Adam Torres and Kathy Chou discuss innovation and transformation in a company.
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Show Notes:
Innovation is important for any company with longevity in its future. In this episode, Adam Torres and Kathy Chou, Sr. Vice President, SaaS Engineering at Nutanix, explore innovation, transformation and Kathy’s new book, Mission Matters: World’s Leading Entrepreneurs Reveal Their Top Tips To Success (Business Leaders Vol. 9).
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About Kathy Chou
As the Senior Vice President of SaaS Engineering at Nutanix, She manages a team responsible for secure and scalable SaaS applications, systems and data assets across the entire customer lifecycle as core to Nutanix’s multi-cloud subscription strategy. Previously, She served as worldwide Sales Strategy and Operations for VMware, focused on GTM strategy, corporate intelligence, sales operations, sales/partner enablement, bookings/billing and new product introduction.
She enjoys lending my expertise to organizations She’s passionate about and serve as Vice Chair of the Stanford International Research Institute in Social Sciences (iRiSS), and on the Board of Regents and Engineering Advisory Board at Santa Clara University.
About Nutanix
Nutanix is a global leader in cloud software, offering organizations a single platform for running apps and data across clouds. With Nutanix, companies can reduce complexity and simplify operations, freeing them to focus on their business outcomes. Building on its legacy as the pioneer of hyperconverged infrastructure, Nutanix is trusted by companies worldwide to power hybrid multicloud environments consistently, simply, and cost-effectively.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today is a very special episode. We are bringing back Kathy Chow, who is the Senior Vice President of SaaS Engineering over at Nutanix.
Kathy, welcome back to the show. Thank you, Adam. Glad to be back. Oh my gosh. So I’m glad to have you back and we’re here. First off, I just wanna say congratulations and finally being published as well. I know we’ve been on this long road of creating this book together, and I’m just so thrilled to have you have you published and in our, in our bestselling series.
So welcome. Thank you. It’s always been a dream of mine and I’m so happy that I found Mission Matters and Mission Matters found me to kind of make a dream come true. Oh, well well, we’re, we’re definitely honored to have you published and like I like to say, so we are, you and I are bound by ink now. Our, our names are both in a book and so this is fun and I can’t wait to talk more about kind of some of the content that you wrote and some of the things you’re known for around transformation and organization.
And also get into, since we last spoke, I know you’ve been featured in another book as well, winning leadership. So we’ll talk a little bit about that. Very thrilled to hear that news doesn’t surprise me at all that, you know, as people start seeing your content and hearing you, I’m, you’re just gonna be popping up all over the place.
I love it. But Kathy, we will start this interview before I get ahead of myself, the way that we start them all with our mission matters minute. So, Kathy, we at Mission Matters. We amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts. That’s our mission. Kathy, what mission matters to you? Well, I’ve always been.
A woman championing other women in stem. And that’s just something that’s been near and dear to my heart since I was in high school and realized I was a geeky math girl, to now being in business and being able to kind of span not only the technical side, but also the sales side, and to be able to build these cultures that really allow people to thrive and grow and.
Be their best selves. That’s really what it’s all about. And just to encourage, actually, not just women, but everyone, to get into technical fields because you know, with technology, we know we can change the world. Yeah, it’s great Lo love having you back on the show and, and, and being on business business leaders and executives and really having them share their mission, you know, the reason behind their mission and you know, why they do what they do.
So great having you on. And I guess just to get us kicked off, I don’t wanna assume, Kathy, that maybe some of our, our, our newer audience have caught some of our previous episodes together. So let’s just maybe start at the beginning. So how did you get started on this path in, in tech and in stem? Yes.
Well, I already alluded to the fact that, you know, in high school I was one of those. I guess nerdy people who couldn’t wait for the math test. I love it was so my heart just now, Kathy, go, keep going. I was the opposite, but keep going. The reason why I love math is because I could always check my work and by the time I finished the test, I knew I had gotten a hundred percent, and so it was just, Mm, a love of, of figures and facts.
Then ended up getting a degree in mechanical engineering and with a master’s in manufacturing systems engineering. But one thing that I realized was, even though I loved the domain and really enjoyed engineering, I didn’t so much enjoy working as an engineer because I wanted to be with people and I wanted to be in the front office, and I wanted to not just be doing my project, but learning and growing and, mm-hmm.
