Fireside Chat with Heather Rocker

I'm Tomas, the CISO at the NFL. Ali, I'll pass it over to you. Hi, I'm Allie cybersecurity awareness manager author, and I do some marketing for Fireside Chat. Russell. Over to you. Hey everybody. Great to be here the night before Thanksgiving. Here in the us Russell Eubanks founder managing partner for security consulting company called Soverty, and former CISO for the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Anil, it was great to get to meet you in real life recently. Anil over to you. Great. Thanks, Russell. Pleasure meeting as well. Good evening, folks. This is Anil Varghese Senior Operating Advisor with Francisco Partners. On to you, Katie. Hi. Good evening, everybody. I'm Katie Hanahan. I am the Deputy CISO at the American Medical Association. And I see Stephen just joined us. Hey, Stephen, over to you. Hey, everyone. Good to see and hear everyone today. Stephen Garcia. CISO several times, been doing information security my entire career, helping out with boards and all that good stuff. Thanks. They don't get back so we get back to the month. Sounds good. Thank you. Look it is Russell said it. And for those in the U S or for those, wherever you are listening in that celebrate happy Thanksgiving to you all. I'm sure we all have something to be thankful for. And I'm thankful for this community that we've been able to build over the past. Wow. Is it four years yet? Or is it three years? I'm losing track cause we've been doing so many of these conversations over the past few years during COVID. Yep. In COVID and post COVID now, I'll call it. So I'm happy and thankful for this community that we've been able to build and Heather, I'm happy and thankful for you to take time out of your busy schedule. I'm sure just like me and others, we probably trying to get our last minute festivities or last minute sort of food preparations in order before the big day tomorrow. I'm sure you're probably doing the same or dealing with, Aspects of that. So I do appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule to spend it with us this evening. So why don't you Heather take a moment and why don't you introduce yourself? And while you're doing that and you can take as long as you like or as short as you like Now, why don't you, while you're going through your introduction, why don't you tell us about you and your origin story? Sure. I'm glad to be here. Thanks for having me. And so again, my name is Heather Rocker and I currently serve as the CEO of Women in Technology. That's a 501 C3 nonprofit headquartered here in Atlanta, Georgia. I have been a woman in technology my entire career, my career is about 50 percent corporate and 50 percent nonprofit. I've ping ponged back and forth. So my original I started as an engineering student at Georgia Tech, so I've been in the thick of it for a while, went through that and landed in it. The energy kind of power supply side of things coming out of college and then went into some nonprofit work and back and forth. So I've done a little bit of everything and it's interesting. I'd say the first half of my career. I think I looked for what was next. And the second half of my career has been being pulled into what is next. So when people ask like, how did you land where you are now? And how did you go from open source CMS technology communities to, working with Alexa AI and then with women in technology, it really is, people say it's who you know. And who knows you? And I think that's been a huge part of my career story. But I think regardless of what my job has been, what I find that's most impactful for me and what makes me the happiest. So really two things is in any role where I feel like I'm using my full self. And I know there's some folks that can, can resonate with that. So we're not only using all my skills and abilities, but where I'm using, where's my personality of fit? Where do I feel like, I'm really bringing everything to the table. The second thing is what's been really impactful for me from a career perspective is, and I think I've just always been this way. I've always been drawn to community service and to helping others and figuring out. How to have the best impact in our communities. So I've loved seeing how technology can be a source of good and can do good for people. And so that's where I'm drawn the most. And so I find that where I feel like whether it's corporate or nonprofit, where I feel like I'm on a team that's making a difference and I'm helping others in the community somehow, either through the technology itself or through in the by product of the technology work, that's where. That's where I feel the best. So from a career perspective, I think my story is a little bit all over the place. There's no straight path. I know some people have had a straight path in their career. Mine certainly has not been but I tend to thrive where I'm making a difference. So glad to be where I'm at today, but it's been a, it's been an interesting road. Sorry, I'm coughing, not because of what you said, it's because I'm sick, man, Allie, I'll pass it to you. Hey so what motivated you to transition from the corporate world into the non profit leadership role? Hey, Allie, thanks for asking that. It's interesting, so I think my first non profit role I didn't know what I was getting into. I just, I saw a role actually had a friend that, that saw it come through, and this is going to show my age. The job came through on a fax machine. And it was an organization looking for a new executive director. And somebody came to me and said, Hey, this looks like a great fit of both your desire to give back and also needing to know about technology and understanding the technology community. So I think at first it was really. Less of it being nonprofit specific and more of this is a good use of my skills. And I feel like I can make a difference here. And then by the way, I'm also, giving back in a way. So it was really about that. But what I realized was. A lot of people thought, going to non profit meant you were taking the easy route. There used to be a term called corporate refugees, where people would leave their corporate careers to go into non profit, thinking that it was going to be an easier route, and quite often it's harder for a variety of reasons. As you can imagine, Allie, one of which is always struggling for enough resources to get the work done. But one of the things that, is important about the nonprofit sector is, nonprofits exist where corporate and education and government leave a gap. So as much as we always try to collaborate with every sector to make things happen, it really is nonprofits. serve a gap. They fill a need that isn't being served by another industry or another organization. And so I think that's what's really powerful about the nonprofit sector. I will say for folks that are thinking about making the transition and again, there's many times I've left nonprofit and gone back into corporate too. But for those look into the nonprofit sector as a possible career path. The downside to not enough resources is that you're always trying to, struggle, make sure you have enough people, power and money. The upside is you typically get to learn a lot. So those nonprofit roles I've had have been the equivalent of 10 different jobs at one time. Which is both exhausting, but also exhilarating and in the amount that you can learn and the scope that you can have in that role. So really it was less about, I'm going to go purposely make this change To make a difference in and of itself. But it was really this is a good use of my skills. It's still connected to technology. I can make a difference, but I'm also just going to learn a heck of a lot along the way. I have a follow up question. This is Katie Hanahan. Um, really great to meet you, Heather. And, looking in your background and preparing for this evening in our conversation. I was really interested in the path that you've taken. You mentioned a number of times pivoting. I want to dig in a little bit more if you wouldn't mind to maybe what some of those early pivots looked like for you. I'm seeing this as a common thread with women in our industry where we often have had to pivot sometimes to even just be able to get into a position somewhere and find the right team where we fit in. So I'd just be curious about maybe a little bit more of a story around some of those pivots. Throughout your career and kind of beginning from that earlier part. Yeah. And I think what's interesting is for me, the pivots have occurred where I'm really outside of my comfort zone. So the, I think we've all kind of heard the wisdom around, you grow the most when you're the most uncomfortable and things along those lines. So I think, I initially started pivoting where opportunities would arise that I didn't, I hadn't done it before. And I didn't know exactly how to get it done, but I knew I had the skill sets to figure it out. And I think one of the things I learned early in my career was that wall of to rise up through leadership. It was not only the hard skills, but the soft skills. And a lot of the soft skills involve the willingness and ability to manage people and to be a people leader. I think the hard part about that is. You don't get the opportunity to be a people leader. Most people want you to have already done it. So you get caught in this catch 22 of I haven't done that thing, but I need those things to be in my back pocket to move up the ladder. And so frankly, Katie, that's part of why I made the original pivot from corporate to nonprofit was it was an opportunity. For me to prove the things that I could do in a new setting and I knew where I wanted to go. I know I've I love being a people leader. I love being a leader. I love owning major projects and organizations and being able to own big outcomes. So part of that original pivot was really. I'm going to go take a risk in a completely different field. I'm going to bring all my experience and skillsets with me, but I'm going to see if this lands me somewhere that I'm not going to land where, where I started. And I will say that because I took the risk to go do something new, I did have the ability. To manage people for the first time to lead