Women in Tech Panel - PyLondinium 2019

so thank you everyone for joining this is going to be a women in tech panel but it's actually has to do more about diversity and inclusion overall so we know a lot of times we talk about women in tech but it there are so many other genders and it's not just binary so it has to do about everything and we're just gonna have like four amazing women here so I'll have you introduce yourselves please yeah my name is Anna I live in London since September I actually just moved to nothing Hill really exciting I work for a company called elastic and I do a lot of community work in my free time I said on the Python Software Foundation board of directors and I'm a co-leader of Pi ladies London I'm also very local I worked on a Bloomberg and I've worked at Bloomberg for 18 years I used to look after all of our engineering teams here in London up until about two months ago and then I started to do a technical product in a role hi I'm Cara Lena I've been working for seven years in Switzerland for startups and medium-sized companies in roles such as full stack and data engineer and then I moved to London and now I work as an independent consultant for the same type of companies and in my free time I enjoy painting them actually I'm running a workshop that combines the concepts about programming and art hi my name is Laura Murray nigo i basically also recently moved to london after being having two years of digital normal life so yes and really happy about it and currently I'm a cool developer expert DDJ cloud community here in London so and also I'm doing IT consulting for different startups nice okay so I forgot to introduce myself it seems hi Mariana I work in Bloomberg as well I've been working here for about five years I'm currently leading a team in London and I'm also a member of the Python guild in Bloomberg which is pretty cool so by the way I'm not just looking at Instagram I have the questions here so let's start with saying a bit more about what you're doing and so on so tell me about something cool you're doing right now except of being on this panel okay I'll let you have an idea yes talk about so one somewhat recent interest of mine is about improving the hiring process so I've been working with with a company to design new coding questions and I'm also working with another company to improve their interviewing process to make it test not just for our goalie algorithmic skills but also other skills that are very useful for a programmer to have so communication skills communication skills for example and also being able to take an existing code base and work with it without burning it to the ground subscribe because legacies a fact of life that really get used to fair enough okay how about something you've worked on that's very that you felt was impactful I actually have a story to tell so I pilotis Ghana reached out to me there is the first pike on Africa happening in August I don't know the exact dates that you all should go because it's awesome it's organized by a woman called Marlene megami I don't know the right now look up online and pilotis gonna reach out to me and they asked if I could tell their members a little bit about how to write a proposal how to prepare for a conference talk and someone tweeted at me yesterday and she watched my workshop and she got our first conference talk accepted and that's really awesome yeah that's really good and that was definitely impactful when you get the feedback it's what makes it yeah yeah I can share a little bit about something that I'm doing now so I started to do a very different role a couple months ago and it's been hugely exciting and I have I haven't felt this completely stupid in a long time and for me that's been a lot of fun and very challenging and it's been kind of learning lots of different technologies and it's been it's been great but what we're trying to do the crux is what we're trying to do is help to make the engineers that you know number get our company a lot more kind of effective by not looking in tons of places to find official documentation and correct information about kind of what tools they should be using and you know what the latest status of different api's are so that's something that the impact of that is something that I've felt many times over the years as my like as an engineer as well as a leader of teams it's like well where do I find this information it's like you just need to ask that person like yeah you can you could you can look and you definitely should do that but once you've done all that research you just need to go talk to them so being able to improve that process for kind of our population I think is something that I'm very excited about because it's very real something I'm experiencing now and yeah it's definitely it's challenging me I can tell you is gonna have an impact on me for sure great well I'm working right now we're really excited a startup that is culturing effective basically it's a football online academy so for me it's really exciting I really like football I'm from Argentina by the way that's why actually the founder is just 23 years old and it's a really young team and they're about to skill about like million users so I'm a leading the developer team I help them to a scale and besides football and the person that is really lovely technology they have this Academy to also focus into mountain health into the kids and actually they want you start playing football and help them to grow as a person so that for me is really exciting okay it sounds like you're all doing very cool stuff actually and it's very interesting when I asked what cool are you working on it is like silence how do you keep yourself motivated and working through everything and