Transcripts For CSPAN2 Geek Girl Rising 20170704

Forbes contributor. Samantha is the editor of the New York Times anthology torn, a recognized speaker on women and work, a contributor to women at forbes, the Huffington Post and disney interactive. Please join me in welcoming Heather Cabot and sam that wall raven. Thank you so much. [applause] thank you. Wow, we really appreciate you coming out on a rainy night like this x this is a super exciting moment for us because, first of all, were in the same city, which we rarely are. 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 trailer first. So lets roll the video. [laughter] 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 hand picked me and advocates for me and pushes me beyond my leadership role currently. So many women i know might not be able to work the typical 9 to 5 job, but having this new kind of [inaudible] gives them the opportunity to work from home, to travel, to do Everything Else they want, to be mothers but also have a job. I dont think that a google should be the gatekeeper, any tech company should 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] out there, and im in the midst of creating more women sharks. I have pitched a group of all men before, and they dont necessarily get my product. When i push to groups of all women, they automatically speak, and they see the value in it x 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, the culmination of more than five years of reporting and research and more than 250 interviews. I dont know if you want to chime in a little bit about the genesis of the project and how we met. Yeah. Yeah, so i call myself a first generation is Silicon Valley girl. So i worked in Silicon Valley 1995, which was 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 becoming used by regular, normal people for business and for commerce, etc. So i worked on pc World Magazine as a tech reporter for two years. Then i got the internet bug and went to work for a Software Startup called tumble wed software. And tumble weed software. I saw the rise and the fall of the dot. Com interest. 1999 we went public, stock shot up to 10, within 120 within six months it was down to 2. I made some really lasting, wonderful friendships during that time. And for me, the inspiration was in 2013, actually, i was having lunch with a girlfriend whos been in Silicon Valley, whos a dot. Com survivor like myself x. She said, sam, ive been working if the valley now for over 15 years, and i just had a performance review. She was the head of sales for a software company. I just had my performance review, and my manager told me each though my sales team had hit the numbers out of the ballpark, 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. Do you mind toning it down a little bit . And by the way, your lipstick is too bright, and you wear too much jewelry. Literally, he said this to her. And she was horrified. Needless to say, she didnt stay at that company very long. But she said, sam, its unbelievable in Silicon Valley today, theres such sexism, such unconscious bias, and you need to write about it. I said before i write about it, i want to interview a couple more people. So i started reaching out to other women. 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 try for a little while. And heather said to me, oh, my gosh, ive been researching i was in Silicon Valley, she was in silicon alley here in new york. She said ive been researching for a similar topic. I have Amazing Stories with all these female founders, and its great. And i started to get these stories as well. You know, yes, we do face sexism. 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. This is a lot more positive than negative when it comes to women starting companies and working in tech. So 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 hook at how the internet was changing our look at how the internet was changing our daytoday lives and put together stories that i would then present on the today show, Good Morning America and all different kinds i was kind of the onair consumer spokesperson. And it was a really eyeopening experience, because i kept meeting women who were starting companies, and i thought, these women are really bad ass. Like, why is nobody telling their story . If im featuring them this these segments, 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 jenner gap gender gap in tech back in the 90s, i knew that it was a problem. So i thought 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 had daughters. I have 11yearold twins, a girl and a boy. Sam has four kids and two daughters, that certainly was an inspiration for trying to mine these stories and 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 kind of bubble up. 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 coasts 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 main treatment audience to take them in mainstream audience to take them inside this subculture of women in tech. Really what the book strives to do is connect the dots across the tech ecosystem to take the audience to the front lines where women are working at the Grassroots Level to close the gender gap in tech and, frankly, the diversity gap in tech. So the book is broken out into seven chapters, and we kind of survey the landscape. We profile activists, entrepreneurs, we profile investors. We profile women and companies that are trying to reinvent the culture of work. We take you to college campuses, and then we take you inside classrooms and also inside the world of the toy industry thats also trying to solve in this problem. So we really try to, again, for a very mainstream audience that may not maybe maybe they love tech and and their iphone, but they dont necessarily 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 a 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 ever experience imposter syndrome . Each and every day . [laughter] what am i doing up here . The imposter syndrome is that nag feeling like im not good enough, im not smart enough. What am i doing here. Even Sheryl Sandberg says she feels it to this day after all of her accomplishments, right in so the chapter i want to read 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 could dream it, do it, own it confidence coaches. Donna was wearing leopard 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 100 techiesing