One of the things that I’d said early on is that I wanted to be a leader in high tech, and because of that I became, I said, I need to get an mba. So I did get a Master’s in business administration, and then I’ve had a wonderful career, actually, a wonderful career raising children. Also a working mother.
Four sons. But really being able to work at large companies, small companies, hardware, software, and along the way learning about sales and bringing a technical aspect to sales with all the data and the territory management and tam total addressable market share of wallet is all very, very technical.
And then being able to go back and forth with engineering and sales, and now working at Nutanix. So that’s a little bit about my background in a, in about a minute. Yeah. Yeah. To me, you’re, you’re the unfair advantage to be able to do the hardware, the software side, the sales side, the engineering side.
Like normally, I, I would argue that those two areas are pretty siloed in terms of the types of individuals that are able to kind of go within them. But you, you’ve been, you’ve had a career that’s spread both, yeah. Yes. Well, you know, Adam, it’s about systems, right? I mean, it’s really, it’s about end to end.
And when you think about what businesses are trying to do today, you always hear this notion of breaking the silos, right? Mm-hmm. Because you can optimize your silo incredibly well. Mm-hmm. But you can actually compromise the system. Yeah, and you really need to understand from a, if you think about a customer from a customer’s journey, from the time they’re considering to the time they try, they buy, they use, they adopt, they expand, they renew.
They maybe say, I don’t wanna work with you anymore, that you need to understand horizontally, and that touches many different functions. So, Understanding engineering and sales helps me understand, hey, does will this product sell? And then in sales, you know, how can we ensure that this technical product is, is really going to scale in in the industry?
So just having that knowledge helps. Make businesses more effective. So you mentioned one of your, your passions is, you know, women in stem and also, you know, just, just more individuals going towards STEM and STEM careers in general. What kind of advice would you give to, let’s just say that that next crop of emerging leaders that are out there, that are considering, you know, the STEM fields or career careers in stem, like what kind of things would you tell them?
Yeah, it’s one thing I was, I remember being in Ireland and I was part of a speaking core that was talking to. I think there were middle school girls at the time, and there was an interesting statistic that said, you know, in middle school it’s still roughly the same between boys and girls. Mm-hmm. But when you start getting into high school, you find that there’s some social norms about, well, you know, the technical side should be.
For the boys and the women should think more about softer things and not so many technical things. And a lot of young girls are dissuaded from going into technical fields. And you know, I think there’s a, the good news is there’s a lot of good work and it’s recognized as an issue, but I think every one of us can do our part.
Whether you have a daughter, a sister, a friend’s daughter, whoever you are, just to encourage. Women, young women, and, and now I say young women and and young men too. Mm-hmm. But if you have that passion for the technology to really take it and explore it and not to give up, because I think a lot of people do that.
And here’s another interesting thing I now say to. Women in college, let’s say, or even high school, that you can be technical and maybe you don’t end up in a technical career, but that foundation is so important to you and. You might, your career is long, so you might start in something non-technical, but could, you can always go back to technical.
And that’s what happened to me. Yeah. You know, I didn’t start off technical. I started off in business, got into supply chain and IT, and marketing then went into the sales side, then back to the technical side. So that foundation you will never be sorry that you didn’t build that strong technical foundation.
Hmm. Let’s switch it up a bit here. Kathy, I do wanna spend some time digging into this book. So I know one of the things that you’re known for is definitely transformation. So you wrote about blueprint for transforming an organization. Lot of things with your background, again, on the software side, on the, on the on the hardware side, on the engineering side.
Like all these things you could have written about a lot of different things. Why write about transforming an organization? Why now? Yes. Well, Transformation was always a big topic, even pre pandemic. Mm. You know, everyone wants to, and, and I read Clayton Christensen’s book about the innovator’s dilemma, how companies that are really successful with this one product.
Sometimes are doomed to not be as successful for their second act. And many companies need to figure out what is that second act and why is that so important. And I think sometimes, you know, they say the things that made you successful and got you to a certain place may not be the things that you need to get you to that next level.
Hmm. But I think the pandemic really made it even more critical because before we would have, I would say a more engaged workforce. Mm-hmm. Whether, you know, people coming into the office, the water cooler conversations, and then we kind of retreated. Right into this zoom world where this digital world, and we lost a lot of things, you know, because we weren’t able to find out, Hey Adam, what did you do this weekend?
