Transcripts For CSPAN2 Geek Girl Rising 20170611

Women at forbes, the Huffington Post and disney interactive. Please join me in welcoming Heather Cabot and samantha walraich. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Well, we really appreciate you coming out on a rainy night like this, and this is a super exciting moment for us because, first of all, were in the same city which we rarely are because i live in new york, and sam lives in san francisco, but this really is the evening before geek girl rising comes out. So its a really special moment for us. And to kick things off, just to give you a taste of what the book is about, were going to show you a little book trailer first. So lets roll the video. I think that women now understand we are not going to get ahead unless we help each other to get ahead. I have a female manager, and shes the one who handpicked me and advocates for me and pushes me beyond my leadership roles currently. So many women i know might not be able to work the typical 9 to 5 job, but having this new kind of tech path gives them the opportunity to work from home, to travel, to do Everything Else they want. Be mothers but also have a job. I dont think that google should be the [inaudible] be the gatekeeper of who gets to sort of, you know, take advantage of the amazing opportunities that technology affords us. Angels exist because there are enough [inaudible] more women sharks. I have pitched a group of all men before, and they dont necessarily get my product. When i pitch to groups of all women, they automatically see the value in it, and they see the passion that i have for it. And immediately their offers are how can i help. So that is a little taste of geek girl rising, can culmination of more than 250 interviews and five years of research. I dont know if you want to chime in a little bit about the genesis of the project and how we met. Yeah. So i call myself a first generation Silicon Valley girl. So i worked in Silicon Valley in 1995, which is really before right at the beginning of the, when people started using the internet for consumer use. It was when [inaudible] was launched. Microsoft windows 95 came out. So before that, the internet was primarily used for academia, now its used by regular, normal people for business and commerce, etc. So i worked on pc World Magazine as a tech reporter for two years. I got the internet bug and went to work for a Silicon Valley Software Startup called tumble wed software. We went public, and i see the rise and fall of the dot. Com industry. 1995 we went public, stock shot up to 120, within six months it was down to two. So we were all really rich, and then we were all really poor. But it was fun, i made some wonderful, lasting friendships during that time. And in 2013, actually, i was having lunch with a girlfriend whos been in Silicon Valley, whos a dot. Com survivor like myself. And she said, sam, ive been working for over 15 years, and i just had a performance review. She was the head of sales for a software company. Just had my performance review, and my manager told me even though think sales team had hit the number out of the ballparks he said to me, ive been told by some people in your group in the company that youre a little too aggressive and, gosh, youre even abrasive. To you mind toning it down a little bit . Do you mind toning it down a little bit . And by the way, your lipstick is too bright, and you wear too much jewelry. And she was horrified. Needless to say, she didnt stay at that company very long. But she said to me, sam, its unbelievable, what women are facing in Silicon Valley today. Theres such sexism, theres such unconscious bias, and you need to write about it. And i said, before i write about it, i want to interview a few other people to see whats going on. Heather was working for yahoo at the time, and i said, you know, tell me your story. I want to hear about your experience. Have you really faced this kind of bias and discrimination, is it really that bad . Id been out of the industry for a little while. And heather said to me, oh, my gosh, ive been researching she was in silicon alley here in new york, and she said, sam, ive been researching a similar topic for yahoo , and she can tell you her story, but i have all these amazing stories. You know, we do face sexism, and in every industry women are facing this. But let me tell you about the technology that im developing, let me tell you about the company that im building, let me tell you about all the positive stuff, because theres a lot more positive than negative when it comes to women starting companies and working in tech. So thats the story we decided to tell. Heather was a contributor to my first book, torn, which looks at women and work life balance. And so we came together in 2013, and heather can tell her story. So i had been, as you said, an abc news correspondent and longtime reporter, and i had the wonderful opportunity to go to work for yahoo in 2007 really at the dawn of the iphone and the app store. And my job there was to cover digital lifestyles. Essentially, to look at how the internet was changing our daytoday lives and to put together stories that i would then present on today show and Good Morning America and, you know, all different kinds of outlets. I was sort of the onair consumer spokesperson. And it was really an eyeopening experience because i i kept meeting women who were starting companies, and i thought, these women are really bad as. Like, why bad ass. Im featuring their products, but i thought it was so interesting that they were so successful, and they were so fearless. And i knew that because i had worked on a documentary right out of grad school about the gender gap in tech back in the 90s, i knew that it was a problem. So i thought, well, this is really interesting. Theres this landscape of women who are really doing well for themselves in spite of the sexism, in spite of the fact that its a maledominated industry. And i wonder, you know, whats the secret sauce . Like, what is it about them that has made them successful, that has actually enabled them to persist . And what could we learn from them for our daughters . And sam and i both have daughters. I have 11yearold twins, a girl and a boy, sam has four kids, two daughters. And that was an inspiration for me to figure out what is it from their backgrounds, from their childhood, you know, from all of their experiences that gave them that resilience to keep going. And so during the time that i was with yahoo , i started curating interviews with these women, and when sam said she was interested in doing the same, you know, kind of mining the same subculture, we realized that we could cover. So much more ground if we were working on two coasts. And what we were able to do, which was so cool, at the time there were so