filmmakers, artists to try to make the first apps for microsofts hololens. Its a futuristic headset that enables holograms to leap from computer screens into real life where they can be manipulate with the 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 hololens 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 x. Her story of resilience is one she tells often as she travels the cup, 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 tech as the invisible fairy godmother who makes things happen. And as of june 2016, she was overseeing Microsofts Windows 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. Microsoft is a legendary software company, and 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 very senior person, i would have just hysterically laughed. Thats because donna didnt know anyone like the woman she would one day become. She grew up in downtown detroit where with her parents, immigrants from kathmandu, worked in the Auto Industry, ran a small dress 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 ant joining the computer about joining the Computer Club. She had been fascinated by computers ever since she first laid eyes on the old mcintosh in the back of her fifth grade classroom. Her father encouraged donna to pursue computing as a practical career move. He felt this new industry wasnt as entrenched as banking or law and his studious young daughter might have a better shot at life if she pursued it. He scraped together the money for her to take a computer coding class, but it wasnt enough to prepare her for Computer Science 100 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 was speaking a Foreign Language as they paired up for assignments. I would listen to them, and they would say, god, i cant believe how easy this stuff is. Who doesnt know this . And im sitting there like, me, i dont know any of this. I dont even know what this word means. What are bits . What are gates . And the teacher would start talking, and the guys would be like we already know this, yell move on. Donna failed the course because she grew too embarrassed to ask questions. She didnt want anyone to think she was an airhead and resolved to muddle through it on her own. Immediately afterwards, she thought about dropping her Computer Science major altogether, but then she started thinking about about how she had learned to ride her bike and how she would skin her knees and cry a lot and vow ill never do this again only to get back in the saddle two days later. She took it again, and this time she got a b. It was far better than i had, and i realized how much i had learned. I was suddenly validated as i just needed to be exposed to it twice, just like those guys. Its not like they got Computer Science on the first time. The message to women is you cant give up on your goal because it didnt work out the first time. Thats like saying i ran a race intending to win first place, but i came in second, so i quit running. She is really kind of the opposite of the stereotype you would think of who works in technology. I love that. She really crushes that stereotype and that was really important to us when we were meeting 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. His big goal for us was to try to pick people who we felt others out of the audience would feel a connection to in some way and also to dispel again a lot of misconceptions about what it means to work intact and a lot of times people assume that its lonely, its cold and its not collaborative. These are some of the things you hear certainly from her young girls when you ask them about it but what we found was so many women that we met it was the complete opposite. They were super creative. They were artsy. They cared about fashion. They had families. They had these incredibly multifaceted lives and their jobs were very collaborative. That was a really big message for us and we want to get out in hopes of maybe Inspiring Women who maybe think twice about going into these types of careers, to see the breadth and the depth of the kinds of people who work in these jobs and how interesting they are. Has anyone here seen the hbo show Silicon Valley . Its pretty hilarious but very stereotyped. Bears the computer genius the coder guy and ceo founder of pied piper, this high company so i spent a week in Silicon Valley and menlo park, called the women start up a lab. I spent a week at a hacker house with eight female founders who were Technology Founders living in a hacker house and the thing i learned about its female entrepreneurs dont look like richard hendricks. 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 women in particular her name was kerry from santa fe new mexico. She had two little kids at home. She said this is the first time ive been in a vote to actually breathe and not have my kids all over me. She calls it the air pmb of baby equipment so when you visit your parents across the country and you are traveling with kids and you have the strollers and cribs you dont have to. You can go from one state to another. So she was there. She spent the week workshopping and training. She could go out and hit investors for capital start her business. I met carey and spent a week with her in the other entrepreneurs and the interesting thing about this program it was building a network of women not yours. You hear about the loneliness and its so uncollaborative, its not. These women are working together being introduced to investors and advisers, mentors. She got back, and her husband looked at her and said oh my gosh who are you . She was so confident. She also met fran maier who is a cofounder of mass. Com and she and fran, france or her vision and she said i want to partner with you and take your vision. I want to make this into a billiondollar company. Fran maier is her cofounder and ceo and kerry is the techie one. They have spread this company into 40 markets across the country and its booming. Again going back to collaboration and the sisterhood finding the people who are going to help you not to scale your business and find investment but to build that confidence that you can do it. You are not alone and you have this network of support. Certainly one of the things we address in the book that we devote a whole chapter to is the fact that women founders have a 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 through seed money. Angel investing and also we