Or, how’s your family and what’s going on here? Mm-hmm. Because with Zoom there’s not really much small talk time where people didn’t do that, and I think we lost the ability to really motivate people to do these sorts of transformations. So that’s why I think with the pandemic, it’s made it even difficult to transform.
And so that’s why this blueprint is important to. Yeah, I could definitely agree with this. And I think about those, you know, when I was growing up and, and in early, especially earlier in my career, like some of the, the main teaching and especially in my early, early sales career, like the main teaching and I think my most valuable lessons, not saying that the formalized corporate training that the organization gave us wasn’t great, but those conversations after hours when people were doing their paperwork or like just hanging out for that last.
Five or 10 minutes, or like listening to somebody else’s, you know, phone call or interaction or asking them, Hey, why did you say that? Or, Hey, why did you do that? And learning from those that had already done you know, what you’ve wanna do and where you wanna be. Like that was the, that was the inches, like, that was the inches I need.
And now, kind of in this new, you know, in this new paradigm, just depending on, you know, your setup not saying it can’t be done, but I found it lacking a bit. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. You know what you just talked about, Adam, is it’s about building relationships, right? Because when you build relationships and you have that repeated time with someone, you build trust and you know, trust is something that is so easy to.
Lose lose. Mm-hmm. It’s so difficult to build and, but when you have that, when you have a trusting relationship, when you have a team that trusts in you, you will be able to innovate. You’ll be able to do things you thought you never could do before. And you know, because you know the second guessing and, Hmm.
What was Adam really thinking? How did you waste their time doing that? Totally, totally. Let’s dig, let’s dig deeper into your chapter and kind of this, the construction. So there’s, I know there’s, there’s multiple parts there. Maybe g give us a little bit more of a flavor of, of, of the work. Yes. So for me, I’ve had the fortune to be able to transform in multiple different companies at a large, multi, multi-billion dollar hardware company, at a, some startups, at some software companies, and now at Nutanix.
And I always have three main pillars by which I do the transformation. Mm-hmm. People, process and technology. And lemme start with process first. And it’s in the book. And I’m, I’m just gonna go very high level, but one of the things that I always do is a listening tour. And you know, a lot of people think, what is the purpose of a listening tour?
Well, one, And a lot of people think you’re just gathering data, but it’s much more than that. You know, I talked about relationships. When you talk to people, you’re meeting people. Mm-hmm. And I ask very open qu ended questions, what is working well? Because you wanna know what’s working well and people will tell you.
And then what is not working well? And usually when I do these listening tours, I really blanket the earth. I usually end up talking to anywhere from 50 to a hundred people. All different functions, all different levels, people above me, people laterally, people below, and. Different functions, different focus areas.
And with that you’ll be amazed at some themes that’ll pop up. But a listening tour really, really important. And I know for us, what I learned was we had a team that was burning out, you know, I learned about work-Life blend and how important that was because we were a team that was known to deliver results.
Yeah. Now the issue is, One can deliver results if you tell me what to do. Kind of, you know, I think of Lucille Ball and the, and the she had the conveyor belt with the chocolates and she couldn’t Yep, yep. Trying to do them ball at the same time. We were a little bit like that. A little first in, first out, you know, where we get a project, we do it, we get a project, we do it, we get a project, we do it.
Well, wait a second. Mm-hmm. Not all projects are created equal. Yeah, some projects are more important. They will drive more of an outcome. I was just on a call right before this where we were talking about our projects, and one of our stakeholders said, well, it’d be good to know how much you invested in that project, how many people it took, how long it took.
Mm-hmm. And I said, you know what it’d be That’s important. Yeah. But I think it’s equally, if not more important to understand the outcome. What did we actually drive was the return on that investment? You know, as big as it should have been. Yeah. And so we created this prioritization process that allowed us to understand that so that we’re working not on the first thing that comes through the door, but on the most important thing that comes through the door.
Yeah. And how do you know, like for yourself, and I mean you, whether you’re using a particular example or other, or just speaking generally, like how do you know, what are some of the, the ones to prioritize? Like how do you get your organization aligned around that? Cause it’s one thing to say, it’s another thing, like to get into people’s hearts, like that’s hard.
Well, we’ve actually turned it into a science so. Perfect lead into the next part of the process, which is the prioritization process. Yeah. I think the first thing that’s important is to understand the vectors that we look at. Mm-hmm. So one of the things that we require is a business requirements document, and we ask five very basic questions.
