The Art of Communicating Technical Topics – TechStrongWomen EP 10

Hi everybody. Thanks for joining us for another episode of tech strong women where we feature amazing women doing amazing things in Tech. Hi.

I'm Jody Ashley executive producer here at Tech strong, and I'm joined by my co-host Tracy Regan and Rebecca August. But before we introduce today's guests I want to give you a quick update on what's Happening Here at Tech strong coming up on October 4th. We have the cloud container security Summit and on November 16th join us for devops experience.

com to sign up and be sure to tune in to text on TV every day for great shows and interviews. Hey over Becca. What do you have on top for this week?

js she's a self-taught devops engineer technical writer and full stack mom is her description. com. You know, what is the internet of things, you know devops versus devsecops Is absolutely amazing and she's kind of fun to watch.

She makes learning really fun. I definitely suggest anybody who's looking into this industry to should definitely check out her Instagram. Full stack mom nice.

Nice. What about you Tracy? What do you have this week?

So as many of you know, I'm on the board of the open ssf so I get things that come through about what's happening at the open ssf and this came through they have now started a end user working group. Super super important for those of you who don't know what the open ssf is. It's basically open source security foundation and they're focus is to really sort out how to make sure we don't have another log for J moment and they're focused heavily around s-bombs and cve's and making s-bombs available to everyone one of their problems though to be quite honest is they don't have enough end users providing feedback in terms of what they're what problems the the end users are having with adoption of s bombs.

So we may generate one and it sits out of biosystem somewhere. So woohoo, right. There's a lot of good to take that time to generate it.

So we're looking at use cases and understanding from a user end user perspective. What stops them. What are the barriers?

How can we help them and having this end user working group will be super essential. So if this is an area that you're interested in or even if you're a devops person because when we start talking about Security it's really part of the devops pipeline. We've talked about devsecops for a long time.

But what does that really mean? It means bringing the security pieces into the development pipeline. Which also means we're shifting security farther left.

So how do we do that? We do that by getting feedback from end users. So that there's so many ways to get involved in open source communities.

The one of the easiest ways though is to be part of a working group where you're providing input means you're not coding you really are just providing input to say these are the problems that we're at we're we're struggling with these are the kinds of use cases. We'd like to see and that's what that that work that end user working group is all about so don't hesitate jump in, you know, don't don't tip your your toe in the water and see if it's too hot or cold jump in full force and help us out with the sorting out these security issues. And if you're in the devops space, this is a really good place to start.

So that's what I have today to encourage everybody who has never been in an open source or worked on a OS working group. This would be a good one for you and you can find out more about it at the open ssf website. That's amazing.

I think we all forget that we can't be a silo right? We need him. Yeah, we need we need to just we don't have to fix all the world's problems.

But we need to have a conversation and bring a lot of people into it find out all the things that are going on. So, that's really cool. Thank you Tracy.

That's that's awesome. I would like to introduce you to Our Guest today. Um, we're very excited to have her the nobia godchalk.

Would you like to tell us all a little bit about you? Hello? Yes.

Thank you. And thank you for having me on and this is such a great group and community. And so as Jodi mentioned, my name is Zenobia godschalk.

I run Communications for a company called swirls labs and on the blockchain side distributed Ledger side. I also am the vice chair of the Forte Group, which is a group of senior women and cyber security who and in the in the midst of the pandemic found a way to develop some community and to share ideas and you know to to come together to enable all of us as much as we were spread out across the country and across the world to still continue to have that level of community. And to share ideas and help each other in our career paths.

So my background and I graduated from Stanford worked out in Silicon Valley for a number of years and worked in technology companies did a very short stint on the cell side and in Investment Banking as an analyst covering Internet Security and infrastructure. It was a great learning ground to really jump in and understand the entire security ecosystem, but it was still Investment Banking, which is not an area I wanted to be in so I left that fairly quickly went back to doing prir and what we call full stack marketing for technology companies and most of where I spend my time is with security and blockchain companies. And so, you know now today also thinking about that intersection of those two always something new to learn and And always and just glad to be here.

And you know, you didn't mention it. But you're also a aren't you a tedx speaker? Yes.

Yes, so I am yeah. Yeah absolutely on you know on on blockchain and cryptocurrency and I think one of the if anybody gets that opportunity, I would highly recommend that they take it it is a lot of work but it's also they have a great process right? They put you through it.

