Voices of Change: Women, Business and the Fight for Equity and Democracy – Tech.Strong.Women. EP47

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, and I'm here with my co-host, Tracy Reagan, creator, and CEO of Deploy Hub.

And in our free time, she works lots with the Linux Foundation. She'll tell you about that later. Before I introduce today's guest, I wanna give you a quick update about what's happening here at techron.

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com and, and see all of the events that we're working on right now, and be sure to tune into Techstrong TV every day for great shows and interviews. All right, Tracy, what's on your mind today? Oh, boy, there's so much to be on somebody's mind right now.

Um, but, you know, I think, you know, this is, uh, we're, you know, recording this during women's history. Um, so I thought I'd bring up a topic that is starting to bother me, um, when it comes to AI in women. Um, first of all, there's only about, I believe, 20% of women going into ai.

So, um, as always, it's male dominated. But this is an area I think that more women need to be considering moving into. Um, primarily because of the way these LLMs are being, um, written.

Um, we are gonna find ourselves as women being, uh, the, the bias in AI is being because it's being built by men. It, it happens, you know, when you think about women and and jobs, you think about teachers, nurses, you don't think about executives and technologists. And it's happening.

This, these, this bias is, as we speak, being built in because more women are not going into data engineering. And, um, and, and, and building LLMs. So ladies out there who are listening view are technical.

Um, think about moving into the space. Men do it quicker than women because women, we don't, you know, we have this thing, we go, oh, you know, we're, uh, um, an imposter in this because we don't know it inside and out. Well, nobody really knows AI inside and out right now.

This is a really good time to make a shift in your career and a good time to get to be part of the conversation. 'cause these biases will be built in if we don't have more diversity in that, uh, community who, who are building these LLMs. And that is what, that's got me concerned for the long run.

Uh, and we have to fix it by stepping up and using our own voice and being in the room. Absolutely. I totally agree.

People, I just don't think people realize how much, you know, the whole world gets tilted by the people that are building whatever it is. And this is like a massive scale where things Yes. Tilted in a way that, that won't be great.

So, well thank you Trace. So as Tracy said, this is Women's History Month. We just had International Women's Day, and we have a special guest for this month we're very excited about.

I would love to introduce to you guys, it's Misty Skolnik, is that correct? I'm gonna let her introduce herself and tell us about herself. Hi, Jody.

Um, so Tracy has me inspired, so A dive in. I might, I might, I might move from, uh, selling pretzels to I Am. Wow, Good.

Oh, I don't know why. Really impressed with that. Um, Really have me thinking.

Uh, my name's Misty. I am co-owner of Uncle Jerry's pretzels. We are a small handmade pretzel from Pennsylvania.

My dad started the company about 35, 40 years ago, and I've been working with him for 16 years. Um, I was originally looking to go into a US foreign policy, but eventually I just slowly got more and more involved in the family business and here I am. Well, that's a switch US foreign policy switch, which is also incredibly interesting, by the way.

So, right. So this makes me feel like from US foreign policy to pretzels to ai, it feels natural. Tracy, what do you wanna ask her?

So you find yourself on tech strong women. Um, and I know that, uh, you know, we are having a conversation about diversity and inclusion in this country. Some of that has been shut down from the, uh, government's perspective.

And even though I'm sitting here and I'm preaching women to go into technology, I don't know if our DE uh, I programs have really made a difference. We find ourselves still with women getting actually in, uh, VC funding less than 2% last year. And this was when DEI was still, you know, being talked about.

Uh, and I felt like that some of those programs went the wrong. They, they were addressing the wrong problems. You know, uh, pronouns are not going to change the way we are seen in the world.

In fact, it, I think it created more animosity because people were struggling figuring out how to use they and them all the time. Right, totally. So where are we in this, this DEI of effort?

I mean, women are not, we have not changed our stance. We have not changed anything. I, there are more women who are being added to or are, you know, I think there was an article that came out recently that said there was a, like maybe four startups that became unicorns that had women who were part of the co-founders.

But there are no w women led, primarily women led businesses that are getting there. And the ones that do get funded, they don't get second rounds. Even though the data shows that women CEOs are far more careful with the money, their burn rates are, are, are lower than what was expected, and their sales and success rate is higher.

So we, the data shows that we're great, but we still suck. What are we doing wrong? I think it's really interesting.

