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hi michael it's great to see you hi dadry nice to see you as well i'm so excited we're going to be having this conversation here today i have been uh talking about it for a while so thank you for participating in really getting into specifically how do we hire and retain uh gender diversity big topic out in the world and um it keeps getting deeper and deeper into the how-to and that's what you and i are going to do today ceo to ceo so um i'm so excited that you're here great thank you happy to be here yeah let's talk about how this all happened to begin with how you and i got connected it's in itself it speaks to the story of what you know you're looking to accomplish and certainly what society needs to do which is uh getting involved in initiatives uh that are out there uh seeking to bring women into cyber security and and and help them grow and so forth and that was uh because of a woman who works uh in your organization you are the the founder and ceo and we're gonna talk a little bit about what technium has to offer here in a minute uh and uh and this special woman went out and found day of security which is an event that i am a big part of sponsoring and creating and training women and teaching them the 35 job categories and helping them see what's here and uh and that has really uh you know jumped into you supporting the event getting involved in the event as a ceo and uh us having a conversation where you said the words to me how do i do this you know how do i do this daydream help me you know and i thought you know what i get this question a lot and uh we've all there's been a lot of high level stuff that i've talked about over the years and and yet now i'm ready to get a little bit deeper of the exactly how we do this so uh so thanks to katie uh on your team for bringing us together thanks to you for being willing to actually have this conversation of what do i what what what's my answer uh to say to you as a ceo here's what you have to be doing minimally to make this happen and so uh from that on that again i thank you and this is going to be really um fun and interesting so share with us what made you care to get involved decide to get involved what's happened in your business and then what that has brought you here to where this this topic is super important to you yeah i mean a couple things so the the the business that we have is a cyber security business and it's a it's primarily an operation-centric business meaning we have 24x7 coverage people working you know all shifts all hours uh and an overlay function of engineers and designers right so it's a and then uh you know the the observation was that it's it's super difficult to recruit and retain women we were happily able to recruit one woman but she unfortunately left in less than a year in the technical side we've had uh success in in recruiting women into non-technical positions but the diversity really feels like because so many businesses are customer centric we're no different we're very customer-centric it really feels like we're limited by not having uh the ability to accomplish uh gender diversity um and i i reached out through katie to seek you know information and understanding of of how to do this and i i was actually very focused on recruiting in meeting you i've actually realized that i need to be more focused on retaining um because um as you always say the the recruiting is the easy part the retaining is the hard part and and that speaks to something that i'm very interested in learning about is how do you create a culture that uh supports gender diversity so that's that's really where i'm where i'm coming from in this discussion i love it i love it i love the transparency i love the lack of ego being in the way your ceo and you are super capable of saying i'm i'm i'm happy to do whatever you tell me to do i don't know the answers right and that's really how a lot of people just need to be is open to hearing the the things that maybe aren't fun to hear i uh he announced and when you hear him you start thinking about your culture sometimes it's not so fun uh and yet you know we know that's not what it's about it's not about fun it's about always growing and evolving and so you're absolutely right this uh you know hiring piece of this equation is much easier and i do want to touch upon it so that everybody else knows why i say it's such easier because it is you know sort of not what everybody's thinking and here's what it is uh so we're at in the technical space of cyber security we're somewhere around 20 to 22 percent uh women which is up from 12 percent i mean we're making some pro like the year uh prior we're making progress it's um going to still take more time because as a society as you know i told you i wanted to share my favorite new stat um that i've been uh sharing in the world which is to say to go here is to say you know as a society we're not really raising girls to think of themselves as powerful to think of themselves as can do anything and in fact it's the opposite and it is the world although the united states as you can see in these statistics here rank very low this blew my mind i know it blew your mind when you first saw it and so once i saw it was like that's i gotta i gotta get everybody understanding this and so anyhow so we're at somewhere around 20 22 with so so keep that statistic of engineers that are women and then know that more are coming and you do have to cultivate and be willing to take some juniors and train but in terms of getting the more experienced folks the the the good news for you the bad news for society is that most people aren't taking care of those people most employers are not taking care of those people statistics show that those that