major projects to really show more of what I could do than if I had just stayed in a traditional corporate setting and kind of slowly worked my way up the ladder. I'll mention to that another thing that helped me with some of my original pivots. I found that you don't get all the skills that you need necessarily on the job in a traditional way. So I was very active as a volunteer in the community and that's where I had all of my original leadership opportunities. And I was involved in things like the junior league and I was running I was running different nonprofit organizations in the community as a volunteer. And because of those volunteer experiences, that's where I really had a chance to spread my wings in a safe environment and do things I didn't get to do in my day to day job and then take those experience and skill sets with me into the next things that I wanted to do. I would say the biggest thing for me from a pivot perspective is the constant willingness to get outside of my comfort zone, think outside the box, do something completely scary. Never know if I'm going to be successful when I get pulled in. But luckily I've had a lot of great experiences along the way. I appreciate that answer so much. Particularly that just around, Finding the volunteer experience to be able to glean the additional skillset and expand your horizons there and get into those places where you feel uncomfortable and finding a comfort zone eventually within those places that were at one point, scary. So I think that piece is really interesting to me. So I guess just as my final is follow up to that is what advice would you give in terms of even your own organization, as I would love to hear what. opportunities and things that you're seeing for women in all phases of their careers to be able to lean into that aspect that's helped you so much in your career and trajectory. Yeah. So I'm a huge advocate for skills based volunteering and then utilizing volunteering to build a skill set. So traditionally it was, what can you bring to the table to help? But I'm a big fan, as I mentioned, Katie, of what can I learn along the way that then I take with me? Probably about 15 plus years ago the concept came into play for me, not only as an individual, but I wanted to bring it to organizations and to others as well. So I I use the term strategic volunteering and I've taken it to Nonprofit organizations where I've worked, but I've also even done things like collaborate with the points of light Institute with their corporate corporate civic engagement. And I've done workshops around strategic volunteering, how nonprofits can build it into their volunteer scope, but also how companies can align strategic volunteering opportunities with their community impact. I got to work with a company once that they actually built it into their performance reviews. So they said, Hey, here's the five to 10 companies that we care about in our nonprofit organizations. We care about in the community as a company. We want people to volunteer for those. We want it to be meaningful and we want those skills that you learn to bring back into your performance review. So I've seen it be really impactful and I try to bring it with me wherever I go. And it's baked in to our women in technology DNA. Because one of the things we find that I mentioned earlier is you don't always get everything you need in your day job. It doesn't always take you where you want to ultimately go. So we've developed, through Women in Technology we're going to be launching it in full force in January. But looking at strategic volunteering for our our women in technology and our allies. It does a couple things. As I mentioned, it builds those skill sets for those involved. We, you can literally write up your volunteer opportunities as job descriptions. Here are the skills you need. Here's the skills you're going to gain. Here's the time commitment. Here's what that volunteer job looks like. And then You're giving back to the volunteers that step up and claim those roles. But it also, from a nonprofit side, just like you think of any business, it's helping with our capacity constraints, right? We're doing more as an organization by getting creative. I think from a women in technology mission perspective, given that we want women to develop their full selves and to get as far as they want to go in technology and remove as many barriers as possible. These experiences help women solve some of the gaps either in their resume or, tools they want to have in their tool belt. So we really use it as a mission forward way of looking at volunteerism. Yeah, I love that. And I can attest that in my own career that is where I've been able to expand not just my skill set, but also the, like you said at the very beginning of the conversation, the network of people and allies and mentors that. I was going to say the network piece is the, probably the most powerful thing that I've seen happen is who you meet when you get outside your bubble, right? You have a shared passion for something, but you really meet people, Katie, like you said, that you would probably never would have run across. in your day to day life. It's a perfect segue then. It's just even this we, this community, we all have a passion for these origin stories and how to make the cyber security community more accessible and more more productive and keep really talented people here. And one of those people that I ran into when we started this whole process was Russell Eubanks, who I'm going to hand it over to next. But, so that's a perfect segue because this is This whole community was built out of people just stretching, doing something a little different, jumping on a, an app, during the pandemic and creating a community to learn about these origin stories. With that thank you so much for answering my double question there, Heather. I appreciate my moderators allowing me the second question, but I'm going to hand it over to Russell and he'll take it from here. Thank you so much, Heather. You're welcome. Katie, you're an amazing volunteer yourself. And Heather, so amazing to be able to spend the evening. Again, thank you for loaning you to us this hour and a half or so in our long time running show. Much respect every Georgia Tech grad I've ever worked with has been amazing. You're the things you already talked about in the first few minutes. I'm like wow. And I had a really good question when I thought it was a good question. But in what you and you respond into Katie's questions, I think I have a better question to set that up. I was privileged to work at the Federal Reserve for a while, and they encouraged all the bank officers to find a local nonprofit and to give back. And I thought, that'd be a nice thing to do and be able to serve and go and do things. And And I did that, and I have to say, I was initially just grunt labor. I would go and work and do things that the local, non profit, local to me, non profit needed, but I didn't have the words that you had. I didn't have words of strategic volunteering or skills based volunteer, or I was just thought, I could just be a hired hand. But it occurred to me that the skills that I have and things that I did at my day job were things that. Quite frankly, the nonprofit that I was working with and on their board for literally couldn't afford me if I were to serve in the capacity of a security leader or security professional on Having that conversation with them would have been so much easier if I'd have had your words way back then. And so I'm super encouraged by what's possible there and the opportunities. And what would nonprofits such as the nonprofit I served on for quite some time what are the ways that they can, what are the things that they can do to attract folks in women in technology. When you have your launch coming up very soon, what are things that they could advertise for or become aware of and give those opportunities to folks aligned with and supportive of women in technology. But what's the call to action for them? Yeah. So Russell, it's interesting. A lot of people, we grow up viewing volunteering as a lot of kind of day of opportunities, and there's things that are really important I've spent my evenings at the food bank, sorting cans. And, I've done clothing drives and all those things, but it's just, it's a little bit different when you think about longer term traction. And I think the thing to remember is nonprofits or businesses, they just have a different tax status. So the things they need to get done, you mentioned no, they're not going to be able to afford a CISO. Do they need information security with the data that they handle? Absolutely. But we'd go back to resources. What are the resources they have available to them? So that's really where. The professional community in particular is so important to the nonprofit community because, if we think about what, what they're doing, they have a financial piece, they, they have a human resources piece, an IT piece, all the things that we think about from a corporate perspective. We forget that nonprofits have to run very similarly, just usually with a lot less help and a lot less resources. So I, I think the big thing, so a couple of things, one, I'll mention, with what we're doing at women in technology and in the volunteer roles, we're going to open up. I think that it really is a matter of people knowing that they can volunteer. So Russell, like you said, you can volunteer in day to day ways, but you can also volunteer in big skills based ways. So I'll say the first thing is for people that are interested in doing that is understand what you bring to the table and be able to communicate. As a nonprofit volunteer manager over the years, I can tell you the hardest part is when people come with all the best intention and they say, I love your mission. What do you need me to do? And then you put all the pressure on that volunteer manager to try to figure out where, what's the best place for me to put you? And what would you be good at? I think the best thing that somebody can do if they're interested Is to ask what, is there somewhere that I can find the opportunities? Are they listed somewhere? Or do you have some biggest areas of