November 28, 2023 • 64 mins
This week’s guest is Raechel Canipe, and I could tell it was kicking off with a bang. From the five words that describe her and our discussion on how the word “relentless” is a positive word and speaks to a person’s passion to grow an idea to an empire.
We moved to how rapidly technology moves; Raechel’s comparison of how technology advancement is similar to compounding interest was intriguing - lightning fast. Her predictions about how education can help individuals upskill more quickly honed in the value of micro credentials which could possibly outpace traditional educational pipelines. This led to the the need to democratize the workforce.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:18):
Hi, my name is Isabella Johnston,the Intern Whisperer.
Our show is brought to youby Employers 4 Change.
And today's tip of the week is about namebias.
Names are important.
It's important to call a personby the name they wish to be identified.
We need to remember that.
So making sure that we're pronouncing itproperly is is just really critical
(00:41):
or addressing them, perhaps by a nicknameinstead of the full name.
Name bias is the tendencywhen people have to judge or prefer people
with certain types of names,typically names that are of Anglo origin.
So this is one of the most pervasiveexamples of unconscious bias,
(01:01):
and it's always used in the hiring processfor the large part,
the numbers bear it out.
One study found that white names receivedsignificantly
more callbacksfor interviews than black names.
Another study found that Asianlast names are 28% less likely
to receive a callback for an interviewcompared to Anglo last names.
(01:23):
So how can we avoid name bias?
It can be avoided if you omit thecandidate's name and personal information
like email, phone number and addressfrom the application materials.
You can either do thisby assigning candidates a number
or having an unbiased third partyteam member.
(01:44):
Omit the informationfrom the hiring process.
And that way it helps to bring in
a candidate into interview in a fair way.
This will ensure that hiring teams areselecting candidates based on their skills
and experiences without the influenceof irrelevant personal information.
(02:04):
Welcome to The Intern Whisperer.
Our show is all about the future of workand innovation.
So I want to welcome to the InternWhisperer is Raechel Canipe.
She is the founder of Womenin Tech and Entrepreneurship.
She's the VP of Marketing and Saleswith Red Star.
She combines over a decade of experiencein sales, marketing and operations
(02:24):
and is a devoted humanitarianand community advocate,
leveraging her expertiseto spearhead pivotal initiatives.
She'sthe founder of and CEO of Women in Tech.
I know I said that earlier,but I'm stressing it again
and she heads upthe organization to dismantle.
I love this financial barriersand economically empower women.
(02:45):
Rachel's impactfulwork has earned accolades
and includes the Tampa Bay inOh Fire Award.
Diane Dewey, Roberts Emerging Leaderfinalist and TBBJ,
which is Tampa Bay Business Journal,Business woman of the Year Nominee.
So welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me on.
I'm totally humbled to be here with you.
(03:07):
Isabella Oh, thank you so much.
I'm very excitedto have you as a guest on the show.
I've been watching you from afar.
You know, I know you were in Tampa.
You used to be with Synapse.
I know you've moved on,but you know synapses near and dear
to all of us for a number of reasons.
I like to kick off the show and say,Tell us about yourself
using only five words.
(03:28):
And just so our listenersknow, we did do a little bit of planning,
so I can just prompt you.
So the first one is generous.
Yeah, this,this is a really hard question.
Yeah, great exercise and self reflectionand what's really important
to us as individuals, right?
And generosity is one that's big for me.
It's very near and dear to my heart.
(03:51):
I am a methodist Christian, which is notsomething that comes up a lot.
But you know, my faith does guide me.
And in that generosity,but I've also benefited
quite a lotfrom the generosity of this community.
Even recently in setting up womenin tech and entrepreneurship,
though it's something that I'm ardentabout embodying and repaying,
(04:13):
and whether that's generosity
with my time and mentorship efforts,or whether it's generosity
with my financial commitments,
I sponsor a small scholarship bidfor a nursing program
through College of Health at USF,through the Leadership and Innovation
Forum of Tampa.
My mom got her nursing degreewhen I was a kid and I watched her hustle
(04:36):
and she was able to do thatbecause of a scholarship.
So I'm quite confident
that that scholarship probably doesn'teven cover a full semester of textbooks.
But it's something
and I fully personally fund womenin tech and entrepreneurship
out of my own pocket.
So generosity is a big one for me.
I'm hoping to be ableto do more outrageously
(04:57):
generous things in the futureas I continue to grow.
Well.
I just learned somethingthat was that's very sweet and very dear
to me is the fact that you sharedthat you're also a Christian.
So am I.
I usually will explain.
It is I'm a Jesus girl with a potty mouth.
Yeah, that's a really.
I'm going to steal that.
(05:17):
Yeah. Feel free.
You know,we'll be in the same club together
because what people should always see is
Christ in usthat's radiating out of us, right?
Not being concerned about a word.
A word is has no powerunless we use it in a negative way.
Unless we give it power, right?Yeah. Yeah.
So loving you even more now.
(05:39):
All right.
So ambitious.
Why ambitious? Oh, this is so fun.
So I grew up around
a very strict household,and one of the rules that we had
is that we were forbidden
from having a cat and our vocabulary.
Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, I like that.
(06:01):
Yeah.
So, you know,you just didn't say I can't do something.
And it it reframed the way that I thoughtabout what I could do.
And you know, how I could do something,even though it might be audacious
or it might be really difficultor it might seem really far out of reach.
And so
(06:22):
that ambition is
something that's been hardwired into mefrom a very young age.
It's something that made me believeeven when people told me
that it was a wild idea that I could start
a nationwide movement to resource women
without ever charging a single dollarin membership dues or event fees.
It's what made me agree to join ProjectAfghan Relief
(06:46):
Fund in a situationthat felt very hopeless and helpless
to believe that we could do somethingeven if it wasn't enough.
Yeah.
So ambitions another big one for me.
Relentless.
Now, we talked about this wordand it is not negative to either of us.
Let's. Let's talk about Relentless. Why?
(07:08):
So as I talk about this word,I want to give a quick shout out
to a friend, rolemodel, mentor and former boss Kashima.
She and I had such a disagreementabout the nature of this word.
It's a wordthat I love to describe myself with,
and it doessometimes carry a negative connotation.
(07:30):
But I have been kicking down doorsfor such a long time.
And you know, when I think about the kindof combination of characteristics
that have allowed me to be successfulin difficult situations, it's
persistence, it's tenacity, it's grit,and sometimes outright stubbornness.
(07:52):
Right.
And to me, nothing captures all of thosequalities better than the word relentless.
Yeah.And you made a very good point earlier.
It's also a knowing,
knowing your direction, know,being committed to that direction.
I think sometimes we overlookthe value of commitment.
We can be,you know, charmed by charisma and ideas.
(08:15):
And oftentimeswe take for granted things like commitment
and follow through and execution.
And to me, relentlessness really capturesthe essence of that, too.
Don't you think that as Christians
in other countries that we'rethat's not a faith that's recognized?
They have to be relentless.
(08:36):
Yeah, that's that's very true.
And and experience it's not exclusiveto Christians in those countries.
Right.
There are a lot of countrieswhere religious persecution
of all different shapesand stripes is very prevalent.
But people, you know, bearingreligious text,
(08:57):
you know, having to hide their identities.
And it really makes me appreciate
while we may still have challenges hereand and everyone
has obstacles in different waysand different things to overcome,
we're truly
fortunate to live in a worldwhere we are able
(09:19):
to be safe in our identityand not everyone feels that right.
There are still people who struggleto feel safe in their identity every day.
And so I do love what you're doing
with unconscious bias and the justthe crucial work that you're doing to me.
Thank you.
Equitable space.
Yeah, Thank you. I appreciate that.
I think that Relentless also describesevery person that is,
(09:44):
you know, behind us and going forwardas to if you have something
that you're passionate about,you have to be relentless.
You have to be. Yeah.
And it almost comes naturally when you'repassionate about it, too, right?
Yeah, I, I have friends all the timethat ask me, Why are you doing this?
You're workingcrazy numbers of hours at at two jobs.
(10:07):
And it justI can't even compute why I wouldn't do it.
And that's that passion, Right?
But passion fuels that relentless spirit.
Yeah, Because if somebody describes
you as passionately relentless,that's a good thing.
Yeah, it is a good thing.
So I hope that thisI know I can't be at the meeting tonight,
(10:27):
but I hope that this is likepart of the vocabulary
that you begin to usewhen you open up the meeting tonight.
I'm emotionally relentless.
We're doing a rebrand for the wordrelentless.
I think. So.
We need what you need.
So your next word was accountable.
And I love this word.
They have an impression
that the word accountableis something that's negative and it's not.
(10:49):
It is absolutely a positive wordbecause somebody is helping you
to make sure you're walking the rightpath, that they're going to be there
to have your back, that, you know,we always have to answer to somebody.
Yeah, accountability and integrity for mein many ways go hand in hand right.
But accountability, I think, is broad.
(11:11):
And so when I think aboutthe underpinnings of a very successful
business venture,someone who is personally successful,
a relationship, that success,that if you step back and take a look,
what you might find is thatthere is a culture of high accountability.
People are immaculate in their word.
They do what they say they're going to do.
(11:35):
People feel a commitmentto honor one another.
Right.
And that is all kind of wrapped upin this notion of accountability,
not just thatI'm going to do the right thing,
but that I'm actually going to followthrough on all of the commitments
that I've madeand I'm going to own the results.
(11:55):
If I have made a decision
that didn't give us the best results,I'm not going to point fingers elsewhere.
I'm not going to blame market conditions.
I'm not going to
say we just didn't have the right peopleor we didn't have the right partner.
There's no excuse me.
There are no excuses, right? Yeah, yeah.
(12:15):
Because the person that choosesand it's a choice
to be accountableknows that they can make change.
Yes. And I'm glad
that you said that because itit brings something up for me that I heard
earlier this year,and I know I'll miss attribute the quote,
but it's the author of the Power Code.
(12:36):
She also wrote the Confidence code.
She was a BBC reporter for a time.
And she's just she's fabulous.
And she has been doing this reallyimpactful research where she's uncovered
that women are uncomfortablewith the concept of power.
Their perception of poweris power over people,
(12:57):
and they don't really want that, right?
Katty Kay Yeah.
So to me she's lovely.
her research has kind of uncoveredthis perception
of power in this negative light, right?
We talked about a negative perception of,
you know, relentlessnessand accountability, right?
Well,this is a uniquely feminine perception
(13:18):
that power is about power overother people.
And she's trying to give power, rebrandand reframe it
as power to get good things doneand to make positive change
for people who are highly accountableor highly empowered.
Right? Yeah.
They believe that they have ownership
over the results that they're producingand that they can get things done.
(13:41):
Yeah, I love that you said that. Yeah.
Thank you.
I think that accountability is is truly
the thing that does push things forwardlike what you were saying.
And if you don't have that, that'syou know some people can lose weight
but the accountabilityknowing that there's somebody at the gym
waiting for them or, you know, whatever,that they're going to text them.
(14:02):
Did you go to the gym today?
You know, like that is an added incentive.
And it doesn't meanthat they have to be visible.
They can also be seenthat they may not be seen in person.
Right.
You can alwayswe have a whole bond that allows us
to connect with people in waysthat we never knew we could.
Yeah. Yeah. Accountability.
(14:24):
Mm hmm. Okay.
This is super, super good.
And I wrote this book downbecause I'm going to go look at it.
I think. Oh, check it out.
So one of your last words, hyphenated
will make it intellectually curious.
Yes, intellectually curious.
So always have been.
But I do attribute a lot of this.
(14:45):
I was to my background.
I know we're going to get into that,so I won't spoil it too much.
But when I was a little girl, I wanted togrow up to be a research professor.
I knew you were going to say it.
How? You know.
Well, you have a vocabularyThat's incredible.