keep doing incredible things that's a hard one I think I think everybody like it this happens to everybody that people don't feel it sometimes for me it's really been I'm connecting with people and sharing my problems and maybe that's kind of I'm spreading the misery a little bit but for me it's really trying to find people that I think care about things that I care about maybe share kind of some sort of values that we haven't come in and then just kind of trying to work together to really you know figure out if I'm stuck on something or if I'm feeling really not you know kind of inspired by what I'm doing is is you know really working with others that kind of care about it and the other thing that I think is you know also important is just to know when you yourself have hit your wall and you know whatever that wall may be whether it's kind of you know needing a change of scenery a change a role change of people change of technology you know realizing what it is that kind of does Drive you and putting things in place and being proactive about getting you inspired again no one's gonna inspire you you have to figure out for me what like that's how I've gone about it yeah kind of what takes yes so I recently kind of hit a point of meetup organizing and fellow meetup organizers might agree with me so there's the krama problem that you always have about a 50% no-show rate for meetups and it's sometimes very disheartening if you put like a lot of hard work into organizing a meet-up you organize the venue you organize the speakers and only ten people show up so that sometimes disheartening but then I remind myself maybe I have some standards that are too high if I just reach one person and I make a difference in their day then I done something good also as Christine said it's important to take breaks especially to your work in the Python community and I think it's important to go on a real vacation don't do any well into your work on vacation just set that out-of-office reminder one of my former co volunteers once said to me there are no emergencies in open-source software where we're not doctors so he'd go on vacation for two weeks it will still be fine people might miss you but that's good but yet take breaks yeah I agree in fact well I've been traveling on my own the last two years one of the reasons that I've been doing that is to meet other communities and there are moments in in my career that I didn't know what it was the next step so basically the first step that I need to do is keep some space to check which kind of the things are like which kind of the things I don't want to write and with that space basically going to the next step so for me what helps is that I work in a flexible way so I can basically to a certain extent choose my hours and that means that when I feel some burnout or whatever coming I can choose to to go out in nature instead of working all day and this has helped me a lot like compared to how it was when I was working full time also I think saying no is important and it's something that a lot of us are bad at I have this rule like if I don't feel a hundred percent yes this excites me and I say no and this is sometimes really hard but you don't have to say no we're in a route way you can say no not me but I have these other ten friends who might be able to help you with what you're looking for so don't be afraid to say no it's often times better than loading more and more and more onto your plate and also I think what some communities struggle with is it's always the same set of people organizing all the things but then there's the other 50% of people who say hey I want to get involved but I don't know how so let's give people a chance to get involved as well yeah I think it's a really like important kind of signal to yourself that like if you find most of the time you're not enjoying kind of what you're doing that something probably isn't right and I like your sort of am I really excited about this like does it spark joy who's that spark joy those who are tied ears you'll know what I'm talking about so you mentioned actually helping someone as well how about mentorship either being a mentor or being a mentor to someone else sorry being a mentor or being Karel Liem mentoring online I used to teach coding in my city but then when I started to travel it's kind of hard right you don't have the classroom so I get the chance to keep inventory and doing classes online and besides teaching is all about also you learn from each other right it's not it's not it's also a different role that you can have your experience or even the different idea that somebody can have about career and you already been in that path can help a lot to somebody as somebody helped me in different way for me mentoring is part of my career for sure as I mentioned I offer speaker mentorship I currently don't do it as much as I used to but that's really important and something that sparks love joy in me for being a mentee I think some people think that you have like that one person that you turn to for everything for me it's not like that like I have mentors for different things like my friend Lorena I would consider her like she has taught me a lot about self-worth for example so she's a mentor to me in that field my friend Jeff he'd help teaches me a lot about personal finance so I think just like build relationships with different people you don't have to have one person for everything yeah I agree and one thing that helped me a lot because I I have a kind of similar way to you have a financial coach like actually be able to share in which part of your life are you and also which kind of things you want to improve financial okay I was wrangling with these I would like to know which other person has a similar