaper.

And my husband, no joke, said, I'll just change all the diapers then. And I was like, all right, cool. And so he did for years, if we were out in public and like there was a diaper change, like he's taken him, he's gonna go find a men's restroom with a changing table, which not all of 'em have.

And so I was with my son who's, who's six now, it was a couple of years ago after he was just outta diapers and we were in the, we had to go to the handicap stall and he was gonna the bathroom and he saw the pull down thing and it's the baby koala in his, yeah. Yeah. I think it's her mom.

I never thought about it. And he goes, oh, that's the baby koala. And his dad.

And I said, W why is that the dad uhhuh? And he said, well, 'cause dads do diapers. You gotta love it.

And I was like, your wife is gonna be so happy. That is so You did her a Big favor. I didn't, my husband did.

Like, that's all on him. Well, you asked though, right? You asked you, you created a negotiation and a conversation and made an assumption that that isn't something you alone should take care of.

And you know, I I so many times, and I've been, I've been on a soapbox about this. Women have to use their voice. We have to use our voice now more than ever.

Is it important for us to use our voice when something is not right? We need to point it out when we are not, we can't do something anymore. We have to say no.

And I, I I I feel like women have been taught that they're not supposed to use their voice and they're not supposed to push back. And they're supposed to be, they're not supposed to confront. Confrontation is a man's job, not a woman's job.

Yeah. Well, And especially when we get assigned roles that are, you know, you know, you sit down in a room with a bunch of people, I'll say, and they look at the only woman in the room and say, Hey, will you take notes for this meeting? Crap like that.

You know, you just be like, no, but you, you've got a pen and a pad. Why don't you go ahead and do that? You know, we have to be willing to do stuff like that when we just automatically get assigned a job because we have boobs.

Yes. Even aside, it's taking it too. Like I feel like the, I I have noticed just in the, the years that I've been in like the career part of my life, things have gotten a lot better in terms of people asking me to like, bring cookies or, or you know, take notes.

But things haven't gotten better or at least not that much better in terms of me volunteering spontaneously for that stuff. 'cause I feel like I should like, not 'cause I want to, but because like, oh, someone needs to do it. Like, why not me?

Mm-hmm. And that's not like, I feel like, so it's not even just we need to say no, we need to, we need to take a beat and let someone else volunteer. How many times I've said that to myself, somebody needs to do it.

Why not me? And you know, maybe women have that programmed into their brain more than men. Um, I don't know what makes the difference.

And maybe men say that often too, but boy, I say it way far too often. I, I take on way more than I should because I'm like, well if nobody else wants to do it, then I, I don't wanna do it. How can I be critical of somebody else who doesn't wanna do it?

So I'll volunteer. Right. And sometimes that's straight too.

Like I love that that initial attitude, that initial instinct is amazing. But then you also, you dash yourself. Like is it something that matters to the end goal or is it something that like doesn't?

And if it doesn't, then you really, really shouldn't volunteer. Yeah, usually I go, is this a superpower I have that I can get done quickly or is it something that will help me learn and take me to the next level? Um, so there is some, you know, selfishness in it, but many times I've said, okay, I'll do it.

And I'm like, what? I agree to that it didn't fit into any of those categories. I do it all the time and I, I'm mm, I've been doing it a lot less these days and it's helping.

Like, I just, partly I've just been so busy and so I, I try to do it kindly, but it's, I'm even doing some less of that these days. Like, I don't, not not being cruel, but at the same time, like I don't need to spare your feelings if you've asked me something unreasonable. Well, and also I've fallen into the trap and I don't do it very much anymore, where I, I do exactly what you talked about, which is like, well no one else is gonna do it, so I'm gonna do it.

And then I find myself whatever in certain situations feeling angry about doing and you know, I'm doing it being like, why the hell do I have to do this? I'm like, why did I, you know, then I get angry about it and I realize, you know, I created the problem for myself. But, um, yeah, you just, you get resentful because you took on the task and you're not enjoying it And no one even asks you to do it.

Like, that's the real part. No one even asks you to do it. Like, you have no one to resent but yourself.

Exactly. It makes it worse, just to be clear. Exactly.