I was an English teacher and I'm like,listening to you, and I'm like,
Well, she she has a great vocabulary.
(15:07):
She reads all the time.
She actually implementsthese words into her everyday language.
So I could tell that.
But as you were talking
about some of these books,I what she thinks like a scientist.
So I see you as a researcher.
Thank you.
I, I have such a soft spot in my heartfor research.
And, you know, I still half jokingly
(15:29):
have not told my partner that I'mjust going to go back and get my Ph.D.
and cloister myself away with my research.
But I I'm so glad that I hadthat classical research training
because it reallyhas made me very analytical
and it's taught me to askvery good questions.
And, you know, questionasking alone is important.
(15:51):
Yeah, it's important.
You know, I, I lead sales and marketing.
If I want to understand our customersand what's important to them at Red Star,
I need to ask really good questions.
When we think about business operations,we need to be curious about
why are we getting the resultsthat we're getting?
Why are we doing thingsthe way that we're doing them?
(16:13):
And a lot of that came to meby way of that classical research training
and when we look at larger social patternsas well, and some of the things
that we seek to address with womenin tech and entrepreneurship,
these are complex issuesthat no simple answers.
And if you're not very curious about
why things are the way that they areand really squirreling out
(16:37):
good quality, credible information,
it's hard to have high intention,high impact strategies, right?
So that's a big one for me.
I'm also an avid bookworm and I'm going tosay something will not endear me at all.
But it is a huge teacher's pet.
As a kid,I was an old so hoping, you know,
(16:57):
I just got along better with adultsthan than kids most of my life.
And so some of the benefit of thatis is learning to think really critically.
And yeah, I think at an advanced levelsometimes I totally agree.
I had found this article and it truly wassaid think like a scientist.
(17:17):
And I went, you know, people don'tI reached out to the gentleman
that wrote the article and I said,Is it okay if I publish this?
I know you may have itpublished somewhere else.
I don't want to mess with your metricshere, but this was really insightful
and that intellectually curiositythat we need to have all of those things.
It's like we need to be four yearolds and really sit here.
(17:39):
But why?
And the two year old questionWhy, why, why?
I mean, those are good questions.
They are in the world beatsthat are robust, that
even if it doesn't intend to,we're not taught to ask good questions.
We're taughtto give the right answer. Yes.
And you look at these social experimentswhere
they get people who are highly intelligentto give wrong answers
(18:00):
because they are reading,you know, social cues in the room
that they're giving the wrong answer,even though it's the right answer.
So we're we're just programfrom a very young age to give answers
and not to ask questions.
And it doesn't serve us well.
So I'll share.
We have a new hire who's a dearfriend of mine, also from the community.
(18:24):
And one of the things that made memost excited about recruiting him
into our business at Red Starwas the volume of questions that he asked.
Yeah, right.
He asked the best questions to the pointwhere I'm
a little bit embarrassed to admit this,but I sometimes get a little bit
annoyed by a good question, like,
(18:44):
why haven't I asked myself this? Or
it is just
I can't understate enoughhow important that skill is.
Mm hmm. Totally.
So where did you go to school?
How did you get to where you are now?
You can take us on any path that you want.
Okay, So this is a good question.
And I I'll I'll keep it brief,but but try to get on.
(19:10):
We have a lot of good stuff to talk about.
We do. We do.
So I mentioned earlier in the showthat I really wanted to be a research
professor when I grew up, and I mentioned
on the show, you know, I moved out young.
I had some help.
You know, my mom was
(19:31):
a single mom and she went back to school,not once, but twice while growing up.
She could have a Ph.D.
right now,and she waited tables the entire time
to pay the bills.
Sometimes she worked multiple jobs,two and three jobs to pay the bills.
And even as she was doing all thattalk about generosity,
(19:52):
she did some prepaid college for me,which was tremendously helpful.
And I had scholarships,but I still had to work to pay the bills.
So I worked in hospitalityand I entered school
with one concept of money,and I left school with a very different
concept of moneyand the goals that I had right.
(20:14):
So as I matured through that four yeardegree process,
I did really well in the research space.
I did a few talks and postersat national conventions,
and I also left
with this heart wrenching realitythat I was probably not
going to be able to do another four years.
(20:37):
And in a Ph.D.
block program, you can't take outside workand not even legal to do
you have to work in your research lab
in the kinds of
programs that I would be pursuingat that time.
And I just couldn't
fathom a way that I was going to do thatwithout taking on a huge
amount of student debt.
I was going to start out of about $75,000a year, which isn't a bad number.
(21:02):
And certainly sounded like a good numberat 16, right?
Yeah.
But as an adult who, you know, paidall of my own living expenses,
I knew that with the student debton top of that and that being a four year
horizon nearly to the age that I am now,
I would have been well,I would have been like 26
to 28, somewhere in there.
(21:25):
I was not going to be ableto build the kind of life
where I could take care of my mom,where I could have financial freedom
and independence.
And also I realized I was probably goingto have to move somewhere
where another professorwho had tenure had either, you know,
(21:45):
decided to move away
or not to be more of it,but had kicked the bucket
because those positions are very fewand far between.
Right.
So I made the choiceto go into the business world,
and it took me a really long timeto figure out what I was going to do
or that I even hadall these transferable skills.
(22:06):
I did not realize thatworking in hospitality
had actually given mea lot of really good skills.
I did not realize that my researchbackground in psychology
had actually given mea lot of really great skills.
So I but I was really lucky.
One of our graduate assistant knewthat many of us
would find ourselves in this situationmade us all get linked. End
(22:31):
as a requirement of oneof the research programs that we were in.
And I got recruited off of LinkedInto go sell copiers,
which is every millennial girl's dream,right?
Yeah.
So I had some reluctance about this,
but my he eventually became my sponsor.
But the gentleman who recruited meand to work
(22:52):
was a regional president at the company,and he had a very similar family
upbringing to mine, similar challengeswith opportunities.
And he had shared with methat this would be
a great way for me to explorea lot of different industries,
to build my resume,to get a great skill set.
(23:13):
And he was right.
And, you know,
I also had a very supportive communityof girlfriends who said,
I know that you're not excitedabout selling copiers,
but do you realize that SaraBlakely Self-made?
I don't know. She.
Oh, yeah.
Now, Yeah, well,way over that way over that.
She started out selling copiers.
(23:34):
And not only didshe start out in the same space,
she did it in the same town as mewith the same people,
the founders of the company that I workedat were the predecessors
that she had worked with initiallybefore they sold their first company.
So that was all really motivatingand inspiring.
On the flipside of that, I was dealing with
(23:57):
what I would call rampant sexism.
I had
some quote unquote prospective clientswho would
waste my time bringing me over to go
through proposals for different timeswith four different markups,
only to call meand tell me that the deal was mine.
(24:18):
If I would go to dinner with them,
I had a branch manager
who told me that I should.
HopefullyI don't get myself in trouble with this
and hopefully he's not with them anymore.
But you told me thatI should get a boob job
with my first commission checkbecause I will sell more.
(24:38):
And, you know, I'mI'm established in my career,
But we're not talking about the eightiesor the nineties.
No, this is in recent history.
Things like thisare still happening. Yeah.
So from fromthere I had a lot of good experiences.
Very good sponsor and mentor,but there was always
(24:58):
this undercurrent of somethingnot quite being right.
I had someone handpicked meout of the organization
to help evangelizethis robotic task automation product.
And you know, he knew
that I would be helping evangelizethis across, you know,
(25:19):
30 to 40 branches at the time,the entire company footprint.
And he said to meone day that a young single
woman should not be traveling for work.
And it was benevolent sexism,but it's still sexism.
I don't know how you expect me to domy job and educating sales
force of 300 people on this productand showing up in their client meetings
(25:43):
and helping themlearn the deal strategy behind this.
If you don't want me to travel,they're never going to trust me
to do this right.
We have to build relationships,
but that got me into channel marketing
and channel sales and sales education
and gave me the opportunityto spread my wings in a different way.
(26:05):
And so from there, I dove more directlyinto strategic marketing.
I got recruited from some TampaBay Chamber involvement
by a defense contractor that wantedto get more into the commercial sector,
and they had some really interestinghigh tech products that they were moving
with open source intelligence.
(26:26):
So I joined them for several years
and wonderful people, had a greattime, had a beautiful corner office,
had a great compensation package,
still still adoredthem, got the opportunity
to serve with project FamilyFund through them.
But I also found myself still the partyplanner, still in the office
(26:52):
at 2:00 in the morning,supervising the holiday decorators
while everyone else had gone home.
Right.
Which, you know,
I don't know how versed in marketingmost of the audience here will be,
but I'll tell you that Christmas treesare not part of marketing.
Yeah, So,
so so that led me to get intothe nonprofit space.
(27:17):
After working in the humanitarian spacefor a little bit,
I realized that it's really important work
and I'm very passionate about it,but it's heartbreaking.
So we were able to get about100 people out after the fall of Kabul.
But that, you know, is relativeto the tens
of thousands of people who needed help.
(27:37):
And that really wasn't sustainable.
The journey for me emotionally, itit burnt me out.
But I still wanted to find a wayto do something good.
And I had been a board memberwith Synapse on the impact
board, and I had the very good fortune
that Bryan Cornfeldbrought me into the team at Synapse.
(27:57):
Did you know that hehad been a guest on my show?
I remember is going back and forth.
I have like 280 episodes now.
Yeah, but I had him and I went backand I was looking and I went,
Oh my gosh, When you were there,we were talking about his
his episode, which was actually,I think it was last year.
And this year it's LaurenLauren's been on the show this year.
(28:19):
I listen to Lauren's.
She's fabulous. Yeah. Yeah.
Make it a great day.
I find out about track and find brands.
I had a wonderful timeworking person apps.
A lot of people don't realize that thethe staff is a full time staff.
Yeah, about four or five people.
Right.
That put on super major events,very high impact events.
(28:44):
You know thousands of peopleattends an app summit and snaps Orlando
and just recently this past weekthe Met Center Global Week.
That is right.
Yes. A bigger celebration. Yes.
It's like the Southby southwest of Orlando.
It is.
It is.
It's very,very cool and it's very high impact.
You know, we're connectingpeople from all over
(29:09):
founder was co-founders.
Venture capitalist
people are hiring their first employees
or their thousand employeesat these events.
People are pitching and getting fundingfor their business ideas.
And that really lit the fire in me.
I knew that I wanted to do somethingcommunity oriented,
(29:30):
and so I did
a few years on the board,a full year on the staff,
and I took a position with Red Star
for Equity, working with my my partnerand my life partner,
the CEO there to help him scalewhat's his name?
Ken. Pamelaokay, a little shout out for Ken.
(29:52):
A little shout out for Ken.
I super appreciate hand him.
But he he asked me to come in
and help him with scaling his salesand marketing and offered me
the flexibility to grow women in techand entrepreneurship at the same time.
So he has partnered
and been one of our biggest supportersfor women in tech and entrepreneurship.
(30:13):
He's made the whole effortpossible and in a way that
would have been
much, much more difficult without him.
From sponsoring our Orlando Chapterlaunch alongside Full Sail
to I jokingly call him my travel sponsor
because he will oftentimesgo with me to chapter events.
(30:37):
So he's he's really wonderful.
And so that kind of leads me to whereI'm at today.
Women in Tech and Entrepreneurshiphas four chapters now.
We're working onlaunching our Jacksonville chapter.
That's unbelievable.
We're working on launching universitychapters, starting with USF,
but definitely interested to expand
(30:58):
and the other markets that we havebig sister chapters, so to speak.
So yeah, creating that flow of ideas,interdisciplinary,
collaborative,Asian mentorship opportunities,
I'd like to say opportunitiesfor our senior members
to bestowsome wisdom on our student members.
(31:20):
But what I expect will happen is that it'scalled peer and reverse mentoring.