I just watched a documentary, um, about women in vc and it talked about a couple of, uh, VC businesses that were women owned and some of the businesses that they were funding. So it was really fascinating to learn, you know, just what Tracy was saying about the amount of funding, how successful these businesses typically are, and yet what a small portion of the funding is actually going towards women. Um, and I guess to kind of start the conversation, I think it's important to move 60 years back in time.

Uh, the idea of, you know, 60 plus years, let me put it that way. Um, the idea of idea creating programs to make things more fair is not new. It's been a long time happening.

It's been in a lot of different iterations. And I think that's really important that collectively we have always moved towards more fair laws and regulations and business practices. And I think the numbers show that has been to the benefit of business.

Um, so whatever you call it, whether it's DEI or the EEOC, whatever, um, we call these types of programs. They've been around for a while. So I think that's important to, to take note of, But they're still not working no matter what we call them.

Now. I think Title IX helped, helped, helped in the universities really help, uh, more women be able to participate in sports, get more, um, scholarships, which was fabulous. But we don't really have a Title IX for women going into ai.

Right? We don't have a Title IX that's encouraging women to, uh, go into STEM in, uh, in particular. And the ones that do go into stem, they find themselves struggling.

I, there, I belong to a, something called invest her, and we went to a, went to one of the, the local chapter meetings and there was a woman, she was probably in her mid thirties, maybe a little younger. Um, she, uh, works at the labs where they work on all kinds of different science. And she is looking at, um, she has a, a model for making sure that you don't have to go back and get a second booster for vaccines.

And she's looking at, you know, needing 150,000, um, to go to the next, go to the next step in her research. And this is a tra, this is a trillion dollar business, and she can't find someone to give her 150 K to start testing the models that she's developed. That there's, so I, you know, I mean, I struggle with looking for funding too, but when I look at somebody like her with her background, you just gotta, you know, and, and not able to get a small, that, that, that's less of what most people pay, you know, um, a software developer for a year, right?

And she couldn't, and she can't get the funding. So it, it breaks my heart. And generally, as you know, we, for those of you who listen to this, um, on a regular basis, we don't do the boohoo, but today I wanna do the boohoo.

What the hell is happening? Really? Why are we struggling like this?

And I have so much to say about it. But, you know, in your own, misty, in your own world, in your own work, what do you see? How do you see women being brought up that, uh, you know, how many people are actually re reaching down and saying, let's bring you up the, the, the, the, the ladder?

Well, fortunately, you know, maybe I'm in a unique situation, but my father has been incredibly supportive of my growth as a business person, not knowing anything about selling pretzels to, you know, 17 years later being a full partner. Um, so I've been really, really fortunate, but there aren't too many women that I work with in my business for sure. So in the food business, the distributors, the retailers, um, there are some small specialty grocery stores that are owned and operated by women, but by and large, the businesses we work with are driven by men.

So it is hard. Um, I did, I was working with one distributor, and she was amazing, and she sold her business. So I think she was maybe the only female distributor, uh, distribution company that, that I had come across.

Um, you know, I, um, in, I went back to school about two years ago, and I recently took a class in human rights and business, and it was a really pivotal class for me because the professor has a long professional journey in, in moving the needle. And he always said he was, um, an incremental optimist. And I kind of went back and forth on whether or not to agree with him, and he was just saying, are things perfect right now?

No. But are things moving forward little by little? And maybe that's, that's good.

Um, so it is hard. I, I agree with you, Tracy. Um, but then I think things have happened.

You know, we have the FMLA, um, there's still a pay gap, but it's, it's getting smaller, um, with movements towards, um, pay transparency. Maybe the gap will continue to close, maybe with more mentoring programs that businesses support, maybe women will slowly move up into the C-suite. I think I just read a statistic that out of the companies listed in the Fortune 552 have women CEOs.

So hopefully we can see that number grow. Um, I think it's really important, and I think continuing with considered efforts to make sure that it's fair and everybody is moving forward is great. I don't know what the, I don't know necessarily what's going on.

I can't really speak to the tech world. Um, yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's tough. It's really tough.

