Empowering Diversity, DevOps and Philanthropy: Chris McHale, CEO of SPK and Associates – Tech.Strong.Women. EP 25

Hi, everybody. Thanks for joining us for another episode of Techstrong Women, where we feature amazing women doing amazing things in tech. I'm Jody Ashley, executive producer here at Techstrong, and I'm here with my co-host Tracy Reagan, creator, and c e o of Deploy Hub.

And in her free time, she spends a lot of time working with the Linux Foundation. Before I introduce today's guest, I wanna give you a quick update about what's happening here at techron. ai, so be sure to check it out.

SecOps, sorry. com. And be sure to tune in every day to Techstrong TV for great shows and interviews.

Hey, Tracy, what's on your mind today? Jenkins. Jenkins is on my mind today.

So every couple of years, CloudBees puts out a sort of state of Jenkins report and, um, this one is pretty astonishing because I think the market would like to tell us, or like us to believe for some reason that Jenkins isn't as used as it used to be, which apparently is not necessarily so true. According to this report, the Jenkins project growth, um, over the last two years has been an astonishing 79%. Now, why is that an important number?

It's an important number because we have to translate that into how many workflows that Jenkins is actually managing. Um, according to this report, they claim that Jenkins still owns about 44% of the C I C D market. And I'm just gonna read these to you 'cause I was, I was blown away by these numbers.

The monthly Jenkins pipeline jobs grew 79% between June of 2021 and June of 2023. Wow. That translates from 27 million jobs per month to 48, almost 49 million jobs per month.

That's an astonishing number of jobs that the, that Jenkins is pushing across our pipelines. Now, I wanna, I wanna keep, keep everybody, you know, let's keep it real. When we're talking about these Jenkins pipelines, we, we know that these pipelines are statically defined.

So if we think about adding secu, adding security tooling to those pipelines, like a SBO m we're talking about updating close to 50 million jobs per month. And a job is basically, you know, you know, I don't know how, if we could break that down into pipeline, actual pipeline workflow files may, it's probably not gonna be 50 million, but it's gonna be a whole lot. It's gonna be in the millions.

So it's an interesting, um, report. You can find it out in CloudBees News. I I highly recommend you take a look at it.

And you know what, if you're using Jenkins, they do have a, a crowdfunding, um, uh, program. Jenkins costs a lot of money to keep running. Uh, the, the, the Linux Foundation and the Continuous Delivery Foundation puts a lot of money into it.

If you're an enterprise that depends on Jenkins, you might think about throwing it some love in the, in the form of cash. Uh, so that is what I've got on my mind today. Alright, well, that's some great stuff.

Yeah, CloudBees, uh, we do a lot of stuff with them. They're a great organization and that's definitely, uh, something that we look for every year. Is that report, right?

Mm-hmm. Well, Now I'd like to introduce you to our guest today. Um, her name is Chris McHale.

Chris, I'm gonna let you go ahead and say hello to the audience and tell us a little bit about yourself. Sure. Um, hi everybody.

I'm Chris McHale, as was noted. Uh, let's see. I, I'm a co-founder and, uh, current c e o of s p K and Associates.

We've been around for about, oh, actually over 20 years now, I think. Um, and we have exclusively worked in the IT operations space for both product development and software development teams. And that's what we've done for that whole time.

But, um, focus more on software these days. Uh, we do a lot of, uh, DevOps services for clients, some startups, some more established. Um, we work with a lot of different tools, including CloudBees, including Jenkins, of course.

Um, and, um, so I'm running this incredible company. It's just a lot of fun. And we have a fantastic team of engineers that work to help all of our, all of our customers.

Why don't we talk a little bit about Jenkins? Yeah, Sure. 'cause I know your company does, I knew that Was gonna happen In this area.

Um, yeah, you know, you, you, I know that, that, that the organization that you're currently involved in does do work around the lifecycle. Mm-hmm. Um, do you see, what are you seeing in terms of, um, C I C D engines?