many tech hubs outside of Silicon Valley that were starting to bubble up. And so it allowed us to really go out there and spread ourselves, you know, as far and wide as possible to be able to track these women and get out of the coast and get into the middle of the country to find some of those stories. And so the book, just to give you, you know, you saw the trailer, what we really try to do is, first of all, were writing for what i like to call the Good Morning America audience. Were writing for a mainstream audience to take them inside this subculture of women and tech. And really what the book strives to do is to connect the dot cans across the tech ecosystem to take the audience to the front lines where women are working at the grass roots level Grassroots Level to close the gender gap and, frankly, the diversity gap in tech. So the book is broken out into even chapters, and we survey the landscape. We profile activists, entrepreneurs, investors. We provile women profile women in companies that are trying to reinvent the culture of work with. We take you inside College Campuses and inside classrooms and also inside the world of the toy industry thats also trying to solve this problem. So we really try to, again, for a mainstream audience that maybe they love tech and they love their iphone but a they dont necessarily know about the industry or understand the challenges that women and people from diverse backgrounds have faced, we try to explain that for them and, hopefully, get them interested in being part of this digital revolution. So id like to take a few minutes and just talk a little bit about confidence and read a little bit from the book from our confidence chapter. One of the Things Holding women back in the tech sector and in Many Industries for that matter is fear of failure. Now, has anyone here heard of the imposter syndrome . Anyone have experience with imposter syndrome . Each and every day . [laughter] what am i doing up here in thats that nagging feeling like im not good enough, everyone around me in my room is smarter, what am i doing here. And even Sheryl Sandberg says she feels it to this day after all her accomplishments, right . So the chapter i want to realize to you from is from our confidence chapter. And the woman im going to read to you about, her name is donna, and she is currently a head engineer, a lead engineer at microsoft. And she talks about fearing failure but not just fearing failure, but actually failing. She failed her first Computer Science class in college at the university of michigan and went on to become a Head Software engineer at microsoft. So if i may, ill just spend a few minutes reading from this chapter. Itll also give you a taste of the flavor of the book. And this chapters called dream it, do it, own it. Confidence coaches. Donna was wearing leopard or and owning it. It was midnight in downtown seattle, and the renaissance woman was in her element on a giant sound stage. She was hosting the worlds first hole hack, a 48hour brainstorming session for techieses, filmmakers, 3d artists and sound engineers to try making the first apps for microsofts augmented reality device. Its a futuristic headset that enables 3d images to leap from computer screens into real life where they can be manipulated with the swipe of a finger. At 36 years old, donna is a hardware geek as well as a Fashion Designer and a novelist, and she is leading the outreach program, confirming her status as a rising star at microsoft. Its hard to believe that she failed her first Computer Science class, but she did. And her story is one she tells often as she travels the country inspiring young women to charge ahead in their engineering studies and hang onto their jobs in the maledominated world of tech. As a longtime developer for the windows operating system, donna likes to think of to tech as the invisible fairy godmother who makes things happen. And as of june 2016, she was overseeing Microsofts Windows Insider Program which has millions of users giving feedback about data versions of updates. My biggest success is being a senior woman in one of the Biggest Software companies in the world. Being a principallevel woman here really is a huge achievement, she says. When i was growing up in detroit, if someone had told me, hey, donna, youre going to be making a really, really, really good salary working at microsoft as a senior person, i would have hysterically laughed. Thats because donna didnt know anybody like the woman she would one day become. She grew up in downtown detroit where her parents worked in the Auto Industry, ran a small dress shop im sorry, her grandmother, a seamstress and Fashion Designer, ran a small dress shop for 50 years. The computer lab at donnas inner City High School consisted of some ancient pcs and a clique of teenage boys who laughed her out of the room when she approached them about joining a Computer Club. Shed been fascinated by computers ever since the fifth grade. Her father who had read the wall street journal with her in high school about all the news of the Tech Industry encouraged donna to pursue computing as a practical career move. He felt this new industry wasnt as entrenched as banking or law and that his studious young daughter might have a better shot at life of if she pursued it. He scraped together the money to sign her up for a coding class in college, but it wasnt enough to prepare her for Computer Science 100, the intro programming class at the university of michigan which crammed seven complex concepts into one semester. She felt like her male classmates, most of whom she later realized had taken ap Computer Science in high school something her school didnt offer were speaking a Foreign Language as they paired up for assignments. I would listen to them all the time, and i would say, god, i cant believe how easy this stuff is. Who doesnt know this . And im sitting there like, uh, me. I dont know any of this. I dont know it at all. What are bits . What are gates . And the teacher would start talking, and the guys would be like we already know this, move on. And they would yell this out. Donna failed the course because she was too embarrassed to ask questions. She would often muddle through on her own. Immediately afterwards, she thought about dropping her Computer Science majorral altogether, but then she started thinking about how she would learn to ride her bike, and she would cry a hot and vow i a lot and vow i will never do this again. She took the Computer Science class again and this time she got a b. It was far better than what i had, and i realized how much i learned actually doing the projects. I was suddenly validated as i just needed to be exposed to it twice. Its not like they got it on the first time. The message she wants to send to woman is you p to women is you cant give up on