profile a handful of female Venture Capitalists that but we were able to get inside their world and meet them and get a sense of what its like to be one of the rare general partners in Silicon Valley Venture Capital firm. The network is really a key point here because men have always had their boys club and what these women are trying to do is not only are they trying to start a company which is the hardest thing ever but they are trying to break into the boys club. In terms of raising money so what we found going back to the network was the value there and how they were able to help each other meet the right person and make the right introduction. In the first chapter we talked about some of these underground secret handshake societies that have been bubbling up whether they are on meet ups. Women are coming together and saying listen if we are not going to get in the traditional way we are going to make our own way. That was a major theme of the book and thats why we want to focus on what was happening at the Grassroots Level. We felt like the focus in the Mainstream Media and rightly so has been on the Tech Industry and it certainly does need to change that at the same time we felt like there were some hope there. We need to look at the strides these women have made by creating their own network. Its pretty impressive that its really inspiring. One of my favorite stories is an entrepreneur named Janet Kellerman in San Francisco. She talks about how she never felt like she was part of the entrepreneur. She graduated and started her company while she was in grad school at Carnegie Mellon. It was called mild pocket and it was a 3d Gaming Platform and it was so to help other gamers to build their games. She launched this company i believe in 711 and she went to work for google ventures. That was the first time she relies what a boys club Silicon Valley was. She is building a product getting money and getting financing and launching her company. She realized all these women who are coming to pitch their companies, whats going on here . This is really bad. She went back as many entrepreneurs do and shes working on a super cool 3d Virtual Reality environment where you can walk around around and its for home design. Basically what you do is you take for pictures in your living room, take for pictures of four corners of the room they make a 3d model of your room that actually looks like your room and give you different design concepts. No longer do you have to pull the samples and bring them back dont like its ship it back. Walking around like an avatar on your computer so its super cool. She raised to think 11 million now. This project is, there are so many interesting investors along the way. She said im going to invite everybody to have a festival. It takes place in april so its in park city. She brought a group of investor friends and entrepreneur friends for the boondoggle or day trip where they skied and had fun in their networks. One of the other entrepreneurs who was a friend of hers joanna said at one point i feel guilty. I should be home at the kids and i should be working on my company and janice said this is what the guys do. They go to boondoggle skeet clubs. Shes doing it every year now to build their network and a lot of the stuff that happens after work or on the golf course. Shes doing her own grassroots girls club. This is what we saw throughout her journey interviewing these women that were creating their own path creating opportunities were even beyond networking but to establish good relationships with that each other could turn into business relationships. Shelly is in the first chapter with the girls lounge essentially a pop ups along and these maledominated tech conferences and business conferences around the world but it was the most famous were the first one and basically what she does is she creates a comfortable place for women to come and hang out and they are at these business events when they are the only ones there and its an amazing place. These women are not only bonding but doing business as well. Her belief is that women need more opportunity to be able to collaborate. She believes women have been socialized and competitive and shes really trying to dispel that notion and i spent some time with her at one of her conferences in germany last fall. She did an entire panel devoted to something called the shining theory which is this idea that if you surround yourself with women who are successful you will be successful as well. Its like if i shine you shine. Thats really her mantra and we really saw that are out. Wherever we were weather was in chattanooga tennessee or pittsburgh or seattle or los angeles are all these places, there seems to be this mandate for women to lift each other out. I remember specifically went to the great copper conference and one of the places we went early on in our reporting where we sold the book proposal, we went to houston and we spent a few days at the great copper celebration of women and computing which is the largest gathering of female technologist in the world. All these women who are used to being the only one in the room suddenly there they are with 15,000 women from all over the world together and the year we were there every program was about how to help each other. It literally was how do we get this done whether its mentoring finding championships helping people to find one of the reasons we went we were interested in finding college students. He wants his do a chapter around College Women and what was happening. In 2015 there was a report that came out called solve the equation. It was the American Association of University Women and it was one of the first times that researchers had actually highlighted things that were actually working to retain women in Computer Science so its not enough that they express an interest in Computer Science. The dig at issue is actually graduating. We went to great copper because its one of the schools that actually pays for freshmen women they do that, to very small school but they do that so that these women get connected to a network so that they can see their other women like them and they also meet professionals in the field so they can actually say okay, they actually have role models that are relatable to them. Thats something we heard a lot as well. These young women were creating opportunities. They would see Sheryl Sandberg