It's tough in the food industry for sure. Well, I was thinking too, when, when we talk about, I mean, the latest statistics are that around 40% of all businesses are owned by women, but what are the size of those businesses and what are they, like, what you guys were just saying, are they hair salons and nail salons and, you know, great stuff. Love me, a good mani petty, but are, they're not, like what Tracy's describing is no one's investing in women in big companies and tech companies and you know, like you said, biotech and biotech, things like that.

They're still like an area where it's, it's still womeny businesses. I don't know how else to term it, you know what I'm saying? Even though there's Grade.

But how big are they as a, a, you know, representation of all of the big companies? And like, like, like Tracy said, you know, there's just not a lot of executives and there's not a lot of, one thing that doesn't matter, whether it's tech or whatever, Misty, we hear a lot of is, you know, women not being able to get funded regardless of the business and women not being able to go climb up the ladder. And it's just the, I think that's across the board a problem.

It doesn't matter whether it's tech or whether it's, you know, working in the, the school system and trying to become an ad a good administrator. It's still that we're still being outnumbered in those higher level roles. I bet if we looked in the school systems, we'd realize how many more are teachers are women, and how many principals are men?

Absolutely. Right. Yeah.

So I was listening, driving down the road, listening to my series xm, and I was listening to, I decided I would be brave and listen to the news, which is a big thing for me in these days. Absolutely. And they were talking about the education system and, um, you know, the defunding of the education system.

And they had a Republican punt and a Democrat punt. And the Republican pundit to my shock, sat there and almost screamed, teachers suck. Teachers suck.

Teachers suck. And the, the, the Democrat pundit, she was, had been a teacher, and her mother had been a teacher, and her grandmother had been a teacher. So she was being beat up big time.

And suddenly it went in my mind from teachers suck to women suck. Hmm. And I realized how deep of a cultural problem we have.

He wasn't necessarily saying, teachers suck. I wanted to scream out and say, well, cops suck. And, and you know, contractors suck and plumbers suck.

I don't think teachers suck at any different rate than any of these. And we have the strongest workforce in the world that teachers have created. But it wasn't about that.

It was really about women. And man, you know, my brain just went right down into history. And I'm thinking, how many years did they burn witches at the stake?

You know, really? And these were always initiated by a man saying somebody sucked about something, you know, they walked across the water and they now are flying on their cow upside down to some covenant where they have sex with the devil. Right.

I, I mean, this is the reality that we find ourselves in because this is, these are we, there is is such a thing as, you know, a trauma that is passed down and inherited over and over and over. And women have suffered that. And I just would love a way to go, how do we break that?

And, you know, women in sports helps break that because now women wanna see ba you know, more people wanna see basketball. I heard of a place in Seattle called the Sports Bra, which I think is awesome, which is a bar for women to go watch sports together. Um, but we, how do we Yes, I know.

Well, in women's soccer, look how hard they were. Women's soccer. Exactly.

High equity. They're like, we're better than the men. Yes.

We race better than the men. We win more than, better than the men pay us as pay. Pay us as you pay the men.

And they, But the men have to want to do that. And almost everybody we speak to in, on this, in, on, on this program, women that are go into tech, it's because they had some strong male in their life just like you, Misty, that said, you should go into business. You should take over this business.

The last one we just had, uh, she said, her dad said, uh, I'm at work and I'm seeing a lot of hap stuff happening around computers. You should go take a computer class. And she ends up taking a c plus plus class 'cause that fit in her schedule, which is one of the hardest classes she could ever take.

She's like, and now she's really hard. What was I thinking? But now she's a very successful person in tech, but her father encouraged it.

So I feel like dads man, brothers and fathers and, and every single person out there who loves a woman has to start changing the culture themselves and speaking out and using their voice. Right? Absolutely.

Where is our voice? Right? And why in the, in the food industry, I would think there would be many women at the higher levels.

Why I, you know, I don't know. I'm not sure if it's just the trend. Um, I was looking, I was, you know, preparing for this conversation and I was looking at women owned brands.

Um, there aren't too many fe women owned food brands. Um, so I'm not really sure, you know, if it's back to the funding issue and getting a business off the ground, or if it's, you know, in order to launch a new product, there's a lot that goes into it. A lot of sales.

And you have to be pretty, pretty dogmatic. And I, I'm not going to use the word aggressive, uh, because that just gets, um, misconstrued. But you have to be strong dogmatic, you have to push hard.

