-: So it's wonderful to be here, and this is really high
so I'm gonna stand out here.
So, I joined Internet 2 in March, and I've had just
such a great time, and the real reason is because
I get to meet with people like you.
There are so many brilliant people in this entire community,
we get to work with over 300 universities now,
national labs, and agencies, and so
it's really wonderful to be here today, and I wanna
tell you how inspired I am by the name of this
discussion today.
That is Opportunity That Scales, because the way I
look at it, until we get to what I call human population
parody in science, technology, engineering and math,
we're really wasting that resource.
All those women and girls that could actually
be helping us with the technology and science
challenges that we have, so thank you very much
for doing this.
See if I can figure this out, yes!
So we're gonna talk about make the case and then
make a difference, and first we're
gonna start with just the facts, ma'am,
anybody ever heard of DragNet?
No, someone has to, thank you,
I need someone to raise their hand, even if
they've never heard of it, to validate me.
And so first we're gonna have just the facts, ma'am,
then we're gonna talk about unconscious bias.
And, when you listen to this and think about it,
you might think,
"Gosh, I think it's conscious bias."
Which is, so unconscious is the polite way to say it,
to be honest with you, and so we'll talk a little
bit about that.
Diversity and innovation, how diversity of thought
drives innovation, I'll give you some personal stories
about that.
And then how you can make a difference.
I'll talk about what we've been doing since
I joined Internet 2 on creating a collaborative
innovation community, which is opened to all
types of members, and we'll talk about that.
What you can do for yourself and others,
and then I'm gonna do my personal journey
at the end, and Melissa I think might be doing hers
first, so we're gonna flip it up just so you
get to see something a little different.
So, just the facts ma'am, underrepresentation of women
in the US.
Human population parody, about half and half, right,
50% 50%, professional occupations, 57% of professional
occupations are held by women in the US.
And then look at how the numbers keep getting
lower and lower and lower as you get to
higher and higher level jobs, very interesting.
26% of US technology jobs, 19% of software
developers, anybody ever seen those signs they have,
"Brogrammers at work"?
Anybody ever seen that?
How many think that's really sensitive to the women?
It's not, right?
So there could be little things like that that look
cute, that you can actually make a difference about.
You can stand up and say,
"You know what, I don't think that
"really works that well."
It would be like us calling them, you know,
"wogrammers"
or something, I don't know.
Um... (laughs)
I mean, you wouldn't like that right?
No, none of us would.
And so you can see, you know, 18% of
computer information science degrees, 17% of
research university presidencies, and it gets lower
and lower, executive officer positions, technology
leadership jobs, Fortune 500 CEOs, and women of
color even more underrepresented.
And so, you look at this and think,
"Man, how can I kind of flip that triangle?"
Right, that's what I think about, you know,
how is it that I can actually help to get more women
to go into technical jobs, stay in them, and rise
to leadership positions.
So first we just say, well,
"Why do we think we might have this problem?"
We're losing people because they don't want to
be there for certain reasons, and why are those
reasons?
Well, they did a survey, and they looked at
even at men and women are leaving technical jobs
but women at a much greater rate.
So let's look at the four reasons why, and this
number one is working conditions, no advancement,
too many hours, low salary, and there are different
reasons for that, I actually, very honestly,
left my last job at IBM because I wasn't
rising anymore, I was already in a different category.
I'm like,
"Okay, gotta keep going."
You'll see, I have my personal plan in here
I had to keep going up, I wasn't getting what I wanted,
and so I left and I'm very very happy.
Work life integration, you needed more time with
your family, and this is a very sensitive thing,
because sometimes there's unconscious bias
related to this too, very honestly.
So I'm married, I have two kids, thank God they
graduated from college, paid my last undergraduate
tuition bill in January, and that's when I decided
to leave, I was like,
"Oh wow, this is so, I love the way this works out."
But, I actually worked with a woman many years ago,
my kids were younger, and at like six o'clock I'd say
I really have to get home because my nanny has to leave
and if my nanny's not happy, ain't nobody happy, right?
So, and she was like very difficult with me, and I
found out later, and this is sad for her, she was trying
to have children for a long time and couldn't,
and I was like,
"But don't penalize me for that."
And it actually happened a few times to me in my job,
very honestly with you in my life, and I'm speaking
very openly today, and there's something I want to
say about that too, is that,
I think we're at the stage now, through discussions
like this, where we're allowed to talk like this now,
and you know what's really wonderful is that you're
all really listening.
Seriously, you know, because there are points I was
on another panel a couple years ago, called
The View From the Top, had senior executive men
and women, and women were asking, you know,
"How do you communicate with men?"
I said,
"Well number one women use too many words."
We just do, and then, even with my husband I'll say,
"I'm not done talking."
He's like, "I'm done listening."
I'm like, "Wait a second!"
(laughing)
This guy sitting next to me said,
"You must know my wife!"
I said, "See it's a pandemic."
(laughs) Everywhere.
You know, but the point is that I've had men
who I know well, when I tell them how I really feel
at work, it doesn't happen at Internet 2, thank God.
Would get up and want to stop the meeting, because they
really don't want to hear it, because it hurts.
And you know, the other thing is, they don't know how to
fix it.
Well you know what, you can fix it.
You can listen, and you all can make a difference.
So, you can help people with these issues,
they don't like their work, they lost interest, but,
you know, sometimes you can be doing the same
job in one place and another, and one place you're
really happy, why is that?
Cause you like the culture, it's a nice organizational climate.
People are nice to me, they understand when I have
to take my kid to a soccer game, I have so much fun,
and sometimes it just doesn't feel that way.
So, sometimes the culture and the climate are actually
affecting these other things, and so that's why I say
everyone can make a difference.
So one of the challenges is what they call
"Unconscious bias".
And so what is unconscious bias?
Well, it's when you look at something or someone
and you think something immediately.
I'll give you an example.
Me. (laughs)
The day I graduated from college, two of the guys
that just knew me from the parties on the weekend,
you know, hope my mother's not watching,
no I'm kidding.
They came up to me and said,
"Hey Flo you got the wrong cowl."
And I did my puppy dog thing like,
"Really?"
You know, because I had the engineering cowl on.
So just to tell you a little bit about me,
so I was an aerospace mechanical engineer, I was president
of the Society for Women Engineers on campus,
I was chairman at the Engineering Council that ran the
engineering school, I was president of the AI double A,
the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
which these guys probably didn't even know what it was,
and they said to me,
"Hey Flo you got the wrong cowl."
So I always try to be gracious and do what's right,
two general rules, I don't always make it but I try,
and I said,
"That's okay, it's the right one."
I'll never forget that moment, I really won't.
This just happened to me twice again this year.
Once this summer I was at a
Department of Homeland Security cyber security
transition of practice workshop, and here I am
Senior Vice President, Chief Innovation Officer
for Internet 2, and I was in one of the breakout sessions
and a woman who works with me was with us,
and this guy was talking about ways they're using
virtualization and blah, blah, so I raised my hand, I said,
"What type of virtualization are you using?"
And he looked at me and he went,
"Well..."
He said,
"It kind of, it's..."
And he looked at me he said,
"Well I'm trying not to get too technical."
(audience groans)
I was like, "Seriously?"
But I didn't say that, so the woman who works with me
was like this.
(laughs)
And so, once again, just like when I was in college
I said,
"No that's okay I can take it.
"So are you using doc or in containers or
"are you using VM some other type of virtualization?"
So I gave them context so they could talk to me
the way I needed to hear what the answer was.
And at educas just a few weeks ago, I was walking,
there was a man and a woman talking, I was listening,
I said,
"Oh you know you'll probably want to find members,
"I'm with Internet 2."
And this woman looked at me and she said,
"Oh do you work for Shell?"
And he's one of my peers, and I just went,
"No, I'm a Senior Vice President too."
She's an Innovation Officer, why did she
assume I wasn't?
Right?
Why did she assume I wasn't?
And so to get her off the hook, what I say is,
Well, when you look at the facts like we just
talked about, you would think,
"Well, she's probably not."
You know, cause the facts don't show it, but you know what
we're not gonna get there if we don't assume it can be done.
So we really all can make a difference, so I live this
every day, just so you know.
I was asking someone, I said,
"Well why does that happen?"