They really make you think about your talk. They help prepare you and so if anybody ever gets that opportunity, I would encourage them do it. I've thought about it, but it was always been like how do I have the time?

Do I have the time? Yeah, and I don't know, you know, I know they run them differently, but I think for me it was sort of a a nine month prep. Not that it was the full nine months, but they walk you through right they want they have a certain bar in terms of what they want to see and and how they want you to deliver that but they also provide some great support and in terms of speaker training, you know, we work with people who are practicing speeches all the time and I always say that there's never you can never practice enough right.

Once you feel like you've practiced so much that you're sick of hearing yourself. That's probably about the time where you're ready to get on stage. Yeah, what happened to Toastmasters, right?

That was it people who attend to this day it snowed, you know organization, but people who do attend Toastmasters and practice they are far more polished. So I think it's awesome. That tedx does that for you?

I didn't even know Toastmasters was still around. It's oh, yeah, my dad did Toastmaster and he would have been a hundred this year. So yeah, that was a long time ago.

I remember him doing that but I just isn't something you hear about that often. It's great that they take that time though to make you to give you a whole new skill set. Not just hey jump up here and do a talk, but that's right.

Yeah, they want, you know they want and they want these ideas to be successfully communicated right so you can have a great idea and if you're not able to share it with the world then you know, that's that's a sort of a singular great idea. Right but the ability to then share it and make that Vision something that other people buy into I think it's really powerful. And it's powerful in everything we do in software in general.

I know as a person who is, you know. I've lived off of small companies since I was 27 Kofi started doing consulting when I was 27 and then formed my first company and 95 to communication is essential. And communicating technical topics can be extremely difficult.

Really bringing I mean just you're you're in the blockchain space. Why don't you tell us about how you know, how are you bringing that blockchain story? Especially security around blockchain.

How do you bring that story forward? What are you what how what's your thought process pulling those pulling that information together? Sure.

Sure. So I think you know I always think about well, you have to go deep before you can then pull back and have that you know, 10,000 foot view. But at the end of the day, there's a great there's a great model and this gentleman named Simon sinek.

If any of you are familiar with him, which is the start with why right people won't care about what you do until they care about why you do it. And so I think when you're trying to communicate these technical topics, you do need to spend time with the folks who are building who are creating it and you need to hear everything that they are saying about what about what they are doing and you know their beliefs on why it's so important and then the challenges taking that and saying great now you all probably know way too much and for the person who is just getting a taste of this. I need to give them only the highest level of why and then I can dive in right then.

I mean, I think that people are much more they want to Control their journey of how they discover things much more on their own, right the days of Gartner tells me what to buy and I go buy it are long gone, right I can now jump into Reddit. I can now jump into Discord. I can now have all those conversations when I want to at a very technical level, but I first need to be hooked.

So one of the things that I tell people, you know, when when they're going through this process is think about you know, at the end of the day everybody loves stories, right? We love them from the time that we're children. We love the heroes Journey we love you know conflict but we also just like to be told stories and we like to be entertained and then if you were able to do that and put it in, you know in the perspective of some of you know, why do I care right?

Why should I care? How does this affect me that's going to be a lot different. So if I tell you well, you know, a blockchain is an immutable Ledger and you can You know control your own data and it is distributed, you know, a distributed multimaster, you know database like most people are going to go that's great, but I don't care if I if I tell you, you know, yes, yes, you're gonna I mean the the person who has 7,000 other things coming at them right there.

They just don't have time to do that. But if you say well gosh, are there any instances where you wish you could control your data or you wish that you had accountability across your supply chain, right? And you know, you talked about and sort of the software bill of materials, right?

So we we think about for example a physical supply chain, right when the covid vaccine was coming out the big story was that supply chain has to be cold at every point and in its journey and That vaccine has to be cold in every point in its Journey before it gets in your arm. Otherwise, it doesn't work. Hey, well, maybe you can apply distributed trust to that process.

Can I have the manufacturer verify that it was cold throughout the creation of That vaccine can I have the Distributors verify that their warehouses were cold at every point where it was stored. Can I have the trucks verify that those were cold at every point where it was transported and can I have the hospital verify that the entire time it's been in their possession that it was actually still cold before it got into my arm. And so those are all things where the hospital may say.