men and women aren't enjoying their work environments so so um it's easy from the perspective of they're there to be had you you got to be able to get to them to begin with and then it's really going to be when i when i say and what you said earlier how you retain them it's really going to be what what story do they meet when they come talk to you and that is your retention strategy is is the story there and so uh we'll get into that in a minute but that's the the simplicity of the hiring it does take work and it does take a little bit more time because you're working with less of the population and so you have to be willing as a leader to to take a little bit more time to fill those roles uh and yet if you're willing to take a little bit more time engage in you know resource such as myself uh right to go get them then you can't the the other pieces just develop them bring them in and develop them right uh and and and i say do both because seniors want juniors to take things off their plate again retention whatever gender doesn't matter they're they're there to take tasks off the seniors plates and that's how they learn and grow and so it's really a retention strategy of all your talent to bring in juniors so make them women right so isn't this crazy statistic did you when you first saw it what was don't what was your reaction well that the bar isn't even visible you know it's it's it's it you know because it's visual and a number it's it's crazy so i felt like um it was shocking that in some general areas women still haven't really you know moved the needle not just security and and engineering which i know something about it's it's it's larger than that that's right in fact that's a great segue mike to what katie brought to your attention and brought to my attention brought to my my team's attention was this you know she wanted to get she wants to get involved and change this cyber security not you know 20 women uh and she said hey the did you know the veterinarian business uh did this and this is something you're also connected to or the story uh and this is kind of how it started too right she brought this too yeah i thought it was really interesting so uh my sister's a veterinarian my wife's a veterinarian and so um it became clear to me when i've worked in veterinary hospitals and been associated with them because we we have a customer that's a veterinary hospital that it was predominantly women and it's if you look at it what's really interesting if you look at the as as recently as the mid 70s it was 20 women 80 percent men that were veterinarians and if you look at what the ratio is now in terms of graduating uh veterinarians it's quite literally the opposite it's 80 women 20 men and so the culture in that industry had to have something how did that happen why did that happen and so i asked katie as an exercise in trying to figure out how we could look at our industry what changed what happened and so that's that's sort of the background is that i wanted to understand that and i wanted to know why why that happened and so she put some work into it and and discovered some things about the veterinary industry that are really interesting yeah which is really applicable any uh industry in humans and what we all want you know what's most fascinating to me is that so it flipped it didn't even it flipped it literally flipped and um which is interesting and i don't i don't i'm not an advocate if i want flipping actually i want equal because what we're talking about is um diversity of thought and again if we flip it the other way we'll just go the other way that's the other way and we have to utilize all humans so um i think i'd like to uh maybe take two we can do some exploration of why did the men get lost in that what happened and yeah you know like i don't want to move the men in this and the columbus the conversation can create that if we're not careful right uh in fact i was talking to another peer of ours um the other day and i said i am liking it to what has happened to the coal industry uh in that you can't sort of take something away and not replace it you know like it isn't it's not about one or the other it's about together and uh and and especially when it comes to jobs so we'll have to do a part two and go investigate what was it yeah yeah that's a very good point because i'm sure there are issues now on the other side right because when you switch that much and and uh the one thing to for that conversation would be interesting to explore is that leadership continues to be primarily men so ceos cfos ceos are still predominantly men so that industry is is having a little disruption right now because there is a a ground swell from the veterinarians the people that are their producers that they're not properly represented so that's more common in the rest of society you know the devil's in the details you know if we went back to the previous slide which is about you know equal power we might it's not equal we will never have diversity if we don't have equal power right it just can't happen so um and this is a great example where it's 80 percent now women 20 men but not in leadership of course the powerful seats are the men so we're not going to have equal we do really want to get to that right isn't that fascinating i mean uh so we'll we'll we'll talk we'll go investigate uh there's nothing to investigate actually now at this point it's really about you know that willingness to um to see women as powerful and to get the training to be powerful sure absolutely it it it really has to be i i have that story of men that hired me out of college i worked for them for 21 years across three different companies and they empowered me to be powerful was i a great uh you know person to get their hands on for sure