He said,
"Well because you're modest in your personality
"and geeks don't usually have that."
I'm like, okay...
I don't know, is that a good thing?
(laughing)
But the point is that, don't just assume when you look
at somebody what they could or couldn't be, right?
Help them be as much as they can be.
So, how does this show up in technical environments?
So what happens is that we might not speak up
in meetings, cause people might not listen to us,
or they might not support it, or we might not have
the confidence, cause people are saying,
"Well you can't possibly even know this stuff."
You know, it's like,
"Actually, I do, I helped create VN."
Or whatever.
Sometimes we're reluctant to take leadership positions,
cause we don't think we're gonna get the support.
We don't have the confidence again.
Being overly harsh on our own work,
there was this study that they did at my college
where there was a chemical engineering class,
and Chem E is really hard, and a lot of the women
were dropping out of this class, and the guys weren't.
So they did a study, and they realized that the girls
leaving the class actually had better grades than
the guys who stayed.
Interesting right?
But they were like,
"Oh I'm not getting an A."
And it's like, yeah, you know, and then they
also interviewed them after a really hard test
and the girls go,
"Oh my gosh it was so hard, I'm not smart enough,
"I didn't study hard enough."
And the guys said,
"What a stupid test."
Right?
That confidence thing.
Women actually, believe it or not, even though we can
look really confident, we lose it very easily.
And so, you can actually help yourself and others
to actually build that up.
So, anyone ever had this situation before?
A woman says something in a meeting, everyone
ignores it, and then a little while later one of the men
says something the guys go,
"Oh, great, great idea!"
Here we go that's an excellent suggestion
Ms. Triggs, perhaps one of the men would like to make it.
(laughs)
Very interesting.
Now this is real, Melissa's nodding vociferously,
but this happened to me a lot in my career,
so one point, my girlfriends and I got together and said,
"Okay, so whenever we say something really good,
"we're actually going to repeat it for each other."
Like, you know, Melissa would say something and then
I would say, and maybe a little while later I'd
come back and say,
"Well, remember, Melissa made a really good point
"before when she said bah, bah, bah."
You can do that, and actually if you have a male voice,
you can do it even better.
So I would encourage you to actually do that,
you'll be, now that you're hearing this, who's ever
seen this before, where women said something,
and people ignore it?
Oh, you guys are great here, oh here we go,
oh hands go up, okay.
Here we go, candid camera, so now we all know.
So this really does happen, and the why
is there are a lot of reasons why,
but if you see it I'd encourage you to try and
do something about it.
So, why are we making case of this,
who cares about diversity anyway, the world's
working fine, we have gazillions of dollars in GDP
and all this other kinda stuff.
Well, you know what, things can be better,
they can always be better.
And diversity benefits creativity and innovation.
Um, and when we work together with different
thoughts we can actually solve complex problems
better and faster, I'll give an interesting story.
So, I was on a Grumman scholar going through college,
and I was working at Grumman during the summer,
Grumman Aerospace Corporation, and a couple of
the guys came up to me, and there were a lot of
summer secretaries, their dads worked there,
so they got to be a secretary for the summer,
really good job.
And so this guy came up to me, and said,
"Could you make a copy of this?"
And I looked at it, you know, tried to be gracious, and I said,
"I could, but I'm an aerospace engineer."
And he looked at me like,
"Really?"
Seriously, I was co captain of the kick line, I still have
the captain flow ladder in high school.
I wore pink, I was perky, even perkier than now,
I was like 18 or...
I know, scary right?
You know... (laughs)
And, it was hard for them to fathom how those
things could go together, how could you be an
aerospace engineer?
I'm like,
"I don't know, cause I am, how cool is that, right?"
And so, we actually had this project we worked on
we were going to create these solar power satellites,
and we were going to put this wave guide extrusion device
into the space shuttle payload bay, I'm gonna get a little
technical here, hope you can take it, no I'm just joking,
and so then, we were gonna take this wave guide
extrusion device, go up to lower Thor but which they
call Leo in aerospaceland, we were gonna put this
whole thing together and then shove it up to Geo,
which is geosynchronous air throttle, which I thought
was a little far fetched anyway, but anyway...
So then what was gonna happen is they were
gonna have this big beam that was gonna come down
to a rectenna, a receiving antenna out in the ocean.
So, I was thinking,
"Hm, what are the odds that that could point
"the wrong way?"
I mean you're talking about geosynchronous earth orbit,
that's far, right?
A lot of things can happen, so I said,
"What if like the beam got off center?"
They were like, you know,
I said, you know,
"And then it could kill the fish and stuff."
And they were like,
"Don't worry your pretty little head about that."
Then I'm thinking,
"How can I personalize this?"
I said,
"What if they were on a plane and you flew
"through the beam?"
Oh, now it's about me?
There we go, that worked.
So, then the EPA got involved, and they were like,
"You guys can't do this."
(laughs) What are you crazy?
They didn't say it that way.
Whatever they say, you know, forget about it,
the EPA thing.
And so then, what was interesting, I was so proud
of these guys, cause they could have been my
grandfather, right?
They would come up to me when we were doing
a new project and go like this,
"What do you think about this?"
(laughing)
Now, they were afraid to ask me, but they wanted to,
because they knew that when we worked together,
we actually were able to solve complex problems
better and faster together, right?
So, they actually learned that, it was a little scary
for them, very nonintuitive, but they figured it out,
and I was so proud of them.
I was like 18 and I was proud of them,
and they were like 58, right?
But I really was because I knew that was a very
hard transition for them.
So, we can help each other through this and just
realize that the answers can be better.
And then, NCWIT the National Center for Information
Technology and Ava St. Rivers who is a good friend
of Internet 2, she's on the board there, she had this study
as well she was involved in that showed that the
corrective intelligence of a group is not predicted just
by the IQs but if it includes women, its collective intelligence
rises, very interesting.
Maybe because we talk so much.
But so this is helping you make the case, you know,
diversity of thought can give you actually better
faster answers.
So, what do we do?
You know, what do we need to do?
So, look at how to retain women and technology,
what women need.
First, leadership and accountability, and I think it's
wonderful just doing a session like this is really
commendable, I really am just so excited about this.
Um, we can collect, analyze, and report retention data,
actually proof, use the numbers, us we love scientists
we love math, you know.
Technologists, engineers, mathematicians.
Formally train people in best practices and then hold them
accountable, you know, if a lot of people are leaving, why?
If women are leaving, why?
And you know what, they would be gracious
about it probably, not many of them will say
exactly what's going on, while I want to spend more
time with my kids.
You know, lot of press releases that say that, that's,
90% of the time I don't think it's really the case, you know.
It could be something...
That could be the case, but it could be something else,
and so the opportunity you have is to really listen.
Ask them, listen, and protect them when they tell you
how they really feel.
Cause that's the other reason, we're afraid
to say it, cause God knows what's gonna happen.
You know, they'll fire me, or they won't give me a...
You know, I won't be able to find another job.
People worry about things like that very, very honestly.
The corporate culture and bed collaboration in your culture,
I'll talk to you about the collaborative innovation program
we have Internet 2, now that's not gender specific, but it's
very open on purpose.
All universities, all networks, all international partners,
all agencies, all labs, everybody on.
Men, women, everything.
Offer training programs to raise awareness,
we actually have the subconscious bias presentation
at the Internet 2 Technology Exchange,
ABUS did that as well from NC, but very interesting
great discussion.
And provide development of visibility opportunities
like this, look here are some senior women that have made it,
yay you can do it too!
I always say, if I can do it, you can do it.
All the men and women, I'm flexible, martians,
robots, I'm very equal opportunity.
Um, and you know, her neighbor workshops do
mentoring, help people mentor each other
and sponsor employee resource groups.
At Internet 2 we have the Gender Diversity Initiative
with my colleague who's wonderful Ana Hunzinger
created a few years ago.
Then we added the Society of Women Engineers
there's a sweet Internet 2 community this year,
and we have a special deal with them that any of the
professionals, women or men, in our member universities
and also in our regional networks now, can join for free
until next July, so if you're interested you can send us
an email, and then make sure that you have the programs
and policies in place to support that.
So I'm gonna give you a quick run through of what
I've done since I've gotten Internet 2 on this
Collaborative Innovation idea, cause this applies
in a lot of ways.