and dan whitman but those are not necessarily relatable. They really need the chance to meet real women that are in the field entry level miarcience st. The interest ow network not just scientists but engineers and some more studying double majoring in english and Computer Science or Information Science and sociology. It was a very Diverse Group of women. Most have a program called the c ambassador program. What they were doing was they were paying it forward. We saw this a lot. They wanted to inspire the next generation of girls and tech. These programs go off to different communities around the United States and they find Young High School girls who are interested in engineering or s. T. E. M. Or technology, girls interested in s. T. E. M. And they say i want you to start a program in a local community that encourages or inspires other kids to get involved in s. T. E. M. I have two daughters. We live in Northern California north of San Francisco and one of the girls i met started a Robotics Program at the school in my little town by Little Library in southern california. She is there with a couple of other mentors, high school girls. They wrote with these young girls and its free and its on sundays. They are learning how to build robots. I think another important thing to remember is these networks of women are not just there for each other but they are to pay it forward to inspire young girls to get involved. Its like changing the way we live. How can women not be involved in this . They are invested in and firing the next generation and we certainly saw that across the country. When we spent time at Carnegie Mellon we had a chance to follow students that were mentoring middle school girls and bringing them to campus and teaching them various skills not in Computer Science but s. T. E. M. In general. The big thing we took away from that they also bonded. They wanted to help the next generation but at the same time they were solidifying their relationships as they graduating go onto that first job. They still have ties to the students that they left behind them their classmates that they left behind. What we are seeing is those relationships become incredibly helpful. Back to the original point about the network it really comes down to having that network and thats why we call the book geek girl rising and inside the sisterhood shaking up tech. We would be happy to take questions if anyone has any questions. Cspan is here. Please wait for the microgravity for you ask your question. Was some what was the most interesting thing you learned in your five years of writing the book . Thats a great question. Thank you. I think one of the biggest, ive learned so much i dont know where to begin. The whole thing has been a learning process. One thing ive learned that we havent touched on yet is Silicon Valley for i am, Silicon Valley is really growing up. Some of the past companies are now in their 30s and they are having kids. They have paid leave and accommodate working parents and employees who are caring for aging parents. We have profiled julia hart and she started her Company Alongside of her husband with the intention very intentionally creating a workplace culture. We die the whole person. We realized he may have children , you metis may need to take care of your health than they offer what they call paid leave whenever you need it. That was a big change from i was in Silicon Valley and i had babies and the only bathroom we had for pumping. I was pumping milk for my newborn with a cold outdoor bathroom. Was freezing cold and i was sitting there with mice pump and it was just horrifying. The engineers would knock on the door is everything okay in there . Whats that noise . They care about the whole person and that something i was relieved to see. Its certainly a shining example thats hopefully setting an example for other companies. I was going to say the biggest take away for me that ive applied and try to apply to my own life by getting access to people one thing i notice about all of them when they had an idea they went for it. Or you worry that is not fully formed or you worry that this isnt ready for primetime yet. Then you dont do anything with it. For me certainly in the process of working on this book was a lesson that sometimes you just have to get it down and put it out there. If you dont put it out there you were never going to do it. Time and time again we saw that with different women whether they worked on it on the side, they have a fulltime job and that night they would work on it or they found a group of friends and they would talk about it and find people who have an expertise that they didnt have to help them get smart on the topic that they wanted to cover in the product that they wanted to build but they didnt let the fact that they didnt have all the answers stop them from moving forward. I think that such an important life lesson for anybody regardless of whether you are starting a company or writing a book or you are starting a nonprofit or a neighborhood group. Whatever it is dont let the fact that its not fully formed or perfect and you dont have it all figured out dont let that hold you back from doing it. That is really what i took away from the chance of meeting all these people. Also have fewer women in technology or in the industry that is maledominated if you cant wind yours go build your own. Theres no reason to feel like you are on your own in this world. Where were some of the other places that you visited throughout the country. People think of Silicon Valley but what were some of the places he went, places outside of the normal places. Was it easier for women to break out in or will it be more dominant in the future . In my personal opinion i believe they think they ask us is shifting away from Silicon Valley in terms of the entrepreneurial activity. New york is such a great example because while Silicon Valley is engineering centric places like new york you have founders coming from wall street, coming from media, coming from fashion which is really incredible expertise. There is not a bias against them for not having an engineering degree or Computer Science degree whereas oftentimes when you hear about the valley where people are certainly pitching Venture Capitalists, if you have a technical background or technical cofounder. We talked to entrepreneurs. It does feel like outside of the valley theres