It is parents, you know,that's what I built
everything around is peer reversementoring and employers for change.
You and I are like, so on the same page,I just love what you're doing.
I really do.
And so that's my hopesfor that program, right?
And we've had
(31:40):
women in New York and Toronto and Atlanta
reaching out, asking us when we're goingto scale into their market.
So so we're laying the foundations.
We'reabout to launch our steering committee.
So that's really exciting.
It is.
It's our board, basically,but it's our trial run for our board.
(32:01):
So we are getting the roles refinedthis first wave of people
that have helped us get here are goingto step in positions where they're able
to set the entire legacyand future of the organization.
So we're starting to recruit for that.
And then on the registerside of the house, we're starting to play
(32:21):
in the machine learning space and like
large data analytic kind of models.
So really exciting thingsgoing on on all fronts of the career now.
But if you had asked me backwhen I graduated
with my bachelors in psychologythat was worth $10
an hour, what I would be doing now,I don't think I could have guessed this.
(32:44):
No, no, we never can.
And I'll just formally I'mgoing to put you on the spot a little bit,
so let me know how I can be of assistance.
I do have backgroundin nonprofit management, so
used to work for the Nature Conservancy.
You know, I've worked in RollinsCollege and Foundation relations, so
parallel to education, it's
(33:04):
the same amount of time, 25 years,a nonprofit as well as an education.
So happy to helpwherever you need support.
We'll have to talk about thatto the big goals that we have for
those audacious goals,I guess the audacious goals.
So one is to launch a foundation
to scholarship womenwho are pursuing micro credentials,
(33:26):
because we think that's really goingto be super impactful
to economic empowerment, to the futureof the workforce, to meeting the needs
that most of our corporate partnersare going to have in the near future.
And then the flip side ofthat is starting a foundation
to help women who are limitedin their friends and family round
(33:47):
as they're raising capital. Right.
Because, okay,I want to apply for all of us. Yeah.
I'd love to talk to you more about thoseand how we're trying to structure those,
because I know I'm humble enoughto know what I don't know.
So yeah, I get where you are.
I totally get where you are.
Well, we're going to move over hereto another question
because this was good stuff. And
(34:10):
favorite quote that you live by.
Oh, it changes from day to day.
My my usual answer to this and
I won't attribute itbecause I'm not sure who actually said it.
It's attributedto a lot of different people.
But it's we're
put on this earth to serve one another,and I genuinely believe that.
But the one that's been more salientfor me recently
(34:32):
I attribute to my mother
growing up, I was a rigid perfectionist.
I, you know,wanted everything to be just so.
And I think for a lot of high achievers,perfectionism can get in the way
of maximizing opportunities and realizing
full potentialand having the most possible impact right?
(34:54):
So she would tell me all the time
that A hard earned B
was more valuable than an easy A?
That's very true.
It's so true. And it's stuck with me.
And it when I'm having those momentsof perfectionism where
maybe I'm not leaping out of the nestthe way that I need to, or maybe I'm
(35:17):
letting the daunting ness of some goalthat I have get the better of me.
I remember thatit doesn't have to be perfect.
I just have to go out and do it andgive it my best shot and and try my all.
And, you know, learning some lessonsthe hard way is
is better than sitting the sidelinesand taking the easy grade.
Yeah, a grade is not.
(35:38):
I used to teach middleand high school English, so I taught at
risk as well as standardand then honors level classes.
So one of the things that I learned
is that somebody see,I didn't define them.
It was really that they spent a lotof time really knowing and understanding.
And it could have beenfor different reasons, language barriers.
(36:00):
It could be for somethingthat was an intellectual, could be because
the home life didn't allow,but it didn't define them.
Their work ethics are the things that I,I couldn't see, but I saw in the output.
So You know,I think that a grade it might show
somewhat how hard somebody works,but that's not always just like
you said to your point, it can be justsomebody that it came too easily.
(36:24):
So really it's more of what'swhat did they get out of that education?
Yeah. What kind of character did it build.
Yeah. And beyond education to Right.
When I think about an event
or a new programfor women in tech and entrepreneurship,
it's better
to do it and bring the resourcesand not have it be absolutely perfect
(36:48):
than it is to push itoff, not move quickly.
And so part of this, this mantraand this attitude has allowed me to move
very, very quickly.
And nine times out of ten,I'm delivering a much higher quality
than than I think I am,whether that's in my rap star career or,
you know, and what I provideto the community, the feedback that I get
(37:12):
is that I am a much harshercritic and self evaluator.
Right?
And I think a lot of highachievers are prone to that, right?
So the the lesson for me is that,
you know, even though I may be fearfulthat I'm not going to do
well at something
or look perfect at something thatI still need to get out there and do it.
(37:33):
Mm. I totally agree with you.
What are you most grateful for?
So many things.
So many things.
It is very hard to narrow it down.
I'm certainly grateful for my partner.
He's already gotten a shout outand for my mom and my family,
but I you know, I've just beenincredibly floored by the way
(37:55):
that people have turned out to supportwomen in tech and entrepreneurship.
Totally unexpected.
And even in this conversation today.
Right. And I'm I'm grateful for that.
I'm grateful for communityand for the way that we're all banding
together around a shared mission.
(38:16):
So Michelle Moore and
she's the lady, they're incredible,incredible forces of nature.
There are Orlando chapter chairs.
And, you know, had Michel not approachedme, she came all the way to Tampa
for a womenin tech and entrepreneurship event.
And because sheshe couldn't find what she needed here.
(38:38):
But not only did she comeall the way there, she followed through.
She told me that she was interestedin doing this with me in Orlando.
And here we are, five or six months
out from watching the Orlando chapter,
I'll be going to a sold out Women and Techand entrepreneurship event tonight.
Michelle and Lindsey plan.
(39:00):
Lindsey Huge responsibilities,very involved.
And the community has takena ton of her time
and her resourcesto help promote and connect women.
I mean. Lindsey Murphy, Right?
Yeah, Yeah.She's been a guest on my show, too.
How is she? Is amazing, right?
They're amazing.So I'm so grateful for them.
(39:20):
I'm grateful for all of our chaptercarriers across the state from Fort
Lauderdale to Saint Pete and Tampaand our new student officers.
Mm hmm. Okay.
I would like to have Michelle on.
So I did send her a note,just so you know.
So I'd like to have youas a guest on the show
so you can let her knowthat when you go to meet her.
Yeah. Oh, sure. Yeah.
Oh, she'll love that.
(39:40):
She'll be very articulate also.
Yeah. And great.
Really interestingcareer. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Yeah.
What do you want to be remembered for?
So for me, mentorshipsponsorship has played
a really big role in my life,and I oftentimes
find myself thinking about peoplewho've had a good impact on me.
(40:04):
this is where I get awayfrom the big audacious goal, right?
I don't want my name to go downin some history book.
What I really want is to know that
I've hadthat kind of impact on someone else
and to know, you know,that one day down the road
there are other peoplewho think back on me
and how I have tried to help themand their journeys.
(40:27):
And the same way
that I think of my mentors and sponsors,you know what that is?
Impact Legacy.
Yeah. That's what we all want to be.
We want to know that we did deliversomething that's just a legacy
that lives on and it just trendsversus around the world.
Yeah, I want to have a positive impact.
I think we all do.
Sure. I hope that we all do.
(40:48):
Now, most people.
Yeah, Well, we're going to take a momentto acknowledge
our sponsor, Cat 5 Studios,and we'll be right back.
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(41:08):
Thank you.
Cat 5 Studios.
Now, what does 2030 look like? We're here.
Oh, it's only five yearsbecause we don't count.
2031, Not counting this year.
So there's just like five years,five years fast.
and it's it's like compounding interestrate.
It's happening so fast.
So several things I,
(41:28):
I have already seenwith our clients at Red Star
we are looking at take for instancein construction
large data sets and apply
machine learningand AI to those to improve
the quality of decision making, to improvethe accuracy of things like beds.
(41:49):
Right.
I see in five years that that is the norm.
That is no longer,you know, an innovative move
on the bleeding edge for our business, butthat every business is using, you know,
machine learning and AI to make betterdecisions in their business.
I see micro credentials
(42:11):
very quickly outpacing
traditional education pipelines,which still have their place
and are still very importantbut are not always accessible to everyone.
Right.
So I see micro credentialsdemocratizing the workforce
and economic opportunitiesfor high wage tech careers.
(42:33):
hopefullysee teams that are doing incredible,
exciting, bleeding edge work
just as they are today.
And we have a presence and Columbia
and Tampa and Austin.
We've got some in Toronto,so I'm I'm looking forward to seeing that
(42:55):
expand even further and to tap into
clients and businesses all over the world.
Very ambitious.
On the womenand tech and entrepreneurship front.
I see as having our foundations launched.
So I guess they let the cat out of the baga little too early in the show, but
well, it's going to be a monthwhen it airs, so I don't think so.
(43:20):
The so the the
3 to 5 yearsgoal is for us to have really.
Well funded foundationsto help seed micro credentials
for women to help seedthat friends and family round for women.
So I envision those being launchedand I envision us
getting a really great scalable modelwhere any woman in any community
(43:44):
can pick up the banner and say,We need this here globally
because community is incredibly importantto being successful.
Whether that is as a technology executiveor as the founder of a business
or an entrepreneur, need a good community,you need strong social capital,
(44:04):
you need access to people who shareyour values and want to support you.
So that's that's where I see us.
And 2030, that'ssounds like it's going to happen, too.
I mean, everything for your organizationis moving super fast.
All of all of my estimates have been offby about 50%.
It's all happenedabout 50% faster than I thought it would.
(44:27):
That's a good sign. Really good sign.
So what are your thoughts?
Robots, AI, Augmented reality.
Virtual reality.
You can make yourself be the expertin whatever you want to focus focus on.
It could be all of them.
I'm not arrogant enoughto pretend to be an expert
in any particularokay, I'm a great generalist.
(44:50):
You know, my partner and I were rewatching
iRobot, the World Smart moviethe other day.
Everybody's talking about it again.I have not watched it.
I'm going to have to go back and gowatch it.
You'll have to.
So the thing that we laughed aboutwas that there is a very particular scene
where they show the guy checking outfor like a couple of beers and it's,
(45:12):
you know, $40 for two rounds of drinksand we're there.
Costs are about that right now today.
But the difference is that in iRobot,
in nearly every householdhad their own personal robot
maid, butlerattending to all of their needs.
Right.
(45:33):
We're not there yet.
And I don't see us there in 2030 either.
But what I dosee AI pervasive to everything, right?
It is going to change the way that we domarketing.
It is going to change the waythat people do business operations.
It is, I hope, going to improve
(45:55):
not just our overall productivity,but also our quality of life.
I think what we've seen up to thispoint is that technology has allowed us
to do more and more work and be moreand more accessible and available,
whereas What our,you know, early predictions were
that we would be downto like a ten hour work week by now.
(46:15):
That hasn't happened.
So I'm I'm still optimisticthat we'll see that.
But I also see,you know, on the flip side of that,
we have more datavulnerability than ever before, right?
People are not
in control of their information right nowtoday.
And I see that only getting worse in 2030
(46:36):
when we talk about the application of
AI to things like voiceand replicating voice, I predict that
the sophistication of scam calls robo
calls is going to hit new heights.Oh, yeah.
And you know, there are people out therewho will say, Well,
then just don't let your voice be recordedanywhere.
(46:58):
For people who are involvedin the community, that is not an option.
And we don't want peoplewho are security minded and conscious
to find that they are excludedfrom the community writing.
We want everyone to be ableto participate and contribute.
So whether that is running for office,whether that is being an executive,
(47:22):
there comes a time where you haveto put your voice and face out there.
And so I have concerns aboutdata security, data privacy
and a very big and salient way
and the accuracy of thingslike AI for facial recognition.