your goal because it didnt work out the first time. Thats like saying i ran in a race intending to come in first place, but i came in second. What are people talking about . A lot of people dont go for things unless theyre guaranteed success. I believe if you get 50 of the way or 75 of the way, thats far Better Success than 0 of the way. [applause] love her. Yeah. Love donna. Shes amazing. And i thank you for reading that passage. I think its really important to point out, and people have asked us, you know, why did you choose certain people to be in the book. I mean, one of the things that we have said as weve been interviewed recently is the fact that there are really countless numbers of stories. There are so many women who we could have put in the book, and one of the reasons why we launched our digital platform is to highlight more of these stories because there truly is a visibility gap in tech. One of the reasons why we chose donna is because not only does she have this supercompelling story about failure and then getting up and becoming incredibly successful, but shes also a Fashion Designer. Shes also a writer. She is a maker. She is really kind of the opposite of the stereotype that you would think of think of of s in technology. And i love that. I think we both love that about her, is that he just, she really kind of crushes that stereotype. And that was really important to us as we were meeting all these different women from all different backgrounds, from all over the country to see how creative and collaborative not only their jobs are, but how they are in their lives. And a big goal for us was to try to choose people that we felt others out in our audience would hopefully feel a connection to in some way. And also the to dispel, again, a lot of sort of the misconceptions about what it means to work in tech. Often times people assume that its lonely, that its cold, that its not collaborative. You know, these are some of the things you hear certainly from young girls when you ask them about it. But what we found was so many of these women that we met was that was the complete opposite. They were super creative. They were artsy. They care about fashion. They have families. They, you know, they have these incredibly multifaceted lives, and their jobs are very collaborative. And so that was a really big point for us in terms of the message that we wanted to get out in hopes of maybe Inspiring Women to maybe think twice about going into these types of careers. Its to see the bred county and the depth of the kinds of people who work in these jobs and how interesting they are. Has anyone here ever seen the hbo show Silicon Valley . Okay. Its pretty hilarious. But its very, very stereotyped. Theres a hacker house, theres, like, the computer genius, the coder guy, richard hendrix, whos the ceo, founder of pied piper, the tech company. So i spent a week in Silicon Valley in menlo park at a accelerator called the womens startup lab. I spent a week at a hacker house with eight female founders who are Technology Founders living in a hacker house. And the really interesting thing i learned about, you know, researching this book was that female entrepreneurs in tech dont look like richard hendrix, they dont act like the programmer type that you see on tv or hear about in the media. These women were from all over the country. One woman in particular, her name is carrie, and shes from santa fe, new mexico. Shes got two little kids at home. She said this is the first time ive been able to actually breathe and not have my kids all over me. Shes starting a Company Called baby heirs which is a babyrental company which she wants to make into the airbnb of baby equipment so when you travel across the country and you have all the strollers and cribs and toys to carry, you dont have to. You can go from one state to the other and rent the equipment. She said it was the first time i could wreath in so long breathe in so long, focus on my company, and she spent the week workshopping and training and learning, basically, building her pitch deck so she could go out and pitch investors for capital to scale her business. So i met carrie and spent the week with her and the other entrepreneurs. And the other interesting thing about program was that it really was building a network of women entrepreneurs. So heather was talking about the loneliness, and you hear its so uncollaborative. Its not. These women were work together, they were being introduced to investors, advisers, mentors. She said that it built her confidence. She got back home and her husband looked at her and said, oh, my gosh, who are you . Wheres the old carrie . This is the new carrie. She was so confident. She also met fran meyer who is a founder, cofounder of match. Com who was one of the advisers at the womens startup lab. And she and fran, fran saw her vision, and she said, carrie, i want to partner with you, i want to take your vision, i want to scale it, i want to make this into a billion dollar company. Is to now fran meyer is her cofounder and ceo and actually, carrie, whos the techie one is the cto. And theyve spread this company now into 40 different markets across the country. And its booming. So, again, going back to the collaboration, the sisterhood of, you know, finding the people who are going to help you to not just scale your business and find investment, but to build that confidence that you can do it. Youre not alone, you have this network of support. Yeah. And certainly one of the things we address in the book, we devote a whole chapter to entrepreneurs and also to investors, is the fact that women founders who are trying to scale their companies have a really hard time raising money. And so one of the things that we look at is how female investors are now starting to come into play whether its i through seed money, through angel investing and also we profile some theres a handful of female Venture Capitalists, and we actually were able to kind of get inside their world and meet them and get a sense of what its like to be one of the rare general partners in a Silicon Valley Venture Capital firm. You know, the network is really a key point here because, you know, men have always had the boys club. And what these women are trying to do is not only are they trying to start a company, which is like the hardest thing ever, but theyre trying to break into the boys club. So in terms of raising money. So what we found going back to the network was value there in how they were able to help each other meet the right person, to make the right introduction. And so we sort of in the first chapter we talk about some of these underground secret handshake societies that have been bubbling up whether its meetups or women are coming together and saying, listen, if were not going to be able to get in the