way and then you can help each other yeah that's it's I think very similar to what I've experienced I've just tried to I've been fortunate to get to know and work with lots of very very skilled and experienced people over the years and just kind of really connecting with different people and sharing my problems and hearing their problems and hopefully we've been able to co mentor each other over the years is really how I've kind of tried to set up kind of my own kind of mentorship experiences whether I was the mentor or whether I was the mentee Martha my friend Martha and I we just talked about how do people build friendships and I think what it comes down to and what also is true for mentorship is that it takes a lot of vulnerability you have to admit that hey all my relationship sucks or hey I'm bad at spending my money and then the mentor also has to open up a little bit for you to build up a relationship but one quote that I really like that I've heard I don't know where I picked it up but it's that people don't associate with don't relate to perfect they relate to vulnerable and so I think vulnerability is really something that unites us it's really hard but I think it's it's always been worth it when I was vulnerable with people it sounds like Bennett Brown I don't know probably I just read a book by her [Laughter] friend a brown or brown she's a storyteller she has been studying balloon oh really yeah and all this talk by her good how do you think the mentorship kind of relationship happened was it something that was organic or was it just for you I've had the best results when it's organic I couldn't there is a register in Matt's in the that the mentor has time and the knowledge that you seek and you you also have the time and dedication to actually show that you're committed and deserving of like the attention of this person there are also some platforms where you can try to get matched up with matters usually those are not they're not free this can also work out for like very specific things I think one such platform for example is code mentor dota yo where people can get help on specific problems so we talked about mentorship let's talk a bit about leadership and you take in terms of being in a minority group and I know Christine you've been a leader for a while so do you think this ever was has affected well it's interesting I think I think I might put that question back to you actually I can share it like I can definitely share my experience and I guess that I'm I think technology is great because when there's disagreements in many cases you can kind of really you know look at data and kind of look at what works and yes we can still disagree about how we're going about things and yes there are like myriad opportunities to still have conflict and and still have kind of you know issues with leadership and you know creating an environment where people are thriving and where products are able to be built which are really amazing but I guess from from my experience I I guess I've seen my leadership challenges really not through a gender lens it's been through challenges I'm with with how my personality is I think and kind of how my what my background is what my skill set is and of course there's an aspect of gender to that but it never felt from I think a lot I'm sure has to do with what company environment you're in and I think for for our company environment at least it's something that I think we spend a lot of time trying to create very inclusive spaces and have people really be heard and so I think for our environment the gender thing was never like a big part of you know being a leader for me if anything I think like it probably you know I was oh she's this the girl and and it but it but in a positive way as opposed to a negative way how about how about yourself no I actually haven't had an issue with this in Bloomberg to be fair not in a leadership perspective for sure it has to do a lot I think with your personality and it does have to do a lot with the kind of the team environment that you yourself inspired to others in others as well so you can have a team that's very inclusive and that doesn't have to do with gender or like anything very specific it has to do more with even personalities you have people who are very extroverted and you have people who are very introverted and having those two personalities in the same team can also it can be an issue but also it can just not be one and it just has to do a lot with an inclusive environment and I mean this is the most important part and it's interesting cuz we we obviously exist in our corporate bubble to a certain extent and I guess you ladies like are like there's community groups that you're leading and like that must it's very different because you don't have this you know kind of like other kind of creature that's kind of creating this environment and trying to enforce this environment so I guess like how has that been for you guys it's all about giving the space right and also check which other person can support you besides that because one of my first roles as a leader was actually in a really small sort of leadership and if there were three other super nice guys and actually at the beginning it was even hard me because idea to lead it was I don't know I was feeling even weird given instructions but it's not about that right and other member that was there I was like okay right now you are given the space for you to actually guide the team get involved with other team members right and I felt more comfortable because also I think is in terms of personality in terms of who you are in terms of sometimes oh I can be a leader sometimes that's other thing right that happened so I think it's about communication and giving