So a member of our community
and a really wonderful journalistwith a budding media business,
(47:47):
Lisa Sparks, who writesa really great newsletter on this,
and she looks at the intersection
of technology, race, class and gender.
some of her reporting is it's
just outright fearful.
We She's she's goodat having a very balanced hand.
(48:08):
But we hear things like,you know, pregnant women being arrested,
detained, left on a bench in a cell
for one or two dayswithout water or food for a crime
that they didn't commit,that they don't match the description for,
that they weren't evenin the same location, I think, or state.
(48:30):
But I picked them up as a match somehow.
Mm hmm.
So there
there are some serious concerns therewith the accuracy of that
and the potential impactthat we need to address.
And and quickly.
There is a movie on Netflixand it's called Unconscious Bias,
and it specifically discusses
the use of a AI and facial recognition.
(48:53):
And it does okay
with being able to identifywhite people very clearly.
But when it comes to people of color, it'sjust like everybody looks the same.
And I may or may not have said this,but that was about a black woman
and there are lots of other examplesthere.
She also has good timelines of black womenexecutives in different
(49:14):
large tech firms facing resistanceto bringing up some of these issues
and in some cases, outright termination.
I don't want to miss citeany things or encourage
anyone who's interested to golook up Lisa's work on their own. Mm.
But, but these are huge and pressing,real concerns
that have real impact for real people.
(49:36):
it's just essential that we addressthose things as soon as possible.
While I see a huge positive impact of
AI for all kinds of businessapplications, that's a real challenge.
less urgent or less dire.
But, you know, my ownanecdotal experience, I've been playing
(49:57):
with AI image generation for stock images.
If you want to talk about a spacewith some bias stock images,
it's definitely one of those spacesto be very hard to find good
representative material.
And so the AI produced
a fairly good image of a womanprofessional in a particular space
(50:20):
that might work for womenin tech and entrepreneurship branding.
But I, you know, at the time,as I was thinking
about my brand palette and colors,I thought I wanted to go, you know,
a darker, more neon kind of tackypoppy vibe
and I asked the AI to make
that kind of change in the background,to darken the colors down a little bit.
(50:43):
And instead it just gave bigger cleavage.
Wow. Yeah. Oh, my God.
Out ranges. And so you're
saying, Yeah.
So I'm not sure how it got,you know, dark in the colors in the back
and turn that into making cleavagewhere there wasn't cleavage before.
(51:05):
But that's a serious programing issueis yeah it's almost laughable.
It's so outrageous.
Yeah that that yeah that is that is crazy.
So with the discussion about AI,
one of the things that I purposely goand try and break it
and I want to see how many parameterscan I put in there before
(51:27):
it's just like cracks.
And then I've asked to do some thingsbecause the use of
I know that I work with a lot of students,
nontraditional students as well as,you know, traditional age.
And I would always say, hey, I want youto go and use a you need to be using it.
You need to be able to figure it outand understand.
(51:47):
So I worked with these high schoolkids for the summer on social content
for five weeks,and they both spoke Spanish.
It was not theirthat is their first language.
They were using it.
And I said, But this you don't talkthis way.
You know, it was writing probably at like,
I don't know, probably a college levelbecause of the vocabulary.
(52:09):
And I said, you need it to sound like you.
You really, really do.They didn't want one.
She was very, very good at it,but she did not want to do that.
She thinks it made it sound better.
Yes and no.
So you can ask.
I chat to break it downand write in eighth grade level.
So I had it right.
The first one,
(52:30):
which was, you know, college level,and then it wrote in eighth grade
and then I said, Right,like a five year old.
And the five year old is the one languagethat, you know, made it easy
for anybody to understand.
Yeah.
So there is
there's a lot of meritin being able to explain things
simply and make it accessible right.
(52:51):
And I often think it's overlooked.
And I do use catch up for copy for,you know,
some of the repetitive things that we doat women in tech and entrepreneurship.
And oftentimesI find it uses really a lot of hyperbole.
And, you know, it's a very flowery word,flowery
words like this does not resonate.
(53:12):
Right? We're burying the lead.
Another interesting thing,if you like, you know,
cognitive psychology and neuroscienceand things like that.
I remember a few years agonow, maybe I was listening
to this really interestingcoverage of how,
you know, there are fashionsand trends in literature, right?
(53:33):
And so we've moved from like the HermanMelville, Moby Dick super long novel
to these really, really short storiesand the cognitive impacts of that
and what it does to attentionand to someone's ability to work through,
you know, complex plotlines and retaining
large volumes of informationfrom the beginning of a story to the end.
(53:55):
Right. Buying backthose early details. Right.
Well, now we're having chat up t
write for us, writing is a cognitive
skill with neural paths and learning paths
that are unused go away over time.
They atrophy. Right?
So I think it's important that we'relearning how to use these tools.
(54:18):
But if we're so reliant on these tools,we lose that skill of writing.
What else are we losing with it? MM
So I think that's somethingthat's interesting to keep in mind.
So for those of youwho are avidly using it, oftentimes
it takes a good writer to recognizereally good copy what say.
But you know what, though?
(54:39):
I read this articlethat said that students had
they had the same assignment,so they used chat to do it
chat, produced the same essay.
So instead of being plagiarism,like they didn't copy off of each other
but chat because it hadthe same assignment, made three out of 30
students turn in the same thing,and so they spent no effort
(54:59):
in customizing it or doing researchto ensure that it was truly
going to be a thought outand researched enhanced article.
They just went the easy route.
And I went,Yeah, what I think that chat will become
is more of going to bewhere people have to do research.
So it should be helping you
refine your research skills and ensuringthat you put citations in there.
(55:23):
I've asked that for citations.
It doesn't do a very good joband I've even asked it to do it
like an APA format.I used to teach it anyway.
This is not APA format.Yeah, it needs work.
Yeah, it would need some work, butit will get better at well it really well.
And so, you know, anecdotally
and our Women in Techand Entrepreneurship newsletter,
(55:43):
I put together a list of resourcesthat are based around a theme,
whether it's finance or on a page board,things like that.
And I will ask strategy because I knowof the resources in my immediate at work,
but there might be other more resourcesthat I should consider.
So oftentimesasked you to give me a list of resources
(56:06):
related to a subjectand about 50% of them are real resource.
So that's another fun thingthat you can do with DVT.
And it may have gotten better.
Now you should ask it to write a bio.
I'm all over the Internet
and I chose a few other peopleI know who are all over the Internet,
(56:26):
and this is backwhen it was still plugged into being.
I think they've turned that off for now.
But I asked it to write biosfor about four of us
have enough online that you should be ableto take a stab at it all.
Four of us became founders,which I thought was just so interesting
and kind of cute, but I itself is a littlebit egocentric in that way.
(56:51):
But the, you know,
the foundations of the bios, the bones,and there
you could definitely customize themand make them work quite well.
It did give you a really good formatto work off of,
but it justit totally fabricated the information.
So, you know it should be used,as you said, as a tool.
Yeah.
(57:12):
That you put your own input into as well.
There was this articlethat came through my email here
and it said Hereyou can sign up for this course.
You can becoming a AI expert
and you take two master classes for free
and you now get a certificateto be an AI expert
(57:34):
just to just three classesfor master classes now.
Yeah, apparently so.
Sign up nowand you can become an AI expert.
And I went I think is a little bit morethan that they're probably over promising.
I think if that was true, we probablywouldn't have clients coming to us.
A rep start asking ushow to implement this into their business.
Yeah.
(57:55):
Yeah. So much so.
So I feel likethis is just like when we first,
when you lookat the industrial pages, right,
and you see the progressionof historical events
and anything that's happeningin the world, technology as it advances,
we start with, well,there was hieroglyphics
and you know, they were in Egypt,all of this and you can go further back
(58:16):
and then you get to a place wherewe're moving past printing press.
Okay, So now we have books, right?
But there's good information.
There's still informationin all of these things.
There's a bias.
And then we move to we've got the Internet
and we're going, okay,so that's like it's on the Internet.
It must be true. But not everything onthe Internet is true.
Not everything in books is true.
(58:38):
Not everything on those tablets was true.
And so now we're over here with chat.
Not everything on chat is true.
It takes the good informationthat is in all of Google,
all of being all of everything,and it just pulls it in there and says,
Here you go.
That'syou have to fact check this information.
We all do.
We have a responsibility to factcheck it and make sure it's accurate.
(59:00):
And that's a skill that I thinkneeds to be incorporated. Yes.
And so, you know, I missed this earlier,but I'm glad you brought this up
because something that I am
very optimistic and bullish
on for 2030 and tech and beyond,is that there you know,
just as we recently addedfinancial literacy
to high school curriculums, there's nowtalk of mandatory computer science. Yep.
(59:24):
And I think that that is
a very belated move.
I think it's a really important move.
It Can't happen soon enough.
And I think it's going to transformopportunities for a lot of young people,
but also for our businesses.
We need this tech talentand if kids don't know
that this is accessibleand available to them,
(59:47):
they don't pursue the career, right?
It's like learning a language.
It can it's delayed and it canit can seriously harm you.
It it can.
But it's also, you know, we are stillwhen we pull and research with kids
what they want to do, they're still namingthe same five things as in the 1950s.
It's accountant lawyer.
(01:00:08):
Yeah, right.
There's just not necessarilyan awareness of that age
of all the opportunitiesthat are available.
So while we kind of watch that legislationand see what happens
there, we're really hopeful that we'll seethat implemented in curriculums,
or at least I'm very hopefulthat we'll see that implemented.
There are a lot of really good
(01:00:29):
organizations doing work in that space,like Girls Who, Code
Tech, Sassy Girls,the robotics clubs first.
Yes, first robotics,
you have connect at 360
doing entrepreneurial skillsand high school kids.
Do they spend a whole yearbuilding a business?
(01:00:52):
You've got think big for kids,creating all this awareness.
So a lot of really good programs
that junior achievementthat you can lend your support to.
Now they're all really,really good things for sure.
What is the best mentoring advice thatyou want to share with our our listeners?
So my favorite piece of advice
(01:01:13):
came to me a very long time ago,and it was that I should not just
have a mentor, but I should have a boardof directors for myself.
So you need
mentors who are outside of your industry.
You need sponsors within your business.
So for those of you who aren't familiar,a sponsor is a mentor
(01:01:35):
who can advocate for youwithin the employer that you work for.
You you have a multifaceted wife, right?
And each mentor
can address a number of thingsthat you might be working
on, but you never want to isolate, right?
(01:01:56):
You want to kind of take on a widevariety of they should not look like you,
they shouldn't look like you.
They should look like the waythat you think about things.
And a good mentor sometimes might make you
a little bit mad, too, for
So I would say for meit's the board of directors
(01:02:16):
and I continue to have a number of mentorswho've been hugely impactful in my life.
Mm I like itbecause it's being an advocate, but also,
you know, keeping you accountable.
Yeah, that's really good.
So how can people find you
and how can they find womenin tech and entrepreneurship?
(01:02:37):
I am on LinkedIn and that'sprobably the best way to find me.
And then women in techand entrepreneurship also very active
on LinkedIn.
Our website is under constructionright now as we speak.
We're technically less than a year oldfrom our public launch and we're working
with a wonderful volunteerto get this website up and running.
(01:02:59):
So I'm hopingby the time that this podcast is lagged,
the website will be out in thein the wild.
But LinkedIn is probably the answerfor both for right now.
All right, that sounds great.
Well, Rachel, I want to tell you, it'sbeen delightful having you as a guest.
Thank you so much for coming in.
Thank you for having meon. This was so fun.
No, I my pleasure.
(01:03:20):
And I look forward to your I'm tryingto get all my shows like locked down.
By the end of next week,
I'll be able to come to some eventsprobably in November and December.
Okay. Wonderful. Yeah.