You can use this as a little model for how you can
get things integrated, across any types of groups really.
So, when I first joined in March at Internet 2,
on March 16th, on March 17th, the next day
we actually did a member survey, I was working on it
for a couple weeks cause I said yes before it was
official I was leaving IBM.
Before it actually occurred.
And so we did a member survey and said,
"What do you all think we should be focusing on
"regarding collaborative innovation?"
I'm the Chief Innovation Officer, but it's not about
what I think, what do you want?
What are you working on, what's the important
research to you, where do you think the
opportunities are?
And survey said 69% of the respondents chose
End 2 End Trust and Security, and then distributed big data
and analytics and the Internet ofThings.
So what we did is we created, in May,
we announced at our global summit three innovation
working groups around these three areas, and we
attracted three coach...
Pardon me, from different universities, and we had
about 80 people in each of them, it includes
universities, industry, regional networks,
international partners, agencies like NSF,
national labs like Argon and Berkeley, all sorts
of people.
And so it's a very collaborative open environment,
and actually, the next month at the beginning of
December I'm going to be in Dubai at the
Internet of Things World Forum, and we're going to have
a panel hosted by Internet 2 about collaborative
innovation for the Internet of Things.
We're gonna have Raj Faramani, who is a professor
in engineering and in the business school at U.W. Madison,
who's one of the co-chairs of our IOT working group,
we're gonna have a gentleman named Victor,
who is from the Internet 2 of Ireland, called HEAnet,
is gonna be on the panel.
A gentleman from the I triple E is gonna be on the panel,
so a standards organization we're working with,
as well as a young lady from IBM, who's providing
software for an IOT sandbox.
So once again, opening up the aperture, and bringing
everybody in.
So this is what we're focused on right now in our
innovation working groups.
And what's interesting here too is that
the End 2 End Trust and Security working group,
when they got started they were working on news
cases like network segmentation, and software defined
perimeters, and then they said,
"Wait a second,
"we have to work with the Internet Famous Guys
"cause we need End 2 End Trust and Security for
"the Internet of Things."
Another opportunity to build more collaberation,
excellent, let's do that together.
So what I'm trying to do, every chance I get,
is to create this very collaborative, integrated, open
environment, and that can be the same thing regarding
diversity, and, after when I show you one of the next
charts here on the Gender Diversity Initiative.
When Ana started this a couple years ago, we started
at the annual meeting we call our Global Summit now,
and now they have a Gender Diversity Initiative
Steering Committee, very active participation,
and you can see a number of the ladies and gentlemen
here, and we also have Gender Diversity Initiative
scholarships, so we actually provide scholarships
to young ladies, well any age, they're all younger than
I am now, but anyway, they're the ladies
to go to the technology exchange and the global summit
so they can be part of the community, and we welcome them
into the community.
And then we mentor them, I had lunch with a few of them,
and then we have partnerships with NCWIT,
the National Center for Women in Information Technology
and SWE.
We also did at the Technology Exchange is we had an
unconscious bias panel, so we had Avis Yates Rivers
from NCWIT present on unconscious bias,
some of the charts I used are hers, as you could see,
and then we had an unconscious bias panel and we had
a gentleman who's Indian who's a Sikh, and um,
it was interesting, he said to me,
"You know, Florence, I feel unconscious bias."
And, I said,
"Wow, tell me about that."
And he said, "Well people look at me and they assume
"I'm a software engineer and I'm not, cause I'm an Indian--"
(audience laughs)
No it's serious, and it's really not funny to be honest
with you, so we all have things that we are
and people think we're something else, and sometimes
it can really bother us.
And so the learning there is that a lot of people
feel this way.
A lot of us do, but we're not talking about it, right?
And so it's not just the gender, it could be what they
think we do professionally, or you know, what we should be
allowed to do, or what level we have, whatever job
we have.
So, I would really encourage you to always be open,
like, well tell me about yourself, like when people
tell me something, I say,
"Tell me more about that."
You know,
"Tell me more about that."
So I really can get some context.
And then we created a partnership with the Society
of Women Engineers, and SWE is NCWIT does
a really good job at awareness, they have this great
charity and it's called Sit With Me, and I didn't realize
that some of the background of it was related to
Rosa Parks, too, I had no idea about that, and I learned
that when I was actually speaking to Avis
at the technology exchange.
Come sit with me, see things from where I am,
very interesting.
And when you sit with somebody, you're usually
talking to them and you listen to them.
So another thing I would really encourage you to think
about, is putting yourself in a position
where you're different.
So as an example, we have the Society of Women Engineers
conference every year.
This year we had 9,000 women engineers.
And every year we have, for the last like five years,
we've had a panel of men as diversity partners.
And a few years ago I was hosting somebody for that
and we were walking around with him, we had,
I called it his harem, not that he would say that,
we were all these women around him, making sure
he'd feel comfortable, you know how we are,
"Are you okay, do you need anything,
"I'll make sure you're happy, blah blah."
And so all of the sudden he goes like this.
And I said, "What's wrong?"
He goes,
"Ah, I feel different."
I said,
"Oh, do you feel welcome, we're so happy you're here."
He goes,
"No that's not it, I feel different."
And then he looked at me and he said,
"This must be how you feel every day."
I almost cried.
And then he looked at me and he said,
"Does it get better?"
And I said, "No, you just get used to it."
And he got it.
And so I was recently interviewed, and I actually
used the example, I didn't say his name or what
company he was with or anything, so I sent him
an email in case he saw it to say,
"This was you I was talking about, I hope you
"don't mind."
And he said,
"That's excellent Florence, if I can help
"anybody see this, I'm happy to."
How incredible.
So I encourage you to put yourself in a position
like that where you're different, we just had
Bruce Mas with us, one of the CIOs,
he spoke on this panel actually at the SWE
conference in Nashville a few weeks ago.
And he was like,
"Wow."
I said, "I know, isn't it amazing."
He was like, "Yeah."
He said,
"I am even more fired up now in how much
"I care about this."
And what he said is,
"Until information of the IT group was
"at the same level as the whole population
"of the university, he wasn't gonna be happy."
And the whole population of the university is
55% women.
He said,
"Until we get there, I'm not done."
God bless him huh?
And so we can all do something to actually welcome
others, if it's a different culture, if it's a different
whatever, they're coming from another school,
I'm sure you do this, everyone's so wonderful here.
You know, you make them feel welcome, but you can
do it on a more tactical basis too, with different types
of diversity in your organizations.
So, if any of you are interested in becoming part of the
SWE Internet 2 community, you get a free membership
until the end of July, you can just send us an email,
or me an email and all these guys ahead of you
get to me.
So what can you do about this?
Oh my goodness, look at all these things.
What can we do?
Well, remember listen.
I would say listen.
Listen to other people's stories,
women or whatever.
Like even when this gentleman who's a Sikh
talked to me, I'm like,
"Tell me more about that, how did you feel?"
You know, and why?
So listen, the other thing that really helped
is we have a daughter, so if you can do anything
about that when you're having children?
(laughs)
Um, men want to protect their children.
So, very honestly, there was a gentleman I worked with
who was kind of passe about this, and then his
daughter went to college, and she called him and said,
"Dad I want to leave computer science."
He was like (gasps)...
"Why?"
She was like,
"You know, I don't feel like I fit in.
"The guys want to go out drinking and then
"they do their problem sets."
And you know us little geeks, she's like,
"I want to do it first and then I go to bed early."
(laughs)
I'm like, "Yeah boy, can I identify."
You know, but she didn't really feel like she was
one of the guys, cause she's not.
He convinced her to stay in it,
but it really hit home when that happened,
and she called him and said,
"Dad, I'm not happy."
You know, and this is his world, right?
Very interesting.
So, listen to these stories, work with women's groups,
SWE and NCWIT, create one here.
Make discussion of gender less risky, as we were saying,
and I was speaking with another friend of mine who's
a CIO recently, and she was telling me about her and her
partner, and I said,
"You know what, I feel like the way LGBT is like
"more welcome now..."
She said,
"As soon as it came out that you could marry each other."
I said,
"I actually feel like that's helping this discussion."
I just think diversity is okay now.
You know, you can talk about this stuff.
Obama was even talking about it this morning,
I was on the elliptical and he was talking about,
you know, the need for diversity in many different
facets, cultural, religious, all sorts of things.