Is Jenkins continuing to be consumed in the way that that report, uh, expresses? Yeah, It, it completely resonated with me. I mean, it's one of those funny things that, um, just because I think of it's, it's, um, it's birth and it's open source.

You'd think that something else would come over and come in and take over. But not unlike Linux, you know, it, it's really just, it's ubiquitous. I mean, people, it's easy to set up, it's easy to, well, somewhat easy to maintain.

It can get pretty, it can be get pretty, uh, complicated at times, which is where CloudBees actually came in and, you know, helped out a bit with that area. But, um, yeah, we see it all over the place pretty much everywhere we go in, they're using it to some degree or another. And how do you see teams, um, kind of adapting?

You know, my complaint about Jenkins is that it is static. It's not as, you know, we, we as technologists talk about all this agile development, but our pipelines are not agile. No.

And we just keep running. We just keep, keep creating them. Are you seeing, um, uh, new and interesting ways to use Jenkins, uh, to address security in the pipeline?

Um, I personally have not at this point. Um, I think that the, the, the, the benefit in the, I guess the bad part of Jenkins is it's, it's free, it's easy to, it's easy to set up many people. Most people know how to use it, so it just Yeah.

Knows How to use it. That's, That's exactly right. Uhhuh.

And so then it's very, it's very quick to do something, um, especially with software teams or they just wanna get stuff done. Um, and then security tends to be an afterthought still, no matter how much people talk about DevSecOps, it just tends to be an afterthought still. And a lot of, a lot of the engineers don't.

Um, there's a lot to do with security, right? I mean, it's, it's a, it's a whole set of things in and of itself. They tend to be engineers that are more versed in that they don't always get included when it comes to the pipeline.

So I think a lot of that is getting the right people with the right mindset involved as opposed to the tool itself. And then I think the right decisions would end up getting made, um, early on, as long as people understand that you, the, the more you can pull the security side in early, the better off you are. Uh, but yeah, once in real Life, once a pipeline's, yeah.

Once a pipeline's defined, it's really hard to go back and add and update that. Yeah. Yeah.

It's hard, right? If you're, especially if you're a small software company and you're trying to get product out the door, you're trying to get product out the door, and you do care about security, but you care more about getting the product out the door with some semblance of security. And then you keep thinking, well, I'm gonna come back later.

I'm gonna really fix that. And, and sometimes you do and sometimes you don't. I mean, this is real life, right?

That that's what happens in real life no matter what people talk about. And, And in real life, we want, we, we really, we are, we want automation, you know? Yes.

Software developers and DevOps engineers and security engineers. Yes. We are no different than anybody else.

We want things handed to us. We want things to be easy. Yes.

We want onboarding to be easy. So going back and trying to readdress some of those pipelines to include that is definitely a, maybe a third or forethought. Right.

Which is why we continue to get stuck in the security problem that we have and why, right. Software itself is, is so vulnerable to different types of, it doesn't even have to be an attack. Right.

It just a simple vulnerability that somebody found. You know, it o over the course of they're working with some open source package. So do you, do you think it's gonna change?

Because it's like anything else where people, I mean, the w what have we had now four or five years, maybe longer? I don't know, of serious cybersecurity threat where it's impacted people in their daily lives, and yet there isn't a huge amount of change, I don't think in how the software companies in particular are acting. The bigger ones are, I think, but the smaller ones, I don't know.

And a lot of that's 'cause it's higher cost, right? It takes longer, it takes More, more time and more money, right. To add that in.

I wonder what's gonna really Change It significantly. I mean, well, do you have a sense of that? You know, I think that when the, uh, Biden administration said, Hey, if you're gonna do work for the government, you have to give us an sbo.

It started a conversation, you know? Mm-hmm. A software bill of materials is the, is the basics.

That's kind of the front line. What's, what are you consuming and you're handing to me mm-hmm. Are you consuming something that was, was written by someone that we don't wanna trust?