Well great, but I don't want you know the distributor owning that or I don't want the manufacturer owning that but I need that distributed trust. So we talk a lot about the end user stories and the why to say why is distributed trust really important and where can you think about applications in your life where you would like to have that kind of distributed trust where you don't necessarily trust one person or party to hold all that data And I think you just gave us the reason why you probably did it excellent tedx presentation because you just taught us what I asked you. I was a great great analogy for tracking software.

You know, we I think that we hear oftentimes it's too complex. It's you know, creating a bill of material or showing the ingredients of software as far too complex. But what you just described is super complex and has a impact a death or you know, a life or death impact on people.

So what is it do you think that why why are we not why is it it's 2022 or headed to 2023 just around the corner and we're just starting to talk about an ingredients of software and making sure that it's stored in a cold Warehouse. What is it? I haven't we talked about this before I have I've been talking about it since 95 and we first created our first build Report, but what is it now other than the byte Administration?

Why is this communication Happening Now what's happening? There's you know, there has been a push for a long time, you know, the concept of shift left right like build security into your software earlier on in the process, but I do think the definition of left has also had to shift because you used to be it used to be I'm going to build my software and I'm going to build every single piece of it right now. You've had the Advent of low code platforms.

Now you have development teams. Globally. Now, you have software that is built more modularly and that's great because that shows and evolution of our industry right that shows a maturation of our industry.

Let's not recreate the wheel every time we're trying to create a piece of software but with that maturation you also then insert that uncertainty because you don't control the whole process and you do have to depend on a number of different vendors where you may not necessarily know everything that goes on in their environment. And so I think you know it is And it's a it's a good problem to have because it shows that we as an industry have matured to the point where we are not you know, we are not sewing our own clothes. We are not, you know, growing our own food.

We have created this beautiful Global Supply Chain, but now we have to do all the other things that other Global Supply chains do which is accountability. Well, and I think along what you were saying is we have all those those Supply chains, but I think a couple things that covid has taught us a is a lot of people went back to trying to grow their own food right over the last two years and then they realized cheese there was a lot more to this because I tried gardening and I'm on my third year of man kind of getting rain same Mater's great. Yeah working and it's and it is giving me a complete new appreciation of this whole process that goes into me getting food and I think the same thing with having discussions right Zoom, although we're all really sick of it has also created conversations that we can jump on in a way that I don't think we were doing we all kind of thought we got to go somewhere and see someone in person and go to a meeting and get everybody in a conference room.

And if we can't do that it's not gonna happen and now it's like what's our excuse right? Just pull up a zoom call and get People on it and have a conversation. So I'm a cup half full kind of person.

I always have to go through times that are rough and I think a lot of it is my faith that teaches me. What is what positive is coming out and I always hear in these conversations. There's there's positive things that have been generated people appreciate things a lot more.

I think after maybe not being able to get everything we wanted right right frankly is going to the grocery store and like how can they not have watermelon, you know, it's stuff like that. I think this this is the same thing in the sense that we're all appreciating all these processes that go into all the things that we appreciate and I think security is definitely with all the zoom calling and home security people on their own PCS and not having networks that people are controlling internally. I think it's created a whole new world of Of awareness that a lot of us didn't have before.

I agree with that. And those of us who had the awareness for going boy. There is a 800-pound gorilla in the room and nobody's mentioning it.

You know what he's mentioning it. Nobody thinking about it. I think that's what's happening is it's a conversation that as you guys mentioned is that it's happening.

Now, it's one of those conversations that needs to be that needs to happen very often and needs to start and schools as young as Elementary School students, you know to you know college students because when you think about it, they're going to you know, they're going from Starbucks to home and jumping on different networks and coming home. And if you're working at if you're working for a tech company and you know, you don't know what information is being shared your child has just brought something home and it's a little disaster. It's downhill from there.

Yes, there's viruses everywhere, right? Now Zenobia, I watched your tedx and you didn't absolute amazing job. Okay, let me ask you with your amazing experience your background what has been the greatest challenge when communicating some of these complex Technologies to the masses.

What is the greatest challenge that you've experienced overall? Yeah, so I think you know there is and as information has been more accessible and as people are willing to and and just have all of this at their fingertips. There is also the expectation.

I think that technology just works right so and so, you know, we no longer you can no longer really kind of open up your computers and kind of figure out what's in there right like the next Generations like yep. I have an iPad and it just works. So I think the perspective of you know, for those of us who have been around a while is these things take time to mature, right?