the space also to others for me I have to say I've been mostly on the individual contributor ika Laguna path they think if it's okay for guys to do it it's okay for me as well I think it's also a lot about encouragement like I'm kind of in this place where I'm deciding do I want to go the individual contributor path or do I want to be a manager I do really enjoy helping people but I'm also terrified to mess up something as a manager because I think it's really hard to be a good manager and you obviously want to do it right but then I in my company we just hired a lot of very strong women and I look at them and I asked them and then they share things with me and it kind of like helps me see yes I want to be like her one day for example Samantha she's our VP of Sales for amia she's like this badass woman who can be really strict with all the territory managers if she has to but she's also super approachable and we'll have a chat with me in the kitchen about yoga or about her anxiety or things like that so I think what it comes down to is having strong female role models and them encouraging other women to also take on leadership roles because as you said like sometimes we are leaders but then we're like am I really a leader I think we always have to have this tendency to put ourselves down impostor syndrome yeah yeah yeah it's very common I have it too to be fair it's interesting like because this question was asked about leadership and I haven't had people I haven't felt ever that people thought of something because of my gender in terms of leadership and it was very funny because I was talking with a friend and I was like oh people have never said anything to me that was like see exist in any way like it's fine and he's like well like ten minutes ago you were telling me how this person said oh you don't look like a programmer or like I'm like oh actually you're right I just shrug it off so well like I've learned to shrug it off that's the thing it's not that it doesn't necessarily exist and I think I'm quite a strong personality so I wouldn't I wouldn't be to put it on myself and stop myself from I would shrug it off but I understand that for other people that can be a real issue yeah that's why even this is space about showing off that okay she can be my next role model or that is possible she is a leader right people can get more involved and actually you're giving visibility about what you're doing yeah I think role models are very important and it keeps coming up here so I think we might as well touch upon that so what do you guys think about roles models have you ever had someone you looked up to you and that drove you more or anything like that that might sound cheesy but my mom no my mom she's a very hardworking woman and she's always taught me and my sister I want you to have an education I want you to make your own money and be independent and I think that she's really taught me how to work hard so I'm really thankful to her because she's taught me a lot I might get emotional talking about her but also recently I recently had a trip to South Africa and I started reading more about Nelson Mandela and I think he's a really inspiring person he inspires me alot it's very hard to top that answer I have to tell you well I don't have role models per se I think it's never been asked that I don't know searching franticly so but the thing is I do get inspired from people in my daily life I am very observant so I notice when they have like a way of dealing with things that is different than mine and I can appreciate it and sometimes also incorporate if I see like a good way like a healthy way of dealing with things that other people have shown me that this inspires me can make me change as well I think it's also related with visibility a lot because sometimes you know this kind of thing that says you don't know that is possible till you see it sometimes and it happened to me actually one of the first times that I went to meet up I was really young so long ago I was agent html5 I think so and and actually I get really inspired with one of I consider him one of my role models because he was in front of the stage talking about technology and talking about actually he was travelling around the world right and teaching about this and I was like wow that's a cool job I want to do the same thing right so after that actually I met him even we were in the same in the same environment a lot and they gave me the opportunity to start doing kind of the same same thing but before that I didn't know that it was a kind of role or like actually it was a real job right so giving the possibility to make visible what you're doing I think it's great you never know who else is it can be inspired by you yeah and I think that when I say yes to do these kinds of things I normally I do it so hopefully kind of the people in our organization and just other people can see like anybody can do that it's fine right like seeing more people who are kind of from all different kind of walks of life and have lots of different experiences get up and kind of you know talk about the things that they've done I think that's kind of what you know we need to make sure that we have a lot of those people who are you know women and from all different communities so you know children kind of are looking up and seeing lots of different kind of kinds of people doing different jobs that you know we need people to do and that have lots of opportunities so for me that's kind of what's really kind of you know important from the role model kind of question at this point because I was like my parents like my parents I also try to pick up lots of kind of skills and way of dealing with things as I interact with people yeah I think that is important