Right. Right. And it feels to me that if we are going to go down this road in terms of application lifecycle management, and we want to add security to it, the best way to do that is for customers to start asking for it.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So the customers have to demand it, but the customers don't always understand it.

Right. Right. So it is a, we we are in a funny, um, in Infinity Loop, I guess you would say, to take a reference to continuous delivery, that we continuously have this conversation and we know we kind of, it's the snake, you know, eating its own tail.

Mm-hmm. And we're not necessarily solving a problem. Right?

Right. Well, what do you guys think? I know we're, we're beating this drum and we're beating it to death, but what kind of an impact is AI gonna have on opening everybody's eyes a little wider?

'cause those security breaches are gonna be even easier to do at the rate that AI is developing. I mean, it seems to be having a huge impact. It could also be part of the solution, Right?

It could. And that's the problem is, I, I'm tired, I'm terrified of some of the AI stuff, but you're right. So many, many people I talked to like you, they stop me and say, but there's also a lot of good going on.

Right? I was being a little devil advocate there. Well, there is that flip side, right?

Yeah. That It can help in addressing. It's because it's going to be able to do some of the engineering, if you will.

But then Yeah. And the response time, right? If you're, you've got a good AI tool built, you can respond to those breaches more quickly.

Yeah. More agilely, because you've got that built. But still, as long As we have the data to build the models, which is what deploy Heaven Ortel is doing, and that's why I'm so excited about that.

And I wanna say something about ai, and this is a conversation we've had. I I, I've been in other discussions. Oh, yeah.

We, we, it is a new relationship with data. When, you know, when we went from having flat files to a SQL database, we didn't have a fear discussion. And suddenly the way we access data and used it changed drastically.

As opposed to reading an entire file. We could get data almost immediately. It changed our relationship with data.

We started thinking about how to model data. So this is, this has been an evolution. Now, AI just is a new way of modeling data.

So if, if we weren't afraid of sql, if we shouldn't be afraid of new data models and machine learning now, except that Up. No, except that, I mean, I I, that that's a great analogy, except that, um, you still had human beings sort of in control of what was going on with the data, or at least semblance of control. What you have now is you're introducing a effectively algorithms and, and, and artificial intelligence that, uh, is in control of it itself.

And so the data seems, uh, psychologically and I think in reality is going to be outside of our control. It's going to evade our control very quickly and already has. I mean, we're already saying I Don't see that, that No.

Okay. I do not see that. I think that when a human rights, an algorithm or a human rights, an ml, um, ops workflow, we're still defining it.

We are still controlling that information. Now, certainly those algorithms can grow, but they're gonna grow incorrectly. And they're, and we're going to bring 'em back in because we're constantly having to, uh, trim the, trim the tree, so to speak.

So, uh, you know, I, I think that there are occupations that should be worried. I think that occupations like the legal world, uh, accounting, um, even medicine, um, may have a concern for those types of jobs. But overall, I think that AI will give us a, all of us a much better life in The same way.

But I'm thinking about, I'm thinking about the disinformation and the ability to mimic reality. So absolutely. Well's happen.

Yes. That, that is just gonna, it's already outta control. And we haven't even entered a political cycle yet.

I know that's what terrifies me about it, is we, we don't get enough feedback about the positives. All we hear about is, oh, look what AI did. Oh, look what AI is doing.

It's generating all this junk and garbage. And, and, um, yeah. So I think that's, we need to focus on getting These, we don't need Conversations out there more where people are saying, but guess what it's doing for me?

That's good. Right. And a, we do not need AI to put out disinformation.

Yeah. But it's not, But it's gonna do it a lot faster. It's Accelerating it.

Yeah. I'm sound like a big naysayer here. I'm not trying to be a naysayer.

No, no. I'm actually just taking the other side. 'cause you were taking masks.

I love it. And I think that regulation's going to be important for, for AI in the social world. There's no doubt regulation will be super important.