traditional way, were going to make our own way. And that was a major theme of the book is and thats also why we wanted to focus on what was happening at the Grassroots Level because it was a story that hadnt been told yet. And we felt like the focus so much in the Mainstream Media and rightly so has been on the entrending. Ed sexism in the Tech Industry which does need to change, but at the same time we felt like theres some hope there. When you look at the strides that a lot of these women have made on their own by creating their own networks, its pretty impressive. And i think its really inspiring. Yeah. One of my favorite stories is of an entrepreneur, her name is janet tellerman, and shes actually in san francisco. She talks about the boys club and how she never quite felt like she was part of it. Shes a entrepreneur, went to Carnegie Mellon undergrad. And she graduated after she started her First Company while she was in grad school at Carnegie Mellon, it was a 3d Gaming Platform which built tools to help other gamers with their, you know, build their games. And so she launched this company which she actually sold to autodesk, i believe in 2012 2011. 25. Yeah. Shes a rock star. Yeah, shes incredible. She went to work for google ventures, and she said that was the first time she realized what a boys club Silicon Valley was. She was so headsdown, you know, building her product, you know, getting money, getting financing and launching her company. So when she got to google ventures, she realized, oh, my gosh, theres so few women who are coming to pitch their companies for investment. Whats going on here . This is really bad. She went back, as many entrepreneurs do, went back and started her Second Company which is a super cool 3d Virtual Reality environment where you can actually walk around a room, and its for home designs. You can, you know, take basically what you do is you take four pictures of, say, your living room. Take four pictures from four corners of the room, send it in, they make a 3d model of your room that actually looks like your room, and they give you different design concepts. So no longer do you have to pull all the samples, put the rug down, bring the furniture in, dont like it, ship it back. You can walk around as like an avatar in your, on your exciter. Its super, super cool. Shes raised, i think, 11 million now. But she started this project, talk about girls club, she said, you know what . There are so many interesting founders and investors that she met along the way, she said im going to invite everybody to park city, utah, every year to have this festival called the thin air innovation festival. Takes place in april, so its sunny, its on the slopes in park city, and she brought a group of investor friends and entrepreneur friends and other advisers for this boon dog canning, fourday trip to park city where they skied and they had fun, and they networked. One of the other entrepreneur who was a friend of hers, joanna said at one point i really feel guilty. I should be home with the kids, i should be working on my company, and janet said, you know, this is what guys do. They play golf, they go on these boondoggle ski trips, come on, this is the girls trip x. Shes doing this every year now to build her network. And a lot of the stuff that happens, the business happens over beers after work, or it happens on the slopes or on the golf course. Is shes actually doing her own grassroots girls club. And this is what we thoughting throughout the book, thought the journey interviewing these 250 women that they were paving their open paths, creating opportunities where even beyond networking, but to actually establish authentic relationships with each other that ultimately could turn into business relationships. Shelley, whos in the first chapter, started something called the girls lounge which is, essentially, a salon. Its a popup a loan at these salon at these maledominated tech and business conferences around the world now. But it was most famous for the first one which was at ces which is and, basically, what she does is she creates, you know, a comfortable place for women to come and hang out when theyre at these business events where their really like the theyre really like the only ones there. And its an may his an amazing place to see these women not only bonding, but actually doing business as well. And her belief is that women need more opportunities to be able to collaborate. She believes that women have been socialized to be competitive, and shes really trying to dispel that notion. And, in fact, i spent some time with her in, at one of her conferences in germany last fall, and she did an entire panel devoted to something called the shine theory which is this idea that if you surround yourself with women who are successful, that you yourself will be successful as well. Its like if i shine, you shine. And thats really her mantra. I think we really saw that throughout. Wherever we were, whether it was in chattanooga, tennessee, or pittsburgh or seattle or los angeles or all these different places, there seemed to be this mandate for women to lift each other up. I remember specifically when we went to the gray copper conference, one of the places we went early on, right actually when we old the book proposal, we went the houston. And we spent a few days at the grace hopper celebration of women in computing which is the largest gathering of female technologists in the world. So for all these women who are used to be, you know, like the only one in the room, suddenly theyre there with this past year i think there were 15,000 women from all over the world together. And the year we were there, i mean, every program was about how to help each other. It literally was how do we get this done, whether its mentoring, finding champions, helping people find internships. It was amazing. One of the reasons why we went was we were interested in also finding some College Students, because we knew we wanted to do a chapter around College Women and what was happening. And in 2015 there was a big report that came out called solving the equation that was Research Compiled by the American Association of university women, the aauw. And it was one of the first times that researchers had actually highlighted things that were actually working to retain women many Computer Science programs and College Campuses. Its not just enough that they express an interest in Computer Science, the big issue is actually graduating. So we went to grace hopper because Harvey Mud College is one of the schools that actually pays for freshmen women to go to grace hopper. And they do that its a very small school, but they do that so that these women get connected to a network. And so that they can see there are other women like them, and they also get to meet professionals that