(upbeat music)
- Hi, I'm Sue.
I'm here today with Kavitha and Micheline,
to talk about the partnership
between Microsoft and Zsaler.
And to talk about how our cultures have transformed
in order for us to do business together better.
Well I have to tell you I'm super excited
about sitting here with two other women.
- It's a nice treat to have it as a someone,
a colleague that I trust and respect but also as a friend,
so it's been a nice little extra special treat for us.
(laughing)
- Good, so now I'm familiar with what Zscaler is doing
with Azure Active Directory.
We are great partner but you're doing
a lot of other things with Microsoft.
- Zscaler has enabled the cloud transformation for companies
to adopt faster, more simple,
and we provide secure access
no matter where they're located.
No matter what device they're on,
we pair with you as good partners
in over 150 data centers across the globe.
Together we're able to provide
and brings security closer to the user.
We are changing the way network security is managed today.
- Kavitha you were just named as a top woman leader
in cyber security by software report.
So congratulations on that.
- Thank you.
- So you wanna just tell me like
what got you into that list?
- As users are becoming increasingly mobile
and as devices are proliferating,
so is the sophistication of threat actors
that are targeting these users in these devices,
and so as the increase in the attack surface.
So the need for you know, investment and development
around cyber security is more paramount today
than at any other time before.
It's an absolute honor to be part of an organization
such Zscaler whose absolute mission is to ensure
that business can be conducted safely in the cloud
and across the internet, you know, protecting users,
protecting the organizations
so that people can do their best work.
(upbeat music)
- You've really changed the culture
at Microsoft about partnering.
Do you feel more comfortable now partnering with Microsoft?
- We're even more excited than we've ever been internally,
but also our customers.
We just had a webinar today
that hosted almost 2000 attendees,
because the entire market is excited
about what the partnership is providing to the industry.
So our partnership has grown.
It's got more depth to it.
We feel more excited about where it's going.
But I feel like there's more to come.
So we're super excited about it.
- I think also there's just such a congruence and value now
more than ever before, right alignment around,
how we both care about innovation,
care about doing the right things as you know,
two companies so I really see
a lot of alignment in our values.
- To add like Satya and Jay are the two CEOs they're similar
I think in terms of the passion, the focus on the vision,
very similar in terms of,
I was just to talking to Satya the other day,
just about the digital transformation.
It aligns so well with where Jay has taken the company.
And we're gonna be able to provide our organizations,
so much more value in terms of how do we enable them
to go adopt the cloud?
How do we help them simplify, to go digital,
there's a lot of companies that are not there yet.
And together, I think there's lots of opportunity.
- I'm still at Microsoft after two decades
because the culture has really transformed
from being computer on every desk in every home,
which was a device oriented mission
to now being about customers.
So it really makes it a great place to work.
I call it the golden era.
It's really been an awesome pivot to be about the customer
and then also how we think about how we partner
and you know, Satya sort of did a hit refresh,
if you will, on how we even think about our partner program.
We've always been partner lead,
we wanna be partner lead going forward.
That's the way, that's the ethos of the company, as he said,
and it's super exciting for us to have the opportunity
to have these types of partnerships that really benefit
our customers as well as our companies.
(upbeat music)
I'd like to move now to talk a little bit about
what happens every day at the office.
It's been a huge cultural transformation
at Microsoft for women.
What's been super exciting recently is really
the recognition that we should just come to work
as ourselves and that we can contribute more that way.
And in fact, you know, even I'm seeing
at industry conferences, more and more the keynotes
are about soft skills and things that really help everyone
be better at communicating and understanding that we need
to sort of recognize diversity, right, recognize inclusion.
So I'm curious what what kinds of experiences have you had?
- We're a tech company, right
and we're a globally distributed company
so we have employees and many different wells
from many different parts of different cultures.
And you know, we embrace diversity, right?
A diversity helps us build amazing technology.
We bring different perspective to what we do
and it enhances every conversation.
I think the fact that Micheline and I are here is also
a testimony to kind of the investment the company has made
into ensuring that you know, diversity is represented
all the way, you know, from from our executive team
throughout our organization.
But it wasn't always like that, right?
The need for inclusion, the need to embrace
different perspectives, different cultures,
some of many different parts makes a much better output.
- Yeah, I think I read something that was to create
a product or service for a diverse audience
requires a diverse team.
- I read somewhere at the Harvard Business Review
where they said there's two types of diversity, right,
one that you're kind of born with,
whether it's your ethnicity, or whether it's, you know,
the color of your skin or whatever it may be.
But the other part is your kind of environment.
Did you live abroad?
Do you understand different cultures?
And companies that have those two,
they call it 2D types of diversity.
They see 45% was the stat they use in terms of
growth year over year,
because you're bringing in a different perspective
and you're not hiring the same people
who look like you or act like you.
So that's where the innovation comes in.
