>> Hi, I'm Lisa Martin with theCUBE,
on the ground at Google for the sixth annual
CloudNOW Top Women in Cloud Awards.
And we're very excited to be joined
by one of the winners this year, Caroline Wong,
the Vice President of Security Strategy at Cobalt.io.
Welcome to theCUBE, Caroline.
>> Thank you for having me.
>> It's great to have you here for many reasons,
and we know that we're both dog lovers
and they're not going to let us talk about dogs
for the whole time, but I love that.
So, you have previously been at eBay, Zinga, Symantec.
Were you a STEM kid from grade school,
and always interested in IT?
Or is this something that you
sort of zig-zagged career-wise,
and made this career that you have now?
>> So when I was 16 years old, my dad asked me
what I wanted to study in college.
And I told him Dance or Psychology.
>> Wow, that's a different from >> It's different because I
was like well, "What do I like? What do I enjoy doing?"
And he said you're going to study Engineering,
and you're going to do it
at the best school that you could get into.
And I studied Electrical Engineering and
Computer Science at UC Berkeley.
I really struggled with the curriculum,
but I'm so glad that I do have
a formal background in technology.
I ended up in Cyber Security pretty randomly, to be honest.
I did an IT project management internship at eBay,
and when I graduated, I asked my manager
if I could work for them full time.
And they said there was a hiring freeze in IT,
but they had an open position in Information Security.
Which at the time, I didn't know what that even meant.
The night before my interview,
I looked up Information Security on Wikipedia
and I memorized the definition.
>> (laughter) You know, that just speaks to,
and look what you're doing now.
You didn't know, and there's probably
many other people who are in the same situation,
whether they're 16 and wanting to major in Dance or whatnot.
I love that, that you were confident enough in yourself,
probably in your education to, "let me try that out".
When you were studying though, at UC Berkeley,
you said there were some challenges there.
This brings me back to my own days of studying Physics,
which I wasn't good at.
What were some of the things that surprised you?
For the good?
>> Sure, so I'll tell you a story
about one of my Electrical Engineering lab courses.
Of course, I make friends with the one other student
in the class who's like, not quite sure what's going on.
And we have teams of three, and so we have to find
someone who really knows how to do it.
So, what happens is, one of my colleagues
fetches the materials for our lab assignment.
My other colleague does the lab, and I write the report.
And at the time, I'm a little bit embarrassed
that I can't do all three.
But after all, it is about team work and it turns out,
what has helped me tremendously in my career
has been my ability to write and to work well with others,
and to communicate both verbally and in written form
what's going on technically.
>> That's outstanding.
Just great advice again for others
that it's not just about understanding engineering.
There's other components that are really critical
and will help you be successful.
So in addition to the award that you're getting
today from CloudNOW, you've been recognized
as an Influencer by Women in IT Security,
and as a One to Watch Women of Influence.
You've also had a lot of publications.
So I'm curious, what inspires you
to be involved in the community and share your expertise?
Not just your education in Engineering
and what you're doing with cyber security,
but also your path to success?
>> Yeah, so for me, I'll contrast it with my sister.
She's a Kaiser Pediatrician.
And she's known for her whole life that she wanted
to be a doctor, and she just went for it.
And she was like, here's my target,
and I'm just going to make it.
I have always been very, sort of go with the flow,
like what's right in front of me
and what's an interesting problem to solve
and how can I just put my whole self into it
and apply what I know and try and learn something new.
And I've approached my entire career that way.
Not really knowing what was going to happen next,
but sort of, looking around, trying to see, "Okay,
"what does the industry need right now
"and how can I apply my skills to try and add value?"
>> I love that, that's great.
My brother was the same way.
Wanted to be a pilot from the time he was probably eight.
And there's me, zig-zagging along.
But I think that's also, it speaks to,
if you have enough confidence in yourself
and try things, you can be successful.
So I love that.
So tell us about your role at Cobalt.io
and app security and what you're doing there.
>> Yeah so, Cobalt, we provide
application security services for cloud companies.
Specifically, we provide on-demand
manual penetration testing
for web apps, mobile apps, and APIs.
So we're really trying to help organizations
to secure their applications.
As a consumer of cloud applications,
as a person who works for a company
that works with so many different cloud companies,
it's critical that security be in place.
Because right now, it's not like, any organization,
certainly no technology organization, works in a vacuum.
Just like a car sources parts
from many different organizations,
every software, every cloud company
sources from many different places.
And at each step along that supply chain,
you want to make sure that security has been built in.
>> Outstanding.
Tell me a little bit about your team there,
and some of the key elements, to you,
for managing a diverse team of folks at Cobalt.
>> So we started four years ago.
We actually have four Danish founders
and so it's really interesting to be in Silicon Valley
but have a little bit of a different culture.
As a mom of a toddler and expecting in May,
it was really important to me to find
a job where I really liked the people,
and I really respected them,
where they liked and respected me,
and where I felt I could make a big impact.
And what's great about working with this team
is, I feel like all of the people I work with
actually have a life outside of work.
I feel like, in Silicon Valley, so many people
work for companies and it's like, that's all they do.
And I respect that.
If you're super passionate about something
and you want to make your whole life about it, fantastic.
But my colleagues are extremely brilliant
and great at what they do,
and then they do other stuff as well.
>> It's refreshing to hear that
because being in Silicon Valley
can take so much time and effort
but to be able to have a little bit of balance there,
I think, you probably see an impact in productivity?
>> Oh, definitely.
I mean, people come into our office and they're like,
wow people are happy, people seem well rested,
people seem really focused and like they're hardworking,
and they're excited about what they do,
but they're not so stressed out.
They're not burning out.
People aren't needing to take emergency medical leave
because of severe anxiety.
So these are just things that I think
really benefits the company and also our customers.
>> Oh, definitely from a customer perspective.
So, tell us a little bit about what winning
this Top Women in Cloud Award means to you?
>> So I'm just thrilled and totally surprised.
For me to have an opportunity to share my story,
and to also attend an event like this
and be inspired by other women's stories,
I mean, I think the mission of CloudNOW
is so incredibly important.
I don't think there's anything so special about
any of the women that won awards tonight.
And what I mean by that is, we're not extraordinary,
we didn't necessarily overcome
any crazy challenges or barriers.
I want young women, and people of all types,
to know that this is possible.
And I think by sharing our stories
and how different we are, and how we came
from all sorts of different places,
I think that can really be inspiring,
for the next generation.
And that's exactly what technology needs.
We need a strong and diverse pipeline
if we're going to continue innovating and continue creating.
>> That's brilliant advice and I couldn't agree more.
I think that some of the stories that we're going to hear
from some of the fellow winners such as yourselves
show that some really doing groundbreaking work,
but others who just persevered,
who had an interest in something
and followed through with it.
And learned along the way, made mistakes,
had the opportunity to fail, learn from that,
and continue going forward.
I personally find that very inspiring.
So, Caroline thank you so much
for joining us on theCUBE and sharing your story.
Best of luck with your new addition.
>> Thank you.
>> And your dogs, as well as congratulations,
again, on the award.
>> Thank you so much.
>> We want to thank you for watching theCUBE.
I'm Lisa Martin on the ground at Google
for the CloudNOW Top Women in Cloud Awards event.
Bye for now.
(techno music)