And, you know, there's different studies that show that, you know, just like women don't ask for raises in the same way that men do. Maybe women aren't pushing their products, um, and they're not getting responded to in kind. Um, I, I think, Well, here, here's a model.

Uh, didn't, wasn't hint. Water isn't hint water. Wasn't it started by two women?

Hint that, I'm not sure. Is it still, I'm not sure. I mean, they did great, right?

They have done really, really well and they did get funding. Yeah. I mean, it, it's not, it's not to say none of it's possible, right?

That's, that's not really the point of this conversation. It's here, here's where we are. We're at a critical point in time.

What do we want the next 5, 10, 50 years to look like? And what are the programs and institutions and ideas that will get us there? It's, but I think, but I do believe that in all industries, across the board, when any and any small company trying to get started, if they really wanna go big, funding is critical.

So as long as women are not receiving funding, I don't know how we can ever climb the ladder, to be honest. I think, I think it is critical to everything that women do when they are looking at building a business, whether it's a clothing line or a tech company or building satellites, right? They, they, if without funding, we are at a disadvantage.

And if we're getting that little funding, then we need more women in funding, right? We need more women who are going to create funds for women and actually invest in women, because I see that happen too. I see women on boards of VCs that don't invest in, that don't push to invest in women.

Yeah. I go back to this documentary, uh, that I watched, and I'm wondering for people who don't get the funding, what kind of feedback they're getting, right? Like, why wasn't their pitch successful?

Was it, you know, were, were the finances Shaky? Oh my goodness, Misty, I could imagine that the, that they re res. You know what I got once I was asked, I was told once, Tracy, I love your pro.

This was before Covid. I love your product, the idea you have. You're obviously an expert in this area, but I could never invest in you.

And I said, why? And he said, because what if your kid gets sick, honest to God? Do you know what my response was?

Yeah. To my face. My response was, wow, cool.

You think I'm in childbearing years? Wow. Go me.

Yeah, that's pretty awesome. If you think I'm in childbearing years. And I said, well, I could see that our, you know, I just said, obviously we would not align in terms cultural and how and, and how important family is, so thank you.

And I ended the zoom call, but what a weird thing to say, right? Because what if your kid gets sick? That is what, that's the kind of experience I believe women have.

I had one guy tell me, well, you should only ask for around a hundred to $150,000 just to see what you can do with it. They would never say that to a man ever. Right?

I was recently at a place where we're supposed to be for, you know, funding for the local area, and I mentioned what we do, and the response was, well, honey, that's really hard. Oh my God. So yeah, there are some serious bias, right, right now that's keeping women from moving forward.

And it, it is, it is multi-generational. This has been going on for a very long time. Yeah.

I mean, you know, to be honest, Tracy, I don't have, we've never sought VC funding. Um, so I don't have really a lot of experience, but I guess it's always, I'm always curious like, what was the feedback? What were the reasons?

What were people being told? Because then with that feedback and assessment, then we can, you know, start to address it. I mean, the childcare issue, I don't know how you would address that, but, um, yeah, I mean, You know, I think also for a lot of women in business, a lot, a large component of these programs are mentoring programs, right?

So I think that's really critical as well, is that, and, and we're not just talking about women, you know, any, any attempt to for fair employment is, is healthy, I think. Um, but mentoring is really important. You know, how do you navigate cultures?

How do you ask for a raise? Um, how do you push back when you feel like you're being asked to do something that is outside of your job description or maybe that you're uncomfortable with, you know, this is all stuff you get from mentoring. And so if you put that under DEI programs, it is important and it does have an impact.

I, I think, um, I know I have over the years sought out mentors, and now I'm happy to give back. So, you know, anytime someone asks me to chat about a business idea that I ha they have, I absolutely help. Um, whether or not it's my industry or not, whether or not I'm helpful, you know, I, I appreciate that.

I appreciate getting insight and input from anyone that's willing to give it. So, Yeah, I, you know, I think in general, you know, I know for myself and many of the younger women that I do work with, um, they don't know, you know, they, mentoring is a mystery. Yeah.

How do you, how do you, who do you ask who, you know, who is, should it be? Should it be my boss? No, no, no, no.

Don't do your boss. You know, who should it be? Who, who, how do you do a mentorship program within a company, right?

How do you build that? Yeah, it's, it's not easy. I always work backwards, you know, I'm kinda like, well, what's the goal?