need? And then I encourage people to even have a version of their resume that speaks to where they want to volunteer or how they've volunteered in the past. Because I can take that information and I can match somebody like I would match them to a traditional job. And part of that is, I tell people to understand, and I tell my WIT volunteers this too, I want you to be really honest with yourself about your time availability, because the worst thing we could do for each other is to overextend. So what time do you have available that you want to be able to commit? And what is it, what's the impact you want to have at the end of the day? Is it using skills that you have? Is it developing new skills? Is it like Katie said, is it building your network? Because with that information, we can figure out, what's. going to be the best fit for you and what's going to make you feel the best because it really you will have a much better experience knowing what you want to get out of it and being able to communicate that effectively. Think for the women in technology side where we're launching our strategic volunteering initiative. It's a lot. It's a lot of that as well. It's a lot. It's understanding, Hey, what are the, what are those things where I feel like I've got a gap or a need or desire to give back? And where do I want to do that? Is that using my skills on the day job? If I'm in it, do I want to do something tech related? I think for everybody in this audience, it would be. Russell, you said it. People aren't going to have a CISO at their disposal unless there are really large organizations. So is it coming in and helping them think through where do we have vulnerabilities? Where do we need to be thinking about our data policies? What do I need to know that I don't know? And then bringing the talent to the table to help those projects, come to fruition. So there's a lot that we as a community can do for the nonprofit sector. that you don't have to go work for them. You can simply volunteer your time. I think the other most powerful piece is bringing people from your network to the table with you. It makes it fun, but it also, helps bring those resources that are needed. So from a WIP perspective, we need a little bit of everything. And I think just knowing that our strategic volunteering program exists. And learning how to get connected. It's, we're open to men and women. So all the women that, that want to come join us, it might already be in the community, might not, might be a good first step. And then we welcome our allies as well that come and volunteer with us. Obviously would love to have some great folks volunteer with women in technology, but definitely advocate for everybody to figure out, the best way that you want to give back and in a way that's going to be meaningful to you. I love that, that how that looks, how your recruiting process might go for that. And let me ask one more question. Then I'll throw it over to a new thing. I think I could ask you a whole bunch of questions. I'm going to limit it to just one more. As I'm thinking about, the matching or the pairing between the person at WIT who wants to participate as compared to the different non profits in the different areas in which you serve, what's the matchmaking process look like on the economic side? Is there more people wanting to volunteer or are there more volunteers? Non profits that could use targeted specific types of help where's the the majority of what does supply and demand look like as far as how you match make and find those opportunities when someone does raise their hand and say they want to engage in a local to them non profit? Yeah, so I think, I think there's always a surplus of interest. In serving, there's a lot of of desire to, to give back and to help. I think both for WIT and for most nonprofits I've been affiliated with people want to help, especially I find, I'm partial here to the Atlanta community, but it's a very community centric place. And so people give back, I'd say. So there's a lot of people that want to give back. I think where the supply demand challenge comes into play is the people having enough of the right kinds of skill sets for the right amount of time is always the challenge. So for me, the matchmaking process literally looks like. Creating a volunteer application that gathers all the right information that matches the opportunities on the nonprofit side. And then there's some serious people work to say, what's going to be the right fit. It often includes having conversations, not necessarily an interview, but really, some conversations to understand what the best fit is going to be. And I think when we talk about those opportunities that are longer term, so maybe it's a three month, a six month, a year long opportunity, You want to, there's a lot of due diligence involved to make sure you're making the right match less involved when you just want to do something, for a day or two days. But I think, we've got, there's great organizations out there that also help match people to opportunities. So the internet is a wonderland. And you can often find a job search version of volunteer opportunities, both short term and longterm that'll help you find the right thing. But I think the big thing is nonprofits are always looking for good talent. Always looking for new volunteer talent to come to the table. So I would say for anyone that has an interest and there's a passion and a mission that calls to you please do reach out because there, we're always looking, we're always looking for great people. Awesome. Thanks so much. It's almost like a little call to action in there. I love that. I appreciate that. And I'm smiling as I think about sometimes I've done the very same thing. And Neil over to you. Thanks Russell. Heather thanks for carving out the time. As you've mentioned earlier the various pivots in your journey, whether from Georgia Tech to SEI, Drupal and Amazon, true leadership comes through going through the crucible of buyers. Tell us about your experiences and lessons learned that have helped you become a stronger leader through those various winding roads and paths you've taken. Yeah. I think, Crucible and challenge makes it sound good. I think it feels like crisis at the time when you're going through it, but I think those are the times where you learn really what you bring to the table and how you make it work. You mentioned Drupal. So I was leading the Global Association for Open Source CMS the Drupal Association. And when IS. Started was pre COVID and the major, I would, when I say the majority of their revenue comes from in person events, it was about 80 to 85 percent of all the revenue of that organization came from in person events and within I would say six months of when I started, we went into COVID lockdown, so I now had an organization that I had to keep up and running and figure out how 80 percent of our revenue that used to come from in person events was going to happen. So when we talk about pivots, it was an organizational pivot, but it was a huge leadership stretch for me. So I was still fairly new to the organization being there for less than a year. And we had to change everything everything that we knew and everything that we did pretty much on a dime. So I became I became familiar with legal contracts. We had we had a conference in person plan for May of that year. So I had to learn how to effectively work with lawyers and contracts and get out of things so that we didn't go bankrupt and in default. As many organizations did during that time, I learned a lot about how to very quickly pivot and host conferences online, which feels like second nature now, but at the time it wasn't really a thing that was done. I'd say the biggest thing I had to learn. So I, two big lessons came out of that for me. One was. How to be a vulnerable leader. And what I mean by that was I have a tendency, especially with an engineer brain to just think I've got a process solve and figure it all out and then not come to the table until I have an answer. And what I really learned during that time was. What's great about working with communities of people is that you get to access all of that knowledge and all of that support and all of that learning. So instead of me trying to solve it in a bubble and in a silo, the best advice I got from one of my board members was lean on your team, lean on the board, lean on the community. Be open and honest about where we are and what's happening and let's figure out how to solve it together. And so part of the, part of that was figuring out how to have an effective online conference that had always been held in person. And part of that was figuring out how to do emergency fundraising at a time where we were looking at where we're going to have to close down completely because of the sharp pivot with COVID lockdown. So I w I, I think the big thing for me was, Never underestimate people and communities and how innovative and impactful they can be. So the community rallied open source communities are some of the most vibrant, innovative, passionate communities on the planet. So they pivoted with me. As I just learned to be super open and honest and transparent with the team and with the community about what was happening and how they could help. Yeah. And so they helped us problem solve. And then we just had to learn very quickly how to take everything we do and make it digital. The good news is I was working within an industry that was very digital so that was super helpful. But, I think that I've often been put into situations where something changed that was super unexpected, or I was asked to come into a leadership position because things needed massive transformation and needed it quickly. So I think for me, what I learned is. Is that a crisis can be solved? It is. It is short term pain, but long term opportunity that leaning on communities of innovation can really make things work, not trying to work in a bubble on the biggest thing is transparency with teams so that you can bring them along with where you are. And so that's really helped me when I've had to come in and do big things that feel very scary and help them be successful. So I think it's also taught me that As