And regulation should have been in, in place way before now, because humans can do the same thing as ai. And maybe they AI are saying we can do it faster. I don't know.

I think there's a lot of disinformation that was out there over the last four years, but AI wasn't there. So True. True.

But they haven't been able to get that under control. So if you just accelerate, that's, if you just accelerate the cycle, it, it just makes it harder. That's all.

There's some kind of regulations gonna have to be put in place for that. Yes. But outside of the social networking and the, the, that human kind of, uh, interaction, um, which I think social, there's social media has a lot of issues.

I don't, you know, kids shouldn't be on social media. Media. I read this most amazing book called The Greatest, I think it's called The Greatest Life.

It's by, uh, written by a couple Harvard, uh, professors, and they talk about, uh, the impact of social, uh, media on kids. Mm-hmm. And there's some areas that I didn't even really even think about in terms of the, the potential, uh, damage that it has.

And one of 'em is relationships. Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm.

Absolutely. And How important relationships are to learn to foster and to grow and to establish, and only having relationships through a portal Yep. Prevents them from really understanding the importance of relationships and growing from it.

Yep. Yes. Absolutely.

We have a lot of issues in, in technology. We have to say. I was just, not to digress, but I was just, I was reading a book where, um, they were talking about just teenagers and, and the development of teenagers.

I have a teenager, so Yeah, you go, the reason I it you're in the thick of it. Yeah. I'm, because they were talking about, um, that, that very fact that, you know, because of the electronics and the way they communicate, they, they don't actually talk to each other as much as they used to.

And so having conversations is actually a skill. They're not necessarily developing as fully as perhaps we did, you know, when we were. Well, and what's crazy is my kids are in their late twenties and they didn't get the social media until they were much older than kids today, obviously.

But what I see, and hopefully they won't watch this and kill me, but, um, what I see is not just the relationships, but their inability to negotiate and have conversations and, um, advocate for themselves. Because if you can do it on a device and you can do it in an email, but when you have to do it face to face, they cow a bit. And they're like, I can, you know, I don't wanna make anyone upset and I don't wanna create any waves.

And I'm like, what? This is okay, you tell them, do this. It's not, they're not gonna get angry.

You know, and it's, it's, yeah. It's a whole bigger, even this, this generation that didn't, you know, have it from the time they were, you know, six and seven. It's, yeah.

It's just interesting to see the evolution of the development of this generation coming up because of mm-hmm. Social And, you know, online stuff. And young girls and even women, uh, older women have trouble finding their voice as it is Yeah's.

So true. Right. It's hard enough.

Right. So, how do we continue to make sure that young women coming through the ranks can find their voice and in the, in roles like you, Chris? I mean, how did you find your voice running an organization?

Like, uh, you're running, you must have somehow discovered your voice way early on. Oh, no, I didn't. I, it took me a really long time.

Oh, yeah. Um, well, and it was really hard, especially in the beginning. Um, there were almost no women in tech, you know, leadership roles.

Um, I have this funny story. I always tell people when, when I was actually doing more of the tech delivery, uh, I was at a, I would be at a client, and that was back in the day when there was infrastructure, you know, on site. And, um, things would break.

Right? And so we'd put in a call for something, uh, for a server, and then the engineer would come and be sitting in the, um, lobby. And I always went by Chris, not because I was trying to fool anybody Oh.

But I just, it was just my nickname since the time I was a kid. And so I would be interacting with some over her email, and then I would show up in the lobby and they would sitting, be sitting there and they would look up when I walked in, and then they would look back down because they couldn't conceive of the fact that I, you know, oh wow. Was a woman, right?

And so I walked up, and then they would kind of do a double take, and then they were always very nice. But, um, it was just one of those funny, uh, memories that I have, uh, throughout the years. Were only being, you know, the only woman in the, in the conference room or what have you.

So I, I found it to be, I'm, I'm a very transparent person. I found it to be very intimidating in the beginning. And, um, while I always thought of myself as this, you know, a woman who could speak her mind or what have you, I, I had to really teach myself just not to care about what, in this case, you know, the men around me, but anybody was thinking.