are in the field so they can actually say, okay, you know they actually get role models that are relatable to them. And i think that was something we heard a lot, certainly at stanford as well. These young women were craving opportunities. I mean, they see sheryl sand berg, marissa mayer, meg whitman, but those are not accessible role models when youre a student. It just feels like thats so far away. They really need the chance to actually meet real women that are in the field, entrylevel, midcareer. Its wonderful to see senior women as well, but they also need to have access to women that are more close in age to them. And i think the hopper conference is such a fantastic example of that and how thats working. So that was, ultimately, why we were there. And we just had the most amazing opportunities when we went back to these campuses. Yeah. I spent some time at stanford. If you go to stanford, you can do whatever the heck you want to do, but i have to say theres a group called she plus plus which is a play on the word c plus plus which is a Computer Programming language. Basically, thats where you start your Computer Science studies. The interesting thing was not only was this group of College Students its own network that included not just computer scientists, but engineers, and some of the women were actually double majoring in english and Computer Science or Information Science and sociology, very Diverse Group of women. They were there to support each other, but more so they had a program called the she plus plus ambassador program. So what they were doing was they were paying it forward. And we saw this a lot in our research also. They wanted to inspire the next generation of girls in tech. So what this program does is they go off to different communities around the united states, and they find Young High School girls or High School Girls who are interested in engineering or s. T. E. M. Or technology. S. T. E. M. Is science, technology, engineering and math. Girls interested in s. T. E. M. , and they say, okay, i want you to start a program many your local community that encourages or inspires other kids to get involved in s. T. E. M. So i have two daughters. We live in Northern California right north of san francisco, and one of the girls i met at she plus plus, her name is sona, she started a Robotics Program after school in tim on, in my little town in california. And my girl started this program, and shes there with a couple other mentor High School Girls. Right from closest high school to us in mill valley, and they work with these young girlings. And its free, and its on sundays, and these girls come and theyre learning actually how to build robots. So i think another really important thing to remember is that these communities, networks of women are not just there for each other, but theyre there to pay it forward to inspire young girls to get involved in this amazing digital revolution thats happening. Thats, like, changing the way we live and the way we interact with each other. How can women not be involved in this . I think theyre really invested in in inspiring the next be generation, and we certainly saw that across the country. When we spent time at Carnegie Mellon also, we had a chance to follow students that were mentoring middle schoolgirls and bringing them to campus and teaching them various skills in not just Computer Science, but in s. T. E. M. In general. What i think the big thing that we tack away from took away from that is this is the way they bonded too. They were vested in helping the next generation, but at the same time they were also solidifying their friendships and relationships so that as they graduate and go on to that first job, they still have ties to the young, to the students that they left behind, their classmates that they left behind. And what were seeing is as they move on and on, those relationships become incredibly helpful. Again, back to our original point about network, it really comes down to having that network. And thats why we called the book inside the sisterhood shaking up tech. So were absolutely happy to take some questions. If anybody has any questions. Should we pass the mic around . [inaudible conversations] i have the mic. Cspan is here filming today, so just wait for the microphone before you ask their questions so they can get it right on tape. What was the most interesting thing that you learned in your five years of writing the book . Yeah. Thats a great question. Thank you. I think one of the biggest and ive learned so much i cant even i dont know where to begin. The whole thing has been a learning process. One of the interesting things ive learned is that Silicon Valley, where i am heathers in siliconally in new york Silicon Valleys really growing up. All the 20somethings who started Technology Companies in the past ten years are now in their 30s, and theyre having kids. And so theyre trading in their pingpong tables for paid leave and work life policies that really accommodate this working parents and employees who are caring for aging parents. So one of our entrepreneurs that we profiled is julia hart, and she started her Company Alongside her husband in 2006 with the intention, very intentionally creating a Workplace Culture that values she says we value the whole person, not just the employee self. We realize you might have issues outside of the house. You may have children, you may need to take care of your own health. And they offer what they call the take the time you need policy. So its basically paid leave whenever you need it, you can take the time you need. Is so that was a big change from when i was working in Silicon Valley and i had babies and i was, you know, the only bathroom we had for, you know, for pumping when my babies, you know, i was pumping milk for my newborns was a cold bathroom. It was an outdoor bathroom. It was freezing cold, and i was sitting there with my pump, and it was horrifying. You know, the engineers would knock on the door, is everything okay in there . Whats that noise . Now you go to these companies, and they have nursing rooms, and they have massage rooms, and they really care about the whole person. And thats something i hadnt seen before, and i was relieved and happy to tee. And event bright is, certainly, a shining example that is, hopefully, setting an example for other companies. I was just going to say the biggest takeaway for me that i actually applied and i have tried to apply to my own life in getting a chance to have access to these amazing people, one thing i noticed about all of them is that when they had an idea, they went for it, and they i mean, so often you have an idea in the back of your head and youre like, oh, maybe ill work on that, or you forget about it. Or you might write it down, and then you dont and, or you worry that