much as it feels super stressful in the moment, I tend to thrive there. I don't do well in maintenance mode. I think I've just had so many transformation and and big leadership moments that, that maintenance mode's not for me. So I've learned about myself. I actually like the challenge. I like the roll my sleeves up and figure it out and learn new things. I just, haven't had a job recently that was maintenance mode, so I haven't had to worry about it. That's great. Thanks for sharing that, Heather. I think part of you mentioned before is, key nuggets I took away from there being a vulnerable leader and then beyond that is short term pain, long term opportunity. I think that anyone, anybody, whatever leadership level we're at today and decide to pursue further can take those away. Appreciate sharing. Absolutely. Thanks, Adele. And what an amazing conversation we've had so far. We've been about half an hour into, about an hour and a half conversation this evening with our special guest Heather Rocker. I'll tell you, so many interesting, inspiring things we've covered so far. Folks in the audience be thinking of some questions that you want to ask. We'll, as soon as we go through to Stephen and see if there's any other moderators who have questions for Heather, feel free to raise your digital hand. We'd love to bring you up on stage so you can ask your question or questions. Of Heather. Love to do that, but Stephen over to you, what questions and what things you have for Heather. Thank you, Russell. Heather, thank you for taking the time to join us. And I really do appreciate it. I imagine with your experience in technology, you've tried to use some of those, what we will call superpowers or skills to help a nonprofit. So I'm curious what are some of the challenges you've encountered in leveraging technology to try to help advance the mission of some of those nonprofits? And, How'd you overcome them? So I think the biggest challenge in using technology. So there's no lack of technology available and solutions and resources. I think it's. It's always been two things on the nonprofit side. One is, as I mentioned earlier, the monetary resources to be able to do what you need to do. And I think the second is having the people resources that understand the technology and know how to help you utilize it. So, I think that I've always really leaned into. How efficient can we be? What? What's this? What? What's the must haves versus the nice to haves when it comes to technology? But I think that, we live in such an interesting time where we have generative AI at our fingertips, and we have the ability to do things like we're doing tonight. So you can reach people so much easier. You can a lot of things like with generative A. I. Where, maybe it took somebody eight hours to put something together, and now we can do it really quickly. So I think it's just it's learning how to be really creative with the technology that's out there. And frankly, we have, being women in technology where I'm at now, we have the luxury of a community of technologists who we've got a lot of very smart people Who in their day to day roles work at a lot of really interesting companies. And so I think those relationships are always valuable when you're on the nonprofit side, which is what, what are those services and consulting services and tech platforms that you can get in kind, as opposed to necessarily having to pay full price. Because from a nonprofit perspective, we want every dime possible to go to the mission. But as I mentioned earlier, you're still running a business. So you want to be effective and you want to be efficient. But you want to push everything, the mission that you can. I think that the, the tech that we have now makes it really impactful and really makes it a whole lot easier for nonprofits to get their message out, to connect with people, to build communities online and not just have to rely on person. I think those things make a big difference because regardless of what your specific mission is, you want people to know. Who you are, what you're doing, who you're serving and how people can connect. And technology goes a long way to be able to make that happen. Whether it's a, a tech platform, that's a membership service that connects people or things like here tonight, the fact that we're having a conversation live on LinkedIn and create a community that doesn't necessarily have to be at a physical table together. Is really important. I think the big thing and I'll go back to, some of that strategic volunteering pieces whenever you can find smart people that are willing to come in and give you some of their talent as a volunteer from a consulting perspective is really helpful from a tech piece because I've seen a lot of nonprofits. put money into a tech platform, a tech service that is supposed to solve a problem. But if you don't have the right discovery, if you don't have the right setup, you don't have the people trained the right way to use those things effectively, it becomes money that just goes down the drain and things aren't done well. So I think having an understanding of Where you want to pull technology in, how you want to use it, who's going to maintain it, and what do you really need it to accomplish and not be too overblown with it is really important because, just like any other industry, nonprofits can get sold really sophisticated tech solutions. And then not, not use 10 percent of it which can be a huge waste. So thanks. I do find it fascinating how many parallels are between profit and nonprofit, because we have, I think all of us here have definitely seen in corporate or, for profit How many times you can blow a budget on technology to solve a problem and oh, yeah, it's not to think, you know Is this really how we should be solving the problem instead of really trying to find the solution before getting the platform? But thank you. Yeah, I think it's that thing Stephen where it's you know What problem are we really trying to solve? Is it the one we think it is or is it something totally different and tech can sometimes be a band aid before you know the real answer Yeah, I've always seen tech as a tool, and tools can be double edged sword. We can either solve problems really quickly or create problems really quickly. So it all depends on how you use it. But thank you, Heather. I will pass it to Domas now. Thanks Steven. Heather, I wanted to ask you a question regarding allies and my question is more along the lines of what can the allies do to help women in tech? What are some of those, if you're thinking about one or two. Key things that, that you think would be very beneficial for us allies to help women in tech what would that be? So that that's an excellent question. And I'll say that, we can do all the work in the world to make technology a better place for women and girls, but if we don't have allies by our side, helping walk down that road with us, I don't know that the work we do is going to be ultimately effective. So the allyship Super important. I think one thing that allies can do is, to be a thoughtful voice in the room. What I mean by that is, when you're in an organization and you have the opportunity. To bring women to the table, to help women be heard, to help them be seen, to make sure that they're being considered. That's huge. Some of the best allyship that I've seen are when, sometimes they call it mentorship. I call it sponsorship where you're really, allies are advocating for the women in their workplace. in a meaningful way. And that makes just all the difference in the world. So that, that, that advocacy that you can do in the workplace is huge. Making sure that women again, are seen and heard and given opportunities. We live at a time where Frankly, D E N I is becoming a bad word for all the wrong reasons, and really all it's about is making sure you've got diversity of thought at the table. And I'm sure what all of you know here, I'm sure is that, diversity breeds innovation and diversity of thought in any organization and any leadership table and on any board, those companies and organizations do better. and they make more money. And so really, at the end of the day, it's a business decision that we want to make sure people understand. I think the other thing that allies can do is show up. So my favorite thing in the world is when we host events and our allies are in the room because that speaks volumes that shows that shows their teams that they care. It shows the larger community that they care, and it shows the women and girls in the room that That they're not forgotten, right? That we're not just doing all this work on our own. So I think, I think the speaking up doing the work as an ally and showing up are huge. Really again, at the end of the day, what I tell people is, even if you don't understand why we're doing what we're doing, just know that your businesses will be better because of it. And all the data shows us that when women and girls. Thrive that communities thrive. So all of those things go hand in hand to make everything better. So as much as I'm a woman in tech advocating for women in tech, the bigger picture is. When you've got more diversity of thought at the table, you've got more talent at the table. Everybody involved is going to succeed and thrive and do better. So there's just, there's no reason not to. But I really appreciate that question. Thank you. I love that question of what can the ally do? What's the role? What's the ways to support women in technology? And was it, is it the right thing to do? And you mentioned the business benefits. It's not just feel good because of that, but you're saying, business thrives and things are better community there. There's a tangible benefit. I love that so much. So earlier, Heather, you mentioned the. Your role responsibility of CEO of Women in Technology, you said 50 percent corporate things, 50 percent non profit things. I'm imagining, I'm trying to imagine what that looks like, the context switching of how you can be successful in that role, needing to serve in those two different distinct and necessary roles. Capacities. How do you balance? What's code switching like between one and the other? Is there times when