actually a lot of people take heart from seeing other people doing things they are kind of interested in and are not sure and then they see them doing it and they're like oh you know what okay so going back to more of a diversity and inclusion overall aspect so we know there have been mistakes because people didn't take diversity inclusion into account let's say for example a very old one from the seatbelts who were not really designed for women or children so it ended up being dangerous or like from an from a software that recognized faces and let's say for specific it didn't really work out very well so why do you think it is important to have diversity inclusion in your own opinion and I think because I just had this conversation a free lunch with two guys I think the adversity is such a broad topic it's not I think and software it's a lot about diversity of genders but I think it goes beyond that its diversity of sexual orientations and religions and even backgrounds like I I studied English in Catholic theology so I come like from a different world basically but there are so many skills that I can use in my job right now that communication skills project management skills language skills so I don't know like over lunch we discussed that diversity is important because we need to realize that we're all different and different is good different isn't bad so yeah yes I completely agree with that and something that I don't like is for example the world minority because it's like okay what is minority a minority because I'm a woman because I'm to speak English right so I think that diversity should be in different areas not only software because everybody should embrace your background it doesn't matter like sex orientation gender and in terms of software we are all consumers too right so if for example one of the things related with boys technology is the first boys devices didn't recognize the boys in women or even worse even if you are a meal and not a English native speaker and they were not able to recognize it so at the end we are all consumers and why not we can be producers why do you think it's hard to have a diverse thing oh yes we're spending quite a lot of time right now I'm investing in improving how inclusive we make our teams and it is really hard because even if you know the team everybody looks the same like obviously everyone knows that you know there's so much more underneath the surface and people's personalities and their backgrounds that really do make people very unique in different people and that's really super important but then how we're actually able to you know work effectively together so people aren't you know hesitating about putting their ideas forward so people are able to kind of you know actually challenge each other and a kind of a constructive way to come up with the best solution but like you know I think people don't want to hurt each other's feelings I think people kind of don't know how to negotiate conflict well I don't think people know how to like make people feel included when they are the minority group as it were so like I think there's a lot of skills and just kind of like recognition of like you know how like what are the areas that we do need to focus on to kind of improve how we create inclusive environments but yeah I think like I think it's thing is really hard actually yes from from being in teams where there's been a you know kind of a good measure of like what you would kind of say is kind of gender diversity and racial diversity and in a diversity of kind of background and from being in teams where there's not like actually it's both hard it's hard so yeah I think I think that's kind of that's what we're really trying to focus on is how we enable the our teams to you know have conflict in a more constructive way to create like environments where people can you know be who they want to be but you know aren't kind of holding themselves back because of you know they feel like they won't be heard or listened to fair enough what do you think the world needs more of to reach gender equity so I'm bringing back gender the reason for that is that it's one that's actually quite visible it's easy to measure yes in whatever diversity or or equality do you want to do is the first step is awareness I think so in so many different areas right even what is a challenge right now why would you are trying to go to equal options and what's going on in other places that maybe we are really lucky to be here we have the the possibility to be here but in other places women are not here so all these kind of things being aware I think is the first about equality and I think it's just an acknowledgement acknowledgement as well it's like okay we're I think many places are saying we're clearly not getting it right so we want to improve it but I think there's lots of other places that aren't saying we aren't like this is a problem for us so yeah I think it's kind of like how you just like this is you know it's it's it's a product of you know the culture that we exist in just to a certain extent so and it's not the entire fault of a particular organization but I think it's how you it's how you take responsibility for it like oh like organization I think is you know so important to improving the numbers overall because it's not just you know one company that's going to fix anything it is cultural so it requires a cultural change yeah I think in general it would solve a lot of problems if we were to sift when appropriate to longer-term thinking because I think short-term thinking is what makes you say okay there is this person I'm gonna hide which is exactly the same as everybody else so it's going to work out but the longer term more diverse teams yield better results I I