And just to know that I knew what I knew, and I didn't know what I didn't know. And I didn't have to pretend, you know, and I didn't have to try to be like anybody else. I just had to be who I was.

And that sounds so simple. And I talked to my daughter about that. It's so hard, you know?

It, it, it's so hard. It's so hard. And she, and even she is, I think, a wonderful blossoming, you know, young person, young woman.

And I can already see, you know, you're, I'm watching her thinking. I remember thinking that I remember being that way. I remember feeling that way.

Mm-hmm. And, um, I don't know, maybe only experience can truly teach you those things. Not sure.

It's, it's a fascinating question, and I actually think about it a lot. Well, and what's painful about it is you experienced it 20 years ago, and depending on the field, women are still experiencing it today. Yeah.

And it's like, um, you know, my daughter goes through it. She's a director and a producer and an actor. Mm-hmm.

And she'll walk into a room as a young woman and with these much older white dudes. Mm-hmm. And, you know, they just don't really have the time of day.

Mm-hmm. And it's, it's been an really, like, with your daughter, it's been an interesting journey to watch her go on. And I've been really excited to see how she's dealt with it.

And, um, I'm always encouraging her to keep it, keep it up. Mm-hmm. But yeah, it's, it's just really hard to watch, but it's sad.

It 20 years later, it's still, yeah. I think it's better. It's definitely better.

Oh. Um, I think it helps when there's just one other woman in the room. And I don't know if that's a very popular thing to say, but I just, I, I don't know.

I feel like it, if there's just one other woman in the room, the, I don't know, you just, you, you feel like you can just be a little bit more real and then you can connect with them maybe, and still connect with everybody else. Um, yeah, I don't know. It's tough.

No, I think that's true. It's a tough, that's a tough one. And we need to Get some more women in the room when it comes to boardrooms, don't we?

It's like, it's time. Yeah. So tell us a little bit about S P K and, and do you, do you guys have a, you know, are you pursuing, um, you know, diversity issues?

Is that something that's often discussed? She Giggles. Oh, well, yeah.

Well, I mean, you know, yeah. Oh, yes, it is. And it's, um, this is one of, one of the, we, every time we're gonna hire an engineer, you know, I, I always try to hire a woman or somebody of color, any, anything to diversify the group, because the, a diversified group, I, it's not just, um, semantics.

It, it really is a truly stronger group. And, uh, you bring perspectives that you don't already have and so on. It's hard to do as a small company in particular, you, there's nobody that we can hire that cannot be sort of at the top of their game, both technically and, and with soft skills.

I mean, they just have to be able to carry that weight. So we're really picky about who we hire. So we ultimately are going to hire the person that can do the job, but we go out of our way, you know, to try to find, sometimes we can and, and sometimes we can't.

Um, yeah. So it's hard, It's hard to find women. It's really, really, it can be really challenging.

I know that. Yeah. So I, and, and this is a question that's, that's that I really wonder about.

Why, why, I mean, there's tons of women in science, you know, there, there's so many women, women in science, and yet when it comes to the technology or the kind of the harder part, uh, there just aren't, don't seem to be as many, or they, I have this current hypothesis, which I have no idea is true, that they do come out of the schools. We've got a lot of, uh, you know, women who are studying to be engineers that are coming out of the schools, and they start to work in the more technical discipline. And then they often have really great soft skills or per interpersonal skills.

And so they morph over into a different role because it's hard to find somebody who can do tech and have the personal skills. And they're very, very sought after. So I wonder if a lot of the women are moving more into those roles, and then they're not really staying in the more hardcore engineering role.

Fully a theory. Think you nailed that. No, I think, I think you're right about that because we've, you know, I, I see so many women who end up in, in a management role, uh, they go into, um, uh, maybe dere or marketing roles.