you're more in one chair than the other? What does it look like to, what sounds like to have two full time jobs, honestly? Maybe even more but how do you balance the two? And when, what are some examples of times when you need to be more in one, perhaps than the other in your current role? Yeah. So it's interesting, Russell. I wish it felt like two jobs. I think being leading a nonprofit often feels like 10 jobs depending on the day. So it's never boring. I think that, I think for me in the role that I have is, A large part of who I'm serving. I'm working directly with corporate entities. I'm working with CISOs and CIOs and chief digital officers and sometimes chief human resource officers and everything in between. I'm also working with directors and senior directors and women that, and men are that are middle management. So I think having an understanding of the corporate world and understanding the businesses and how they run and the fact that, there are As much as they want to give back, there's business decisions and there's financial implications and how all of that works really influences the way that I work with our corporate partners and our funders and I, how I try to position the opportunity for them to give to the organization, to have volunteers for the organization, support what we're doing. I think the flip side to that and where I do a lot of context shifting is then I have to shift back to, okay, now I've got to go run this nonprofit as a small business. And I've got to make sure that we've got our mission hat on. And I've got to make sure that we don't think too corporate and miss the mark on what we're trying to do when it comes to impacting women and girls. But I think, for me, I wouldn't want to be in a role necessarily where I'm just on one path and one train of thought. I think I can't imagine any of you here are without context shifting and moving and whatever the thing is that comes up. So one moment I'm a managing, people issues in the next. I'm, figuring out volunteer management and the next time knee deep in a financial audit, or in the next time, figuring out why our it systems aren't working. And, it's a little bit of everything, but I think that what makes it come together, what makes it gel. Is all the experiences that I have come together and have allowed me to have different experiences so that when I do the context shifting, I'm not out in the middle of nowhere, but it's they're all things that I know how to do and have some experience doing, or I don't know, but I'm smart enough to call the right people and find the right people, whether they're board members or volunteers or other people on the team that can help get something done. But I think when you work in a nonprofit that's so heavily entrenched, not only at the individual level, but at the corporate level. And we work with. Not only the, corporate leaders, we're starting to get more and more involved with different employee resource groups that are in those organizations. So if there's a women's group in the organization or in particular, a women in technology group within the organization, learning how that all blends together, understanding those corporate structures, how things roll up, who makes decisions have to understand things like what are the fiscal years and when do they make budget decisions and who decides on budget and how do you convince them. the marketing department to fund this and the, the foundation side of the business to fund that. So while it feels like it's all over the place, it's also just really interesting. And quite frankly, a great way selfishly, it's a great way to, to know a lot about a lot of different organizations big businesses and how they work and who's within them and, So it's a really fascinating way to get inside a lot of corporate structures, but it's just the people that I get to meet and the things I get to learn. I would never know if I worked in an organization that didn't have that much reach. I love what you're saying there the get to, Heather gets to versus Heather has to. That's your point. Pride and sincerity that just really stuck with me. Hey folks in the audience, feel free again to raise your digital hand. I know some of you did earlier and just weren't able to get to you. So as you've got questions, please feel free to come up on stage and ask. We're happy to let you up at. Jeffrey, I'll go ahead and do that right now. Jeffrey should be able to come up on stage and there you go. Jeffrey, go for it. Yes. I'm other, I'm saying thanks for your time. This evening I've enjoyed listening to you describe the pivots and a little bit of your philosophies, but I would just, Tomas actually stole my question around allyship. So I'm going to ask you the green question. Could you maybe lean in a little bit more, excuse me, around what's the day in the life of Heather, meaning I've heard you talk a lot about, a variety of things, the variety and not wanting to be in maintenance mode. So I'm just curious from sunup to sundown, what does the day look like for you? It's interesting. That the day requires a lot of what we just talked about with the context shifting. But I think, a lot of my time, it's interesting. My team and I, we work from home, but I'm in particular on the road a lot. So I'm driving all over Metro Atlanta and meeting with people in person as much as I can. And that in person meeting might be a potential volunteer. It might be a potential donor. It might be a potential corporate sponsor. So I'm having a lot of people conversations and connecting resources to the organization or connecting people to our resources to help them. So I'd say about half my day is spent connecting externally into the community and half my day right now is spent internally from an operations perspective with the organization. I like that 50 50 blend. I like the working with my team and working on the ops and everything we do and making sure everything's happening the way it needs to. And so that may be. That's a lot of meetings. So I would say the day to day is a lot of meetings, a lot of meetings with the internal team, a lot of external meetings, a lot of talking to people, which is awesome. But if you're like me and your extrovert percentage is just slightly over your introvert, introvert percentage, I thrive on the people thing. And then when I'm done, I have to go like retreat. And not talk for a while. But that, that day to day, it really is it's being out and about in the community being very much, talking to people one on one and in small groups some of its public speaking to large groups and spreading the word about what we do with women in technology, advocating for organizations and corporations to do better work. And then. Just making sure that we're doing all the right things as an organization. So making sure, planning, special events, planning our programs making sure that we're not overlapping with similar organizations in the community. So that we're not recreating the wheel understanding where we can join forces and not do things in a bubble. But I'd say about, I'm using a lot of my engineering brain during the day, but then I'm also using a lot of my, community service. brain. I get to use a lot of pieces and parts of me for sure. Jeffrey, I mean, just to follow up question really quick. Um, I guess in your downtime, how do you spend your downtime or, recharging the battery at the end of the day? Yeah. The not so serious answer is I watch a lot of Bravo and reality TV because there aren't problems that I have to worry about or solve. And I never have to worry about being a very affluent housewife. So I can watch that and just relax. The other thing is I have a 14 year old son. He is a baseball player and he does travel baseball and all those things. So while it doesn't necessarily seem like downtime, I really do love the ability to have a flexible enough schedule that I can go to all his baseball games and see him do his thing. So I love that as well. That's awesome. Thank you so much. Yeah, that's awesome. Thanks, Jeffrey, for coming up on stage asking your questions. That's fantastic. Heather in my company, there's a couple of clients I get to work with. I'm pretty happy about some of the success I get to work through them, I imagine. You, as CEO of Women in Technology, might have some success stories, whether you can share any details or not about it, or perhaps some of the impact that you've had primarily in the Atlanta community. Any stories like that, or any success stories or things as far as the impact that Women in Technology has had, maybe at a company, maybe through a Corporate partner, like you said, or perhaps individual contributing in some meaningful ways. Anything like that come to mind that you could share with us success story wise? Yeah, so I think I think what's really interesting is women in technology does have distinct impact in the metro Atlanta area and even belong beyond. I've been fortunate in my time as CEO to be able to build on the things that came before me. So things like our single mothers program where we help women single mothers in the metro Atlanta area, many of whom are living at or below poverty with their children that are looking to transition into technology jobs. So that's a program that existed before I came in but I had the opportunity to, take it and run with it. And one of the things that we're doing, we've had 132 women graduate through the program. And what we're working on now is making sure every last one of them is able to land in a technology role that gets that technology job experience which is really going to not only change their lives, but the lives of their children. And so We are launching in January. Through a lot of hard work on behalf of my team and our volunteers, we're launching in parallel to the certification program that we've been doing. We're launching a program for all 132 graduates so that we can continue to mentor and support their journeys, that we can make sure they get ongoing mentorship, that we further ingratiate them into the larger WIC community, that they can get ongoing support for interview skills and resume reviews and Things like preparing for their first performance review and how to navigate