Transcripts For CSPAN2 Geek Girl Rising 20170611 : compareme

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 strolle