its not fully formed. You worry that, oh, i dont im not ready, this isnt ready for prime time yet. I need to work on it more. And then you dont do anything with it. So i think, for me, certainly in the process of working on this book sometimes youve got to get it down and put it out there, because if you dont put it out there, youre never going to do it. And time and time again we saw that with these different women, that whether they worked on it on the side, you know, they had a fulltime job and it was a side hustle and at night they would work on it or, you know, they found a group of friends and they would talk about it and, you know, find people who have an expertise they didnt have to help them, you know, kind of get smart on the topic that they wanted to cover or the product they wanted to build. But they didnt let the fact that they didnt have all the a answers stop them from moving forward. And i think that is such an important life lesson for anybody regardless of whether youre starting a company or youre writing a book or youre starting a nonprofit or a neighborhood group. Whatever it is, if you have the desire to do something, dont let the fact that its not fully formed or its not perfect or you dont have everything figured out, dont let that hold you back from doing, because youll regret it later. So that was really what i took away from the chance to meet all these amazing people. And also you dont have to feel alone if youre a woman in technology or a woman in really any industry where its maledominated. If you cant find your posse or your tribe, go build your own. Theres no reason to feel like youre on your own in this world. Yeah. Where were, where were some of other places that you visited throughout the country . I mean, i think everybody thinks of Silicon Valley when they think of tech, but where were some of the other places that you went, and do you think places outside of of the normal spots for tech are easier for women to break out in or do you see one as becoming more dominant as we, you know, in the future . I think, in my personal opinion i have heard people say more and more that they feel like the axis is shifting away from Silicon Valley in terms of the entrepreneurial activity. And, i mean, new york is such a great example because while Silicon Valley is very engineeringcentric, places like new york you have founders that are coming from wall street, coming from media, coming from fashion with really incredible expertise. And theres not a bias against them for not having an engineering degree or not having a Computer Science degree whereas often times when you hear about the valley, when people are certainly pitching Venture Capitalists, you know, thats a question. Do you have a technical background . Do you have a technical cofounder . So, you know, when we talk to entrepreneur, it does feel like outside of valley theres a little bit more of an openness towards other types of expertise when youre building a product. And the reality is if youre building a company, you need all kinds of expertise. You, obviously, you need the technical expertise, but you can hire someone to do that, you can hire a cto, recruit a technical cofounder at some point later. And so, certainly, i think we see that here. I mean, i had the opportunity to spend time in chattanooga, tennessee, which you would not expect, but it is actually a hotbed of startup activity and feminism. Which is really unexpected and fun. And, i mean, thats when youre in sort of a place thats a new tech hub like a chattanooga, you can kind of write your own story. And i think thats really cool. And i think thats why you are seeing places like detroit and cleveland and pittsburgh and albuquerque and these other kansas city. These tech hubs that are popping up around the country where, you know, there are more women and more diverse founders that are working in some of these places because theres an openness to their background. Theyre not immediately dismissed because they dont have the, you know, the technical degree or the fancy degree, frankly, you know . That bias towards, or rather bias against people who didnt graduate from stanford or the ivy league, you dont necessarily have that in other parts of country. Its really more about ideas and execution, frankly. Two really unusual places, one is in south l. A. , so cassie is a entrepreneur who started shes actually a Fashion Designer, and she started a company that connects designers with manufacturers. So if you have a design, you dont know want to get your product made, she makes that connection online. Shes starting an accelerator, its could an urban Economic Accelerator Program called made in south l. A. , which is her hometown. And shes trying to help, you know, give some life, put some life into her economy because the jobs, its a poor area. So shes starting this accelerator program. Other place thats interesting is detroit. Theres another entrepreneur, tara reid, who is from detroit. She calls herself the antimark zuckerberg. Shes africanamerican, female with no technical background. And she started a Company Called apps without code. And she said its interesting, in detroit theres all this activity around entrepreneurism because theres, theyre engineers who used to work in the Auto Industry who are now without jobs, so programs are popping up to try to get some of this talent into the Tech Industry, try to train these people and get them to work in tech and to start tech jobs. On that end of things, like, are you seeing more and more women who are going into this industry from other industries who dont have those typical backgrounds . Certainly among entrepreneur, i think, and thats there are a lot of reasons for that, but definitely when you talk about consumerfacing tech, youre seeing women that are not necessarily technical who are starting these companies and the reason for that, one of the reasons for that and susan line, who is the founder of bbg ventures, built by girls ventures, which is an aolbacked fund that invested in womenled tech startups, she talked to us about the fact that when the app store came online and when you suddenly had this opportunity for people to be able to use open source tools, to be able to build an mvp, most viable product, to be able to build, essentially, a prototo type of their prototype of their ideas without having to raise millions of dollars or be affiliated with a university, suddenly that opened the gates to anybody who had an idea, right . It didnt take millions of dollars to build the first version of something that you wanted to test out, you know, to test on the market. You could build it for a couple thousand dollars. So once those costs started coming down, it really democratized the ability for anybody to be able to get into this world. And and it opened the gates for