Look at the pope, you know, he said,
"Who am I to say who you should love?"
Wow, that really spoke to a lot of friends
of mine.
So I think it is less risky now, but you have to make it
less risky.
If you're the person that has that bad experience
then gets up and walks out of the room when I
start talking about how I really feel,
that's not going to help.
Because I'm probably not the only person you're
doing that to, and I can't help then, right, I can't say,
"Wow but they really want to help us."
Because I don't feel it, right?
So help that happen, help that happen.
Um, model alternative work life strategies, I remember when
I think it was Andrea Young was CEO of Avon, she said,
"I leave early to go to my kid's soccer games,
"everybody knows that, I don't hide and say
"I have a meeting, I say,
"'I'm going to my kid's soccer game.'"
You know, and so model it so other people are comfortable
with it.
Establish accountability metrics, decide what you
want to go for, you know?
Human population parody's my goal, but anything
that gets us to the right area is better, because it's just
unused resources, which is a shame.
Noticing incorrect bias, unconscious and conscious bias,
some don't even realize it.
I was watching a show the other morning about
a young man who was in a wheelchair and he was
going out for the archery team, and so some kids
looked at him and said,
"What are you doing here?"
He said, "I'm going out for the archery team."
And they were like...
They didn't have to say anything, that's all
you had to see, right?
Then, he ends up getting all these bulls eyes,
you know, all this cool stuff happens, and then the
coach says to him,
"Well, you're doing well, but
"we don't have a wheelchair enabled bus,
"and so the school thinks it's too much of a risk
"for you to come into any of the meets.
"You can be the manager here when we're at home games."
He said, "But that's not what I want, I want to compete."
And so the kids who were initially like this,
when they went for the final cuts, he was there in his
wheelchair in the hallway, he was looking kind of forlorn,
and the kids come up, and they all were in a wheelchair.
The rest of the guys on the team.
And they all went in and lined up, and then
what are they gonna do?
No team?
Or everybody in the boat?
Everybody in the boat, how amazing was that?
Everyone was really very inspiring when I saw that.
So notice and correct the bias, even if it's in yourself,
you're allowed to change what you decided, we all
have that opportunity.
Mentor and sponsor women, help them, you know
one thing I noticed sometimes, is that it's easier
for people to say, "What's wrong with you?"
It's like,
"What's right with you?"
Right?
What's wrong with her, what's right with her,
and how do I coach her through it?
Sometimes people will just give up like,
"Oh, she's not good with politics."
Well teach her.
You know,
"She doesn't know how to speak up in a meeting."
Help her! (chuckles)
You know?
So that's the other thing I would encourage you to do,
don't put a label on somebody, help them get there,
coach them through it.
Increase female leader visibility grace we talked about,
recruit women, and talk to other men, talk them into it.
But talk to them and listen to them too, cause,
people are gonna do what they can understand, what they
can ingest, and digest, right?
So it could take time, but I would encourage you
to talk to each other and help each other through this too.
So now I'm gonna personalize the story a little bit,
how am I doing, okay?
Am I doing okay here?
Oh I think I am, okay good.
So, this is my life, and I didn't have this in here, but then
I was talking to the guys last night at dinner,
and I said oh okay I'll put it in.
So, I'm gonna tell you my real story,
so um...
The day I was born, my mother died at childbirth,
she died three hours after I was born.
My father didn't want me, they were married,
she married when she was 18, they had me when
she was 20.
He didn't want me, so my maternal grandparents
paid for me, they actually gave my father money for me.
And legally adopted me, and my grandfather would never
tell me how much that was, because he didn't want me
I'm probably gonna cry, to think there was a
price on my life.
So I started day one with a really big speed bump, right?
I was all alone, I really was.
I was in the hospital for three months while I got
all the paperwork done and then my grandparents
legally adopted me, and were just so so good to me.
I mean, my grandfather was a plumber, my grandmother
was a cafeteria lady, they sent me to Princeton.
Thank god I got a lot of scholarships,
always very supportive.
So that's my grandmother up there, do I have a thingy?
So up in the left, the cute little old Italian lady
on the top left, that was my daughter's communion,
and God is very important to me too, that could be
part of your life, but, when I came in I'm like,
"Okay, I get this, the only thing I have is me and God,
"I'm in."
(laughs) You know, so I'm very close to that.
Right next to that is my brothers and my sister, also
my uncles and my aunt, so you see complex
problems are really natural for me.
(laughs) Because, my brothers and my uncles,
my sisters and my aunt, I tell people,
"My sister just turned 80."
They're like, "Whoa."
I'm like,
"I know, I dye my hair."
(laughs)
But, she's adorable, I'm spending Thanksgiving with her.
So, she just turned 80 actually, and my two brothers,
and it was a very hard transition for them when I
joined the family, right, their sister, who they love so much
went to the hospital to have a baby, and now
she's gone.
And then I'm what came home, this crying
little mushy thing, right, and they were 13 and 14
and they don't usually like crying little mushy things
at that age, maybe at any age.
So, it was a very difficult transition, so from day one
I was always different.
And I actually think that's a benefit for me now,
I'm really used to it.
It's very calming for me.
You know like, one of my sisters-in-law
was saying to me,
"How many women were in that meeting you were in?"
I'm like, "God I never even think about that."
You know, because I'm just used to being different
I don't worry about who else is there, I just do my thing,
so what doesn't kill you makes you stronger right?
So, anyway, that's a little bit of my background,
that's my husband, who puts up with my travelling
cause then he can golf a lot and he never has to
make the beds, so it works out really well.
And then my son and my daughter, thank god,
graduated from college.
And then over here is two of my sister friends,
as we call each other, this is a picture of
me and Lucy and Susan, and we're all retiring this year
from IBM, very interestingly, and that's one of our mentors
Nick Dinafrio, who was the Chief Technology Officer
and Executive Vice President at IBM and we call ourselves
Nick's Angels, we go out to dinner, we peer mentor
each other, because you get to a point where either they
retire or they died unfortunately.
Probably not that old yet, but you're like,
"Who's gonna mentor me now?"
So we do a lot of peer mentoring and networking,
and we promote him to women once a year, and he joins
us for dinner, and gets a really nice bottle of wine
we would never pay for ourselves.
And so we funded my son who's a big golfer,
and actually he's working in financial industry now,
and my daughter, we all golf, great family sport.
And I'm the worst, which is good, because then all their
egos can be higher cause I don't need one on that
kind of stuff, works out really good.
And she's actually in Spain now, so that's my base.
Down here, Princeton is a very important part of my life,
I feel very fortunate that I got to go there
and that I had the scholarships to go there.
And I'm the gift that keeps on giving, I do a gazillion
things for them, I bleed orange and black, just like
you guys, well bleed red, actually that's normal
so you can't tell right?
(laughs)
Anyway, so down here on the left is me with
Chris Eisgruber, he's the president of the university,
he was undergraduate physicist, and I was class president
so this was me at our reunion.
This is me and Sonia Sotomayor, she went to Princeton,
she has incredible stories, you ever get a chance to read
her book or see her speak she's just absolutely amazing.
And actually I was talking to her about the Internet of Things
at the time, so we did a photo op together, and I said,
"I really care about security and privacy, I'm working
"on security."
She said, "Good, I'm working on privacy, you do that,
"I'll do this."
I said, "Perfect."
So she's really incredible, and then this is me with
a Nobel laureate, I call this my Florence Gump pictures.
I was tell them, do you remember Forrest Gump
anyone see that movie, he had all these pictures,
with like all these, how did that happen, right?
Like, I don't know.
So that's me and Sonia, this is me and Daniel Kahneman,
anybody know who he is, any economists?
So he's a Nobel laureate, and we actually brought him in
when I was at IBM, that's at the TJ Watson Research Center.
Because he is an expert on cognition, human cognition
and I was working on the Watson strategy, can't tell that
by looking at me either, right?
Here we go again.
But what we were looking at is when people and computers
are thinking together, who's thinking fast and who's
thinking slow?
Very tricky, and it depends on the precise human too, right?
If it's a healthcare app, there is the patient, there is the
caregiver, there are people who are cognizant
people who are not, there are doctors, nurses, all different
types of people, so we brought him in to talk about it.