Makes I really need some in a blame. I've definitely learned, gotten to unlearning that one. So Rebecca, I see that you have a turntable in albums back there.

Um, I so a fan of collecting albums. I love playing my turntable, especially on Friday and Saturdays is kind of my thing. I do.

But you also have a bunch of books behind you. Oh Boy. We go, We always, we always ask for a book recommendation.

Is there any books that you might, uh, suggest? And it doesn't have to be a technical book, it could just be some really cool books you're reading. Like I'm reading Kristin Hannah's books right now on women in the military, which has been, you know, their, their historical fiction and they're fascinating.

Um, especially around women and how we volunteer for things That, oh, I, I will have to pick that up. That sounds interesting. I have two that just pop into my head.

Um, one is fiction. So like you said, it doesn't have to be serious. So I'll start with the, one of the most underrated works of fiction, I think out there is a book called Confederacy of nces by his last name is O'Toole.

He wrote one novel ever, uh, maybe like one and a half. He wrote this one. He tried to get it published for years and years and years, ultimately committed suicide, which is terrible.

Um, and his mom took up the mantle of getting his book published and got it published and it's, it's satire, it's hilarious. It's dark. It's like everything you want in a story of, of this, this really unlovable protagonist who never really becomes lovable throughout the entire book.

And I won't spoil it further, but one of my absolute favorite books I've ever read. And I, I reread it every few years, which is not something I do much just because like it speaks to me in different ways depending on when I'm reading it. Um, so that's just a, a fun fiction book.

The probably the most helpful book I ever read. And it comes down to when I read it, like it, I read it when I was in a more formative part of my life and I resisted reading it 'cause of its title 'cause it sounds Gross, uh, which is how to Win Friends and Influence People. Like I didn't, I didn't really wanna read a manual on how to make friends and influence people, but boy, some of it's just common sense.

But it helped me so much in learning, really learning to stop having so much main character energy. Like learning that the world is not revolving around me. And instead, if I can address things in terms of problems other people are trying to solve, like I'll be both more effective at what I want to do anyway and happier while I do it.

So those, those will be the two that I, that I recommend. That is an awesome book recommendation. I also read it when I was pretty young.

Um, but it is timeless and you know, it's too bad that they did stuff. They just don't have everybody read it in high school, right. Senior.

Why not? That's about the time you need it. I've heard it joke, like joke that like it's really just a book about how not to be an A-hole, which is kind of true's, but like I feel like c do need that book.

Like yeah. A lot of them anyway. Yeah, it is that, but it's teaching you how to be a mature adult, right?

Oh, for sure. Yeah. I think there a lot of people should read that.

I do too. And I think every now and then I'll, I'll find myself like frustrated in something that feels like some intractable like negotiation or something. And I'll go back to those principles and I'll just change like a little bit about my approach to make it less about me and more about whoever I'm working with.

And it's magic when I remember to do that. And it's, it's good for personal relationships too. Like it's, it's a great book.

Well I think that's a really great place to stop today because we're, we're way over what I'm supposed to do. Oops. No.

And we do this every time. Reentries. Yeah, we do.

It's, we're Always, it's great. We just do what we do and, and apparently it's working 'cause we have a lot of people, people watching. So that's what matters in the end.

That's what matters. Um, how to make friends and influence people, words to live by. I love it.

Thank you Rebecca. Thank you so much for being here. This is a great way, uh, we're recording this on a Fridays, we probably made it pretty clear and it's a great way to end the week.

Um, it's been a crazy week for me, so I really appreciate having this time with both of you to kind of decompress from the week and just have some fun. So thank you so much for being here. I hope our audience feels the same way.

Tracy, take it away here. I'm just gonna say thank you Rebecca. I'm so glad that we got to meet and curse on March the fourth and I was able to say, all I wanna really do is invite you to, to speak on tech strong women.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna reach out to you on some other topics, so it was great having this time with you today. Thanks So much to both of you and hopefully you have a great rest of your week. Yeah, you go, you too, both of you.

So thanks for watching another episode of Textron Women Everyone. Um, look forward to seeing you next time. Stay tuned for more great shows and programs here on Textron tv.

There's a lot to lot to watch and enjoy. Have a great day everyone. Thanks.