mean short-term thinking is also what has created the situation with the environment so I think long-term thinking in general is an important thing to adopt as a culture that it would solve so many more things than just the gender gap yeah so in that aspect of diversity and inclusion how do you find the overall community not just companies like the development nerd community and even the Python community I really happy in the moment that we are in terms of community and inclusion we in different communities also the community I mean right now and basically I wouldn't be here in London without the community because the opportunity that I have to start doing these and everything was first with from somebody with the community so communities has a responsibility even us to first of all create these spaces offer opportunities right and make feasible whatever it is happening right now in terms of equality so even if you're a community organizer or even if you are just going through an event try to reach out somebody that maybe it looks different than you give a chance I think that's really important well the Python community I find this quite diverse if one looks at who is using Python because Python is used for example by academic people and I find it interesting to go to conferences because of the variety of people you get to meet there what do you think pythons doing differently than like well I mean sometimes it just has to do with being at the right place at the right time but I think Python appeared you know with good timing and it's also easier to get started than C++ because you can just write some Python without compiling so it has a lower barrier to entry so I think it's easier for more people to get used to that I think we're doing well but we can do better I mean if you look at the core Python developers there are actually some women now which is really exciting five women okay that's awesome and I know the core desks are working on it but I think we can do better or if you look at the PSF board which I'm a part of there's a lot of white people on the board so I think we we can do much better so because I agree we're doing well but we can't improve for sure it's good it's a work in progress yeah okay [Music] [Laughter] so what do you believe like a young person would be good to know it would be good to hear if they were on the fence or just considering what they would do you mean in terms of technology yes absolutely do it because I say I was always told or like don't do math don't do physics like you're good in languages you should do that because like honestly I was always mediocre in math but I always really liked it because I like the problem solving part English was just something that I could do it wasn't very challenging for me it was just good at it it wasn't until of my early 20s that I started learning Python and I realized though I can actually do it and it's really exciting so I think every kid should at least try it and then if they're not interested that's fine but I think don't self select that's a good I think like something that happened to me a lot with young people is that when they see a career in tech usually they think just with developers and or something else but tech is has so many different profiles so many different types of work around this career path right so yeah Tech is it can be mentoring it can be a leader you can work as a as a consonant there are so many different types of profile that you can be around tech even this is the mark marketing right so yeah that's something that I would say I have one almost question before we go to everyone else so I asked like what would you say to someone who's thinking of starting their career but what do you think about someone who has topped their career for a while and they would like to come back or like it depends because sometimes it can be like maybe there are five years outside of the workplace and what do you think they would need to go back or to just stay and I don't think like there is an answer for it scientifically just getting ideas here I can try answer this one because I was manager for many years that's it's very much and I'm going back more to a hands-on role now and so it's it's been definitely a big change I think kind of just embracing that you're gonna be you know kind of learning a crapload like for a long time and you're gonna be like you're going to want to talk and you're like and like that's that can be quite hard kind of mentally it's a sort of to kind of like I have so much to learn and but you know it's something that you have to kind of like be excited about and you know if this is a career that kind of you know that that you know that you're going to enjoy you enjoy solving problems with software and you know that's something that we all need to be doing we all need to be consistently yes coming back after a five-year gap you know you you have a lot to kind of to to start learning but everybody is learning all the time so I think it's kind of embracing the fact that it's fine you'll get there believe in yourself and find people who are also along the same journey right like find people who are kind of in a similar place so you can pump yourself up because you can pump each other up because I also think that's super important is to not feel isolated make sense to me okay I'm gonna say for anyone else has questions to ask yes uh by the way thank you all for sharing fantastic panel it's really really cool to see the intersectionality also of all of your backgrounds so first of all thank you so one of the things that I find when I had this dialogue with people about diversity equity inclusion diversity equity belonging whatever flavor you name it is people will say well you know it's not