This is my current job right there at the CEO of Internet 2
and that's us at the White House actually, so that was
in EEOB the Eisenhower Executive Office Building,
which is connected to the White House, lot of the
business meetings are there.
And then just under that is my buddies at
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, and their exoscale
computing site, I love being a geek, it's so much fun.
So, we had our hardhats and everything on, so they're
just wonderful, and then this is my background I'm
an aerospace engineer I said.
So the top left is me and Sally Ride, and I met her,
which side do you think I'm on, the left or the right?
Left, okay good, a lot of people guessed right
but that's Sally.
So that was...
You know, that was my look, right?
So I had a headband, I wore pink,
little white lace blouses, and I was an aerospace engineer
at the time, she was gonna be flying in the space shuttle
and I was designing it, so I was a little nervous,
but...
And then, the top right is when I introduced her
to my daughter at another event, and then this is
Bonnie Dunbar, another astronaut at the SWE conference
it's really something interesting regarding diversity
and women in technology.
So my daughter was with me, I was praying she was gonna
be an engineer instead of being a psych major,
but I tried really hard, I would bring her to all these
Society of Engineers conferences, I'm like,
"I have to make one if I think we need more,
"I have to do my own too."
It didn't work out, that's okay, she's very happy.
So we're getting ready to see Bonnie, I'm like,
"Kristen hurry up we're going to see Bonnie Dunbar."
She's like, "Who's that?"
I said, "She's a lady astronaut."
She goes,
"Uh, I already know lady astronauts."
(laughing)
I was like
"Whoa, how cool is that?"
That she feels like, oh it's just like you know
when someone has a dog, what's the big deal
lot of people do right?
So that was really cool that she felt that way.
But anyway, we still took picture with Bonnie.
And then that's me and Hillary, we were actually
on a Title 9 panel together, how many of you
know that Title 9 goes beyond sports,
there's a stem clause in it.
It's like the Santa Claus, saw that movie right?
So there's a stem clause about helping
women get into the stem field, it's very interesting,
so we were on a panel together, it was me and Hillary
and three women Olympic athletes, so I come home and tell my son,
and he's like, "You..."
And I'm like don't even say it that's not nice.
(laughs)
But there was one woman, I was telling the gentleman
at dinner last night, and she was a chemical engineer
and a hurdler, and her legs were about this high,
she was like incredible.
Then there was another woman I'm gonna tell you about,
and I'm sure she wouldn't mind me mentioning this story,
it was in the paper after we did it, her name was
Theresa Witherspoon, anybody know who she is?
Okay, so she was a basketball player,
she was actually on the women's Olympic basketball
team when they won the gold medal.
And so she told this story that she wanted to play
basketball when she was younger and she's
not really tall, and one of her coach say,
"You'll never be a good basketball player."
So, she played basketball when she got into
high school, went to college, ends up being on the
women's Olympic team, they win the gold medal.
Now this is many years after she's in middle school
or high school, right?
So, she said she gets home, she takes her medal,
she runs out of her house and runs all the way
to the coach's house.
How many years later was this?
And she still had it right here in her heart, right?
And she knocked on the door, he opened the door
and she said I went,
"Boom!"
(laughing)
But listen to what that meant.
She was carrying that that whole time, right?
You'll never be a good basketball player.
If she believed him, she wouldn't have won the Olympic
gold medal.
So, does it get better?
No, we get used to it.
But you can make it better, so I'd really encourage
you to do that.
These are, I get to have a lot of friends around the
planet, which I love another diversity model.
The women from Africa are great, they always get this
same fabric and make all these things, every village
is different, just beautiful.
My friends in India, some friends in Korea,
how beautiful is that outfit?
She looks like one of the dolls I had at home,
she looks so pretty, and her daughter was there,
how adorable was she, and she was the
Minister of Science and Technology for Korea,
like how cool is that, right?
And then with my friends from Japan as the
Society from Engineers Executive Director.
So, a little bit of the facts of my life,
so I told you the personal side, so I have a
bachelor science mechanical engineer and
space engineering from Princeton.
I wanted to cross over to the dark side, the business side,
so I had to get some business school to feed these,
so I did executive education Harvard and Columbia,
I actually presented at Harvard too, because we had
a thing that we did between IBM and Harvard on
emerging business opportunities and strategic
leadership.
I worked at Grumman Aerospace, it was Grumman Scholar,
so they paid for a lot of my education and gave me
summer jobs, great deal.
They still have in case you know kids that want to be
space engineers, they still have that program.
The NASA jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, not far
from where you work, and HP IBM and then Internet 2,
I was lucky I got a bunch of scholarships, thank god,
when I was going to college, and I've been very lucky,
so on the business side, I'm in a Harvard case study about
emerging business opportunities which is like what I'm
doing now with Internet 2, you know, building new business areas.
I'm in the case study that Harvard did on that
about IBM, this is my favorite one, Wise Wonderful Woman,
I'm like, oh, that sounds so good.
Actually, when I was a little girl and some people want
to be ballerinas and some people want to be firemen,
I want to be old and wise, you see I was always different.
And people are like, so I didn't say it to a lot of people
because it didn't go over well, but that's really what
I wanted.
So you see I was used to thinking what I thought
I should think.
Um, and so I've been lucky in a number of things,
I did a TED Talk too, if you want to watch it,
on sustainability on a smarter planet.
Um, and then I have another little idea to give you,
so, as I was trying to go higher and higher in my roles
or whatever I was doing, I started getting involved in
not-for-profit boards, which is pretty easy because
they don't pay you.
(laughs) So they can't be too picky,
no I'm kidding.
But you can actually get involved through United Way
or other things like that and start getting on boards
it actually helped me get a corporate board position.
Cause then I knew about how it worked, and I'd
been on a board, and this and that, I was president
of a board, so if you're looking to actually...
Sometimes, you have to do a bank shot in your career
to get farther, you know, you might want to consider
getting on some not-for-profit boards, I did quite
a bit of that, and I'm still on the Technology Council,
the Civil and Environmental Engineering Advisory Council,
the Infrastructure Master Plan Council at Princeton,
but I'm not class president right now, so I don't have to
spend as much time.
But I do bleed orange and black.
And then I was on a corporate board for a while in the
COM committee.
So what are my key learnings?
There are many speed bumps in life, we all have them.
Sometimes you can see them by looking at somebody
and sometimes you can't, but we all have them.
So, you'll have to keep trying to
get over your speed bumps, you know, keep
rolling over till you get over you know.
Sometimes you'll be on a bicycle, in a car,
and there's a speed bump and you're like
neh, and you go back, neh, and you keep on
trying to get over it.
That's how life is, it can take years to get over some
of these speed bumps.
But see if you can help other people too,
but you have to keep trying to get over them
if you want to get over them.
Be inclusive, be kind, help others, remember
everyone else has speed bumps.
This is the hard one, the people you think are there to
support you are not always on your side.
When I won the Grumman scholarship I vividly remember
where I was when my physics professor, and I was the
only girl in the advanced physics, I took two years
of physics, I was the only one who made it to year two
in high school, and he looked at me and told me
he was disappointed that I won the Grumman scholarship
and not one of the guys.
And so being a woman I was like,
"Maybe he's right.
"Why did I win?
"Maybe I shouldn't have won."
We question ourselves all the time, what a pain
in the neck, you don't even want to know how bad it gets.
And then, I said,
"Wait a second, those Grumman guys are really smart,
"and they picked me, they have this really big company
"they must be right."
But I actually did think,
"Oh, why did he say that?"
Because these are people that you think are there
to help you and support you, they're your teacher,
they're there to teach for the rest of your life.
How could that be?
You know, I've had a boss that was that way with me,
came running into my office and said,
"You're not the only rocket scientist around here."
I was like,
"Whoa where did that come from?"
I said,
"You can be a rocket scientist too.
"I'm equal opportunity."
You know, it's very interesting, and sometimes family.
So, don't expect it so you think everyone's out to get you,
but don't be blindsided by it, like if you feel something
it could be there.
Because you can be a threat in other people's mind
just by being intelligent, successful, nice, whatever,
you'd be shocked.
When you perceive it, it's there, that's the hardest
thing for me, I think,
"Oh they can't be thinking that way,
"oh how could that be?"
Well, it can be.