when they do get that first big tech job, navigating culture and having somewhere to go where you feel like it's a safe space to ask questions and to get support. So that's a huge thing from a whip perspective, but it's also going to infuse some really important talent into our communities and our businesses which I think is really important. So we serve girls all the way down to the middle school level. As women in technology, we start in middle school. We serve middle school and high school. And then we try to keep that stem awareness alive. Then we serve the college level through what campus and then we have what. Young professionals. We serve women at all levels of their career. So we say classroom to boardroom and our single mother's program is a piece of that classroom to boardroom, which is that women in transition piece that we try to support. So I think that's an instance where we've seen Success and we're building the tools and the abilities to have even more success because the ultimate outcome is that 132 graduates lands in the tech role. That's going to give them a much more livable wage. And some great experience. And we know that tech jobs are a great place to be. And then we want to have that, that have that opportunity for more women. I think another thing that's been a success story that I've seen is, like I said, we work with girls starting in middle school and high school. And the WIC girls program has been around for, more than a couple of decades. It was one of the first programs that came out of the WIC community, where those women said, hey, we want to reach back down the ladder and make sure that we're, getting more women interested in this career path. And what's been really great is that the diversity that we're seeing in those programs at the student level. Middle school, high school, and even college, frankly. And so I think there, it makes me super proud to see not only serving young women, but serving young women and having more and more diversity come take advantage of those opportunities. So we know that we're building the right pipeline. That technology is going to need. And so the next step where I'm hoping to see even more success and Russell, you asked about success, but I want to bring up, a point where we're keeping a close eye on it because we're going to need to solve it as a community, which is. The numbers are showing us that more women are leaving tech mid career. So there was a McKinsey report that came out last year that the numbers were getting bad, that women were leaving tech mid career for a variety of reasons. And this year's report saw the numbers get worse. As much as I'm excited about our successes as an organization, the board and I are laser focused on what can we do to turn that tide, because obviously Businesses are losing that talent. And when you lose that mid career talent, you're also losing your leadership pipeline. So there's a double whammy that's going to have an effect because of that happening. So we're laser focused on, okay we've got the right girls coming into the pipeline. We're trying to make sure we don't lose them in college. We, we support them fully as young professionals. We bring them in as women in transition. But we really need to find a way to work with our corporate partners and with our community to say, okay, once they're in those organizations, how do we help them stay there? So there's a variety of factors we're digging into, but I think it's going to be really important from a talent pipeline perspective and a leadership pipeline perspective that we collaborate to figure out what happens next, because I think it's going to be a big problem down the road. And what you said double whammy, and that's one thing I think that, that leadership pipeline that's something that I think I would've overlooked had you not said that. And so thinking about what that looks like. Thanks for sharing that and not just saying the good things, but then some opportunities, some risks and concerns like you've outlined there. Katie over to you. Yeah. Thank you, Russell. And it's funny. I was going to ask you a little bit, to expand on some of your thoughts on mid career, but the first question I want to ask is which is your favorite franchise though on Bravo? Oh. So let's see, I am an orange County, kind of the OCOG thing. But I'm very excited that Beverly Hills is back because I was going to say, yeah, and I love it. You know what I thought was funny too. It's, I always joke about this. People who don't really ever watch these shows. They are mindless, but sometimes it's interesting. There's actually a female, a CMO who came through. Oh yeah. She's a powerhouse. That can be a diverse background to be, Netflix and other things too. So they're actually, I love watching her like that. That's phenomenal. And then I must say though, being in Atlanta, I do have a soft spot. spot for the Atlanta franchise. Oh, you have to, you're going to figure it out, but it's highly entertaining. Yes. Your hometown franchise, you have to definitely root for them every time. But I think it is so important to, to have those things. And I think it's important for those of us who are in I consider myself mid career a deputy CISO now and believe me, there have been some moments in the last couple of years where I thought, This is really hard to keep moving forward and keep moving into the leadership track that I had been, working really hard to get into. So I really appreciate those comments and if we can expand more on that as well. But you also said something earlier that came up not just once but twice in the last two weeks where I've been on various panels. One was just a panel on AI had nothing to do with DEI and then another one was a DEI panel. But. You said D. I. Is now becoming a dirty word in some aspects of corporate America. And I, I'm learning more and more about kind of some of the challenges that organizations are having around lawsuits and people Not being as supportive as they may have been previously. So I'm just curious from your perspective, what are the, some of the things that we can do is, as individuals, what are the things that we could do better in, in our organizations and then what you're doing from your perspective too to ensure that this doesn't become. A dirty word or dirty acronym, to be accurate, precise. But what are we supposed to do to ensure that we're keeping the trajectory going in the right direction and then leading into that, additional information about keeping women in this and a diverse perspective in the leadership track in mid career as well. Yeah, it's interesting, Katie. So I think that the acronym D E and I got co opted. And used in all the wrong ways, right? And now the concept is suffering because of it. So I think part of what we've got to do is we've got to help people understand really what does that mean, right? So if you take the hot button topic of it all off the table, when we talk about DE& I, what do we mean? And so it goes back to when I mentioned earlier about. the reason for having diversity at the table and the reason for businesses to care why you want more women in the room and why you want more than just one, one thought bubble, one race, one gender, whatever the case may be. You don't want to over index anywhere. But it really is, whether you're making products or you've got services or whatever the case may be, the more brains you've got in the room, the better it's going to be. And especially for businesses and organizations from a products and services perspective, who's your ultimate customer. And is that person even represented in part of what you're designing, what you're building, what you're selling. And if you take all of that away and you're homogeneous and you're not, you don't have the right representation in the room, you're not going to be as successful. I. Okay. I almost think of it as saying, if I stopped just using the term D E N I in conversations, and we just talk about representation and having the right brains in the room, and do we pivot it and reframe it? But I think for businesses, I will always stand on my soapbox of why it matters. And I will put it in, In the terms of whoever's in the room. So when I'm in my passionate nonprofit phase, and those are the conversations I'm having, I can talk about the effect that, that it has when you don't. Make sure that you're paying attention to who's involved and who's got opportunities and why and what that does for women and girls. And all the things that causes problems. But I think, I think the other pieces, let's talk about it in the language, let's talk about in business language, let's talk about the ROI. Let's talk about the bottom line financial implications, like whatever data we have to bring to the table to prove the point it's there. So I think one thing we can do in our organizations is gather that data and bring it to the table and not even necessarily have it as a passionate discussion, but have it as a logical business discussion because All the data shows that the more diversity we have, the more successful you're going to be. And quite frankly, communities of innovation happen because you've got not only shared purpose, but you've got diversity of thought. So all those things are going to be really important. I think too and Russell and I talked about it a little bit, when you think about, okay, so if you take your eye off the ball and you aren't If you aren't committed to diversity, equity inclusion, what's that going to look like? Not only from your output, but what's that going to look like for your talent pipeline, your leadership pipeline? What are the implications that are going to happen? Because if you create an environment where you're not thinking about the bigger picture, and women are dropping out mid career, and they're not there along the way. Who's going to step in, right? So I think that we just have to maybe, we have to do a couple of things. We have to rebrand and take it back and help people understand what we mean when we say it. And again, we have to sometimes reeducate people that it's not about giving an unqualified person a seat at a table they don't belong at. It's about making sure that qualified people of all