Mm-hmm. One, what is the problem? I think a lot of times people don’t, they bypass it and already go to the solution, but wait a second, there’s multiple solutions to any problem. So let’s understand what is the problem. Second, what is your business goal? So is your outcome, are you expecting to get more quotes?
Are you expecting to drive down costs? Are you expecting to mitigate risk? What is your business outcome? Yeah. Who are the key stakeholders? Who’s leading this? Who’s the exec sponsor? To your point on alignment, I’m gonna spend a little time on alignment as well. Yeah. What are the, what’s the data that you need?
In order to make this project successful. And last but not least, what are the success metrics for this project? So, lemme talk about alignment for a second. You know, you use the word aligned. We use that word all the time. But let me tell you something. I will say that the majority of projects that don’t.
Fall into the success bucket are ones that are not aligned upfront, and I now have learned something that’s so important as I’m leading this subscription transformation for our company is, Not only to get people aligned, because a lot of times you’d get aligned one-on-one. I can yeah. Align with you. I can align with the next person, but it’s the power of having everyone together and aligning.
Yeah. Because when you’re in the meeting, right, and there’s Adam in the meeting, and then there’s Sally. She’s there too. Mm-hmm. You know, Adam, you might be thinking point A and she might be thinking point B, but once you hear Sally’s point B, you might change your mind. And so when you have everyone in the room, I always say this, all the right people in the room, then you can get alignment and you can actually denote that as a key milestone.
Remember that meeting that we had mm-hmm. In Chicago where we had everybody there, and you’ll be able to move much faster because each time you have an alignment point mm-hmm. You can get to your end goal in a more expedient fashion. Hmm. And so when I think about this idea of alignment and like, there’s different layers, right?
So I mean, there’s alignment within your team. There’s alignment within like, you know, the, you know, middle management and within the whole organization. Like from your vantage point, like can you, can you maybe talk a little bit about that? Like just the levels? I guess that’s a way to say it. Yes. And so I’m gonna do two things.
I’ll talk about the levels and all. So tell you ways. To do alignment well. Mm-hmm. Okay. So you have your stakeholders. Yeah. Obviously there are, let’s start with the working team. Mm-hmm. The working team is very important because they’re the people that will be, you know, putting their blood, sweat, and tears into the project and you one needs to make sure that, and I treat these.
Special people like gold because I don’t want them working on the wrong thing. I don’t want them burning the midnight oil. I want them to learn and grow and develop as they’re working on this, right? Mm-hmm. So that’s really important. There’s a whole element around developing people, making sure the project is clear.
That’s the business requirements document. Mm-hmm. Then there are your peers. Okay? This is the cross-functional peers that you’re working with. Hmm. And sometimes they may or may not know, or may not even be aligned as to why are we doing this? Or they may have their own personal reasons why they want this done, but it’s for their silo, but not for the system.
Hmm. I think a lot of times people need to understand that you need, in the end, we need to do what’s right for Nutanix first. Yeah. Then your function. Okay. And then there’s the people that are above, and they’re very important. They’re the decision makers, they’re the C level, they are the people that will.
Help you resolve any sort of escalation. Mm-hmm. They will. They will be the people that will give you the funding and investment that you need. Mm-hmm. They will the people that will champion and realign resources, right? Mm-hmm. If you need to do what you need to do. And so those are the different levels and they’re all very important, but you have different strategies for each.
Yeah. Now the thing that’s the most important with all of these is communication. And I find that people. I think a lot of people think communication is a soft, fluffy thing to the side. I actually think it’s very strategic because, and you know, they say it used to be, you know, you had to say something seven times for someone to get it.
Now they say it’s 11. Yeah. Cause the digital age that we’re in and 11 different ways, and I always say to my team that the onus is on you. You might say, I communicated to them, they should know. No, no, no. If they didn’t know, the onus is on you. Even if you’ve said it 10 times, I don’t care. You did not communicate in a way that they understood, and so communication.
Communication is needed up and down the chain. Now, obviously at the most senior levels mm-hmm. It’s how do you get it down to the most strategic points of view that matter to them and to them it’s about outcomes. You know, are we gonna drive more revenue and how are we gonna do it? What are the two or three critical things?
Yeah. When you’re looking to the side, I always put myself in their shoes, right? So if I’m talking to marketing, I’m gonna say, well, how can this generate more leads? Mm-hmm. You know, how can this help with our marketing campaigns? So just understand how what they can do can drive. Better outcomes for them, but also better outcomes for our project.