So you have to build your wisdom and act
appropriately to protect yourself.
And find a role and a place where you're respected
when you're being yourself.
Which is what I feel like I am here,
it's so fun.
Forgive, but don't forget.
Learn from the things you go through so you
don't repeat it.
What was it somebody said, you know,
"There are those who study history,
"that have to watch other people repeat it."
Cause nobody listens to you.
And find places where you can recharge and really
do great things for yourself, and never give up
on your dreams.
And then the last thing is a little more less personal,
it's more personal but in another way.
So, what are the critical successors I suggest for you?
Well first, plan your life to achieve your purpose, that's everybody.
You know, determine your work and life goals and then
look at the goals, reassess your reality, look at your options,
then figure out what you're gonna do about it.
Always believe in yourself, especially when others
don't believe in you.
That's when it's really important so you don't lose
yourself.
Montra, I believe in me, I believe in me.
Say it back here.
And after a speed bump, be on your side.
You know, there is a person who was very mean to me,
when my grandmother was dying he tried to get me fired,
it was really this totally terrible thing,
and I was like in a puddle on the floor crying at home,
my daughter said to me, she was like 12 at the time,
she said, "Mommy, why are you on his side
"when everybody else is on your side?"
Wow, out of the mouth of babes, right?
Don't believe them if you're really good,
and build your support network, mentors,
networking, personal cheerleaders.
So this doesn't always translate outside the US,
I don't know if anybody else has cheerleaders
but we do, you guys would know right?
So, cheerleaders, those are the people you call
in your life and say,
"Oh, yeah I'm not smart enough, I'm not good enough."
And they say,
"Are you kidding me?
"Remember the scholarship you got?
"Remember that presentation you did?
"Remember how you were invited to speak
"at this other place?"
They remind you of all the good stuff about you,
what's good with you and not what's wrong with you.
Follow your instincts including your values, people ask you
to do things, believe it or not, that you think are really bad,
so you have to choose what to do.
And continually build your skills, you know, today
with the internet, you can continually become an expert
in your field, you know, I was speaking the other day
at the Wicked Conference, I gave them a new acronym
and a new nickname, Wicked the WUECT conference,
and I think the might use it, and that morning
they said that,
did you see that there was a cop who pulled over
a Google driverless car?
Anybody see that?
How funny, and so the cop gave the car
a stern warning it said, and then called its mother Google.
(laughs)
Very interesting, but that was very real I was talking
at a panel at IOT.
You know, so you can do that, build your business
and financial skills, even if you're technical,
cause you have to deal with budgets and things.
Your collaboration skills, I always say I built an ark,
when I was looking to do something new,
everybody in the boat, a diversity of thought.
Everybody can help each other, leadership and then
communication skills.
So this was my original life plan, and I found it
after I took this job.
And this version was from October 2005.
Piece of graph paper and a pencil and about
anybody engineers in here?
Okay, this is how I lived, I still have my picket slide rule.
So anyway, this is my life on one page, and I had
all that room yet.
So, this is when I was born, and then I got my degree,
I got married, that's when I thought I needed a plan,
I'm like,
"Okay I have to get this guy on board with what
"I'm thinking."
And nothing personal, and so then I had marriage,
career, all these things I wanted to do,
I wanted to send my kids to college, that was
really important for me.
And then, look at the options, and I wrote this
ten years ago.
SVP strategy, or GM, IBM or other.
I wrote that 10 years ago, I guess I kept this
in my desk.
So, and then academia, and then CEO,
and what I'm doing is a lot of this.
I'm a Chief Innovation Officer, how cool is that?
I get a sea, I get to work with academia every day,
how fun is that?
IBM or other, I did the other.
And I'm a Senior Vice President, how amazing is that?
This is almost like one of those magic tricks, right?
But I really did have this, so...
(laughs)
So anyway, you can do this too, decide what you
want to do.
So I would suggest, don't go where the path may lead,
go instead where there is no path
and leave a trail.
But I would also say, by having days like today,
we're building new paths.
And I want to thank you for that.
So thank you.
(applause)
-: Thank you Florence, that was great, and thank you
for sharing your personal stories.
So we've got time for a couple questions.
First questions tough, but we've got
a microphone up here so we can...
(mumbles)
-: Or answer, I'm into questions or answers.
Voiceover: The question that I had was,
talking about the subconscious bias,
-: Yeah.
Voiceover: Have you had to, is there a different message
that you have for the different age ranges
compared to the millennials as compared to
X and Y generation?
-: Yeah, bias can come from any angle.
It can be the age you are, what they think you can do,
which I think is really rude, because I especially think
that you're less inhibited when you're younger,
and it used to be people would say,
"Stay in your box."
Now it's like,
"What box?"
I remember my son said that to me I'm like,
"I think I'm gonna use this later."
So it can actually come from any angle,
but that means that diversity is about accepting
people that are not like you, however you see yourself.
That's really what it is at a personal level.
So, it's more exper...
Or, older people, more experienced,
accepting younger thoughts, like the guys I worked
with at Grumman, right?
Or, accepting another gender, or accepting input
from someone from another country.
I just met a young lady from Gaza,
and she's working with us as an intern at Internet 2
for a year, she's a State Department Atlas Intern
it's called, amazing.
So she wanted to have a call with me,
and she was asking me stuff, so I was telling her my story
and giving her some advice, she goes,
"Oh, thank you so much, you taught me so much."
And I said, "You could teach me a lot."
Gaza, wow.
So I said,
"I'd love to hear from you, I'd love to know what you know
"that I don't know."
And so she said, "Why don't you come home for dinner?"
I'm like,
"No I'm gonna have guilt now, I wasn't trying to invite
"myself over for dinner."
She's like "No come over, we'll have dinner with me and
"my friends."
So, I said okay.
So we met at the office, so this young lady from Gaza,
her roommate from Azerbaijan, her roommate from Pakistan,
and her roommate from Ethiopia.
What an eye opening evening.
It was incredible, and we had such a great time
together, and I was showing her my presentation, I said,
"Oh, well since you can't be there I'll show this to you."
And she was like at the end,
"I'm so inspired, we have to do a selfie,
"I want to capture the moment."
I'm like how cute is that?
But she taught me so much, cause I was like,
"So is it safe where you live?"
I was open, you know, she said,
"Yeah, actually we have grass and trees,
"we don't live right there."
I'm like,
"Wow, how long does it take you to get here?"
She said,
"Well you know, the border's closed,
"so it opens for two days every three weeks
"or something like that."
You're like, wow, if we want to get somewhere we
jump on a plane and we go, what is that all about?
You know, so it really starts with respect.
It's really what it starts with.
Respect the other person for who they are,
and then validate them for who they are,
that's where I think it needs to be, so,
the message is really respect overall,
accepting people that are not like you.
I would say for younger people still accepting older
people, who's seen that movie The Intern with
Robert Deniro?
How adorable, anybody see that?
Oh, it's so cute.
So, he's a senior citizen, his wife had passed away,
he's really bored, and so he sees a piece of paper,
they're looking for senior interns, not like seniors in
college, but senior citizen interns, how cute is that?
Cause they wanted to have more multigenerational
diversity in the company, and Anne Hathaway was running
the company, and he ends up being the intern,
it was just so adorable, it was very cute, but it was about
accepting each other and helping each other.
And that's really what diversity is, it comes from
every single angle, but it could be that you have certain
feelings, and I'd be happy to talk to you and I'm sure
others that you think there's something that we can do
to help more.
And it all comes with listening and respecting people
for where they're coming from, especially when they're
different than you.
Thank you for the question, any other questions?
(drowned out by fuzzy mic)
You want to know if I want one more little box
on my body so I have all these mics?
(laughs)
Voiceover: So you're working with a group of people
and your coworkers just don't get the diversity, and the
importance of recognizing your strengths more,
how do you call them out on it?
Do you have strategies for helping other people
get this?
-: That's a really good question.
So, remember my two little rules, I try to be gracious
and I try to do what's right.
I don't always make it, for people who really know me,
but I really try.
So, the example I gave when I was in that discussion
this summer and they were like,
"Yeah, I'm trying not to get too technical for you."
I'm like okay, and I didn't go, I could handle it.
I said...
I ingested it and I thought how can I act graciously,
that's okay I can handle, and then I gave him more
context, right?