backgrounds and all genders and all races have the opportunity. It unqualified isn't going to show up to the table. It's the opportunity. It's making sure that they're not invisible. It's making sure they're not left out of the conversations and the opportunities. It's just making sure that when you open the door, That you leave it open for all the qualified candidates, not just the ones that look like you. And I think that's the piece that has gotten forgotten. It's not, it's not a if a woman wins, then a man loses, right? It's not that binary. We really all, we all succeed when we look at this the right way. And we keep an open mind to who should be at the table. But I think, okay, we can pull all the statistics together and share that story, right? And so if it needs to be a financial case, we'll make the financial case. If we're going to pull heartstrings, we'll pull heartstrings. But everybody's going to be better off when we don't all look like each other in the room, et cetera. The same thing everybody understands that you don't want to be the smartest person in the room. You want to surround yourself with people as smart or smarter than you. That's how you get really successful as an org. Same things happens with backgrounds and experiences and opportunities. So we just want to make sure that we're continuing to be thoughtful. I fully believe I'm going to spend the next Couple years banging that drum and shaping that story in whatever way works and I'll have a hundred versions of it for every possible Scenario, but I think that's going to be a large part of my work Frankly over the next couple years is really trying to make sure that Companies aren't thinking of this as a liability, but as an opportunity. I love that. Yeah. Just that it's not a liability and it is an opportunity. And I think that just for our listeners and those who are listening to the podcast after when they're streaming it, you talk about data points and gathering that data. I'm, I'm in a position where, I'm often, asked to present a lot of data points. So what are the sources though, that you're. Going to first, or where would you point us to in terms of those data points? Yeah. I spend a good bit of time, doing my internet research. I think one of the places I always look to is the McKenzie women in the workplace report so that I understand what's happening and why. I use my, I was telling Allie earlier, I use my intern chat GPT for a lot of things and this is one of them. So having chat GPT comb the internet for me to find all the statistics and pull them together. But there's, there's, whether it's Forbes or McKinsey or whatever the case may be, there's a lot of data out there. There's a lot of organizations that, that you can look to. I don't have them all at my fingertips, but happy to share them in the chat after the fact about some good places to go for some of that research, but it's there. It's just a matter of pulling it together. I appreciate that. And yeah, I might pick your brain offline from time to time if you don't mind. Oh, that'd be great. I would love it. and collaborate and be able to bring that story. The story that you're telling is very much in line with the story that, I like to tell as well in terms of where my own organization and then also my place overall in the cybersecurity space. With that, thank you very much. And back to you Russell. Thanks, Katie. I definitely appreciate that. Heather, I feel like I'm just pounding you with the questions here. Folks in the audience and others feel free to Please raise your hand. Love to have you up on stage and feel that you are most welcome to have your voice heard. We definitely want you to feel that way and act upon that if you're in a position to be able to do so Heather, I was thinking about something that one of my kind of favorite books is Daniel Kahneman's book, thinking fast and slow and Some of the folks here may have heard of it or not, but in there, he talks about system one versus system two thinking. System one that says or system two thinking that talks about logic and facts. Maybe some of the facts that you pull from McKinsey women in the workplace report as an example that you said and then system one, the emotion side, the feelings, the what does it feel like? What did it look like maybe from a success story? And I'll say when I was. When I was working, I was privileged to work at the Federal Reserve of Atlanta. That's something that I had, I needed to be educated on was not that I have a wife and I love her. I have a daughter, I love her, I have a son, I love him, but being educated to look around the room, whether it's a boardroom, a leadership room, or the room full of security people I was privileged to lead and have that feeling of who's not here. And you you hit on that a little while ago of, hey, who's not here? Whose voice is not represented? Whose experience is not represented? What is that type of awareness that I'm talking about that I went through, is that typical? Is it usual? Is it often necessary or are there better ways to help people? People like me maybe people like us in the audience to be more aware and just cognizant of whether it's the logic side or the emotion side to ultimately take action and kind of seek out those voices, seek out those perspectives, seek out those. Folks that just aren't in the room at this time. Yeah. So Russell, I appreciate you, you thinking about it and positioning it the way you did. I definitely don't think that you were unique in that circumstance. I think that the fact that you, the aha moment, of, Oh, what could I be doing different? What should I be doing? Think, thinking about differently. And that's really going back to that allyship conversation, right? So part of allyship is just that exact moment of who else should be here that's not. And how do I advocate to make that happen? And with Katie and I talking about the DE& I and the idea that, that it's a pie. And if you slice it a certain way, somebody is going to win and somebody is going to lose. You just get a bigger pie, right? Get a bigger table. It doesn't have to be an either or conversation, how do you make sure that you're creating an opening and growing the space? So you've got all those perspectives at the table. But yeah, I think it's huge. Just the fact to even be thinking about it when you're in the room. Is a great start. And then it's okay. So what do I do to make a difference? And who are the people that I can connect with that are going to, that they're going to think that are going to also be passionate about making that happen and how do we make it work? It's one of the reasons where you can have organizations like women in technology. You can have 5, 000 of us all over the world, where rubber's going to meet the road is in the workplace and we're not in the workplace. All day, every day. So it's really, it's just like you said, Russell it's having these conversations and meeting enough people and opening eyes, but also working with those internal groups and internal leaders so that they're, they're taking the torch and running with it. So we may spark the flame, but we're not the ones who are going to carry the torch. So I think that it's great that we, Russell, we have folks like you and everybody on this. On this chat tonight that are thinking about what can I do and how can I do it because that's what's going to happen, right? So we're hoping to spark the conversation, but we're hoping to have, thousands and thousands of allies and all in all these workplaces that are really going to, just take it and run with that. And I'm sure Katie and Allie have some ideas about this too. But yeah I think it's just the willingness to look around the table and see who should be there and look around the office place and look, when, who should be on this call that's not and how do we make sure more of those voices are heard? It's really impactful. And some of it's working with HR, right? What are the hiring practices? If hiring practices are being run by AI bots, How are those AI bots trained? And is there diversity? Is there enough diversity and inclusion built into the training models? We hear this about AI all the time, what's the diversity and inclusion that's missing from training models? And if you're using AI to automate tasks, which HR is increasingly doing, then you know, you're you've got some issues on that side of the house, too. So it's looking across the whole organization and making sure you understand all the places where the wrong things can happen. And then how do you turn those into the right things? Got it. Thanks that extra call to action there. Anil, over to you. Thanks Russell. Heather, in the role, I think you've been in your role a little bit over a year at this stage, tell us about, your vision on how you want to shape the agenda and what you would qualify as a win, a couple of years out that time horizon of what would you see as a compliment you're trying to carry out and that sadly say, Hey, we moved the needle. Yeah. So I think the biggest thing moving forward, so one of the things that I'm doing. At the end of my 1st year going into my 2nd year is I'm making sure that everything that we're doing every program, every initiative that we have really. Really concrete desired outcomes and KPIs and measurements. So making sure that everything that we're doing, we understand what the ultimate end result should look like in an ideal world and then measuring along the way how to make sure that we're moving in the right direction. So one of the things that's going to be coming out is literally a score card that measures up against our mission and the initiatives that we're doing so that not only internally but externally you can see how we're, with or moving the needle. Which is, I think, is going to be really important. What I hope we see over the next two to three years is that we're moving the needle when it, we're still positively tracking when it comes to diversity and inclusion. Not only that we're serving women and girls, but are we serving a diversity of women and girls? And is that diversity growing and not shrinking? I think solving, Putting a dent in how we're gonna, how we're gonna figure out this piece about