And then let's break it down into small parts. Um, so for example, when I'm looking for people to talk to, I'll find people that are maybe doing something that I admire or appreciate or want to model, and then I just try to reach out and say, look, I really appreciate how you've grown this, how you've done X, Y, and Z. Can we chat?

And then the relationship may or may not grow. It's, it's always a risk, but yeah, it's mentoring programs, um, like a lot of programs can be kind of fuzzy sometimes, and guidelines can be tough to establish, but that doesn't mean it's not worth it. Just because it's hard doesn't mean it's not worth it.

I was speaking to a young woman over the weekend who, um, you know, she works, she's pretty high up in the, um, in the education department here in New Mexico, and she was asking me these questions about her career, and I was like, you know, it's great that you're a you're asking me, but I have no idea how to answer those questions. Who within your circle in the education department would be a good mentor? And the only person she could think about was her boss, which is not the right person, right?

It's just the wrong person. And I, and I said, let's try again. And she could not think of a person who could be her mentor, even though she is well connected within the state, right?

She just, she just says, I'm gonna have to really think about that. I have not thought about who could help me, guide me through my career right now. And I, you know, I don't think it matters what, if it's in tech or if it's she's in, you know, policy, um, you know, education policy.

The, I think women struggle with mentorship and asking for mentors. I've asked for many mentors in, in my career, and, uh, I've, I've leveraged them as much as I can, but I didn't do it until I was much older and had more confidence. Isn't that interesting though, that you needed 15, 20, I mean, how, whatever age it was where you started asking that, the whole point of finding a mentor is to build that confidence.

I Know. Wouldn't be able to find the mentor until you had the confidence. It seems like, wait a minute.

Yeah, no, it's true. It's hard to ask. It's hard to ask for things.

Um, I think a lot of professionals struggle with that. It's hard to ask for raises. It's hard to ask for feedback.

It's hard to ask for mentorship. It's hard to ask for time off. I have a lot of, uh, friends in industries where time off is not given freely.

So yeah, it's, it's not easy. Well, we need to do it more. I can, It's not given freely or people are afraid to take it because they're, you know, afraid to not, I just had that conversation with a coworker today, and she's like, well, I'm gonna be on vacation for the rest of the week, but I'm not really gonna be on vacation.

And I'm like, you need to be on vacation. And she's like, well, it doesn't really work that way. And granted, we're a smaller company and what she does is, is super important.

And, and she's very busy, but there's gotta be, you know, there's got, and, and having been married to A-A-C-T-O where there was times when he was president of a company and if, you know, something broke, he had to be available on a vacation to be reachable. And so I've lived in that world, but I'm the polar opposite. Everybody here knows when I'm on vacation, I'm on vacation, I'll talk to you when I get back, I put it in my email, you know, expect a delay in my response and be patient when I get back because I'll need a couple days to catch up.

You know? And we shouldn't have to do that. And, and I think we put it on ourselves.

And I know, I know a lot of women that do that a lot more than men. You know, we, they're done. They're on vacation, they're outta here.

And it's like, okay, before I struggling with it, I read an article, um, sometime back, and it talked about, you know, the difference in women and men in business. And, um, women are oftentimes the person who's asked to go buy a birthday card and make sure everybody signs it. They're oftentimes the person who is being asked, Hey, if we're gonna have luncheons and you know, Hey, you know, Jane Doe, could you go ahead and get everybody's, uh, you know, orders and, you know, go and order subs for us?

Uh, they're the women. The, it's, those tasks always go to the women. And women are more likely to work on emails and answer phones when they're on vacation than men.

And I think it has to do with they're, they're afraid of losing their job, right? Fear is, uh, you know, dri as driver of, of a lot of the, the habits and behavior that we have. Uh, and maybe it's, there's a good reason for it.

Maybe they don't wanna come home and find out, well, you know what? You were off last week and everything fell apart and you weren't here to fix it, so it's your fault. That's real.

So, So Tracy, what, what's the fix? Uh, you know what I left, I I we have to, we have to speak up. Yeah.

And we have to take our own, we have to take responsibility in the situation that we are currently in. Mm-hmm. We do.

We have, um, you know, much of what we're talking about is hierarchy, right? It's a hierarchy that women in general have agreed to that hierarchy, that men are, the men are higher than women in, in jobs and what we do, and we buy into that. And my suggestion to everybody, and I've re I've recommended this book before.