They take time to progress they take time for that adoption to happen and you know the sort of hype cycle of when technology is really get to be exciting and then when they get adopted is very different and so I think making sure that people understand We're still so early in some of these things right that don't get discouraged because there are issues because there are security issues because there are you know downtime issues. If you try to go back and remember the days before, you know fiber was ubiquitous right the internet there were a ton of critics because people said this thing is never going to work like why would I use this? It's slow it's horrible.

It doesn't do anything I need and you know, and now now you can't imagine I mean I look at articles that basically say like the internet is dead so long. That was a great experiment right and I think Wow, I think being able to apply that same level of perspective to new technologies as they're coming out, right? So when you're in it day to day, it's almost like you know with your with your children, right the days are long but the years are short and so making sure people understand look just because there is an issue with this aspect of the technology today or just because it doesn't work sort of how you have projected that it should work today and doesn't mean that that Vision won't come too fruition, but you have to have that patience to understand all of these things have to be you know, all of that innovation has to build on itself, right if we gave up on mobile devices the first time we did it.

I mean you guys remember the what the Palm Pilot the all of those, you know, the Is yeah, you know, there was there was sort of a more of a tolerance and patience for Technologies maturing. When I think we didn't have you know, the the attention span of of tiny rodents right today, you have Generations that say great like my my interest in entertainment is 30 second Clips. I'm not going to watch a 30 minute sitcom.

So for them, you know, it's it's great to have that level of impatience in some ways because it does drive a technology forward, but I think it's also important to be able to communicate and convey that these things are working. They may not be working as well as we'd like in Utopia, but they will get there. Now just to play Devil's Advocate and I had a conversation with one of our youths of our interns and we were talking about um, you know, how we communicate our our stuff that we have on Tech strong.

How how do we get it out the masses and and he was convinced that everything everybody used Snapchat and that in five years. Snapchat was gonna be the thing and he was saying that today and I was just chuckling because I'm like, At what point do we realize some of those things? How long do we go before we realize we have to let go and move on.

I mean there's a whole other because to me a Snapchat really, I have 20 somethings and they don't use Snapchat. So the thought for me of five years down the road this being the latest greatest all the sudden it's and you know you we look at where we are. He's in a generation that they do use it.

That's how they communicate. So at what point do we realize? Okay, we've pounded our head against the wall along enough.

Maybe we should try something else that's part of the challenges of technology is the speed of which we're changing exactly. I used to tell people in the in the in the build space and in the devops space, we used to have the luxury of time to sort out our Pipeline and little scripts because it wasn't going to be for two weeks before this was rolling out, but now we're rolling out things and micro Services world. The idea is to roll them out all day long, right?

So we're that time is being compressed while we used to have that luxury of time. We don't have that anymore. And when we're rolling out changes on a regular basis new technology is hitting the hitting the internet hitting clusters hitting the desktops and the phones of end users all the time.

So this pace has really changed a lot about how we interact with the world. And now we as customers demand things to be fixed immediately. We don't want to wait for anything.

That's notification. Yeah to mimic that I know Zenobia hit a point on that kind of like saying that you know, we just, you know, we just can't wait anymore when we think about it. I know and I grew up we still had the the telephones that were in the walls well by the time Yeah, by the time I came around, you know, my son came by time.

My son came around he was automatically just FaceTiming me, you know, it was FaceTime. So I remember when I was in high school. I would have to call leave a message wait for somebody to call me back.

There's no such thing anymore you FaceTime somebody they answer or instant message, right? No patience anywhere across the board. Yeah.

I'm so guilty. I'll have 50 or 60 messages when I go to check. It's like why didn't you just text me?

I don't even leave messages my kids. I don't I call and I most of my friends do if I call them and they don't answer. I just hang up.

They see that I have a missed call and they call me back exactly who wants to listen to a message, not me. Hey, I'm sorry. I miss you.

Can you call me back? All right, right like Miss call. You know, I called you.

Give me a call. Well, and I think you know you Jody you brought up a good point about that. I think we try to also think about the message versus the medium.

And so, you know, I think it becomes even more important to make sure that that message is crisp and clear and everybody understands it and then to say okay, but my area of expertise is not Snapchat. It's not you know some of these other platforms. So maybe I need to then build my team so that we have all those different experts on there.

But at the end of the day, they are all delivering that same core message across those platforms where it's consistent that makes sense. Definitely. So Zenobia just to shift a little bit.