and yet are you kidding they gave me power so i did wonderful things um and so that's rare i'm a one i represent the one percent founding technical ceos one percent and i have the story that nobody else has who who gets out of college and works for serial entrepreneurs that have a bunch of technical companies and keep building them right and so why we can't have that be that means everybody has to be those two serial entrepreneurs that were what they were for can't be dumb luck yes it can't be that and unfortunately all my sisters that i know out there have gone through the wildest stories to get to their leadership roles you know or excuse me to not to get to leadership roles excuse me you know and the ones that are in leadership they have the similar story didn't really have the sexual harassment didn't really have the held about had men supporting and growing it's like we all sit up there on these panels and stuff and it's like we don't have the story of the norm this is the problem so i'm super um you know confident that when we acknowledge that things will change now you and i both know and you can see all these things listed on this screen that one has to do that we're one person and yes we do run the show uh and we are responsible for the culture and so um we have to rely on all these other people to do what we need them to do i mean you run a highly technical organization managed services lots of client interactions and yet we don't really know what's being said to to to each other in you know in in the office we know more about what's being said to our clients than what's being said to each other and so when i really think about this challenge of creating a culture uh that can retain women i think we have to back it up to what i deem the basics right i don't think any cultures are really talking about them anymore and i put these five things up here on the screen and deidre that was one of the reasons why i did want to talk to you and why i'm interested in these five things is because what the only thing i did do right was i decided culture was important right and we we made a decision a couple of years ago to fix our culture to be a happy good place to be so now i want to make it more inclusive but i i agree with you the focus has to be as much on the internal as the external so you can't spend all of your time trying to make customers happy and not making your people happy otherwise you don't gonna have happy customers so there's no point that's right and you use the word inclusive and that's the word inclusion comes before diversity i uh been doing a talk with a title of that for the first time in a couple of weeks and the person i said to what said what's the difference what's the difference between diversity and inclusion you know and i'm glad he said that because these terms are sort of just getting utilized without really understanding which is inclusion is a behavior you know it's a behavior which is what culture is a behavior uh and uh and diversity is is not a behavior it's an outcome yeah outcome right outcome so so when it so when i think okay how do i help somebody as special as you and your peers that come to me with this i i realized that i because i thought about coming in as a consultant which i've never done but i put myself in that space right and i thought well the first thing i do is i tell the company how important this is to me and i'd educate them on inclusion and diversity and what they need and why they're important and diversity of thought and this isn't about replacing men and and yes we're you know speaking about this uh veterinarian example here but at the end of the day we don't want that either because that's not diversity of power it's not diversity of thought if only the powerful or one gender uh and in order to do so there's some basic stuff that we just have to get to and we have to own and uh as the leader of the organization i will not tolerate anything other than an a performance on this uh you know these are these are basic and yet really critical uh to us even having a shot at having an inclusive environment right you know yeah for sure and and and really also saying to all the men it's not your fault you know like it's really you know you're not it's you're not the enemy like yeah you know um humans are are conditioned by society and it's only through uh you know experiences that we can wake up the conscious mind we're in a real conscious time in society in fact i don't want to get too much in the brain but you know the the the days of farming brought a whole new game to our our our left side of our brain literally empathy feelings things like that but anyhow uh it's not to blame it's to say you know sort of there's always been this culture of let's take number one for example sexual harassment flirting asking on dates to me it doesn't matter of course i don't want sexual harassment uh but i also don't want flirting and asking to go on dates because it's it really is exhausting men need to understand that women are hit on and asked on dates and to do whatever on a regular basis up outside of the office 24 7 starting as being a little girl we all know this and so who the hell wants that in the office i don't care if it ends up into a marriage once in a while who cares uh it it's not imma you know it's hard for men to maybe imagine what it would be like to be flirted with 24 7 and a minute or five you're like i'd love it yeah not until it happens 24 7 of your life starting as a young age you wouldn't say that and i know i'm just kidding that most men wouldn't excite my my point is the environment has to be void of it it can't even echo a tiny bit of it you can't ask people on dates you can't flirt with people and of course sexual harassment's against the law