Mm-hmm. Uh, and instead of staying because they're better communicators mm-hmm. And so they gravitate towards that, those areas and they in, instead of being in those technical roles.

Yeah. And in fact, we've had, we've always asked women what, you know Yeah. Was gonna say, what would you, you suggest to a Huh.

A young woman just outta school in getting into her career. And almost everybody says, take a job as a coder, stay in programming as long as you can, learn as much technical as you can before you jump and do anything else. And I think, Yeah.

We have some good empirical data to back up your theory. Yes. Just on our interviews here.

Yes. Hundred percent 100s, exactly what people say is that that's what women, women tend to do. And an sbk How.

And so how long do they stay? Well, just quick question. How long do you think they end up staying in the tech coder more engineering role?

Five years? Well, I Have a, I have an, so I have a, a a niece who, um, just graduated and she had about three years of programming experience as an intern. And then they offered her full-time work while she, and she did that while she was, uh, um, going to school.

And they started pushing her pretty early into project management, which I kept telling, no, don't do that. Don't do that. Don't do that.

Yeah. So they were, that's really interest. They were, they just almost, almost stereotypically said, there's the girl on, on the, on the team.

Let's give her some of the more administrative tasks that are more, We're good at organizing. We're good at Organizing. And so they wanted someone to organize.

And she started doing that. And I kept saying, no, tell 'em no. You want a code.

Tell 'em you want programs. You, you just gotta code. That's awesome.

So I think it, I don't think it takes very long. I really don't. Yeah.

And there is that side of, not so much the administrative, but the interpersonal side. That is, it is extremely valuable, right? I mean, and even in our team, well, we're a client facing team for the most part.

We have some people that are less client facing, but, but, but the people that we hire have to be able to talk to people and interact with people on some level. Um, and, um, that, that's hard. That it's harder.

And, and sometimes if they're really gifted, technically they're worse, you know, the interpersonal, um, and vice versa, I suppose. And then there are some unicorns that are really good at both, and they're very, very rare. Um, and so, and I wonder like even project management is about getting people to do the things that you need them to do.

Mm-hmm. So I wonder if it's the administrative side, or is it really more that interpersonal capability of being able to, you know, herd the cats and get people to team up in to producing something, but I it might be both. And Keep the wheels on the rails, keep things moving, keep things productive.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. That's the kind of categories I've always fallen into, and I enjoy that.

I like my life here is hurting a lot of cats around the world. But, but yeah. I, I, we see so many, see so many people or women that have talked to us that have said the same thing you did, that they all kind of get funneled.

And then, and sometimes it's because, you know, we have babies and we have families and we're caretakers, and that, that, you know, is a whole other conversation that we struggle with when it comes to having jobs and going up the corporate ladder. Right? Yeah.

Yes. Yeah. Although I would argue that if you really wanted to be a coder in your coding, it's a very flexible job, right.

Because you have to produce, as long as you produce, you can go pick up your kids from the Exactly. School. Exactly.

Or whatever. Exactly. That's Good.

I know you, so are you, let's talk about remote work. I'm just curious. Yeah.

Um, what, so you, s p K does a lot of work with customers all over the United States. I don't Maybe in In the world. Yeah.

In the world. So, um, are you seeing, so are are you primarily remote or are you spending a lot of money on travel? You know, what, how, how is that panning out?

Um, I would say it depends on what we're doing. We're we try to do as much as remote, remote as we can like everybody else, because it's less expensive and less, um, invasive on the engineer, you know, in terms of travel and so on. We find that, and this has been a really fascinating topic over the last several years.

'cause we all went through this immense social experiment, you know, where we all were forced, forced remote, and certain things worked really well. And then a lot of things didn't work at all. Um, human beings, I feel like they need to see human beings.

And Zoom is a great, it's better than nothing, but it's not the same as seeing somebody face to face. Uh, when we start a project or start a relationships where if we're doing managed services, you know, for, for a client, we try to spend as much face-to-face time as we can with them, especially upfront. So we may go, we may, we may stay for a few days, try to get to know the people, get to know the relationships, get to know the politics, you know, of a company.