I understand you were also involved with a group called Forte Forte group. I think a person like myself needs to learn more about what that is. Could you kind of give us a rundown of what you're working on?

Absolutely. So um, yes, so going back to the start of the pandemic, you know, there are as you all know and the percentage and the number of women in cybersecurity is is small But Mighty and you know, I think we used to we used to sort of we got used to seeing each other at conferences. We got used to getting together in person.

We got used to sort of, you know, giving each other the nods of oh, yes, it's you know, it's some of the same folks that we've known for a long time who we've watched and supported each other growing up in the industry. And when the pandemic came around DD date and thanks anyway, you know started having conversations around. Well, how do we get this?

How do we keep that sense of community? And how do we keep that sense of support among this group when we're no longer able to Together and so we started meeting informally in 2020 and you know, it was really a sort of a slack channel of, you know, women who were fairly senior in their careers in cybersecurity and in privacy and then it started being okay. Well, let's not just sort of share tips and tricks, but maybe we should, you know have some education that comes here too.

So We brought in speakers who talked about everything from negotiating. We had a Harvard Professor come in and talk about you know, negotiations and we had folks who you know. Now this is this is a group of Fairly senior women.

So, you know, we had some of the women present and have a discussion on okay, how should you negotiate Equity comp, right? What are the things that you need to be thinking about? We've had women come in and talk about if you're thinking about Angel Investing.

What should you be looking for? And then also much more technical topics. So, you know s bomb being one of them managing, you know ransomware risks and cryptocurrency risks being one of them all topics that are really important in our careers and that also, you know potentially have some sensitivity and so we're having a trusted group of other women where you can say great, this is Chatham House Rules and you know, nothing gets shared and you know, With attribution Beyond this group has just I think been a really valuable resource.

But of course, you know, if you are, you know, you you all know some of these women none of them are content to sit on their Laurels and say great that's wonderful and we've done this and now, you know solved so last year we started talking about. Okay. Well, how can we and and we we actually had some inquiries from people who said great this seems like a great group.

I'd love to you know, I'd love to participate in terms of making donations or I'd love to participate in terms of somehow otherwise sponsoring the group internally we were all so talking about how do we scale? You know, how can we potentially put in place some more infrastructure? So it's it has been and continues to be all volunteer.

But how do we you know get in place some of those resources and then how do we think about potentially supporting that next generation of leaders? Who? You know, it is incumbent upon us to build that pipeline.

A lot of women are multi-time cisos. A lot of women are in their first role as a seeso. A lot of women are sort of at that one layer down where it's clear that they will be that next generation of Security leaders.

And so how do we provide the kinds of programming and resources that really strengthen that group and help identify, where are the gaps and you know both in knowledge as well as in networks and support to make sure that that group is successful and to make sure that we are also, you know paying it forward and helping that next generation of potential leaders in our space. Interesting, very interesting. So do you are there?

You know, I don't know that particular Market that well. Is there an under are women underserved in those higher level security positions? So I think I haven't looked at the data but I think if you look at you know, the overall cybersecurity industry, it's you know, it's I think something like 15% It's still quite small and as you get up the ranks and you know, I think it speaks volumes that we all knew a lot of the senior level women, right?

So we started and and it has grown through. Hey, I know this person and I you know, I I recommend that she be invited to join but it is a very small group I think in some ways, you know, it is it's probably You know, I don't know how compares to the overall it and you know female leaders and in it, but it is it's definitely a small group. I would say at the open ssf in terms of who's on the board.

There's we're probably like five percent women. If that I'd have to do the math, but I'm let's just give it you know, the benefit of the doubt five percent exactly. Yeah.

Well, I spend my time hunting up folks to be on panels and and participate on text wrong and one of our shows is called see so talk so we're always looking for sea level and as someone who does that a lot? I'm just gonna put it out there. I could have a panel every day.

I have five white dudes, but we don't do that at Textron and if the panel isn't diverse the we don't record that's just the the standard that our our CEO and a very proud to the fact that the CTO who's my husband has done that in his whole career. He's always mentored women and helped them to you know be able to find a way to get up those ranks because it's very important to him and he sees their value. It's one of the reasons I love him so much Tracy and Rebecca both know him.