right so these other things are not against the law and yet if a culture has it you're not going to retain and develop women if they deal with that you know um and i can tell you as a woman that um while that didn't happen to me i worked alongside women that it did and their careers were derailed you know yeah that's awful without a doubt and um and uh and it's really awful and and people don't understand even the innocence of flirting and i get that there's the challenges of breaking bread and having drinks together and i get that there's the challenges of anybody could be flirting women too i mean as far as i'm concerned i'm speaking to any human right you know and yet really uh in society it's the you know sort of the norm has been meant to flirt with women which is why this has been such an issue right you know so to actually the willingness to engage about this and stand in front of our employees our teammates and say you know and speak to it and and and not just once but sort of regularly reminding ourselves i think it's important because i'll tell you what as you know i do a ton with bringing women into cyber security i do a ton with just helping women grow in their careers and unfortunately i still hear this problem of you know i still hear it we know it's there the the the the statistics of what's happening to women and abuse in is is another slide that would just blow our minds so we can't you know even pretend to think it's not in our work environment right right right so to be able to look people in the face and say and if you're not up for this just vote with your feet it's okay yeah we'll give you give you the time to look for a job and transition you out no problem if you have any issues with us happy to talk through it but once we talk through it you got any issues with this conversation then it's just not the place to work and that's okay and right you don't have to hide an interview behind the background i don't have to go replace you behind your back let's go just do that uh is what i i say and would say to to my environment so that's that's like okay let's get the you know let's just not have that in our way right because there's nothing more uncomfortable than that for a woman um especially uh you know if you're talking about bringing in junior entry-level women it's uh disastrous i mean it's disastrous for anybody but you know i mean they don't have the experience of possibly dealing with it or getting support with it or anything like that um so number two here no nicknames this is one that um that uh just in my own experience of building businesses have observed how nicknames in one case can be super powerful and build a bond and just be really um you know uh you know positive then in other instances the concept nicknames can be really negative hurtful bullying even right yeah i i th this one really impacts me because i could see how it on the surface it would appear fun and you know even sort of culture building but it could so easily go wrong so it's just not worth it you know call a person by what's the sweetest sound a person's name call them by the name they want to be called right very simple i love that what's that quote from i've never heard that oh it's a sales technique you know the sweetest sound is a person's name use their name as frequently as possible so oh i haven't heard that yeah really but there's a reason there's a sociological reason is that it's uh you know people identify their whole lives with their name and you know they i think what you would say is they get to choose so the woman who introduced us is named katie her full name is catherine but she prefers katie so that's not a nickname in her eyes that's her name but but i but i i you know i this this really spoke to me when you talk to me about it because i think it's it's it's a very simple thing to do eliminates any ambiguity people get called what they want to be called and everybody's professional that's right and that's their email address too right right and that's their name uh and um and there's just no exceptions and we have to lead by example of course on everything right right um so number three here no speaking over people in meetings i uh this is a huge complaint of women still a problem today sorry to interrupt you which sounds like i'm speaking over you but i'm not um how do you actually present that and quote enforce that deidre i'm interested in that one yeah absolutely so the rule is whoever's speaking nobody else speaks until that person's done and if what you'll deal with next is people that are long-winded and i just deal with them both at the same time which is the other rule is say something once and only once do not rephrase it do not re if anybody needs to know what you just said and they don't understand they'll ask will somebody will ask or whoever doesn't know should ask for the person to repeat themselves you and i both know people say things two three times before they stop talking the same thing i know it's very common so it's sort of that's the the backup rule to this um but that's how you establish the culture is you yeah must must must make meetings go much more effectively too super effective yeah uh effective supportive right so yeah super um it's fun it's always great when solutions are easy huh yeah yeah yeah that's that's actually true it's always the best all right fair and equal opportunities for advancement this is you know none of these can be ordered they're all number one as far as i'm concerned uh this one is really key and i'll tell you the the easiest way to make sure this happens is that your roles and your responsibilities are clearly defined in your organization literally clearly defined by tasks and projects and everybody's on the same page and they're transparent