So it helped them rise to the occasion, because they felt...
And they didn't even think they should still
be talking that way to me, it was really obvious
when they were talking.
So I try to help them get there.
Sometimes you have to talk to them outside
of the event, you know, cause you don't really
want to call them on it, because you know what they
say is,
"People don't always remember what you did,
"but they remember how you made them feel."
And you must have this incredible thing that's kind of
like football, which is like defense turns into offense.
And so, if you put them back on their heels,
it might just get worse, they might come after
you worse.
That might have not been grammatically correct,
but I'm a lot better at numbers.
So you have to be careful how you do it, because,
remember you're trying to engender diversity and inclusion.
So if you call someone else out on something, it looks
like you're not accepting them for how they feel.
And it could be that they have all sorts of stuff inside.
I mean everyone has speed bumps, like there was this guy
who was always rude to me, and one day I just couldn't
help myself, I said,
"Did you have a sister?"
(laughs)
And he looked at me, I said,
"I thought so, did you along?"
I probably shouldn't have done that, but I've been
working with him for like a year and a half
and I'd had it, I really had, and I just needed
some context, and all the other guys were like,
"Whoa!"
(laughs)
You know, but it was obvious he was living
some stuff out, and it was very interesting
because when I retired and he was
at my event, he didn't say anything, but he actually
wrote me a letter
basically apologizing for everything that he'd done.
Very interesting.
I'm not sure why, a few of them went through that
catharsis when I retired, I think they were like,
"Man why did she leave?"
I'm like, seriously?
But for other reasons too.
But they started reflecting on it.
Maybe they had daughters by then too that were older,
cause I know this guy does.
But you really have to be careful calling them out
because then they'll actually attack you more sometimes,
and it's sad but it's true.
Defense turns into offense, it's a human condition
you've probably seen it before.
So, you have to be very careful how you do it.
Sometimes it's a bank shot, like I said, it's a bank shot.
Anybody played pool?
Except sometimes you can't go direct you have to kind of
go around the eight ball, otherwise it's a problem.
So, sometimes it's a bank shot through somebody else,
like where we were saying,
"Talk to other men if you're a man
"and you're trying to help with gender diversity for women,
"it could be the opposite, it could be nursing
"it's the opposite."
One of my good friends from high school is a PhD nurse
and I think he feels like people look at him
like, "Seriously?"
You know, so I think he feels the same way
in the other direction.
And so, it could be that you have to talk
to somebody outside, and then try to help them
with a bank shot, like talk to them, the person who's
acting improperly to somebody else, see if you can
interject and help.
So there are different strategies that you could use,
getting aggressive about it doesn't usually help,
that's when people say,
"Oh you're one of those."
Women things, or you're one of those,
"Man things."
Or whatever that thing is that you're not, there we go
again, they don't look like you, there's a problem
with them, that's the problem is when they
can think that way.
So, what you want to do is try to encourage them
to be more open and inclusive.
I think it's quite epiphany-like when you put yourself
into an environment where you're the different one.
So, if there is a way to make that happen,
that might be interesting to be honest with you.
You know like call a meeting all the women engineers,
and then invite one guy, I don't know,
just a thought.
At the SWE conference, there were about 100 guys
there five years ago, and they have a dance party
on Saturday night, it's like a thousand women
and 100 guys.
So I'm like...
(laughs)
Right?
It's a great place for guys to go.
(laughs) You know?
Um, and they're cuter now, women engineers,
yeah we were very geeky when I was a kid, now they're adorable.
So, very sweet.
But put them in a situation where people are different,
you know, then they can see how they feel maybe,
and them maybe that'll help.
Some people it won't help, you're not going to get there,
but there are different techniques that you could use
to do that.
But I don't want to take too much time, is it time?
Oh, one more?
Any more questions?
Voiceover: I watch people try to assimilate,
and um...
And I see them give up big chunks of themselves,
or they try to change their personality
to fit in to where they're trying to go.
And can you talk at all about how to find that balance?
-: Ah, what a great question.
So, the first day I became an executive, one of the HR
people came up and said,
"That's funny you don't act like an executive."
And so I said,
"Well maybe they should act like me."
Didn't go over very well, um...
And then they would say you should just be comfortable
with yourself, and then they would say,
"Why do you have that thing in your hair?
I mean, I was always getting different messages,
or a Senior Executive on the same floor as the chairman
said to me,
"So do you like your hair cut that way?"
It's like, and that's important because why?
So, it's really a hard balance, it really is,
to figure out how to be gracious
how to assimilate, and how to be yourself.
So, what you end up deciding as you get through to the other
end, is you realize just being yourself is a lot more fun,
it's a lot more comfortable, the problem is that
other people don't accept you yet.
That's the problem, so it depends on what your goal is.
You know, there was a guy I worked with I remember he got
this job, and he said,
"I want to do this the rest of my life."
And I'm like, seriously?
You know, I wanted to keep climbing, he's like,
no, but that's all I wanted to do, so he didn't
really care what he said.
And he just wanted this job and he was really good at it,
it was fine.
I, on the other hand, was trying to get into all these
other roles, I was technical, I was trying to get it to
business, I wanted to be a higher level executive,
I didn't even know what an executive was, my father was
a plumber, my mother cafeteria lady, my grandmother and grandfather
wasn't until I saw a woman that kind of looked like me
and acted like me, she was kind of perky,
I thought,
"Wow, she's a director, I could do that.
"If she can do that I can do that."
But, along the way I did have to...
I felt I had to be different, I had to change cause
I was looked at differently.
And then people would say,
"Just be comfortable in your skin."
I'm like, "Then why do you talk about my skin?
"Or why do you talk about my hair?"
Or why they would say it and then on the other side
they would do this stuff that made me uncomfortable
when I was myself.
It's very, very difficult to balance, so...
What I would say is, get some friends you can talk to
about this, honestly, cause sometimes it's good to,
you know how if you just talk about something out loud
sometimes you can't actually have to figure it out
by yourself, you just need to say it to someone?
Now can you go, hmm, hmm, or whatever like your friends
or people?
So I would say find mentors or people peers
that you can talk to about it, any of you,
and play out the different ways you can approach things,
and then give it a try.
There was actually this guy who was very derogatory to me.
I can laugh at that right now, cause he left the role.
It was like 15 years ago, and he was always like really
condescending to me.
And, so, I'm a nodder, like you know people that are
validators, people talk and they go like this,
we're like those little bobkins in the back of your car like,
"Oh yeah, I'm validating you, we validate
"everybody else right?"
And they don't validate us, and so I was always validating
when he spoke, and I was talking to a friend of mine,
may she rest in peace, she passed away from breast cancer
since then, but I said,
"You notice how she treats me?"
She's like, "Yeah, yuck."
So I said,
"I have a new strategy."
And this is what I did, and this wasn't necessarily gracious
but it was a lot of fun.
(laughs)
I was in a meeting.
And he was talking and I was like this.
(sighs)
(laughing)
And um, it was very interesting,
he started treating me completely differently.
And so I said to my girlfriend Jane afterward,
I said,
"Did you notice he was..."
This gentleman, I won't say his name.
"Do you notice how he was treating me differently?"
She said, "Yeah."
I said,
"Did you notice what I did differently?
She said,
"You did something different?"
Didn't affect her at all, cause she was all
about the content, she already believed in me.
But he was affected by how he looked.
And he had to put other people down to go higher.
And so as soon as I started playing the game with him,
he lost it, which is really a lot of fun.
So, that wasn't very gracious, but it worked.
Um, at the time, he was fetid as this
kind of the next whatever, so I couldn't
get other people to see how I felt except
for my girlfriends very honestly.
So I had to just kind of do it myself.
Um, but you could be the person that people can come
to and say that, and there are a couple of ways
you could react, you could say,
"(sighs) I don't know what you're talking about."
Or you could say,
"I don't see that."
Or you could say,
"But he's blankety blank, you know?"
On the other hand, you could say,
"Tell me more about that.
"How do you feel?
"When do you notice that happens?"
And then you become more conscious of it.
So remember, it's unconscious, and then it can
become conscious, and then you can help other people
with it.
And so that's what I would encourage you to do,
is if you're in a situation, find someone you can talk to,
if someone in that situation comes to talk to you,
make it a risk-free environment that they tell you.