Mm mm And then for the team, it’s how do you create and inspire them and motivate them to work on this project? That’s so important because I don’t want someone just to go through the motions. I want someone who really, one, I educate them to understand the big picture, right? Mm-hmm. It’s not just manufacture this widget.
It’s why are we doing this? It’s really, really important that people understand the. Customer outcome, the end partner outcome, what is the ultimate outcome that they’re driving? And to understand that they are growing as they’re doing this, and to stay close enough and put in the right reviews, the data, the dashboards, so that you can get track of the.
Project progress, which by the way, we’ve just done, we’ve automated that. Wow. Down to the Jira story, which is pretty impressive. We just debut this on our call that I was just at and we have a lot of great feedback. But anyway, little long answer to your question, but great. There is a science to it and, and I think you answered one of my questions, but I wanna see if that’s an answer to it and that is or my next.
Question, which is like, especially when you’re going on one of these, like longer, let’s just say large multi-year journeys, like how do you, how do you keep the team motivated? So I think part of it you just mentioned, which is dashboards and like communication. Any, any other tips like Yes. Yes. So I alluded to the fact that I’m leading the subscription transformation for our company, and that’s a new responsibility that I’ve gotten.
Wow. Congratulations. First off, that’s big time. You’re large company. Congratulations. That’s huge. Thanks Adam. I have to admit, being very transparent, when I first was voluntold, I was voluntold. I was, I was a little intimidated, you know? I thought, my goodness, I already have a full-time job. This is a huge effort, you know, that we’re doing for a company that’s on a really wonderful trajectory.
Yeah. Will one, will I have the bandwidth? To do it. Two, will I be able to really do what I really wanna do and manage the team that I have? Yeah. And, and this is a multi-year transformation, what we are doing, but, you know, to generate kind of the excitement around it, it starts with what I said earlier around what is the problem statement.
You know, I’ve, we’ve created a subscription North Star, and this North Star is around driving customer value. And I, why I say that it is so important that it’s customer value because I think a lot of companies in subscription will end with, well, they consumed it, they right, they adopted the product, they’ve consumed it.
Wait a second, you can consume the product and not achieve your outcomes. Hmm. And so when you think about subscription, you wanna make sure the customer. Is achieving their outcomes, because if they are, then your product is very sticky cause you’re making them successful, right? So how do you drive customer value?
So create that North Star. Set that, and that North Star really is that vision, that two year vision of what we wanna be. Mm-hmm. The other thing that I’ve done is really tried to show that this is a cross-functional effort. It’s not just a back office quote to cash process, which a lot of people think it is.
It starts with subscription ready products, right. You can renew in product, you can do support in product, you can try and buy in product, you can. Have enablement in product, there’s a lot of things that you can do in the product that will really make this whole subscription engine Hum. Hmm. That said, there are a lot of things that do need to be done in, and I call it lead to cash and, and just understanding what is, you know, sales role, what’s engineering’s role, what is support’s role, what is customer success’s role in building that.
And then because people are impatient, We have created two short term wins, right? Because people don’t wanna wait two years. Yeah. So what are, what are things that we can do in six months, six to nine months, that move the needle that allows us to get some things done on our path? Driving towards that North Star and so these sorts of, and regular reviews.
Mm-hmm. Communication, as I said, are, and then getting the funding and the resources right. You need to get the funding and resources in order to make this dream a reality. But between having an excellent plan mm-hmm. Making sure that it’s cross-functional, driving the motivational North Star, aligning the resources, it’s then about making sure that we.
Methodically get done what we say we’re gonna get done. And also having an escalation process because if things don’t work out, you wanna be able to get to the sea level or whoever the person is. You need to unblock the roadblock. Mm-hmm. You need to get to them fast and everyone will have stalls. It’s those who are able to resolve their issues much faster, that are more successful.
Hmm. Well, Kathy I, I think on the, some of the book discussion, I’m gonna, I’m gonna hold it there just for everybody watching. There’s more that Kathy wrote about everybody. Pick up a copy. We, we do sell books here. It’s okay. We’ll definitely have a link to that in the, in the show notes. But but switching, switching topics.
Briefly. So Kathy, I know one of the things we talked about last time you’re on the show, maybe it was a couple times ago, it’s been a little bit is that you were a board member over at ion Q any any updates there, just in general? Yes. By the way, one of my dreams was always to be on a public board, and I think this is a dream.