Our holiday party in Orlando is,I think, December 3rd or fifth.
Okay.
So we hope to see you at that.
It will be fun. Oh, I make that one.
(01:03:41):
Thank you.
Yeah, thank you.
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Music is by Charles-Lawrence Lide.
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Hi, my name is Isabella Johnston,the Intern Whisperer.
Our show is brought to youby Employers 4 Change.
And today's tip of the week is about namebias.
Names are important.
It's important to call a personby the name they wish to be identified.
We need to remember that.
So making sure that we're pronouncing itproperly is is just really critical
(00:41):
or addressing them, perhaps by a nicknameinstead of the full name.
Name bias is the tendencywhen people have to judge or prefer people
with certain types of names,typically names that are of Anglo origin.
So this is one of the most pervasiveexamples of unconscious bias,
(01:01):
and it's always used in the hiring processfor the large part,
the numbers bear it out.
One study found that white names receivedsignificantly
more callbacksfor interviews than black names.
Another study found that Asianlast names are 28% less likely
to receive a callback for an interviewcompared to Anglo last names.
(01:23):
So how can we avoid name bias?
It can be avoided if you omit thecandidate's name and personal information
like email, phone number and addressfrom the application materials.
You can either do thisby assigning candidates a number
or having an unbiased third partyteam member.
(01:44):
Omit the informationfrom the hiring process.
And that way it helps to bring in
a candidate into interview in a fair way.
This will ensure that hiring teams areselecting candidates based on their skills
and experiences without the influenceof irrelevant personal information.
(02:04):
Welcome to The Intern Whisperer.
Our show is all about the future of workand innovation.
So I want to welcome to the InternWhisperer is Raechel Canipe.
She is the founder of Womenin Tech and Entrepreneurship.
She's the VP of Marketing and Saleswith Red Star.
She combines over a decade of experiencein sales, marketing and operations
(02:24):
and is a devoted humanitarianand community advocate,
leveraging her expertiseto spearhead pivotal initiatives.
She'sthe founder of and CEO of Women in Tech.
I know I said that earlier,but I'm stressing it again
and she heads upthe organization to dismantle.
I love this financial barriersand economically empower women.
(02:45):
Rachel's impactfulwork has earned accolades
and includes the Tampa Bay inOh Fire Award.
Diane Dewey, Roberts Emerging Leaderfinalist and TBBJ,
which is Tampa Bay Business Journal,Business woman of the Year Nominee.
So welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me on.
I'm totally humbled to be here with you.
(03:07):
Isabella Oh, thank you so much.
I'm very excitedto have you as a guest on the show.
I've been watching you from afar.
You know, I know you were in Tampa.
You used to be with Synapse.
I know you've moved on,but you know synapses near and dear
to all of us for a number of reasons.
I like to kick off the show and say,Tell us about yourself
using only five words.
(03:28):
And just so our listenersknow, we did do a little bit of planning,
so I can just prompt you.
So the first one is generous.
Yeah, this,this is a really hard question.
Yeah, great exercise and self reflectionand what's really important
to us as individuals, right?
And generosity is one that's big for me.
It's very near and dear to my heart.
(03:51):
I am a methodist Christian, which is notsomething that comes up a lot.
But you know, my faith does guide me.
And in that generosity,but I've also benefited
quite a lotfrom the generosity of this community.
Even recently in setting up womenin tech and entrepreneurship,
though it's something that I'm ardentabout embodying and repaying,
(04:13):
and whether that's generosity
with my time and mentorship efforts,or whether it's generosity
with my financial commitments,
I sponsor a small scholarship bidfor a nursing program
through College of Health at USF,through the Leadership and Innovation
Forum of Tampa.
My mom got her nursing degreewhen I was a kid and I watched her hustle
(04:36):
and she was able to do thatbecause of a scholarship.
So I'm quite confident
that that scholarship probably doesn'teven cover a full semester of textbooks.
But it's something
and I fully personally fund womenin tech and entrepreneurship
out of my own pocket.
So generosity is a big one for me.
I'm hoping to be ableto do more outrageously
(04:57):
generous things in the futureas I continue to grow.
Well.
I just learned somethingthat was that's very sweet and very dear
to me is the fact that you sharedthat you're also a Christian.
So am I.
I usually will explain.
It is I'm a Jesus girl with a potty mouth.
Yeah, that's a really.
I'm going to steal that.
(05:17):
Yeah. Feel free.
You know,we'll be in the same club together
because what people should always see is
Christ in usthat's radiating out of us, right?
Not being concerned about a word.
A word is has no powerunless we use it in a negative way.
Unless we give it power, right?Yeah. Yeah.
So loving you even more now.
(05:39):
All right.
So ambitious.
Why ambitious? Oh, this is so fun.
So I grew up around
a very strict household,and one of the rules that we had
is that we were forbidden
from having a cat and our vocabulary.
Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, I like that.
(06:01):
Yeah.
So, you know,you just didn't say I can't do something.
And it it reframed the way that I thoughtabout what I could do.
And you know, how I could do something,even though it might be audacious
or it might be really difficultor it might seem really far out of reach.
And so
(06:22):
that ambition is
something that's been hardwired into mefrom a very young age.
It's something that made me believeeven when people told me
that it was a wild idea that I could start
a nationwide movement to resource women
without ever charging a single dollarin membership dues or event fees.
It's what made me agree to join ProjectAfghan Relief
(06:46):
Fund in a situationthat felt very hopeless and helpless
to believe that we could do somethingeven if it wasn't enough.
Yeah.
So ambitions another big one for me.
Relentless.
Now, we talked about this wordand it is not negative to either of us.
Let's. Let's talk about Relentless. Why?
(07:08):
So as I talk about this word,I want to give a quick shout out
to a friend, rolemodel, mentor and former boss Kashima.
She and I had such a disagreementabout the nature of this word.
It's a wordthat I love to describe myself with,
and it doessometimes carry a negative connotation.
(07:30):
But I have been kicking down doorsfor such a long time.
And you know, when I think about the kindof combination of characteristics
that have allowed me to be successfulin difficult situations, it's
persistence, it's tenacity, it's grit,and sometimes outright stubbornness.
(07:52):
Right.
And to me, nothing captures all of thosequalities better than the word relentless.
Yeah.And you made a very good point earlier.
It's also a knowing,
knowing your direction, know,being committed to that direction.
I think sometimes we overlookthe value of commitment.
We can be,you know, charmed by charisma and ideas.
(08:15):
And oftentimeswe take for granted things like commitment
and follow through and execution.
And to me, relentlessness really capturesthe essence of that, too.
Don't you think that as Christians
in other countries that we'rethat's not a faith that's recognized?
They have to be relentless.
(08:36):
Yeah, that's that's very true.
And and experience it's not exclusiveto Christians in those countries.
Right.
There are a lot of countrieswhere religious persecution
of all different shapesand stripes is very prevalent.
But people, you know, bearingreligious text,
(08:57):
you know, having to hide their identities.
And it really makes me appreciate
while we may still have challenges hereand and everyone
has obstacles in different waysand different things to overcome,
we're truly
fortunate to live in a worldwhere we are able
(09:19):
to be safe in our identityand not everyone feels that right.
There are still people who struggleto feel safe in their identity every day.
And so I do love what you're doing
with unconscious bias and the justthe crucial work that you're doing to me.
Thank you.
Equitable space.
Yeah, Thank you. I appreciate that.
I think that Relentless also describesevery person that is,
(09:44):
you know, behind us and going forwardas to if you have something
that you're passionate about,you have to be relentless.
You have to be. Yeah.
And it almost comes naturally when you'repassionate about it, too, right?
Yeah, I, I have friends all the timethat ask me, Why are you doing this?
You're workingcrazy numbers of hours at at two jobs.
(10:07):
And it justI can't even compute why I wouldn't do it.
And that's that passion, Right?
But passion fuels that relentless spirit.
Yeah, Because if somebody describes
you as passionately relentless,that's a good thing.
Yeah, it is a good thing.
So I hope that thisI know I can't be at the meeting tonight,
(10:27):
but I hope that this is likepart of the vocabulary
that you begin to usewhen you open up the meeting tonight.
I'm emotionally relentless.
We're doing a rebrand for the wordrelentless.
I think. So.
We need what you need.
So your next word was accountable.
And I love this word.
They have an impression
that the word accountableis something that's negative and it's not.
(10:49):
It is absolutely a positive wordbecause somebody is helping you
to make sure you're walking the rightpath, that they're going to be there
to have your back, that, you know,we always have to answer to somebody.
Yeah, accountability and integrity for mein many ways go hand in hand right.
But accountability, I think, is broad.
(11:11):
And so when I think aboutthe underpinnings of a very successful
business venture,someone who is personally successful,
a relationship, that success,that if you step back and take a look,
what you might find is thatthere is a culture of high accountability.
People are immaculate in their word.
They do what they say they're going to do.
(11:35):
People feel a commitmentto honor one another.
Right.
And that is all kind of wrapped upin this notion of accountability,
not just thatI'm going to do the right thing,
but that I'm actually going to followthrough on all of the commitments
that I've madeand I'm going to own the results.
(11:55):
If I have made a decision
that didn't give us the best results,I'm not going to point fingers elsewhere.
I'm not going to blame market conditions.
I'm not going to
say we just didn't have the right peopleor we didn't have the right partner.
There's no excuse me.
There are no excuses, right? Yeah, yeah.
(12:15):
Because the person that choosesand it's a choice
to be accountableknows that they can make change.
Yes. And I'm glad
that you said that because itit brings something up for me that I heard
earlier this year,and I know I'll miss attribute the quote,
but it's the author of the Power Code.
(12:36):
She also wrote the Confidence code.
She was a BBC reporter for a time.
And she's just she's fabulous.
And she has been doing this reallyimpactful research where she's uncovered
that women are uncomfortablewith the concept of power.
Their perception of poweris power over people,
(12:57):
and they don't really want that, right?
Katty Kay Yeah.
So to me she's lovely.
her research has kind of uncoveredthis perception
of power in this negative light, right?
We talked about a negative perception of,
you know, relentlessnessand accountability, right?
Well,this is a uniquely feminine perception
(13:18):
that power is about power overother people.
And she's trying to give power, rebrandand reframe it
as power to get good things doneand to make positive change
for people who are highly accountableor highly empowered.
Right? Yeah.
They believe that they have ownership
over the results that they're producingand that they can get things done.
(13:41):
Yeah, I love that you said that. Yeah.
Thank you.
I think that accountability is is truly
the thing that does push things forwardlike what you were saying.
And if you don't have that, that'syou know some people can lose weight
but the accountabilityknowing that there's somebody at the gym
waiting for them or, you know, whatever,that they're going to text them.
(14:02):
Did you go to the gym today?
You know, like that is an added incentive.
And it doesn't meanthat they have to be visible.
They can also be seenthat they may not be seen in person.
Right.
You can alwayswe have a whole bond that allows us
to connect with people in waysthat we never knew we could.
Yeah. Yeah. Accountability.
(14:24):
Mm hmm. Okay.
This is super, super good.
And I wrote this book downbecause I'm going to go look at it.
I think. Oh, check it out.
So one of your last words, hyphenated
will make it intellectually curious.
Yes, intellectually curious.
So always have been.
But I do attribute a lot of this.
(14:45):
I was to my background.
I know we're going to get into that,so I won't spoil it too much.
But when I was a little girl, I wanted togrow up to be a research professor.
I knew you were going to say it.
How? You know.
Well, you have a vocabularyThat's incredible.
I was an English teacher and I'm like,listening to you, and I'm like,
Well, she she has a great vocabulary.
(15:07):
She reads all the time.
She actually implementsthese words into her everyday language.
So I could tell that.
But as you were talking
about some of these books,I what she thinks like a scientist.