It's called a book written, um, by, I think her, I think her name is maybe, uh, made this look really quick. We're big on books. Yeah.

Regina. Yeah. Regina Jackson and Sarah, or Sarahs Rao, um, a black woman and an Indian woman.

And they started doing these dinners in Denver where they would bring in a group of white women and talk about racism. Um, and of course, most of the women immediately say things like, well, you know, I'm not a racist. I adopted a black kid.

Right? Um, but so the book is called White Women. The book itself is called White Women.

It's super short, but it is packed with a vision for what the future could look like if we as white women spoke up on a more regular basis and caught this hierarchy as soon as it started showing up in conversations, which means that we may have to disagree with the husband, which most white women don't wanna do. And I thought, I found the book fascinating. Um, it made me think a lot about the, we, the situation we find ourselves in.

Um, I understood a lot more about what racism really is like. It, you know, they talk about India has a serious racism problem. They have caste system.

They're all the same color of people. Racism has nothing to do with color. It has to do with hierarchy.

And I think where, where we find ourselves now, um, in our political situation is we have, women have really given up on speaking out. Our voice is the only thing we have. And it is powerful.

And together, I think we can make changes, but we cannot sit back. We cannot, we have to be brave and we have to speak out. I think we also have to set an example, Like, yes, I came up from the world of being a, a chief of staff slash senior executive assistant to only C-level executives.

And so it was a more unique executive assistant kind of role, because I had a lot more exposure to what was actually going on in the company. And I had more ability to do stuff. But I set a tone, even in a role like that, where men immediately and every time I was in those roles would be like, they'd want me to help plan their family vacations, and they'd want me to do stuff with their wives that needed something.

I set a boundary. Day one, I am not doing personal. I am here to work for you for this company.

Don't ask me to do stuff that's personal. And I was never asked to, one time, I was, it beca it was a total disaster. And I left the company and I had to sign an NDA.

So I can't talk about it. But as a rule, we have to set a, set a boundary. Everywhere I work, I've set that boundary that when I'm on vacation, I'm on vacation, I don't, my job isn't so important.

What I do, like my husband's, was that I needed to stop what I was doing. But we have to set those boundaries. And if we don't, then everybody, this is everybody.

Men, women, black, white, doesn't matter. You need to create that. This is what I'm willing to do and not do.

And if you, if you allow this stuff to happen to you, then they're gonna take a, someone's gonna take advantage of it. And then when you say no, suddenly you're gonna be the bad guy. Right?

So even if it's just as something as simple as when I'm on vacation, I'm on vacation, you, you've gotta set those guidelines. Then if you have to do something, it's because it's, it is really important. It's an emergency.

And people will be like, uhoh, what's going on? They're responding on their vacation. Something important is happening, then it's, and it's, it's important.

It's not just, oh, don't worry about it. She'll answer her email even if she's on vacation. 'cause It's, but it's a matter of normalizing, right?

What is normal Right. Thing. This, this stuff has been normalized and we're going through a new phase of, of, of normalized in, in our US politics.

Yep. What is normal, it's normal for women to go out and, and get the, buy the birthday card and make sure everybody signs it. That's what's the normal condition.

What is normal now? How can we change what's normal? You know, if, if we can change our politics, and, you know, it's okay now for a president to say that he gets to decide all the laws, and is that gonna be our new normal?

Is that, is that what, and so if that's the case, how do we make, uh, how do we make women in business a new normal? What does that look like? And how we can move forward is having a stronger voice, because that's the only way we can stop it.

Yeah. I, um, I, I 100% agree with you, Tracy, that having a voice talking about it, organizing over, you know, and just supporting groups and businesses whose values align with yours is really critical as well. Because I think, uh, as consumers, we have a tremendous amount of buying power.

And I think that's another way to make our voices heard. If a company is driven by a bottom line, then we should be using Yep. Our dollars to affect their bottom line when their values don't seem right to us.

And I think that is appropriate. Um, you know, it's, it's, it's hard as a small business to have discussions like these because you're aware of some of the impact or the risk that you run. Um, and it is hard.

But, uh, as I'm learning, it's also really important. And if more small businesses came together, we're a large part of the economy Absolutely. Where small businesses came together and organized, we could make a tremendous impact.