Another dream come true because I’ve always been fascinated by technology. Yeah. And I’ve also had this thing in my heart, what can we do? How can we use technology to change the world to make it better? And quantum computing is really at that. Kind of nascent stage where just like classical computing when it was first, you know, finding its way and then you have that Moore’s law on the curve.
We’re just about to, you know, in the next two, three years to break it open and. To be in the forefront of a company that’s at the helm of trying to make this happen. Mm-hmm. There couldn’t be a more rewarding experience to be on. And one of the things that Ion Q has done, we just signed announced a deal with Amazon bracket, which is super, super exciting because that also helped the stop pop a little bit, which was exciting.
But one of the. Neat things about Ion Q. If I geek out for just a little bit, please, please. There’s multiple ways that you can attack the quantum computing problem and we do it with trapped ions and you know, with trapped ions. Why that’s so interesting is cause it has. Very high gate fidelity, so that’s high quality.
It also has this, what we call all to all connectivity, which is very ubiquitous. We have long coherence because a lot of times quantum computing, it’s, you can maybe get to that you know, state for maybe a second or two, but we can do it between 10 and a hundred seconds, which I know doesn’t sound like a long time, but where we are right now, that’s.
Almost a lifetime. You know, we want, we need to build on that long coherence. And then of course, it’s all about error mitigation, right? Because right now there’s a lot of errors you can get to a certain state, but we believe that the trapped ion technology is the way, and we’re looking at ways to see how we can, you know, room temperatures really important Cause we’re temperature cool, but how do we get to room temperature?
So there’s still a lot of. Innovation that needs to happen. But I would say I n Q is on a great track to get there and, you know, if you think about solving the world’s logistical problems, chemistry, you know, pharmaceuticals, self-driving cars financial simulations, I mean, there’s a lot of really interesting problems that classical computing just can’t solve that.
You know, there’s the spot saved for quantum computing to kind of step in there and advance the world. Hmm. Super exciting. And I love having you on the show so I can know, you know, I’m, I’m gonna look back and, you know, 5, 10, 20 years, whatever the amount of years is, and I’m gonna be like, ah, I remember Kathy and I were talking about that.
And to see like all the progress that is made and to see the growth of the company and other companies. It’s just, to me, it’s fun. It’s fun to be kind of at the intersection of these conversations and and to have them, and of course to bring the content to our audience. And speaking of being on the right path, I think you just dropped this one on me today, or I just recently found out that you’re also in another book.
So I, I have to first off to any publisher out there, any in content creator that’s creating a platform to help others tell their story, like I’m a huge fan of. So I love to maybe take a moment or two and have you talk about a winning leadership book and kind of how all that came about. Cuz I want, I definitely wanna give them some shine too.
Well I’m gonna, I’m, I’m gonna pat you on the back and answer same. So I, with Mission Matters coming out in our book, being published, I believe I got on Sherry Wynn’s radar screen. Wow. And you know, she reached out to me and said, Hey, I’m writing a book and it’s about winning leadership. Yeah. And it says, you know, winning leadership secrets to being a truly powerful leader.
And she interviewed, I think hundreds of leaders. And I have a small feature in that book. But it was really, really exciting. She’s a two time Olympian and national basketball coach. And you know, I think that if you think about leadership, right, it spans every domain. Yep. Sports, business, schools, you name it.
Whatever it is that you’re doing. Mm-hmm. And it was really fun to be able to share a little, a bit of, you know, how I became a leader and I have to get a little shout out to my dad, Philip Co. Who really was the inspiration. Right? And one of the things that he said to me early on, That’s two things he did first.
It’s me and I have a younger brother. There were never any gender differences. Didn’t matter. I was a girl. He was a boy. Wow. This thing was, you had to be the best and he’d always say, you need to be number one. Doesn’t matter. Whatever you do, you have to be number one. And he would say it’s pretty progressive, by the way.
It’s very progressive. It’s very progressive. Now we hear that statement and like we take it, I, I think many, myself included, take that for granted. That’s super pro progressive on your dad’s part. I know and it’s funny, you know, I think a lot of people, when you hear them talk about who their inspirations are Yeah, love them, are their parents, and, and he was he was tough, you know, but he would say things like, if you shoot high, you might get middle.
