Name: Women in IT: Leading Under Pressure
Uploaded: 2026-03-11T20:25:06.860Z
Duration: 1 h 25 min 4 s
Description: Women in IT: Leading Under Pressure

Transcript for "Women in IT: Leading Under Pressure": Okay. Great. Hi, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us today for our panel, Women in IT Leading Under Pressure. I'm Erica Libby. I'm a product manager here on the devices team at Rippling, and we're really excited to bring such a knowledgeable group of women together to talk about their experiences in the IT world. You know, this is a challenging field, but also a field that has a lot of exciting changes and opportunity. So the intention today is really just to have an open conversation to talk about what it's like being a woman in this field, what it's like having a successful career in this field, and just learning from the amazing women in this room. I do wanna encourage everyone joining us to use the chat to ask questions as we go along and create an opportunity for you all to connect with each other. This is a community building event, and as I said, please ask questions as we go along, share what you've experienced in your own career, and just drop thoughts into the chat as we go along. With that, I would love to introduce our three panelists. We have Erin Merchant, who's the head of customer success at the AI help desk company, Rosoto, and is also the co chair of the Mac Admins Foundation. Becky Scott is the community leader for the nonprofit DT Matters and the former head of tech and community advocacy programs at JumpCloud. And lastly, we have Jen Hayroth, who's the manager of enterprise security at the data analytics company d b DBT Labs. You all are amazing successful women, and I'm so excited to hear what you have to share today with the group. So we are going to get started here, and I'd really love to start with a question for everybody just so the room can get to know each one of you. I'd love to start with you, Erin, and what first drew you to IT? What really made you say, yes, this is the right place. This is where I wanna build my career. I didn't know if I was in the right place, which is, I guess, a reminder that you don't always, like, land in the expected career path along the way. I fell into this via the Apple Store, so it was, like, previous knowledge and expertise from essentially, like, retail experience. But everything that I had over the course of, like, all of my formal education and informal education has, like, a theme of problem solving. And maybe secondarily, as somebody who came out of, like, the more political realm of education was, like, some sort of either diplomacy or handshake between, right, like, what a business needs, what an individual as, like, a customer of the business needs, what they and all the interplay that happens in between that. Ultimately, my own drive for career development was the thing that told me I was on the right career path, both in terms of, like, the skills and experience and the breadth that I was gaining over time and the ability that I was given to play within those spaces. I had enough sandbox to essentially say there's a place for me within IT that maybe isn't the not like, the typical evolution of the career expectations at the time, which was mostly you do IT, you're going to be technical. I didn't want to be technical. I still don't want to be technical. I think there's a lot of people who would probably argue with me whether that's true or not today or how technical I've become. But it was essentially like I wanted to be on the ops side of the house. Wanted to make sure that I was helping people at the end of the day, and those relationships are really important to me. So the more opportunities I had to do that and the more impact that I was seeing, the more validation that I knew that I was still doing the right thing and that this was a place where I could excel at that and then I could apply those skills. Great. Well, sounds like it's you started really on the ground level there And you're in the Apple store helping helping people out. So Yeah. Were one on the ground there. I'd love to turn over to you, Becky, and hear, you know, your version of that story. Well, I I started figuring out that I I liked people in IT and the technical side of things when I worked at UC San Diego and worked in the IT department for student services. And I found that when I was learning to troubleshoot our site and services and things like that, I enjoyed it and found that I had this really sweet spot between the technical side and the business side and kinda being that translator between the two was where I really enjoyed being. And so we had a a position kind of called technical liaison was what it was. And I had a mentor there who was in that position, and she, you know, kinda took me under her wing and and started teaching me some things. And I found that I I really enjoyed the bringing together the people and the technology and just really enjoyed being a part of people who were technical. Even if I didn't do that part of it myself, There was usually something about being a a part of those folks and getting to getting getting to know them and understand them even though they were sometimes hard to get to know. You know, sometimes people in in tech just wanna be left alone. At least the people I've I've worked with, they're kinda like, just just let me be and do my job. And so when I found a way to connect with them and work with them closely, I just enjoyed that so much. And so over the years, as I started working a lot with engineers, they just became some of my my favorite people and favorite audience. So I just found that that was where I liked to be most of all. Great. And last but not least, Jen. Yeah. I I started as, like, the kid who fixed the family computer because, like, my dad did it until he was traveling all the time, and then I'd call him and he'd walk me through it. And then eventually, it was just me doing it. And then when I got into college, I kinda fell into a group of gamers. And so then I did the, like, I'm gonna build my own