and they're measurable so this isn't up for speculation of whether somebody did a good job or not you got to have measurable agreements that are tied to job functionality and roles and when you do that well then it when it comes advancement time it's not who do i like better who am i closest to or or who you know uh whatever experience i've had with that person recently i just go by versus literally looking at what they've been doing right and what are their results and and who's best for the job and and that has to be done really well because we do know that most promotions occur who likes who right for sure that is a problem uh that's going on out there and women complain about this all the time there is no better way to lose a woman who's got experience than this yeah no that makes sense when you're entry level and you don't have a lot of experience those first three you deal with you live with and um depending on how the outcomes come you you get you great you gain wisdom and you move forward right as fast as possible but the first three all entry-level women are just dealing with it today but once you've got experience if you're gonna get passed up they're gone it's the number one reason i get called uh is by a woman with experience saying that's it i just got passed i'm uh gotta get out of here yeah and uh and they believed that they had the better resume and so let's stop that from happening you know in my day i'll tell you so first this story just popped in my head my first management seat i was 22 years old i've been one year in the business i was going after getting that management seat and we were opening one office which meant there was one seat and there was a guy that i was competing with our numbers were very very similar and it was like who's gonna get that new seat and i'll tell you in my head if i didn't get it i was out uh and i bet you in his head if he didn't get it he was out well guess what happened they made two they opened two offices instead they didn't want to tell either one of us we weren't getting it smart people yeah like that's who i worked for for 21 years you know and i don't know that i would have been out but i'll tell you i would have been angry as hell right you know and so uh you know we need to be thinking ab that and understanding that women are just as competitive women want to be just as successful women want the powerful seats too and so there has to be equal play for them uh and we can't just assume that a woman isn't going to want that role which i also have a great story on the founders i work for didn't pitch a job to me because i just got married and there's a had a few new step kids and oh wouldn't think you'd want to move and this and that and i heard the job being pitched to somebody else when we're out at a bar and was like what now that was my rapid 7 job and i'm so glad i took that job and they said to me he said to me well i didn't think you'd want to do it you just got married this and that like and it's like no no no i want that job and my resume is better and so i got that and it was a great thing in for my career and that came from a place of love so we have to understand that we just have to take the the the sort of emotions and just always put the woman put anybody on the list who's qualified let's not assume let them choose right of course yeah yes even again this was moving across the country so uh again that was the assumption that i wouldn't want to move across the country and so um let's uh let's remember that we can we don't know we don't know and we think and even when it comes from a good place so make it fair keep that stuff out in terms of our our observations um and then you know in terms of advancement i think in general we have to invest in humans in emotional intelligence training in communi which is communication training which is now there's a new uh there's a new term of uh empathy intelligence right you know super what we're meeting in society uh so we gotta we gotta offer that training i don't think that is as obvious as people think right i think that sounds very logical to me right because it's very difficult to always understand what the right reaction should be to be empathetic right you can't always be sympathetic but you sure can be empathetic yeah yeah you know i've i've found the eat some of the old models like myers briggs right right it just and you know oh personality profiles disc profiles they're so powerful this is yeah yeah you make if you have people have it on their desk and like we we have we have models on our desk and you know when i built majorly large-scale organizations that such that you didn't walk into anybody's office without knowing what their their score was yeah yeah yeah and it was so helpful because it would remind me oh yeah this person needs me to be calm not like ah i got all these ideas this is my cfo right so the approach right yes he needs me to plan and not just walk into his office and sit down and start right and i and i had to learn that and that helped me so much and i was still a powerhouse learning that yeah so again that was brought to me that training was brought to me uh we have to invest in training if we're gonna actually have equal opportunity because it's uh really easy to otherwise sort of just choose right right instead of it being everybody that's advancing like let's all grow uh so um you know there's so much details within all of these things right and yet um we're almost done here with i like to wrap it all up with the environment has to feel calm you know i always say calm cool collected no matter what's going on uh and in security you all are actually some of the best i've ever seen at calm cool collected well it's it's you know you're you're in emergency situations frequently