that bad or I've been at places where it's worse I find that answer really infuriating I'm kind of curious when you're in those dialogues with people because it sounds like you all are actively cut in some way putting yourself out there to think through these issues what are some ways that you respond to that or what are some ways that you kind of combat that that um basically apathy right when people don't care if things don't change I can add my two cents and then I will stop and I think I think people get a little bit apathetic to this when they don't think it impacts them or like their product 13 so I think it's trying to have trying to help them to understand how this does impact every team and it really does and a lot of times we get kind of people who will get super invigorated by it once it really impacts them right so once they have a daughter or they get married to somebody who's had you know bad experiences right so once it does impact them directly then they become kind of super motivated to be very impactful in this so it's how can we you know kind of frame the discussion around how this impacts everyone and it does like it impacts you too because you're not the same as everybody else and there's been moments in your life when you've been excluded and when you haven't kind of you know done what you could have done because you felt like you know you you wouldn't have been listened to or whatever so I think that's for me like what like it is it is an important way to get people to really think more about how it makes a difference to them themselves yeah empathy well honestly when somebody has the reaction do you describe this person is giving me very useful information so I observe basically and if I want to create an initiative I would not reach out to them because it's good to to create initiatives with people that really have your back and also if there are still people that think like that I think that we still need to work on them and I think it's the awareness part that's the important one like we live in a bubble for fine but we still need to kind of look outside and learn more from other people as well well I'm not sure that I have a question exactly kind of targeted to Christine so you have mentioned that that you feel like you kind of live in a bubble here where you felt that you you didn't feel so much of an issue here within Bloomberg and as a person that has shaped the culture here in London because well Christine was the engineer margin in London and she actually made this even happen because he was not gonna happen until you stepped up so Thank You Christine and everyone should thank you but as a person that's shaping their culture in this in in Bloomberg London what would you tell to everyone that's here that's from many different compressive companies so they can take something to their company and make everyone feel as you yeah and I guess like my my response to kind of like how like gender kind of like being a female framed my experience leadership was really around the fact that I think we we as an organization have had loads of issues but you know some of them we're here oh man II like we had so many very very good learning experiences yeah like it's true right like anytime something really horrible happens I think it is just like whoa we really need to really learn from this and and I think because when I came over to London we were just starting out our engineering office he was like 25 of us so we had to do loads of hiring loads of building teams and we pretty much made you know every mistake in the book around kind of creating teams around promoting people around when you're kind of like just how we delivered our services it was pretty awesome so because of that like we had loads of challenges but I'd but that's why I think probably this sort of the aspect of you know kind of being a female wasn't just it like it wasn't something that was part of the the mix at that point and but I think like when when we were trying to really change certain things around the culture here and I think really really building meaningful relationships with kind of our leaders in New York was incredibly important right so it's kind of it's understanding like who is shaping the culture overall and it's you know really really caring about what you're doing I guess that's the other thing so when we were speaking about and it wasn't just me it was kind of a number of us when we were speaking about the things that we wanted to do differently like we really cared we really cared about the products that we were that we were delivering the services we were delivering and we really had thought for had been thoughtful because we had made all these mistakes about how to do things in a different way which we felt was gonna yield better results so for us it was you know really have speaking from a point of caring and you know making sure that we were heard and you know I think I think we're lucky an organization we have live very like flat structure you can go and kind of talk we obviously have a hierarchy but kind of you can go and talk to anybody basically so it was very open and accessible to kind of talk to different people and yeah I think you know it is that's really kind of what it was for me it was you know it was very clear that I that I had first-hand experience that I really cared and and I was trying to really focus to your point on communicating things very straightforwardly right and you know communication is not a soft skill it's very hard so I think he had really doing that in a in a very good way was kind of instrumental to I think getting the team's kind of working in a certain way here we have a time for can we have a club for this amazing lady thank you so much for coming you