So I see you as a researcher.
Thank you.
I, I have such a soft spot in my heartfor research.
And, you know, I still half jokingly
(15:29):
have not told my partner that I'mjust going to go back and get my Ph.D.
and cloister myself away with my research.
But I I'm so glad that I hadthat classical research training
because it reallyhas made me very analytical
and it's taught me to askvery good questions.
And, you know, questionasking alone is important.
(15:51):
Yeah, it's important.
You know, I, I lead sales and marketing.
If I want to understand our customersand what's important to them at Red Star,
I need to ask really good questions.
When we think about business operations,we need to be curious about
why are we getting the resultsthat we're getting?
Why are we doing thingsthe way that we're doing them?
(16:13):
And a lot of that came to meby way of that classical research training
and when we look at larger social patternsas well, and some of the things
that we seek to address with womenin tech and entrepreneurship,
these are complex issuesthat no simple answers.
And if you're not very curious about
why things are the way that they areand really squirreling out
(16:37):
good quality, credible information,
it's hard to have high intention,high impact strategies, right?
So that's a big one for me.
I'm also an avid bookworm and I'm going tosay something will not endear me at all.
But it is a huge teacher's pet.
As a kid,I was an old so hoping, you know,
(16:57):
I just got along better with adultsthan than kids most of my life.
And so some of the benefit of thatis is learning to think really critically.
And yeah, I think at an advanced levelsometimes I totally agree.
I had found this article and it truly wassaid think like a scientist.
(17:17):
And I went, you know, people don'tI reached out to the gentleman
that wrote the article and I said,Is it okay if I publish this?
I know you may have itpublished somewhere else.
I don't want to mess with your metricshere, but this was really insightful
and that intellectually curiositythat we need to have all of those things.
It's like we need to be four yearolds and really sit here.
(17:39):
But why?
And the two year old questionWhy, why, why?
I mean, those are good questions.
They are in the world beatsthat are robust, that
even if it doesn't intend to,we're not taught to ask good questions.
We're taughtto give the right answer. Yes.
And you look at these social experimentswhere
they get people who are highly intelligentto give wrong answers
(18:00):
because they are reading,you know, social cues in the room
that they're giving the wrong answer,even though it's the right answer.
So we're we're just programfrom a very young age to give answers
and not to ask questions.
And it doesn't serve us well.
So I'll share.
We have a new hire who's a dearfriend of mine, also from the community.
(18:24):
And one of the things that made memost excited about recruiting him
into our business at Red Starwas the volume of questions that he asked.
Yeah, right.
He asked the best questions to the pointwhere I'm
a little bit embarrassed to admit this,but I sometimes get a little bit
annoyed by a good question, like,
(18:44):
why haven't I asked myself this? Or
it is just
I can't understate enoughhow important that skill is.
Mm hmm. Totally.
So where did you go to school?
How did you get to where you are now?
You can take us on any path that you want.
Okay, So this is a good question.
And I I'll I'll keep it brief,but but try to get on.
(19:10):
We have a lot of good stuff to talk about.
We do. We do.
So I mentioned earlier in the showthat I really wanted to be a research
professor when I grew up, and I mentioned
on the show, you know, I moved out young.
I had some help.
You know, my mom was
(19:31):
a single mom and she went back to school,not once, but twice while growing up.
She could have a Ph.D.
right now,and she waited tables the entire time
to pay the bills.
Sometimes she worked multiple jobs,two and three jobs to pay the bills.
And even as she was doing all thattalk about generosity,
(19:52):
she did some prepaid college for me,which was tremendously helpful.
And I had scholarships,but I still had to work to pay the bills.
So I worked in hospitalityand I entered school
with one concept of money,and I left school with a very different
concept of moneyand the goals that I had right.
(20:14):
So as I matured through that four yeardegree process,
I did really well in the research space.
I did a few talks and postersat national conventions,
and I also left
with this heart wrenching realitythat I was probably not
going to be able to do another four years.
(20:37):
And in a Ph.D.
block program, you can't take outside workand not even legal to do
you have to work in your research lab
in the kinds of
programs that I would be pursuingat that time.
And I just couldn't
fathom a way that I was going to do thatwithout taking on a huge
amount of student debt.
I was going to start out of about $75,000a year, which isn't a bad number.
(21:02):
And certainly sounded like a good numberat 16, right?
Yeah.
But as an adult who, you know, paidall of my own living expenses,
I knew that with the student debton top of that and that being a four year
horizon nearly to the age that I am now,
I would have been well,I would have been like 26
to 28, somewhere in there.
(21:25):
I was not going to be ableto build the kind of life
where I could take care of my mom,where I could have financial freedom
and independence.
And also I realized I was probably goingto have to move somewhere
where another professorwho had tenure had either, you know,
(21:45):
decided to move away
or not to be more of it,but had kicked the bucket
because those positions are very fewand far between.
Right.
So I made the choiceto go into the business world,
and it took me a really long timeto figure out what I was going to do
or that I even hadall these transferable skills.
(22:06):
I did not realize thatworking in hospitality
had actually given mea lot of really good skills.
I did not realize that my researchbackground in psychology
had actually given mea lot of really great skills.
So I but I was really lucky.
One of our graduate assistant knewthat many of us
would find ourselves in this situationmade us all get linked. End
(22:31):
as a requirement of oneof the research programs that we were in.
And I got recruited off of LinkedInto go sell copiers,
which is every millennial girl's dream,right?
Yeah.
So I had some reluctance about this,
but my he eventually became my sponsor.
But the gentleman who recruited meand to work
(22:52):
was a regional president at the company,and he had a very similar family
upbringing to mine, similar challengeswith opportunities.
And he had shared with methat this would be
a great way for me to explorea lot of different industries,
to build my resume,to get a great skill set.
(23:13):
And he was right.
And, you know,
I also had a very supportive communityof girlfriends who said,
I know that you're not excitedabout selling copiers,
but do you realize that SaraBlakely Self-made?
I don't know. She.
Oh, yeah.
Now, Yeah, well,way over that way over that.
She started out selling copiers.
(23:34):
And not only didshe start out in the same space,
she did it in the same town as mewith the same people,
the founders of the company that I workedat were the predecessors
that she had worked with initiallybefore they sold their first company.
So that was all really motivatingand inspiring.
On the flipside of that, I was dealing with
(23:57):
what I would call rampant sexism.
I had
some quote unquote prospective clientswho would
waste my time bringing me over to go
through proposals for different timeswith four different markups,
only to call meand tell me that the deal was mine.
(24:18):
If I would go to dinner with them,
I had a branch manager
who told me that I should.
HopefullyI don't get myself in trouble with this
and hopefully he's not with them anymore.
But you told me thatI should get a boob job
with my first commission checkbecause I will sell more.
(24:38):
And, you know, I'mI'm established in my career,
But we're not talking about the eightiesor the nineties.
No, this is in recent history.
Things like thisare still happening. Yeah.
So from fromthere I had a lot of good experiences.
Very good sponsor and mentor,but there was always
(24:58):
this undercurrent of somethingnot quite being right.
I had someone handpicked meout of the organization
to help evangelizethis robotic task automation product.
And you know, he knew
that I would be helping evangelizethis across, you know,
(25:19):
30 to 40 branches at the time,the entire company footprint.
And he said to meone day that a young single
woman should not be traveling for work.
And it was benevolent sexism,but it's still sexism.
I don't know how you expect me to domy job and educating sales
force of 300 people on this productand showing up in their client meetings
(25:43):
and helping themlearn the deal strategy behind this.
If you don't want me to travel,they're never going to trust me
to do this right.
We have to build relationships,
but that got me into channel marketing
and channel sales and sales education
and gave me the opportunityto spread my wings in a different way.
(26:05):
And so from there, I dove more directlyinto strategic marketing.
I got recruited from some TampaBay Chamber involvement
by a defense contractor that wantedto get more into the commercial sector,
and they had some really interestinghigh tech products that they were moving
with open source intelligence.
(26:26):
So I joined them for several years
and wonderful people, had a greattime, had a beautiful corner office,
had a great compensation package,
still still adoredthem, got the opportunity
to serve with project FamilyFund through them.
But I also found myself still the partyplanner, still in the office
(26:52):
at 2:00 in the morning,supervising the holiday decorators
while everyone else had gone home.
Right.
Which, you know,
I don't know how versed in marketingmost of the audience here will be,
but I'll tell you that Christmas treesare not part of marketing.
Yeah, So,
so so that led me to get intothe nonprofit space.
(27:17):
After working in the humanitarian spacefor a little bit,
I realized that it's really important work
and I'm very passionate about it,but it's heartbreaking.
So we were able to get about100 people out after the fall of Kabul.
But that, you know, is relativeto the tens
of thousands of people who needed help.
(27:37):
And that really wasn't sustainable.
The journey for me emotionally, itit burnt me out.
But I still wanted to find a wayto do something good.
And I had been a board memberwith Synapse on the impact
board, and I had the very good fortune
that Bryan Cornfeldbrought me into the team at Synapse.
(27:57):
Did you know that hehad been a guest on my show?
I remember is going back and forth.
I have like 280 episodes now.
Yeah, but I had him and I went backand I was looking and I went,
Oh my gosh, When you were there,we were talking about his
his episode, which was actually,I think it was last year.
And this year it's LaurenLauren's been on the show this year.
(28:19):
I listen to Lauren's.
She's fabulous. Yeah. Yeah.
Make it a great day.
I find out about track and find brands.
I had a wonderful timeworking person apps.
A lot of people don't realize that thethe staff is a full time staff.
Yeah, about four or five people.
Right.
That put on super major events,very high impact events.
(28:44):
You know thousands of peopleattends an app summit and snaps Orlando
and just recently this past weekthe Met Center Global Week.
That is right.
Yes. A bigger celebration. Yes.
It's like the Southby southwest of Orlando.
It is.
It is.
It's very,very cool and it's very high impact.
You know, we're connectingpeople from all over
(29:09):
founder was co-founders.
Venture capitalist
people are hiring their first employees
or their thousand employeesat these events.
People are pitching and getting fundingfor their business ideas.
And that really lit the fire in me.
I knew that I wanted to do somethingcommunity oriented,
(29:30):
and so I did
a few years on the board,a full year on the staff,
and I took a position with Red Star
for Equity, working with my my partnerand my life partner,
the CEO there to help him scalewhat's his name?
Ken. Pamelaokay, a little shout out for Ken.
(29:52):
A little shout out for Ken.
I super appreciate hand him.
But he he asked me to come in
and help him with scaling his salesand marketing and offered me
the flexibility to grow women in techand entrepreneurship at the same time.
So he has partnered
and been one of our biggest supportersfor women in tech and entrepreneurship.
(30:13):
He's made the whole effortpossible and in a way that
would have been
much, much more difficult without him.
From sponsoring our Orlando Chapterlaunch alongside Full Sail
to I jokingly call him my travel sponsor
because he will oftentimesgo with me to chapter events.
(30:37):
So he's he's really wonderful.
And so that kind of leads me to whereI'm at today.
Women in Tech and Entrepreneurshiphas four chapters now.
We're working onlaunching our Jacksonville chapter.
That's unbelievable.
We're working on launching universitychapters, starting with USF,
but definitely interested to expand
(30:58):
and the other markets that we havebig sister chapters, so to speak.
So yeah, creating that flow of ideas,interdisciplinary,
collaborative,Asian mentorship opportunities,
I'd like to say opportunitiesfor our senior members
to bestowsome wisdom on our student members.
(31:20):
But what I expect will happen is that it'scalled peer and reverse mentoring.
It is parents, you know,that's what I built
everything around is peer reversementoring and employers for change.
You and I are like, so on the same page,I just love what you're doing.
I really do.
And so that's my hopesfor that program, right?