a little bit more of an openness towards other types of the cavities when you are building a product. The reality is if you are building a company you need the Technical Expertise that you can hire someone to do that. You can hire a ceo or recruit a technical cofounder at some point later. Certainly i had the opportunity to spend time in chattanooga tennessee. Its absolutely a hot bed of starter pack 70 and feminism which is really unexpected and fun. When you are in a place that is a a new tax cuts like chattanooga you can write your own story. I think thats really cool and thats why you are seeing places like detroit and cleveland in pittsburgh and albuquerque and kansas city. These hubs that are popping up around the country where there are more women and more founders working in some these places because of the openness in their background. They arent immediately dismissed if they dont have a technical degree or a fancy degree. That dais against people who didnt graduate from stanford. You dont necessarily have that in other parts of the country. Its more about ideas and execution. Some of the unusual places one in south l. A. Kathy is an entrepreneur who started as a Fashion Designer and a company that connects designers with manufacturers. You dont know where to get your product made to make that connection on line. Its called an urban Economic Accelerator Program called me in south l. A. Which is her hometown trying to help put some life into via con me. She is starting this Accelerator Program and another entrepreneur tara reid who is from detroit. Shes africanamerican female with no technical background. She said theres all this act to be around entrepreneurs because they are engineers. People in the Auto Industry are now without jobs so they are popping up to get some of the talent and to train these people and get them to work in tech. I see more and more women who are going into this industry from other industries. Certainly among entrepreneurs and there are a lot of reasons for that but definitely when you talk about consumers you are seeing women that are not necessarily technical who are starting these companies. One of the reasons for that and susan lyne who is the founder of growth ventures which is an al al aol tech startup she talks about the fact that when they came on line and you have this opportunity for people to be able to use open source tools to be able to build a viable product as a prototype of their idea without having to raise millions of dollars to be affiliated with the university, suddenly that open the gate to anybody who had an idea. It didnt take millions of dollars to build the first version of something you wanted to test out and test the market. You could build up our couple thousand dollars so it democratized the ability for anybody to be able to get into this world and its open the gates for people coming out of Business School or media or wall street or other industries that have a business idea but didnt necessarily have an engineering background. Thats a really interesting shift and that really only happened posts. Many of the founders we spoke to kidnap technical background but they would find an engineering team. One that i spoke to starting a company which is a Recovery Platform for addicts whether they are drug addicts or alcohol addiction and she came basically she had no technical background but she saw a problem that aa programs didnt work for all alcoholics and she tried aa herself and it didnt work for her. She said i want to create a platform where people can find different kinds of meetings and check with other people who are in recovery and its artificial intelligencebased. People are coming from all different backgrounds and industries. They have passion and they have a problem that they are trying to solve and they are so passionate about solving that problem that they will go to any means to get this Problem Solved i had the chance last week to sit down with the chief operating officer of the Fastest Growing careers resource platform today. She was saying that if you dont love what you are doing if you dont leave you can solve this problem with this company were building you will never succeed because it is so hard. It is so hard to be an entrepreneur. 3 4 of these startups fail and she was giving advice to younger woman who was standing with those who is basically saying dont start a company to start a company. Start a company because you really care about this problem you are trying to solve than you really believe in it. The ups and downs are so extreme and the sacrifices are so extreme when you are starting a company that if you dont have that passion you wont have success. One of the cofounders of childcare was the Cybersecurity Company in San Francisco. She had a great quote pucci said entrepreneurism is a rollercoaster ride but people pay to get on rollercoasters. Having read all the stories about women what stood out that you could share with us . Definitely get out of your own way. If you have an idea, go for it. Dont let being a woman or a nontraditional person stand in your way. Thats a big one and this idea of perfection and realizing it is about iteration and testing and trial and error. Companies will ship products with bugs in them and then they work on them and ship another version and another version. I think its really important to realize that. If you stumble or you get rejected for the first version isnt what you thought it was going to be, dont give up. The original story will for microsoft coming out to keep going. Thats a common theme among all these people whether they were entrepreneurs act of his educators technologists. All of them seem to have that quality that they could live with themselves if they made a mistake or they stumble. They believed in themselves and they believed what they were trying to do. Its certainly a big take away for me. I think its a universal take away. Something else i learned a program that teaches girls to program computer code to she said i love it. If we raise our voice to be brave and fearless and we raise our girls to be perfect and compliant and wellliked. But she said thats bull. Theater teacher girls to be fearless, to be bold to get your hands dirty to try and fail, learn to raise your hand. The girls had to be so prepared to raise their hand with the perfect answer. I think its something to think about what is