You know, once we find shared values and a place to start from, I think we can really make a huge difference. Um, so I'm gonna try to be optimistic. Um, not Pollyannish, you know, don't, don't get that.

Don't think that. But um, yeah, I think it's, it's time to use our voice and to see that progress continues. For sure.

I think that's really important and not, you know, for everybody, it doesn't have to be a zero sum game, I don't think, you know, if you win, I lose. I think there's lots of people that can win. And I think there maybe would, it would be helpful to have some type of reframing of the conversation so that it's less black and white.

You win, I lose, I win. You lose, we can't come together, so we walk away. Absolutely.

That's just not going to move us forward or anybody forward. And that zero sum game. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That zero sum game is what we, what what it boils down to. If women succeed, men will fail. Right?

That's, or if a, if, if, you know, a black person succeeds, a, a white person will fail. It isn't a zero sum game. Exactly.

Right. But If I, but if you're in power, maybe you're afraid of losing that power and so you push back even harder. And I feel like that's what we're experiencing now because we had gains and so now we're being pushed on.

Right. And that's why, you know, if you're sitting in a meeting and you see a woman getting beat up on, stop it. Raise your voice and say, what are you doing right now?

Why are you, why, what, why are you doing this right now? This is not part of the conversation. We have to raise our voice.

We have to be brave enough to say what you were, were told we're not supposed to, which is stop doing this. And we've been told that for a very long time. Be the cute little girl in the corner and, and you're supposed to be seen, not heard.

Not anymore. We have to use our voice. We have to, even if it's somebody who's in our family and we, and we love them, and they don't even know they're doing it, we have to tell them that they're doing it.

We have to be reflect, we have to be the mirror. Yeah. Yeah.

We have to model what we'd like to see. Yeah, exactly. As great as that is.

No, but It's true. You, that's exactly, that's, that's a really, it's a gr I'm, we're running outta time and I really like that point. As a way to wrap this up is, yeah, we have to be a role model.

And I also like the idea that there's power in numbers. Um, whether it's what's happening to Tesla today, which I'm very entertained by, and I won't, I won't say I'm not, I'm people, people driving around and putting Toyota on the back of their Tesla or putting a Mazda logo we saw last night. Somebody has footage a On the back.

It was that truck Logo on the back of their Tesla and or signs that say, I'm sorry, but it's the only car I have, you know, that has an impact. And that's modeling, that's telling people, I, I get it. I'm, you know, this is what I, 'cause sometimes you don't have a choice and you're stuck in a spot, but you know, it's, it's important to, to still keep it up and keep fighting.

Um, thank you so much for being with us. I think this is a great conversation and obviously we need to have a lot more of them. And I wish we could just use AI to find a solution.

Tracy. I know, I think AI's gonna cause us some problems before we find solutions, though. I think we never have bias.

And in LLM Yes, it is. But, um, we really appreciate you being here, Misty. Tracy, you have anything you wanna add?

No, just, you know what, don't be afraid. It's time to be, it's time to be warriors. Ladies, it's time to be warriors.

Misty, you, you're next. You can wrap us. Thank you for allowing me to contribute to this conversation.

Thank You for being part of it Here. Thank you. You're, you're the first totally out of tech person.

We've, uh, we've invited here. So we're very excited that you joined us. And, um, again, this is a conversation for everyone, not just people in in tech or in in, um, the food industry.

And by the way, I found there's a store by us that can write your pretzels. I have pretzels. Tracy.

Tracy. There's one in Santa Fe. Oh, good.

I'll have to go check it out. I pulled it up now. We were here.

I'm like, there's one in Santa Fe and there's one in, there's a couple in the Denver area. I live in Denver. How Many stores do you have, Missy?

Um, well we sell to retailers. So we're in several hundred, uh, nationwide. And we also sell on our website.

Yep. Also. So we love pretzels at our house.

So I'm gonna, I'm gonna get out there and, and grab some, they're in Whole Foods too, which is very cool. Yep. And support small businesses too.

That's amazing. Well, thank you everyone for joining us for another episode of Techstrong Women and our great guest. We're very excited to have today.

Um, keep watching. We'll have a new episode soon and as always, keep tuning in and watching on Textron TV today. There's a lot more great content for you to check out.

Thanks and have a great day.