They know that he's a he's a really good guy that way but I struggle I struggle because like you said I end up kind of with the same pool of folks whether it's women or whether it's women of color or whether it's diversity in general, especially at the sea level and it's super frustrating to watch that. So when I see groups like yours I get so excited because I I see this whole sea of of people that I didn't I Aware of that I can reach out to and be like, hey, we're doing this. We're we're having an event.

We're doing a panel. I have a webinar that I need you on and and we need to get to the point where we're just like finding people and it's not so hard that we have to specifically look for color and sex and gender identity and all those things that are so important. But yeah, I definitely those numbers are low.

Yeah, and and we absolutely have you know, folks. So Jody we can you know, we can definitely share with you some incredible women. And we're really not you meant you bring up a good point about allies though too.

Right? I mean and we certainly see that there are some incredible allies in the space. So, you know it is I would be remiss to not note, you know, the the men who get asked to join a panel and say great but I'm only going to do it if there is diversity on this.

Yeah. Okay. So more that every day people literally saying am I you know who's on here?

I want to know that this is diverse. Yeah. Yeah for as soon as we get and we need to get investors thinking that way too.

I just want to point out that women only get about if I think around 2% of the VC funding 2% I used to go out and look for funding and then one day I thought said to myself what makes me think. I am at the 2% of women who have awesome ideas. And I just decided not to pursue anymore because it was going to be a waste of my time which is you know, a sad statement because of you know, quite honestly, I think if I was had a different profile I would have been looked at more closely but it's two percent and when you only have two percent of women being lifted up at Ace co-founder or sea level, you're not going to have a whole lot of diversity come along the way.

It just is that is just the case when you don't have upper management and co-founders and sea level folks who are diverse. You're just not going to have a diverse population at that company. Yeah, and I think you know, that's one of the things that we you know, that's that's part of I think the beauty of this group too is that there are you know, there are women who are in VC.

There are women who have been Angel Investors or LPS. And so it's not just about getting access to them, but it's also about saying, okay. Well, how can we potentially help you?

Think about how other VCS are you know thinking about things in their portfolio? What are the kinds of things that you need to have ready? If you really do want to go and Pitch all these other folks and how can you you know use these networks of other women who have you know who have been able to get there to help you?

This is a true story. I was pitching to I won't say who it was VC out of the Silicon Valley and he listened to my about five minutes of my pitch and he said I just want to stop you right there. And I was like, okay fair enough and he goes I could never invest in your company and I was like a great tell me why you know is my zipper down somebody tell me if I've toilet paper stuck to my shoe.

Right? Let's stick on my teeth. Exactly.

He said well what would happen if your kid got sick? Oh, And you know what my response was. Cool, you're you think I'm in childbearing years why thank you, I guess and thank you so much for thanking that and I said, but how is that different from a man?

Right? And he said because it's the women who always stay home with the sick kids and I don't want to have to deal with that. What would I what would what would I do?

He was honest. And I thanked him for his honesty. How reason was this last year?

No. Oh my gosh. Oh, yeah last year boy.

I behave myself now. So we have a long way to go. We have a long way to go.

So I'm glad that the Forte group is addressing that problem because it matters every little bite matters, right? Okay. I have to ask one more question age group of this human.

what age group was this person in it's hard for me to tell age, but I'm guessing he was somebody between Yeah, he thought I could have babies but he probably was he probably was younger than me. I look much younger than I am. I'm guessing he was between 40 and 50.

Wow, I would have expected 10 plus. For that no that that attitude is in that age group just but he was honest how many other people have I pitched to that didn't tell me that right? He saved you the other 50 minutes of your time.

He did he did it if I thanked him for it. I did I thanked him and but like I say, I don't know how many other How other pitches I had done where they were thinking that and they didn't tell me we need to use the format of like the voice or that show where they wear weird costumes when they sing and nobody knows who they are. All right, if you put people in our room and you didn't know anything and you just listened to what they had to say.

We would not be having this conversation all the time. Yeah this whole Oh, I'm gonna get all wound up. This is bad.

I have really like Mario my whole family my children are very active politically they're into stuff. So we get a lot of good conversations going on. So I have to be hate myself.

I'm gonna get myself in trouble, but I think I mean, I think there's been that application right like in in the NFL. There's the Rooney Rule right in terms of who you have to interview before you and before you, you know appoint someone in a job. I think there's there's tons of examples where you know being able to kind of, you know, unfortunately mask the real identity of someone and puts them on a More Level Playing Field.