mid career women leaving faster, not slower. I think that's going to be a huge win that I'm hoping to see over the next two to three years. And that's only going to be done very closely aligned to the corporations that we partner with, because That's where the real work is going to happen. So I think seeing a win there is going to be important. I think the conversation I had with Katie when we get over the hump with the idea of diversity, equity, inclusion being a liability and where we see it as a positive and a game changing winning strategy. That's going to be a huge win. So that's going to be a ton of conversations, a ton of advocacy, hopefully influencing some minds that kind of take that ball and run with it is going to be huge. But I think from a tactical perspective, on the nonprofit side, what you're always facing is, do we have enough funding and resources to do the things that are important? So our list of things we need to accomplish is growing in an environment where funding is not necessarily growing at the same pace. So the ultimate success is going to be. that the funding is there to do the things that need to be done. And we're not having to leave major things undone and on the table. Especially when it comes to this, how are we going to solve some of the leaky pipeline issues that we're seeing so that when women get into tech, they're staying in tech but in a way that feels really sustainable. So that's what I'm hoping to see. And I'm hoping that the tide turns from a funding perspective. Because one of the challenges, frankly, is if women and girls in tech is seen as a D. E. I. Issue and D. E. I. Is coming off the table and out of budgets and out of Vogue, then we have a bigger issue. We've already seen it affect some organizations that have closed their doors that are doing similar work. And so I want to make sure that we don't fall behind. Prey to that same consequence. And that we can make it very clear why we do what we do and why it's important to communities and businesses. Thanks for that. Oh, that's great. Thanks for sharing that. Yeah. Awesome. Thanks, Aneel. And that leads me to my next question, believe it or not Heather, but you talked earlier, you mentioned, classroom to boardroom. It seems like that could be like a mantra logo and I get that it resonates with me. You don't have to tell me again, it just, it's sticky perhaps sticky, that idea of classroom to boardroom. And then you. You talked about, your corporate partners, the big companies in the Metro Atlanta area. We know who those are. We're familiar with what they do. What's the, has that message been as sticky with the corporate partners, that classroom to boardroom, the better for the business? Has the language that you've used with us, has that been effective or not as effective as what you'd like in the corporate area in, in our Metro area right now? I'm just wondering how that. It resonates with me, but I'm not the big companies. Does that resonate with them as well? Or do they need a different motivation or message? That's interesting. I think they all get it right. And thank you for bringing that up. So when we talk about classroom, the boardroom we try to always ground everything we do in that. Only because, there's organizations that serve part of, one end of that career journey or the other. And so we're one of the very few that, that goes from from start to finish, which I think is really important. I think where companies get it right. So depending on who you're talking to in the company, they may care more about the classroom part or the boardroom part or somewhere in the middle. Overall, I do think they care about classroom to boardroom and they get it. I think that one of the things we do is, The classroom part typically resonates from a give back to the community perspective, a future talent pipeline perspective, but also with their own corporate social responsibility their own metrics and desired impacts, right? So we align nicely there. And then obviously once you get Out of classroom and more kind of that working piece of it, right? They understand what we're gonna, we need to be thinking about future leadership. We need to be thinking about talent pipeline. So I do think it resonates, which is great. And I think that the organizations that understand you don't. You don't end up with enough women in tech leadership. If you don't think about the whole journey and support the whole journey. So what we try to do to your point, Russell, is make sure that people understand why what happens at each part of that career journey and why it matters and where things can fall apart and why an organization like what is needed to make sure that we're fostering all the way through because it matters. You got to get them in, you got to keep them, and you got to elevate them, right? Otherwise, you're not going to end up with that ultimate result that everybody wants. So I'm glad Russell, that classroom to board room resonates with you. We'll keep that. There you go. You're fully endorsed by Fireside Chat on that on that message. So I imagine, yeah, I remember, so we've been doing this for, I think, close to four years right now. It used to be every week. Recently it's gone to every month. I know when I was in the hot seat we affectionately call what you've been peppered with all these questions. What are they going to ask? When I'll be ready. I want to ask what may be my next to the last question. Maybe some questions from others, but maybe the last one was what was the question that you thought we'd ask? Prepared for and maybe we're wishing that we would ask, but we didn't get around to yet. Russell, I love that you think that I fully prepared for this. It was a desire but it's funny. So this week I'm technically on PTO and I've been traveling. I just drove back from South Carolina today. So I was preparing to prepare is probably the best way to put it. And then just hoping for the best. So I this has actually been, this has been lovely and I've really enjoyed it. I'm surprised. I could tell you the question that my dad asked me when I flip back from corporate to nonprofit, which is why would you do that? Can you just write a check and volunteer? So that's usually one that I get asked is the why of the back and forth. But I spoke to it already a little bit with around, the passion and making sure that my why is aligned with the why of my work is probably something that's really important to me and that has driven my career. But I gotta tell you y'all asked a lot of great questions. So I think what I was most prepared for was just to have a fun conversation with this crew. And my biggest fear was being hit with some hardcore cyber security stuff that I'd have to look up real quick. So I'm glad that y'all took it easy on me from that perspective. You did great. And you already said you got your fingertips are on chat. You could ask questions. I was going to be ready. It's just going to take a minute. Yeah. Hey, let's do this. I've seen the time at nine 24 Eastern time. You've been on our hot seat the last hour and a half. Let me ask you one more question and then give you a chance to any closing statements, and then we'll wind things down for for this evening, that literally the evening before Thanksgiving. So my. Last question, I promise this is the last one last question for you, Heather, is what advice would you give the younger Heather things you know now, things maybe you wish you knew now, what advice would you give the former younger self and wish you to had the ability to do that before today? So I would tell the younger me what I tell a lot of our girls and campus students that I hope that they avoid some of what a lot of us go through, but it's It's really just to have more confidence in yourself and your younger self to trust your instincts to have confidence, to take on some big challenges, to know that you are. As good, if not better than everybody else in the room and to not let society put pressure on you. I think I ended up in engineering out of spite. Not because I was. I got a lot of you're good at math and science, girls don't do that. And so just the the way I'm wired, I was like I'll show you. So out of spite, I've done what I did from an education perspective, but not all girls are wired that way. And I think having the confidence because girls are really smart and even ones that are really good at math and science starting in fourth grade, it becomes a confidence issue, not at all an I. Q. Issue. So that confidence piece is really huge for a lot of different reasons. But I would, yeah, I would tell myself what I now get to tell others, which is just believe in you carve your own path and have confidence that you can do it and you can do it your way. I love that. I've added my pages full. I've been writing notes the whole time, Heather, my pages full, but that have more confidence. in your younger self resonates with me as an ally. And then that engineer out of spite that's a fantastic guy. That's a, that's, I have to keep that one and add it to the other amazing comments that you made there. So Heather, again, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for us for here listening to this conversation live for folks who listen to the recording that we'll have available before you know it. And definitely make that a. Let you be aware of when that's available as well. We can't think enough for spending your night before Thanksgiving with us, especially on your PTO, especially when you've been traveling and all the things and the hope that you have a, just an amazing Thanksgiving, hopefully a long weekend, long deserving restful weekend for you and for your family. Oh, thank you so much. This has been a pleasure. I'm a big proponent of communities and the power of community. So thrilled to be here tonight to support what you're doing. All right. Thanks so much. And a reminder, if you're not already following our page, our business page in LinkedIn for Fireside Chat, do that. That's where we announce our next sessions, our next conversations and looking forward to the next time we get together. Everyone take care of yourselves, take care of each other, and we'll see you all here next time in Fireside Chat.