people coming out of Business School or people coming from media or wall street or other industries that had a business idea, but they didnt necessarily have to have that engineering background. And thats a really interesting shift. And that really only happened postiphone. I think many of the founders that we spoke so didnt have technical backgrounds, but they would find an Engineering Team or a cto. One of the experts i spoke to recently is starting a company which is a recovery tool, a Recovery Platform for addicts whether theyre drug addicts or alcohol addiction. And she came, basically, she has no technical background, but she saw this problem that aa programs didnt work for all alcoholics, and she tried aa herself, and it didnt work for her. She said she didnt feel that spiritual connection. She said i want to create a platform where people can find different kinds of meetings, and they can find connection with other people who are in recovery. And its artificially intelligence based. So these women are coming from all different backgrounds and all different industries. The common theme i think they have, we saw is that they have passion, and they theres a problem that theyre trying to solve, and theyre so passionate about solving that problem that they will go to any means to get this problem solved. I was just going to say, i had the chance last week to sit down with alex [inaudible] whos the chief operating officer of the muse which is, like, the Fastest Growing career resource platform today. And she was saying that, you know, if you dont love, if you dont love what youre doing, like, if you absolutely dont believe that you were put on this earth to solve this problem with this company that youre building, you will never succeed because it is so hard. It is so hard to be a entrepreneur. Threequarters of these startups fail. And she was just, he was giving advice to a younger woman who was standing with us, and it was just basically saying dont start a company just to start or a company. Start a company because you really care about this problem that youre trying to solve, because you really believe anytime. Because the ups and downs are so extreme, and the sacrifices are so extreme when youre first starting a company that if you dont have that passion, you just youre not going to be successful. Michelle zatlin, one of the cofounders of crowd flare which is a web Authentication Company in san francisco, she had a great quote. She said entrepreneurship is a roller coaster ride, but people pay to get on roller coasters. [laughter] one more . Sure. Having read all these stories about women, what would you say stand out as some of the pieces of advice that you could share with us . Well, definitely just start. Get out of your own way. Thats a big one. Get out of your own way. If youve got an idea, go for it. Dont let being a woman or a nontraditional founder stand in your way either. And i think thats a big one. And then, you know, this idea of perfection and realizing that tech inherently is about iteration. It is about testing and trial and error and seeing what works. These big companies, theyll ship products with buggings in them, right . And then they work on them again, and they ship another version and another version. Is so thats kind of baked into the culture. And so i think its really important to realize that, that thats part of the process. That, you know, if you stumble, if you get rejected, if you the first version isnt what you thought it was going to be, dont give up. Its like sam started with the original story with donna from microsoft. Its like youve got to keep going. And i would say that as a common theme among all of these women whether they were entrepreneur, investors, activists, educators, technologists. All of them seemed to have that quality that they could live with themselves if they made a mistake or if they stumbled. And because they believe in themselves, and they believed in what they were trying to do, so they just kept going. I think thats really certainly, its a big takeaway for me too. I think its a universe kind of takeaway. Something else i learned. The founder of girls who code which is a program that teaches girls to program computer code, and she said something really great, i loved it. She said if we raise our boys as participants, we raise our boys to be brave and fearless, we raise our girls to be perfect. And compliant and wellliked. And she says thats bull crap. Enough of that. We have to teach our girls to be fearless, to be bold. Its okay to be messy, its okay to get your hands dirty, its okay to try and fail, you know . Boys will raise their hand, and they have no answer in their head, and they dont care. Whereas the girls have to be so prepared to raise their hand, its got to be the perfect answer. So, you know, as were raising the next generation, i think its something for us to think about, like, whats the message were giving our girls about trying and failing and getting our hands dirty . Mistake making mistakes, thats part of the process, learning and moving forward that was a huge message for me as a recovering perfectionist. [laughter] its okay, im not always doing it right, im not perfect. Move on, learn from your mistakes and move forward. Yeah. Grit. Its grit. We have our last question right here. I, i dont know is this on . Okay, good. That reminds me a lot of the book the curse of the good girl. Uhhuh. Rachel simmons. [inaudible] exactly what youre saying, and it sounds like this book is sort of the part two of that book. Yeah. And some answers about how to get around it. I wonder, like, where does the so much of what youre saying getting laughed out of the Computer Club totally resonates. As a kid, i remember it was an incredibly gendered experience. I didnt have the language for calling it that, but i wonder where does that idea start . Why do we think of to tech as male . Is it as simple as role models and the story that were telling, or is there Something Else going on there . Well, i would just say i, we both had the opportunity during this process to interview engineers from other countries. And it is like, we talked to somebody from russia, for example, or israel. Like, theres just not the same stigma attached to it. It is very much a western thing. And i think it does have to do with the media, i really do. I think that in our country these gender norms are, like, so entrenched and they have been, and, you know, it comes off the 1950s out of the 1950s, you know . And its really hard to get away from that. And unfortunately, you know, movies, tv, all of these perpetuate those stereotypes. I mean, theres research that shows thats one of the reasons why you have so few women that are wanting to pursue Computer Science and engineering. Whats really interesting, everybody talks about