Um, and then we won't just stay remote then we'll, we'll parachute in every, you know, some sort of frequency. Uh, if we can get an engineer, kind of like a lead engineer, we call 'em primary engineers that's local to that company, even if they're not necessarily doing all the work or it's not their skillset, if they're their representative, they can go on site, even if it's for a day, and they can just sit there and talk to people. Because it's amazing how many people will come up and just start talking to you about stuff that they, they won't tell you.

They won't, they won't enter a ticket, they won't ask a question. But if you're sitting there, they'll come over. And then we found during c o that it was challenging to maintain those relationships to that really high level without being able to visit people.

That that's at least been our experience. I think it depends on the kind of tech that you're doing for people, you know, but that our kind is a helping kind, I guess. So it helping to be on site.

It kind of goes with that, you know, the, the book I was reading, the Greatest Life relationships are so important. Um, yeah. And it's hard to build them through a, our Zoom meeting or even a 15 minute zoom meeting Yeah.

And a standup. Yeah. So it, it, it, uh, it, it creates kind of an interesting puzzle for companies like yours Yep.

Who have engineers who don't wanna have to be getting on a plane on a That's right. On a Sunday night and coming home on a Friday night and just barely having a day at home. Right.

It makes it really, really hard. And, And we really don't Do that. Welcome to my life.

Oh yeah. That's what my husband does. That's what my husband's like, he travels so much.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

We, we, we try not to do, we don't do that. I mean, we, we really, um, we, we just work it out so that we don't do that. 'cause I just, that's not a good culture, I think for the company and for the people.

And, and a lot of people will say, well, why did you start this company? And I, I say, well, there's a lot of reasons. But one of the reasons was at the time, I felt like there was not a great supportive culture in tech.

You know, there were just a lot of companies that were in it just to make a bunch of money, and then they would use people the way they needed to use them and wouldn't, they wouldn't necessarily benefit in the fruits of the labor, et cetera. And I just thought, whoa, why don't we have a company? And I did come out of hp, so I probably was somewhat colored by that, but I thought that why can't there be a tech services company where the people are hugely valued and, and they are a company, you know, they're, they're what it's all about.

Mm-hmm. And, um, so that culture and maintaining that culture is, it's really important to me, uh, because it was part of the reason that I started it to begin with. Um, and we have people that have been with us 15, 16 years.

Wow. Which in Silicon Valley, that's Like family. I Know.

It really is family. It's really wonderful. It's really wonderful.

Yeah. So I have a question for you. Yes.

Um, I was reading in one of your bios that you do work to improve the lives of women and girls in Ethiopia. Yes. I would love to hear more about that.

Yes. Okay. This is so close to my heart.

Um, my daughter is from Ethiopia originally. Wow. She's adopted.

And so I have that feeling and, you know, tie to the country. Uh, I was also, my dad was in the foreign service, and so I grew up in Africa and Asia. And so I have childhood memories and kind of connections, I guess, to different countries, but, um, certainly countries in Africa.

And so when, um, when, uh, after Hannah, my daughter was adopted, and we would go to this heritage camp once a year where they tried to get the kids together just to kinda maintain Ethiopian heritage. Wow. And do fun things.

It was wonderful. And I met this man, and, oh, sorry. Prior to me getting involved in tech and, um, business, I wasn't in international development.

So that's also something close to my heart. And we did a lot of micro lending and small business development when I was working in it. So when I met, um, this fellow Aku who had founded this company, Zumba, we just hit it off.

We met at the Heritage Camp. And knowing what I knew about international development, he was just doing everything right. So we got, I got involved in what he was doing, and I started funding a lot of his projects.

He has done absolutely amazing work. I can't say enough about what he has done. And, um, in Ethiopia, uh, one of the first projects that he did was to try to keep girls in school.