And so, you know as we think about I mean, you know, I'm not sure that the, you know, Mark Zuckerberg's vision of the metaverse where look you can now have a virtual meeting in the meniverse. I was like, wow that seems like the most painful thing to do. Why why would you want the meniverse for that?

But if you can think about you know, potentially Are identity in the menaverse? Right? And if you had a pitch competition where everybody looked the same and everybody, you know when they were presenting had the same, you know Avatar the same environmentally and then you really allowed to be judged on the Merit of your ideas.

Maybe maybe that's a more interesting that the Avatar right? Yeah. I was talking to a CEO about this for Fairly large company about how they do this how they do hiring to try to encourage more women and The person responded by saying we when we distribute resumes we take the name off.

and my point back was that doesn't work. because it's we need to we have to now start saying give me a pile give me binders full of women and binders full of diverse people so we can hire from that discrimination goddess into this mess discrimination will get us out of the mess. So the culture has to start shifting to say it's okay to say I'm going to look at these resumes from this pile of diversity.

And we have a another pile here that has really skilled people but we need to look through this specifically. So, you know discrimination can have it can go both ways. Right?

Let's discriminate to bring some diversity into into Corporate America and just taking a name off of resume just isn't going to work because there's so many more men than women in that particular, you know in this in our industry. There's it's ridiculous. How many more men there are than women?

Well, and I think you can read it resume without a name and probably tell a lot about the person because women speak in a different tone than men a lot of times right the way we describe ourselves the way we describe what we do. It's very different. So I think if you gave me a stack of 10 nameless resumes I think I could probably identify at least 50% of them by whether they were male or female maybe higher.

Especially of what they're interested in right exactly. They have their interests too. It's too generic.

Well, I hate to tell you guys this but we we live a few more minutes left. So nobody tell us what the Forte groups got going on coming up that people can look for or jump in and and check out or so. Yeah, we have now finalized the process we are officially a nonprofit and so, you know, if anybody would like to contribute or your companies would like to support it.

com website and we will all so be thinking about ways that we can expand that membership as I talked about and those opportunities so that we are engaging not just you know, the women who have already sort of fought their way to the senior level, but how do we make that easier for that? Next Generation? I think there is not the you know for many groups.

There's the belief of well, I suffered so, you know, you should suffer too right? We are not the we're not Navy Seals, we're not going to and like we've we've said okay great, you know we've suffered so let's make it better for those who come after us and let's figure out how we utilize those same, you know, those same kinds of networking opportunities that have benefited the majority in the past. And you know, like I say small But Mighty let's figure out how we use those to our advantage going forward and how do we think about you know, how do we cultivate that and make sure that you know, the people who are Jody to your point not even reviewing the resumes but also writing the job descriptions are right and with diversity in mind and they are writing them so that they, you know value those kinds of things and we went to Israel a few years ago and our tour guide said so in Israel, all the checkpoints are manned their man by the military, right and you drive through and you roll down the window and you answer a few questions To the to typically the woman holding the you know, ak-14 or whatever.

It is at the checkpoint. And he said do you notice what do you notice, you know and essentially most of the people at the checkpoints were women and he said why do you think that is and of course, you know, my my boys were looking at me like no idea and I said, is it because women pay more attention to detail? Absolutely.

It's amazing. So when you think about cybersecurity right those kinds of things that that, you know, you you know, there's a lot of benefit to having that diversity to having that diversity not only of opinions but also experiences and of the kinds of things that you're thinking about because you can bet that the you know, the opponent on the other side is not going to just limit their way of thinking to sort of a very traditional All mainstream way of thinking that's not how they got to be hackers and how they got to be on that side. So and you know, we need to use that diversity of thought and opinion and experience to our benefit because we are we are not winning the war at this point.

So we've got to get better. Well, what a great way to wrap this up. Thank you so much for being with us.

This was a real yes conversation just fascinating meeting and and speaking with you. Zenobi. I really enjoyed it.

Thank you so much for having me. It was great and we're gonna keep in touch and we're gonna we're gonna watch what you guys are doing. I'm sure you're gonna do some great stuff.

That's super exciting. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your support.

We really appreciate it. Well, thanks everybody for tuning into another episode of tech strong women. We'll be back in a couple weeks.

tv. We have lots of great stuff out there for you guys to watch. All right.

We'll see you later.