And we've had
(31:40):
women in New York and Toronto and Atlanta
reaching out, asking us when we're goingto scale into their market.
So so we're laying the foundations.
We'reabout to launch our steering committee.
So that's really exciting.
It is.
It's our board, basically,but it's our trial run for our board.
(32:01):
So we are getting the roles refinedthis first wave of people
that have helped us get here are goingto step in positions where they're able
to set the entire legacyand future of the organization.
So we're starting to recruit for that.
And then on the registerside of the house, we're starting to play
(32:21):
in the machine learning space and like
large data analytic kind of models.
So really exciting thingsgoing on on all fronts of the career now.
But if you had asked me backwhen I graduated
with my bachelors in psychologythat was worth $10
an hour, what I would be doing now,I don't think I could have guessed this.
(32:44):
No, no, we never can.
And I'll just formally I'mgoing to put you on the spot a little bit,
so let me know how I can be of assistance.
I do have backgroundin nonprofit management, so
used to work for the Nature Conservancy.
You know, I've worked in RollinsCollege and Foundation relations, so
parallel to education, it's
(33:04):
the same amount of time, 25 years,a nonprofit as well as an education.
So happy to helpwherever you need support.
We'll have to talk about thatto the big goals that we have for
those audacious goals,I guess the audacious goals.
So one is to launch a foundation
to scholarship womenwho are pursuing micro credentials,
(33:26):
because we think that's really goingto be super impactful
to economic empowerment, to the futureof the workforce, to meeting the needs
that most of our corporate partnersare going to have in the near future.
And then the flip side ofthat is starting a foundation
to help women who are limitedin their friends and family round
(33:47):
as they're raising capital. Right.
Because, okay,I want to apply for all of us. Yeah.
I'd love to talk to you more about thoseand how we're trying to structure those,
because I know I'm humble enoughto know what I don't know.
So yeah, I get where you are.
I totally get where you are.
Well, we're going to move over hereto another question
because this was good stuff. And
(34:10):
favorite quote that you live by.
Oh, it changes from day to day.
My my usual answer to this and
I won't attribute itbecause I'm not sure who actually said it.
It's attributedto a lot of different people.
But it's we're
put on this earth to serve one another,and I genuinely believe that.
But the one that's been more salientfor me recently
(34:32):
I attribute to my mother
growing up, I was a rigid perfectionist.
I, you know,wanted everything to be just so.
And I think for a lot of high achievers,perfectionism can get in the way
of maximizing opportunities and realizing
full potentialand having the most possible impact right?
(34:54):
So she would tell me all the time
that A hard earned B
was more valuable than an easy A?
That's very true.
It's so true. And it's stuck with me.
And it when I'm having those momentsof perfectionism where
maybe I'm not leaping out of the nestthe way that I need to, or maybe I'm
(35:17):
letting the daunting ness of some goalthat I have get the better of me.
I remember thatit doesn't have to be perfect.
I just have to go out and do it andgive it my best shot and and try my all.
And, you know, learning some lessonsthe hard way is
is better than sitting the sidelinesand taking the easy grade.
Yeah, a grade is not.
(35:38):
I used to teach middleand high school English, so I taught at
risk as well as standardand then honors level classes.
So one of the things that I learned
is that somebody see,I didn't define them.
It was really that they spent a lotof time really knowing and understanding.
And it could have beenfor different reasons, language barriers.
(36:00):
It could be for somethingthat was an intellectual, could be because
the home life didn't allow,but it didn't define them.
Their work ethics are the things that I,I couldn't see, but I saw in the output.
So You know,I think that a grade it might show
somewhat how hard somebody works,but that's not always just like
you said to your point, it can be justsomebody that it came too easily.
(36:24):
So really it's more of what'swhat did they get out of that education?
Yeah. What kind of character did it build.
Yeah. And beyond education to Right.
When I think about an event
or a new programfor women in tech and entrepreneurship,
it's better
to do it and bring the resourcesand not have it be absolutely perfect
(36:48):
than it is to push itoff, not move quickly.
And so part of this, this mantraand this attitude has allowed me to move
very, very quickly.
And nine times out of ten,I'm delivering a much higher quality
than than I think I am,whether that's in my rap star career or,
you know, and what I provideto the community, the feedback that I get
(37:12):
is that I am a much harshercritic and self evaluator.
Right?
And I think a lot of highachievers are prone to that, right?
So the the lesson for me is that,
you know, even though I may be fearfulthat I'm not going to do
well at something
or look perfect at something thatI still need to get out there and do it.
(37:33):
Mm. I totally agree with you.
What are you most grateful for?
So many things.
So many things.
It is very hard to narrow it down.
I'm certainly grateful for my partner.
He's already gotten a shout outand for my mom and my family,
but I you know, I've just beenincredibly floored by the way
(37:55):
that people have turned out to supportwomen in tech and entrepreneurship.
Totally unexpected.
And even in this conversation today.
Right. And I'm I'm grateful for that.
I'm grateful for communityand for the way that we're all banding
together around a shared mission.
(38:16):
So Michelle Moore and
she's the lady, they're incredible,incredible forces of nature.
There are Orlando chapter chairs.
And, you know, had Michel not approachedme, she came all the way to Tampa
for a womenin tech and entrepreneurship event.
And because sheshe couldn't find what she needed here.
(38:38):
But not only did she comeall the way there, she followed through.
She told me that she was interestedin doing this with me in Orlando.
And here we are, five or six months
out from watching the Orlando chapter,
I'll be going to a sold out Women and Techand entrepreneurship event tonight.
Michelle and Lindsey plan.
(39:00):
Lindsey Huge responsibilities,very involved.
And the community has takena ton of her time
and her resourcesto help promote and connect women.
I mean. Lindsey Murphy, Right?
Yeah, Yeah.She's been a guest on my show, too.
How is she? Is amazing, right?
They're amazing.So I'm so grateful for them.
(39:20):
I'm grateful for all of our chaptercarriers across the state from Fort
Lauderdale to Saint Pete and Tampaand our new student officers.
Mm hmm. Okay.
I would like to have Michelle on.
So I did send her a note,just so you know.
So I'd like to have youas a guest on the show
so you can let her knowthat when you go to meet her.
Yeah. Oh, sure. Yeah.
Oh, she'll love that.
(39:40):
She'll be very articulate also.
Yeah. And great.
Really interestingcareer. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Yeah.
What do you want to be remembered for?
So for me, mentorshipsponsorship has played
a really big role in my life,and I oftentimes
find myself thinking about peoplewho've had a good impact on me.
(40:04):
this is where I get awayfrom the big audacious goal, right?
I don't want my name to go downin some history book.
What I really want is to know that
I've hadthat kind of impact on someone else
and to know, you know,that one day down the road
there are other peoplewho think back on me
and how I have tried to help themand their journeys.
(40:27):
And the same way
that I think of my mentors and sponsors,you know what that is?
Impact Legacy.
Yeah. That's what we all want to be.
We want to know that we did deliversomething that's just a legacy
that lives on and it just trendsversus around the world.
Yeah, I want to have a positive impact.
I think we all do.
Sure. I hope that we all do.
(40:48):
Now, most people.
Yeah, Well, we're going to take a momentto acknowledge
our sponsor, Cat 5 Studios,and we'll be right back.
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(41:08):
Thank you.
Cat 5 Studios.
Now, what does 2030 look like? We're here.
Oh, it's only five yearsbecause we don't count.
2031, Not counting this year.
So there's just like five years,five years fast.
and it's it's like compounding interestrate.
It's happening so fast.
So several things I,
(41:28):
I have already seenwith our clients at Red Star
we are looking at take for instancein construction
large data sets and apply
machine learningand AI to those to improve
the quality of decision making, to improvethe accuracy of things like beds.
(41:49):
Right.
I see in five years that that is the norm.
That is no longer,you know, an innovative move
on the bleeding edge for our business, butthat every business is using, you know,
machine learning and AI to make betterdecisions in their business.
I see micro credentials
(42:11):
very quickly outpacing
traditional education pipelines,which still have their place
and are still very importantbut are not always accessible to everyone.
Right.
So I see micro credentialsdemocratizing the workforce
and economic opportunitiesfor high wage tech careers.
(42:33):
hopefullysee teams that are doing incredible,
exciting, bleeding edge work
just as they are today.
And we have a presence and Columbia
and Tampa and Austin.
We've got some in Toronto,so I'm I'm looking forward to seeing that
(42:55):
expand even further and to tap into
clients and businesses all over the world.
Very ambitious.
On the womenand tech and entrepreneurship front.
I see as having our foundations launched.
So I guess they let the cat out of the baga little too early in the show, but
well, it's going to be a monthwhen it airs, so I don't think so.
(43:20):
The so the the
3 to 5 yearsgoal is for us to have really.
Well funded foundationsto help seed micro credentials
for women to help seedthat friends and family round for women.
So I envision those being launchedand I envision us
getting a really great scalable modelwhere any woman in any community
(43:44):
can pick up the banner and say,We need this here globally
because community is incredibly importantto being successful.
Whether that is as a technology executiveor as the founder of a business
or an entrepreneur, need a good community,you need strong social capital,
(44:04):
you need access to people who shareyour values and want to support you.
So that's that's where I see us.
And 2030, that'ssounds like it's going to happen, too.
I mean, everything for your organizationis moving super fast.
All of all of my estimates have been offby about 50%.
It's all happenedabout 50% faster than I thought it would.
(44:27):
That's a good sign. Really good sign.
So what are your thoughts?
Robots, AI, Augmented reality.
Virtual reality.
You can make yourself be the expertin whatever you want to focus focus on.
It could be all of them.
I'm not arrogant enoughto pretend to be an expert
in any particularokay, I'm a great generalist.
(44:50):
You know, my partner and I were rewatching
iRobot, the World Smart moviethe other day.
Everybody's talking about it again.I have not watched it.
I'm going to have to go back and gowatch it.
You'll have to.
So the thing that we laughed aboutwas that there is a very particular scene
where they show the guy checking outfor like a couple of beers and it's,
(45:12):
you know, $40 for two rounds of drinksand we're there.
Costs are about that right now today.
But the difference is that in iRobot,
in nearly every householdhad their own personal robot
maid, butlerattending to all of their needs.
Right.
(45:33):
We're not there yet.
And I don't see us there in 2030 either.
But what I dosee AI pervasive to everything, right?
It is going to change the way that we domarketing.
It is going to change the waythat people do business operations.
It is, I hope, going to improve
(45:55):
not just our overall productivity,but also our quality of life.
I think what we've seen up to thispoint is that technology has allowed us
to do more and more work and be moreand more accessible and available,
whereas What our,you know, early predictions were
that we would be downto like a ten hour work week by now.
(46:15):
That hasn't happened.
So I'm I'm still optimisticthat we'll see that.
But I also see,you know, on the flip side of that,
we have more datavulnerability than ever before, right?
People are not
in control of their information right nowtoday.
And I see that only getting worse in 2030
(46:36):
when we talk about the application of
AI to things like voiceand replicating voice, I predict that
the sophistication of scam calls robo
calls is going to hit new heights.Oh, yeah.
And you know, there are people out therewho will say, Well,
then just don't let your voice be recordedanywhere.
(46:58):
For people who are involvedin the community, that is not an option.
And we don't want peoplewho are security minded and conscious
to find that they are excludedfrom the community writing.
We want everyone to be ableto participate and contribute.
So whether that is running for office,whether that is being an executive,
(47:22):
there comes a time where you haveto put your voice and face out there.
And so I have concerns aboutdata security, data privacy
and a very big and salient way
and the accuracy of thingslike AI for facial recognition.
So a member of our community
and a really wonderful journalistwith a budding media business,
(47:47):
Lisa Sparks, who writesa really great newsletter on this,
and she looks at the intersection
of technology, race, class and gender.
some of her reporting is it's
just outright fearful.