so you develop a certain competence at you know soothing um you know handling a situation with i guess that is empathy in a way because the whole idea is i understand your situation i understand your emergency we're gonna help you right that's there's a certain degree of bringing someone's emotion to a certain place that so that's one of the reasons why you know i i was sort of seeking some help here because i feel like more diversity would be very helpful in developing that sort of culture yeah it is you know i wonder how much so having to be that calm cool collected with clients then do we still do that with each other in the workplace oh it can go wrong after that because you can you can dump on the next closest person right so we have to i i do think it's emergency work michael and i think that we have to care for our security professionals by giving them the training of how right to believe stress encouraging self-care again any human encouraging self-care encouraging good diets and rest and time off and spending time with family like encouraging it right not just talking about it encouraging it making sure it's happening uh and and really you know being really willing to say i i want that same behavior with clients with each other sure right that's the name of the game that is the name of the game i call it win-win communication me personally i like that meaning and my mom taught me this when i was really young she swacked me with the only time she never whacked me with anything with a brush when i said a derogatory name to my brother i must have been five years old and she said you don't have anything nice to say don't say anything at all and i i'll never forget it man it woke me up back then and it's still true today which is if i find myself not coming from a win-win perspective or i'm not feeling positive do not speak daydream you know it doesn't have to be this sec take your take the time to to be in to where all your conversations are win-win you're always calm cool and collected uh and uh and and really that's what we demand to our clients and we're just as important and if we're not happy we can't make our clients happy like you said earlier imagine all the men doing this you know all these things all day long too you know and supporting each other i happen to un know what it's like to work around a lot of men too and i feel like that you know there could be a lot more support going on for sure uh absolutely then the the the beating up and the right and i get that there's this camaraderie in manhood and i it's endearing i love watching that stuff uh and yet it it can wait let's make that positive jabbing or what have you uh fun because even if you're not making that behavior towards a woman nobody wants to be around it most likely the men don't want it either and yet it's just a part of life right so it just has to be eliminated in that everybody interacts with everybody the same and we're all going to be happier we're all going to grow faster and we're going to be inclusive so that we can have diversity of thought and we can have diversity of of of cultures that can bring more perspective our attackers are all over the globe i want people all over the globe protecting me if my attackers are people all over the globe right i want them thinking like those people think too and they're cultural norms and language connotations that mean something and things like that so so really uh while we you know make this about uh having gender diversity to me this is really about let's treat each other gender regardless the same and then that'll be the inclusive environment and then just go recruit those women and train some of them and you're going to have a great you know a great uh diverse culture very soon great great that sounds great i know i can't wait we i would imagine there's going to be a lot of women listening to our recording and i want them to reach out to you for jobs your organization is growing and thriving and you're here exactly where's your location uh we're in south borough as a headquarters but we really have people all over we have people across the united states and europe um because we have a balance between a european and a u.s operation centers we have two and we also have we started culturally from the very beginning with uh giving people the opportunity to live wherever they want to and that's an important thing so we've we've got some density here in boston because you know we've been able to find people here but we've seen people leave boston but stay with us and we found people in other places that we need so we're we're really not limited geographically at all i love it i love it ladies send your resume they're hiring they'll make roles uh mike is very serious about to completely change in the game and uh the quality of a workforce and i encourage you to take him up on his offering and i'll make sure i stick around to make sure that that we all continue to grow and talk about this even more and have more conversations but for now mike this has been absolutely a pleasure thank you for willingness to um to be told these things and and for your response of sure yeah like right now anxious to learn that's great yep thank you thank you daydream well i can't wait to do a follow up i want to hear how it goes after you get with your peeps and you spread the message because you're going to get people applying to your jobs and uh i would start now like next week where can people send their resume uh very simple just jobs at techniumnetworking.com jobsnetworking.com everybody and we'll be putting out social media and links and all kinds of things and uh we'll make sure to do episode two on our progress thank you everybody for your time today have a wonderful rest of your day thank you you