And especially in our time where cloud is so prevalent,
we need to move fast and innovate.
But also as leaders, I feel a huge responsibility
as a female leader, in terms of being that role model
and being able to lead within the company
is a huge responsibility for me,
like I feel it more than probably
the entire company feels like,
because I feel I owe it to women and men.
I feel like to my entire team, because I'm a leader,
but we make it we make a huge impact
on the little things that we do.
Comments that are made that I realize people are watching
what we do in a positive way,
like they thank me because I said something
or I did something and I don't realize the impact
that we have as leaders and it becomes like more
of a kind of a weight on my shoulders and I carry every day
and I hold true and I think about it every day.
- Yeah, and I think what is interesting,
we come from a generation where, you know,
there weren't many women role models,
not many women in I mean, in tech and in management,
and if there were ever was that top job, you know,
women in our generation climate for that top job, right,
we're not collaborative, they they did not partner,
they did not lift each other up.
And I think, for us together, you know,
what we see, what we do, it really brings kind of a breath
of fresh air that you know, you can collaborate.
There are more roles, and that, you know,
we can we can show others that actually uplifting each other
is a positive thing.
It's not no longer competitive.
And I think you'll see with this new generation,
that they are more uplifting with each other, you know,
and they're more supportive of each other,
which was not the case actually, in our generation.
- The language that you're using reminds me of the book
that was written by Melinda Gates, The Moment of Lift.
- Yeah.
It is amazing and it really talks about lifting women up
in the world, lifts up society
and I think that's true that lifting women up in tech
brings up the entire quality of tech.
And I think that we're in a place where that's
about innovation and competition and doing the best work
that we can and bringing those extra ideas
and people to the table is just simply a good thing.
(upbeat music)
At Microsoft, we were starting to move away
from just talking the talk.
We had something happen recently where
it was Women's History Month.
And we had an idea from one of our colleagues to put up
a wall and talk about you know, great women I admire.
Another one is what's my experience as a woman in tech,
it turned out that what some people put up
as their experience was a surprise.
Things that, you know, I'm not mistaken for the admin.
I'm asked to take notes.
I have to keep reminding people I'm technical enough
to do this project, things that are you know,
really eye opening for some of the people on the team
and it turned out to be a blessing in disguise
because it created that way to have a conversation.
And for people across the board to understand
what everyone's experience was,
whether it was at Microsoft or somewhere else,
but it was like, this is what the experience is like.
And that's really opened up a conversation and an awareness
that I think is helping us make a difference
in how we change the culture.
And even something that Satya's just asked the entire
company to do is a values training or values conversation
around respect, integrity, and accountability.
And so I feel like it's the right time for us to do more
than talk about it, but to actually do things
and it's been super exciting and hopeful for everyone,
I think that it's gonna make it easier for everyone,
even if it's the difference between say, a senior engineer
and a junior engineer.
There's a lot of other things that don't just fall under
the classic definition of, you know, gender
and as it might be put in some statistics and reports.
(upbeat music)
So I'm a voracious reader.
I'm wondering what's on your coffee table these days.
- Well, my coffee table is more on the audibles.
(laughing)
So it's virtual coffee table exactly.
- For me, you know, Lean In from Sheryl Sandberg
has always kind of hit home.
One of our good friends gave me an art of innovations book.
And it's a really interesting book in terms
of how do you inspire innovation.
This company does, it's a an agency firm for Apple
and for many other organizations
where they help drive innovation,
and they're constantly coming up with new ideas.
And it really helped me approach life
and approach my own team and in a different way,
where we're trying to see how do we quickly innovate
and transform as a marketing team.
- I'm a little bit more of a traditionalist,
I love paper books.
I love being able to touch hold and read them,
and so one of my classics, my favorites
is Legacy by James Kerr.
He writes about the All Blacks, the New Zealand rugby team
that have been champions forever and draws parallels
between kind of the ethos and the culture of the All Blacks
in their training and how that leads, you know,
the parallels between that and the business world.
And in everything they do as a coach
and train newer players, it's all about what the legacy
that you want to leave behind will be, right.
And so, you know, some of the guiding principles
in that book are about humility.
It's about coaching and mentoring.
It's about changing the game.
So just when you're really good,
and at the top of your game, change the game, right?
And so to me, it's, it's been one of those
I go back to over and over again.
- Excellent.
And I'll add one to your list.
I am again, listening.
I do audiobooks is Invisible Women by Caroline Perez.
- Yes.
It is so insightful to see how we have done a lot
of research and definition of mankind is really being
about men and that you know about women.
And so this notion that as we move
into artificial intelligence and into machine learning,
making sure that we really represent the world's population
as it is, and we don't over assimilate the data
and it's a fascinating read.
So thank you, Micheline and Kavitha
for being here with me today.
I really appreciate the time.
- Absolute pleasure, thank you for having us.
- Thank you so much.
(upbeat music)