Um, what happens in a lot of the rural areas is that the girls start their period when they enter puberty, and there's not really any way to control that. And so, um, they don't have pads and they don't have things that we take for granted here. So he came up with this just really basic idea of we'll get sewing machines and we'll get them all out to these, uh, villages.

And the girls will sew pads and reusable things that they can then use so that instead of when they get their period, they just stay home from school. Sorry, didn't mention that at the beginning. They just stay home from school and then they fall behind, so now they can continue to go to school.

The simplest thing. Right. That the simplest thing.

So sad. That's so mm-hmm. Right.

But, but his work has been fantastic. And so he started it and now the girls train each other and they go to different villages themselves. That's amazing.

It's like he planted these seeds, you know? So that was one thing he did. He also, um, TAF is the grain in Ethiopia that is used, uh, to make in Jira, which is one of their, um, basic, if you've ever had Ethiopian food, you've had in Jira, um, they tend to, in the rural areas, grind the with stones.

Mm-hmm. Which then eventually little tiny pieces of the stones stay in the T. Mm-hmm.

So first of all, it's really hard work for the women. And secondly, it actually wears their teeth down over the years. And so he bought some mills and we helped fund that too.

And so he puts the mills in these different kind of co-op mills in different areas. Uh, several villages use them and they bring the tein and they use the mill and they can grind the T and then they go back home. And anyway, these are just a couple of the projects that he done.

No, That's just fascinating. That is so amazing. Yeah.

I learned a lot about TAF over the course of, uh, COVID. I was doing a lot of cooking and learned how important. Yeah.

Teff is a really high in protein. Low in sugar. Yes.

Yes. Um, and, and I was making T cookies and taf bread and teff Por Oh, on te I was, I was te out. Let me tell you.

And it's funny, I, I started seeing te flour in like a, our local kind of whole Foods place. Right. I thought, oh my gosh.

They have tough flour in the United States now. Yes. And most of it comes from a woman.

I think she came from Ethiopia and she's mm-hmm. And she's in Idaho and she's growing tough locally and out of Idaho. Oh, Wow.

Wow. And it's really, really, uh, important because it's, it's drought tolerant. Yes.

Oh boy. It grows easily. It doesn't take a lot of water.

And like you said, it's really high in protein, much more than some of the other grains. So there you go. Tech strong women.

Great. Such a new one. Hey, You know, this is a, this is a good time to let our audience know we're almost outta time.

Um, oh My That I know. We, it goes fast. It goes fast.

Um, wow. I just really appreciate having you here and that I'm always the one Tracy knows, I always wait to pounce on the, the things, and it's just so amazing to me. And again, I'll probably get yelled at, but what I see is women pick up a project and they work and they succeed and they do jobs, but they still hold on to these outside really important things that they're doing on top of that.

And, um, it never ceases to impress me. Um, um, and, and you fall, it's what Makes it Into that category I was thinking, but it's what makes life so rich, right? Doesn't it?

I mean, it's what makes it all It's balance, right? It's balance. And we all needed, and covid messed it a lot up.

Mm-hmm. And it's been, I know I personally have struggled to get, get it back. So, um, I just love hearing stories about, you know, I didn't know any of the stuff about tough.

I know that there's a lot of girls around the world struggling because they have periods and whether it's water sources so they can go to school and have hygiene or whether it's supplies that they need. Um, it's just great to hear people that find a way to, to make things work. And if you guys feel like it, ZBA, Z O Z A M B A, they have a website and they do take donations.

Um, you, if you want to donate to something that's going directly to people and helping people, it's just wonderful. Yeah. That's amazing.

Well, thank you so much for being with us today. We really Appreciate it. It was an absolute pleasure to meet you too, Tracy.

Wonderful meeting. You too. Yeah.

And Jody both thank you. And Michael, thanks for staying with me and, and making sure I got Chris on the show. I appreciate it.

Thanks to everybody for watching. Um, stay tuned for some more great programming from Textron tv. Have a great day.

Thank you. Thanks.