If you shoot middle, you might get low. If you shoot low, you may get nothing. Wow. So shoot for the stars. Yeah. And that’s, that’s what I’ve done my entire life is, you know, no one can’t tell me no one can say to me, it can’t be done. Right. Mm-hmm. And I, I had a little something, a little reminder in my desk, you know, that would say it can be done.
There’s always a way. Yeah. Right. That’s great. That’s great. I, I love it. That, that, that’s what I’m talking about, dad. Passing on the knowledge and now passing it down to everybody else here. This is the power of knowledge and story and like us sharing our stories, which is what I’m always telling people to do because I, it makes a difference.
Like that, that that story and that, you know, that bit of advice from your dad could have, you know, remained trapped in yourself or in among your network alone and you know, your kids and otherwise, I’m sure you passed that, that knowledge down, but now everybody gets to benefit from it. How nice. One of the other things that I know that you’re, you’re definitely involved in and passionate about is really thinking about how to ensure like diverse hiring pools and, and things around those lines.
Can you maybe comment on that a little bit? Yes. You know what’s a little bit sad is when I graduated from college, I looked around and I was looking for the women in leadership positions and mm, I saw a few I did, but didn’t see. And now 30 years later, I look and it really hasn’t changed that much.
And it’s, you know, it’s sad. It’s, it’s a sad situation. And so I say, you know, what can I do in, in my small sphere? Mm-hmm. I think the first thing is, we talked a little bit about it, you know, encouraging young girls to go into STEM fields. Talking to young women, especially when they wanna have a family, I find that a lot of women, Tend to drop out or maybe they say they can’t.
Mm-hmm. Do that high powered job they thought, but you know, part of it is you, you, you need to understand that maybe you don’t do it full-time, you know, maybe you can do it part-time, but keep those skills there. I do a lot of mentoring and championing, and a lot of it also is in the retention and hiring process.
I know we spend a lot of time on hiring, but I think retention is also very important. You know, the women that I have in my organization, I spend a little extra time just understanding them. And we had, during national international Women’s Day, we had a really wonderful meeting where we had all of the women or some key women present their stories and it was Wow.
Created meeting. And then when you hire, you know, make sure you have a female and diverse candidate in every one of your panels. Don’t. You don’t move on unless you have one. Mm-hmm. And so it’s just providing the access. Mm-hmm. Providing the opportunity, and then providing the encouragement and development once they’re here.
Mm-hmm. Spend a little extra time so that they can grow and learn. And then lastly, be a role model. I know that when women are in certain positions, people are looking at you and to really share how important, I have a work-life blend task force that’s on my team, and it’s one of the top things that we talk about at every one of my town halls.
How we are doing on that because it’s really important that we, the most diverse teams, provide the highest impact and return on investment. Yeah. That’s great. Well, well, Kathy first off congrats again on being published in, not, not one, but two books now. I just have to ask, I mean, what’s next?
I mean, what’s next for you? What’s next for your career? What’s next for your mission? Well, I know you had asked me this at the end of our last meeting. Yeah. And it’s still the same, which is this I want to do. The best that I can to help others in everything that I do, be it at the Asian Pacific Fund Board, the work that I do with Stanford and Santa Clara and Baylor, helping that next generation of students achieve their goals.
Whether it be on the ion keyboard to help us really change the world. And last but certainly not least at Nutanix for my team, for the organization, how do we drive value for our customers, partners, and colleagues? And it’s just really all about raising the bar and having excellence, giving back to others and making a difference for others.
Fantastic. And Kathy, if somebody wants to follow your journey or to connect them, what’s the best way for them to do that? I think the best way is through LinkedIn, and so I’d love to hear from folks. Fantastic. And we’ll, we’ll put the link of course to, to your LinkedIn profiles. People can look you up, of course, and connect there.
And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters or engaging in an episode or listening to one of our, our interviews, we’re all about bringing on business owners, entrepreneurs, executives, and ex. Experts in having them share their mission, the reason behind their mission, like what motivates them to getting on the marketplace and to make a difference really.
If that’s the type of content that sounds interesting or fun or exciting to, we welcome you hit that subscribe button because we have many more mission-based individuals coming up on the line and we don’t want you to miss a thing. And Kathy, again, thank you so much. It has been a pleasure and an honor working with you on this book, this book launch project.
I’m having you on the show. Thanks again for all you do. We need you. Thank you Adam. Really appreciate it.