And then try some different strat...
Maybe not the strategy I used, but it was
a lot of fun.
But, you know, maybe you can come up with some
strategies, like if it's the validation strategy,
like, you know, you're in a meeting and this person
disses that person, and you say,
"Susie, gosh, the point you made before was
"exactly the right one.
"We really will have to be working on that.
"Actually, in the next meeting let's all come back and
"talk about how we can make that happen."
They'd be like, "Whoa, what just happened there?"
Right, so you can actually enable things staying in
what you're trying to accomplish for your business,
it's good for the business, is the point.
Or whatever you're trying to do.
So there are multiple tactics you could use.
I had fun with one of mine you could tell,
but there are different ways that you can do it,
was that helpful?
Okay, thank you.
Okay, well this, oh yeah
one more question, sure.
GIrl in Black: Since there were three males before me,
I'm gonna represent diversity.
Florence: Yay, thank you!
Girl in Black: Considering my skin color's
different as well.
Florence: Mm hmm.
Girl in Black: Since earlier you mentioned that topics
that people are afraid to talk about, and uncomfortable,
I'm going to purposely poke a question.
Florence: Good.
Girl in Black: You talked a little bit, there was one
sentence you said about, you joked about how
you wanted to keep talking, your husband said,
"I'm done listening."
And I think there are probably many ladies
in the room who they themselves, they've seen their
mothers do the same thing.
So, two level question, how do you help your spouse?
And how do you help your children,
especially male children, how to deal with
the fact that they're going to go through that
eventually too?
-: What an excellent question.
So, um, being the good little Catholic girl,
when I first got married I thought I was just supposed to
follow him, and then I got over that.
Um, took a while though.
You know because you know, you're going to honor and obey,
like obey they still say that, right, all that other kind of
stuff and he just has to say,
"I'll marry her."
Right, so it took me a while to learn about that.
Actually, a little more in that, I told my husband
I talk about this, he goes,
"Oh great."
So, he used to tell me,
"Why do you tell people you're a rocket scientist?"
And I was like,
"Oh, this is a trick question.
"Uh, because I am."
And apparently it made him feel stupid when I said it.
Okay, so that was my problem, interesting right?
So, for 20 25 years I couldn't say that out loud.
Then about five years ago, he said it I almost fell off
my chair.
"Yeah, my wife the rocket scientist."
I was like, "Whoa, who's that?"
You know?
So, there are a lot of issues with why they listen
or don't listen.
So, I've told my husband after I had the epiphany
what happens about it, and we have um...
This is our kitchen table and then there are these
stairs that go down, and it's like one of, you know those
comedians who actually do this, like you know when they're...
That's what happens, like I'll be talking, and then his head
just goes away, he goes down the stairs.
(laughing)
It really does, and I'm like,
"I'm not done talking.
"And you can't be done listening."
Actually I call him on it, we've been married
30 something years, and all our warranties expired,
we're stuck, you know, so that's kind of how it is now.
So, but I've had to call him on it, I actually have,
because it's very rude, or I'll say,
"Turn off the TV."
He hates when I do that.
(gasps) But I want to listen to the TV but we're
talking about something, I'm home like one day a week
can we talk about this, you know?
"Oh I want to watch TV it's a golf..."
I'm like oh my gosh seriously?
So sometimes I just have to call him on it and say,
"This is what I need and I deserve to be listened to."
It's hard, but some of them can get really angry
I guess, but thank god he doesn't, he just ignores me
anyway and I say,
"What did I say?"
(laughing) He hates when I say that too.
So funny, uh sorry.
(laughing)
Any men go through this with their women
that they know?
Yeah good job okay,
well maybe not good job, so you can get over that too.
So try to remember, write or take notes or something,
cause we're a lot easier to deal with, if you remember
what we say.
Um...
So, I actually call him on it.
(laughs) I actually call him on it now,
and you know I didn't for quite a while cause I just
thought I was supposed to be nice and stuff,
I really did think that, and I can still be nice
but I can still ask for respect,
and so that's what I do.
Same thing with my son, he's this big,
as you can tell in the picture that I showed, you know,
he's gigundo.
And so, you know, I remember there was a guy worked for
me one time, I said,
"Sit down so I can yell at you."
Because he was like so much taller than I was.
But with him too I have to, you know,
both of them I...
He'll sit down and he'll talk to me,
he'll actually sit down and talk to me,
look in my eyes, it's a beautiful thing.
Look in my eyes.
So, what I find is that I actually have to
give them the tools, they don't have them.
They're not even cognizant of what they're doing,
it's just natural.
You know, there was an article in the New York Times
a few years ago that said, like,
"Men have 4,500 words a day and women have like 9,000
"or something."
Anybody see that article?
Yeah, yeah, and so I was like,
"Wow, so they've run out of words!
How interesting is that?
Who knew, right?
Very scientific, they run out of words,
and we have a lot, you know, we can load up
a couple more little pots of words.
Um, so I've had to...
I guess kind of force him, either of them to sit down
and talk to me, and actually listen.
That's what I do, but it is hard,
and I think we all go through it, cause we have a lot of words.
But the other thing we can do is make things more NET.
So, as an example, there was a guy I worked for who was
incredible.
But he knew he wasn't going to get
all the way at the top at IBM, so he left.
He went to the president of Semantic, and now he's
Chairman of the Board of Microsoft, did pretty well right?
And so I used to work with him he was wonderful,
and he said, we would write things and he'd say,
"Put it on a diet, cut it in half."
And I was like, "I take that personally."
But what he meant is, we just use too many words.
And so, what I do is, I share this a lot,
and I'll write something, then I save it,
then I go back to it, and then with a new perspective
I cut it in half, then I save it again, and then I come back
to it and I usually take another third out of it.
And so it allows me to be more NET because for things
to be understood, they have to be ingested and digested.
And some people can't ingest and digest all that stuff,
like I use a lot of words, I use a lot of content,
I talk fast, I even have a speed matching buffer,
I think faster than I talk, that's how scary this is right?
And I'm kinda weird, but I'm different, remember I'm
used to it.
So, what I do is I try to redo, especially in written word,
I use as few words as I can, because then it's much
easier for people to ingest it.
You know, most time we're just talking about you got
this really long note from somebody,
actually wasn't even a woman, but it's usually
better if you use fewer words, there was a woman that
I used to work with, she would actually, in the email systems
years ago she would run out of space and had to write
multiple ones.
Multiple emails to get our whole message across,
oh my gosh, you know?
And I would try to teach her, you know that's too many words.
I'll read all two and a half messages, all like eight
paragraphs because I love you, and I'm trying
to help you and coach you, but you really
have to cut it down.
So, it's good to use as few words as you can,
but they get them in it with you, the other thing
that really helps is if there's value in it for them,
so if there's, like...
You know, let's talk about vacation.
Okay!
You know that's usually, unless it's like oh yeah
you just do everything I'll just show up,
happens in my family.
But, you know, if you can make it valuable for them too,
if there's something good associated with it.
The story I love to tell is when my son was younger we were
in Santa Barbara, we were by the beach,
and you know when you go in the water and then the tide kind
of takes you down the beach, and then you're a nervous
wreck cause your kids are down there, and you're here
with the baby, and you can't go and get them.
And I was like,
"Ryan come back, come back, come sit
"in front of me."
One of the guys who worked at the hotel said,
"Hey Ryan, the waves are better over here."
So guess what Ryan did.
And he was right in front of me,
I was like,
"I'm taking that guy home with me."
(laughing)
He's really good.
You know, but the idea is how do you make it
valuable for them?
So my husband loves to go out to dinner
and I travel all the time, I want to have a can of peas
at home that would be so much nicer for me.
But, so we'll do that, so we'll do things,
and then when we're out to dinner we can
actually talk cause it's just him and me.
He gets distracted and looks around
at all the pouring water and stuff, but that's okay,
we can get a lot done.
So try to put it in an environment where it's conducive
to allowing that discussion, and see what ways you can
make it valuable for them too, and use
fewer words, of course I'm using a gazillion words
right now.
But use fewer when you can,
especially in written communication it's much more effective.
Okay.
Announcer: Thank you so much, please join me in thanking
Florence Hudson again.
Florence: My pleasure, thank you.
(applause)