the message we are giving our gross about trying and failing and making mistakes is part of the process learning from our mistakes and moving forward. As a recovering perfectionist, im not perfect. Move on and learn from your mistakes and move forward. It is grits. Is this on . That reminds me of the book the curse of the good girl. It sounds like part two of that book. I wonder so much of what you are saying about the Computer Club as a kid totally resonates. I remember it was an incredibly gendered experience. I wonder where does that idea start . Why do we think of tech as males is her something going on there . We both had the opportunity during this process to interview engineers from other countries and we talked to somebody from russia for example. Its very much a western thing. I think in our country the gendered norms are so entrenched and they have been since the 1950s. Its really hard to get away from that. Unfortunately movies and tv solve these perpetuate the stereotypes. Theres research that shows one of the reasons why you have so few women that are wanting pursue Computer Science, everybody talks about s. T. E. M. The route is there are women going into science and there are women going into math. Its engineering and computing specifically where you have this gap and i feel in our research we have certainly found that the media plays and Companies Marketing personal computers to men and gaming. The first video games that were out for all of these shoot them up, they were not games, they didnt have stories. Anyone remember where in the world is carman san diego . That was one of the only games. We profiled the people who created that game. That was one of the first games and thats why the girls liked it because it had a story to it. Goldilocks in a lot of ways, that was the vision for goldilocks to make that connection between building and the narrative and realizing gross and boys, we are different and we learn differently and we are anxious to do Different Things and its okay to try to appeal to us in different ways. I feel its very hard to overcome what we are supposed to be. I really hope there is emphasis on diversity in technology. Its part of a macular, hope it goes a long way. Also talking about s. T. E. M. Math and other sciences that are taught in school. Everyone has to take their math and science and there is less of a gender disparity in those fields where as coding and engineering are not required courses in k12. Computer science for all initiatives are being worked on. Its being rolled out in Chicago Public schools and i think new york might have a ticket Computer Science coding in k12 and that will make a big difference and make it less of the gendered issue. I have one other point to add to that. We have the opportunity to interview somebody who was one of the architects and since the Obama Administration has now left the question is what is going to happen with that initiative . A lot of the people that were involved initially are still working on it. What i found so interesting is they were able to get the college ward to create a new Computer Science ap exam. The original ap exam is only job you had to learn java and be tested on bad and that was it. The new one is a survey course they were learning a survey course but as understanding the societal impacts and implications of the code you are learning. I believe there were 55,000 kids i dont remember the exact percentage of girls. It was much greater than the original Computer Science exam. Its showing women how technology affects our lives the impact of it. Its appealing to women do like to feel connected to the rest of the world. We do enjoy that and its important for us to understand the narrative that you want to make that connection between what you are learning and how you apply it. We are just at the beginning of this. I cant wait to see what happens in 10 or 15 years from now. I hope we get there. I really do. Thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it. [applause] b the book is a description of the world or my best attempt at a description of the world as it is changing. Its a very short book. It is a manifesto and what i think one can draw and literally a handbook that you can carry with you in putting your pocket. Its a book about, tries to get a sense of why one ought to do it and why one ought to make a difference although it touches on defense that have been forgotten in the 20th century. Its very much a book about how we go through our day. The premise of the book is that we are made day to today by each individual choice. Whether we like it or not one can choose to look away or choose to be provocative whatever it may be but that is precisely looking away. Let me try to take a stab at joining a very generous introduction to the book because this book is a departure for me. The other books ive written will not fit in your pocket. I advise you to carry them around with you or in your purses or backpacks. The other books ive read do not involve catchy lists of things in round numbers. Sit up archer in that way but also i am from the United States. I am from the United States but i grew up here but for the better part of my adult life has been spent and Central Europe or the very least to learning the language of those places are reading documents were books from or about these places. This involves a certain cause. Takes time and effort to learn the languages rather than being spent doing other things like watching baseball games. Theres a certain cost on reading this amount of historiography about the tragedies of the european 20th century and the particular price that one pays in spending thousands of dollars over primary and its only the point of this book is we are going to see some of the things cant have the benefit of passing along a certain amount of wisdom. What im trying to do here is to convey the things i think ive learned from history and a way that is relevant to the president of the United States. One of the ways that things have something to say, because im an american and theres a turning point in American History whether you like it or not. The turning points come. The fork in the road is right in front of you regardless of whether you realize it or not. You can imagine is not there but its there. Up next on after words nebraska senator ben sauce talks about how to engage young adults how to gauge citizens