We She's she's goodat having a very balanced hand.
(48:08):
But we hear things like,you know, pregnant women being arrested,
detained, left on a bench in a cell
for one or two dayswithout water or food for a crime
that they didn't commit,that they don't match the description for,
that they weren't evenin the same location, I think, or state.
(48:30):
But I picked them up as a match somehow.
Mm hmm.
So there
there are some serious concerns therewith the accuracy of that
and the potential impactthat we need to address.
And and quickly.
There is a movie on Netflixand it's called Unconscious Bias,
and it specifically discusses
the use of a AI and facial recognition.
(48:53):
And it does okay
with being able to identifywhite people very clearly.
But when it comes to people of color, it'sjust like everybody looks the same.
And I may or may not have said this,but that was about a black woman
and there are lots of other examplesthere.
She also has good timelines of black womenexecutives in different
(49:14):
large tech firms facing resistanceto bringing up some of these issues
and in some cases, outright termination.
I don't want to miss citeany things or encourage
anyone who's interested to golook up Lisa's work on their own. Mm.
But, but these are huge and pressing,real concerns
that have real impact for real people.
(49:36):
it's just essential that we addressthose things as soon as possible.
While I see a huge positive impact of
AI for all kinds of businessapplications, that's a real challenge.
less urgent or less dire.
But, you know, my ownanecdotal experience, I've been playing
(49:57):
with AI image generation for stock images.
If you want to talk about a spacewith some bias stock images,
it's definitely one of those spacesto be very hard to find good
representative material.
And so the AI produced
a fairly good image of a womanprofessional in a particular space
(50:20):
that might work for womenin tech and entrepreneurship branding.
But I, you know, at the time,as I was thinking
about my brand palette and colors,I thought I wanted to go, you know,
a darker, more neon kind of tackypoppy vibe
and I asked the AI to make
that kind of change in the background,to darken the colors down a little bit.
(50:43):
And instead it just gave bigger cleavage.
Wow. Yeah. Oh, my God.
Out ranges. And so you're
saying, Yeah.
So I'm not sure how it got,you know, dark in the colors in the back
and turn that into making cleavagewhere there wasn't cleavage before.
(51:05):
But that's a serious programing issueis yeah it's almost laughable.
It's so outrageous.
Yeah that that yeah that is that is crazy.
So with the discussion about AI,
one of the things that I purposely goand try and break it
and I want to see how many parameterscan I put in there before
(51:27):
it's just like cracks.
And then I've asked to do some thingsbecause the use of
I know that I work with a lot of students,
nontraditional students as well as,you know, traditional age.
And I would always say, hey, I want youto go and use a you need to be using it.
You need to be able to figure it outand understand.
(51:47):
So I worked with these high schoolkids for the summer on social content
for five weeks,and they both spoke Spanish.
It was not theirthat is their first language.
They were using it.
And I said, But this you don't talkthis way.
You know, it was writing probably at like,
I don't know, probably a college levelbecause of the vocabulary.
(52:09):
And I said, you need it to sound like you.
You really, really do.They didn't want one.
She was very, very good at it,but she did not want to do that.
She thinks it made it sound better.
Yes and no.
So you can ask.
I chat to break it downand write in eighth grade level.
So I had it right.
The first one,
(52:30):
which was, you know, college level,and then it wrote in eighth grade
and then I said, Right,like a five year old.
And the five year old is the one languagethat, you know, made it easy
for anybody to understand.
Yeah.
So there is
there's a lot of meritin being able to explain things
simply and make it accessible right.
(52:51):
And I often think it's overlooked.
And I do use catch up for copy for,you know,
some of the repetitive things that we doat women in tech and entrepreneurship.
And oftentimesI find it uses really a lot of hyperbole.
And, you know, it's a very flowery word,flowery
words like this does not resonate.
(53:12):
Right? We're burying the lead.
Another interesting thing,if you like, you know,
cognitive psychology and neuroscienceand things like that.
I remember a few years agonow, maybe I was listening
to this really interestingcoverage of how,
you know, there are fashionsand trends in literature, right?
(53:33):
And so we've moved from like the HermanMelville, Moby Dick super long novel
to these really, really short storiesand the cognitive impacts of that
and what it does to attentionand to someone's ability to work through,
you know, complex plotlines and retaining
large volumes of informationfrom the beginning of a story to the end.
(53:55):
Right. Buying backthose early details. Right.
Well, now we're having chat up t
write for us, writing is a cognitive
skill with neural paths and learning paths
that are unused go away over time.
They atrophy. Right?
So I think it's important that we'relearning how to use these tools.
(54:18):
But if we're so reliant on these tools,we lose that skill of writing.
What else are we losing with it? MM
So I think that's somethingthat's interesting to keep in mind.
So for those of youwho are avidly using it, oftentimes
it takes a good writer to recognizereally good copy what say.
But you know what, though?
(54:39):
I read this articlethat said that students had
they had the same assignment,so they used chat to do it
chat, produced the same essay.
So instead of being plagiarism,like they didn't copy off of each other
but chat because it hadthe same assignment, made three out of 30
students turn in the same thing,and so they spent no effort
(54:59):
in customizing it or doing researchto ensure that it was truly
going to be a thought outand researched enhanced article.
They just went the easy route.
And I went,Yeah, what I think that chat will become
is more of going to bewhere people have to do research.
So it should be helping you
refine your research skills and ensuringthat you put citations in there.
(55:23):
I've asked that for citations.
It doesn't do a very good joband I've even asked it to do it
like an APA format.I used to teach it anyway.
This is not APA format.Yeah, it needs work.
Yeah, it would need some work, butit will get better at well it really well.
And so, you know, anecdotally
and our Women in Techand Entrepreneurship newsletter,
(55:43):
I put together a list of resourcesthat are based around a theme,
whether it's finance or on a page board,things like that.
And I will ask strategy because I knowof the resources in my immediate at work,
but there might be other more resourcesthat I should consider.
So oftentimesasked you to give me a list of resources
(56:06):
related to a subjectand about 50% of them are real resource.
So that's another fun thingthat you can do with DVT.
And it may have gotten better.
Now you should ask it to write a bio.
I'm all over the Internet
and I chose a few other peopleI know who are all over the Internet,
(56:26):
and this is backwhen it was still plugged into being.
I think they've turned that off for now.
But I asked it to write biosfor about four of us
have enough online that you should be ableto take a stab at it all.
Four of us became founders,which I thought was just so interesting
and kind of cute, but I itself is a littlebit egocentric in that way.
(56:51):
But the, you know,
the foundations of the bios, the bones,and there
you could definitely customize themand make them work quite well.
It did give you a really good formatto work off of,
but it justit totally fabricated the information.
So, you know it should be used,as you said, as a tool.
Yeah.
(57:12):
That you put your own input into as well.
There was this articlethat came through my email here
and it said Hereyou can sign up for this course.
You can becoming a AI expert
and you take two master classes for free
and you now get a certificateto be an AI expert
(57:34):
just to just three classesfor master classes now.
Yeah, apparently so.
Sign up nowand you can become an AI expert.
And I went I think is a little bit morethan that they're probably over promising.
I think if that was true, we probablywouldn't have clients coming to us.
A rep start asking ushow to implement this into their business.
Yeah.
(57:55):
Yeah. So much so.
So I feel likethis is just like when we first,
when you lookat the industrial pages, right,
and you see the progressionof historical events
and anything that's happeningin the world, technology as it advances,
we start with, well,there was hieroglyphics
and you know, they were in Egypt,all of this and you can go further back
(58:16):
and then you get to a place wherewe're moving past printing press.
Okay, So now we have books, right?
But there's good information.
There's still informationin all of these things.
There's a bias.
And then we move to we've got the Internet
and we're going, okay,so that's like it's on the Internet.
It must be true. But not everything onthe Internet is true.
Not everything in books is true.
(58:38):
Not everything on those tablets was true.
And so now we're over here with chat.
Not everything on chat is true.
It takes the good informationthat is in all of Google,
all of being all of everything,and it just pulls it in there and says,
Here you go.
That'syou have to fact check this information.
We all do.
We have a responsibility to factcheck it and make sure it's accurate.
(59:00):
And that's a skill that I thinkneeds to be incorporated. Yes.
And so, you know, I missed this earlier,but I'm glad you brought this up
because something that I am
very optimistic and bullish
on for 2030 and tech and beyond,is that there you know,
just as we recently addedfinancial literacy
to high school curriculums, there's nowtalk of mandatory computer science. Yep.
(59:24):
And I think that that is
a very belated move.
I think it's a really important move.
It Can't happen soon enough.
And I think it's going to transformopportunities for a lot of young people,
but also for our businesses.
We need this tech talentand if kids don't know
that this is accessibleand available to them,
(59:47):
they don't pursue the career, right?
It's like learning a language.
It can it's delayed and it canit can seriously harm you.
It it can.
But it's also, you know, we are stillwhen we pull and research with kids
what they want to do, they're still namingthe same five things as in the 1950s.
It's accountant lawyer.
(01:00:08):
Yeah, right.
There's just not necessarilyan awareness of that age
of all the opportunitiesthat are available.
So while we kind of watch that legislationand see what happens
there, we're really hopeful that we'll seethat implemented in curriculums,
or at least I'm very hopefulthat we'll see that implemented.
There are a lot of really good
(01:00:29):
organizations doing work in that space,like Girls Who, Code
Tech, Sassy Girls,the robotics clubs first.
Yes, first robotics,
you have connect at 360
doing entrepreneurial skillsand high school kids.
Do they spend a whole yearbuilding a business?
(01:00:52):
You've got think big for kids,creating all this awareness.
So a lot of really good programs
that junior achievementthat you can lend your support to.
Now they're all really,really good things for sure.
What is the best mentoring advice thatyou want to share with our our listeners?
So my favorite piece of advice
(01:01:13):
came to me a very long time ago,and it was that I should not just
have a mentor, but I should have a boardof directors for myself.
So you need
mentors who are outside of your industry.
You need sponsors within your business.
So for those of you who aren't familiar,a sponsor is a mentor
(01:01:35):
who can advocate for youwithin the employer that you work for.
You you have a multifaceted wife, right?
And each mentor
can address a number of thingsthat you might be working
on, but you never want to isolate, right?
(01:01:56):
You want to kind of take on a widevariety of they should not look like you,
they shouldn't look like you.
They should look like the waythat you think about things.
And a good mentor sometimes might make you
a little bit mad, too, for
So I would say for meit's the board of directors
(01:02:16):
and I continue to have a number of mentorswho've been hugely impactful in my life.
Mm I like itbecause it's being an advocate, but also,
you know, keeping you accountable.
Yeah, that's really good.
So how can people find you
and how can they find womenin tech and entrepreneurship?
(01:02:37):
I am on LinkedIn and that'sprobably the best way to find me.
And then women in techand entrepreneurship also very active
on LinkedIn.
Our website is under constructionright now as we speak.
We're technically less than a year oldfrom our public launch and we're working
with a wonderful volunteerto get this website up and running.
(01:02:59):
So I'm hopingby the time that this podcast is lagged,
the website will be out in thein the wild.
But LinkedIn is probably the answerfor both for right now.
All right, that sounds great.
Well, Rachel, I want to tell you, it'sbeen delightful having you as a guest.
Thank you so much for coming in.
Thank you for having meon. This was so fun.
No, I my pleasure.
(01:03:20):
And I look forward to your I'm tryingto get all my shows like locked down.
By the end of next week,
I'll be able to come to some eventsprobably in November and December.
Okay. Wonderful. Yeah.
Our holiday party in Orlando is,I think, December 3rd or fifth.
Okay.
So we hope to see you at that.
It will be fun. Oh, I make that one.
(01:03:41):
Thank you.
Yeah, thank you.
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Music is by Charles-Lawrence Lide.
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