s. T. E. M. The reality is that there are women going into science, and there are women going into these other fields, women going into math. Its engineering and computing specifically where you have this gap. And i feel like in our research we certainly found that those, that the media plays a huge role. And also the fact these companies were marketing personal computers to men and gaming to men. You know, the first video games that were out, they were all of these kind of shoot em up, you know, they were not games that they didnt have stories. Anybody remember carmen san diego, where in the world is car men san diego . That was one of the only ones i played. [laughter] remember, i was telling you i worked on that documentary . We profiled the people that created that game. That was one of the first games that actually had a narrative. And thats why girls liked it, because there was a story to it. Central female figure too. Yeah. But, you know, and goldilocks in a lot of ways, that was actually the vision was to make that connection between building and a narrative. And realizing that, you know, girls and boys that we are different. We are different, and we learn differently, and were interested in different things. And its okay to try to appeal to us in different ways. But i feel that these, it is very hard to overcome these societal expectations of what were supposed to be. I hope, i really hope that this emphasis now on women in technology and diversity in technology in recent years, i really do hope, like, the girls who cold all this stuff thats now part of the ve knack lahr, i hope it goes a long way to dispelling those stereotypes. I think also talking about the s. T. E. M. How, you know, math and other sciences that are taught in school so everyone has to take their biology and their math and sciencing, and girls theres less of a gender disparity in those fields whereas computing, coding is and engineering are not required courses, right . In k12. So theres this Computer Science for all initiative which is being worked on, and actually its been rolled out in Chicago Public schools, san franciscos working on it, i believe new york may have it to try to get Computer Science coding into k12. I think thats going to make a big difference in making it less of a gendered issue. I have one other point to add to that which i just thought was interesting. So we had the opportunity to interview somebody who was, you know, one of the architects of cs for all. And since the Obama Administration has now left, theres some questions about, you know, whats going to happen with that initiative. A lot of the people that were involved in it initially are still working on it. And what i was told that i thought was to interesting was that they were able to get the College Board to create a new Computer Science ap exam. So the original cs ap exam was only java. You had to learn java, and you were tested on that, and that was it. The new test a survey course. So youre learning a programming language, but youre actually understanding the societal impact and implications of the cold that youre learning. The code that youre learning. And i believe, i may have the number wrong, but i believe there were 55,000 kids its a new test. This is the first year they offered it. 55,000 kids took it this year, and i dont remember the exact percentage of girls, but it was much greater than the original ap Computer Science exam. So part of it is also, like we were saying earlier about the College Women, is showing women how technology affects our lives, the impact of it. So its not just learn aring a language, but its also appealing to, you know, women do like to feel connected to the rest of the world. We are caregivers. We, you know, we do enjoy that. And its important for us to understand. Its like the narrative, right . You want to make that connection between what youre learning and how you actually apply it. I do think, you know, were just at the beginning of this. I cant wait to see what happens in 1015 years from now. I really hope that we get this. I really do. And thats why we wrote the book. [laughter] thank you so much for joining us, we appreciate it. Thank you. [applause] every weekend booktv brings you 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books on cspan2. Keep watching for more television for serious readers. You also have another book coming out on the same day, itll be in september. What can you tell us about this book . Well, this book is, for me, a really personal, deep experience, and i also have to to say an emotional catharsis. For a long time, ive collected quotes that were inspirational or funny or in some way meaningful to me to try to capture a thought or to buck me up when i needed it. And ive shared them with my friends over all those years, and i even had a little book that i cared them around in. You know, youd have a tough time or a funny time or a quiet time, and id flip through them and get e minded and get reminded of what they meant to me. And after the election, i was thinking as i was going through all those quotations how it was spurring my thoughts about the life ive led and the ups, the downs, the great opportunities, the accomplishments, the disappointments and how during the course of the campaign there were so many people who shared their own stories with me. And it is one of the real treasures of being out in the public eye. Theres a lot that you see which is, you know, very difficult to be clear, you know that. But those moments when somebody grabs your hand or when youre backstage and a total stranger comes up and tells you their story or tells you that, you know, they understand what youre going through or they want you to know that, you know, theyre with you like the first question today, that is incredibly meaningful to me. And so i began to go through all those quotations, and then i began to really reflect about the country and my life and really what happened in this election and to start to put my thoughts down on paper in a way that i think is not just about me and not just about an election, but about resilience, about, you know, getting back up when youre knocked down because everybody is. Where you find the courage to do that and what helps you along the way, and its, as i say, proven to be an extraordinary, very personally meaningful but painful experience. It really is painful. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. Up next on after words, nebraska senator ben saws explores how to engage children and young adults to become independent, active and engaged citizens in his book, the vanishing adult. Senator saws is interviewed by senator sass is interviewed by the founder and president of the millennial action project. Host senator ben sasse, republican senator from nebraska, thank you so much for joining me