machine thing. So I started out in, like, kind of typical help desk, then I was a sys admin. And then I started managing pretty early into my career. And honestly, that's been kind of like the pivot point for me because managing has meant that I've been able to manage all sorts of different technical teams. So, you know, I've managed everyone from tech support to database analysts to software engineers, PMs. You know, like, if if there's a tech team, like, the last team before this that I managed was an SRE team, and now I'm managing, like, IT and security. And, like, I know the other two kinda mentioned this as well, but, like, for me, it really comes down to, like, being helpful and fixing things. So in all those situations, like, that's my favorite part is to say, like, oh, here's the issue we're having. Like, yes. I know how to solve that, or I don't know how to solve that. Let's walk through this and figure it out together. But then also as I've kind of headed into this part of my career, I'm really interested in, like, how tech can help the business. And, like, I know we're in the age of AI right now, and so that's a huge discussion. Like, yes, AI exists, but how do we use that for the company? How is that helpful? I'm also in security now. So, you know, how do I make sure that we're secure as a company, but I'm not annoying everybody with all the requirements and security stuff we have in place, which I think is a kind of a fine balance. But in the end, it always comes down to how do I help you do your job easier with tech, or how do I fix your tech issue? Amazing. I feel like for me, the theme there was, like, really loving to, like, help people and also this kind of, like, being I don't say, you know, being this liaison, I really like the word you use, Becky, there for, you know, connecting people from the technical side to the business side. And, you know, even Jen, you mentioned there at the end, like, enable those business folks to kind of do their job better. So maybe kind of, like, drilling down into that and kinda sticking with you, Jen. I'd I'd love to hear how you, you know, frame the role that you're in and the IT universe to leadership as a sort of, you know, pro business. You know, we are here to help unblock folks, you know, rather than as sometimes, you know, a cost center or sort of a blocker. I can't get anything done because I'm waiting on IT. You know, how do you really kind of successfully present your team forward and and get the investments that you need to kind of make the business successful? Yeah. I I think often IT is seen as a cost center, and that's kind of always an uphill battle. I actually was just writing an operating model for my current team to kinda put to paper everything we do and why. And that is one thing I specifically called out is like, I don't view our team as a cost center. I view it as a strategic capability and laid out what that means. And so a lot of that for us means, you know, utilizing tools. Automation is one that's big for my team. So automating what we can to, you know, sublinearly grow our team using automation and scripting. But then also, you know, back to AI, unfortunately, again, we're currently in the conversation about, hey. People really wanna use all these tools. Like, how do we enable them to use those tools, but then also secure those tools without being a pain to everybody, which, you know, is a bit of a challenge right now. And some companies have taken the stance of, hey. We're gonna save money and just decide on one AI tool, and that's our stance. And others, I think, are going a little bit more towards we're going, which is we're allowing people to kind of take adventures down the path, such as AI tools as long as they're being secure about it and figuring out what this what's the right fit. But in all of those conversations is IT because we're giving you access to the tools. We're securing the tools. We're deprovisioning the tools if we've decided that's not the right fit. And so all of that is enabling the ability for the company to use AI. And I would say, like, we also sometimes step into a consulting role. So it's not just helping the tickets, but also, hey, people team. We want to automate more of the onboarding or the offboarding processes. How can we do that together? What systems do you use? Can you give us access to those to automate those steps to save time for everybody? So I do think it's easy to just look at an IT team and say, hey. Well, they don't sell product, so they're a cost center. But if you actually dig into everything we're doing with the business, we are, like, a strategic capability partner. I think that's really good when you when you look at it that way and try and show them all that you're doing. Like, we're not just supplying the computers and the technology. We're doing these other things. And that word you said enable, I I use that a lot. I I sometimes jokingly call call it the enablement layer. Like, we're the enablement layer that's that's helping enable you to do your work, to do these things. And so I I might talk a lot about security and also helping people figure out, like, what technology is right for them. Like, what software should you be using or not using or, you know, let's consolidate some things when people have, you know, several different tools. If if it if it helps the company save money, you know, like, you've got three different task management tools. Hey. We could probably save some money if we, you know, all go in on one or something like that. And I think being visible in things and being available and and really trying to help both end users and management see that there's all different spaces in the company where IT can contribute is really important and making sure that there's a voice in decision making. Because a lot of times, IT gets told things after the fact. And if you can build that partnership in management and in the c suite, it makes a huge difference in being able to be there from planning and advising on, like, with AI, like, making sure that things are secure and there's training and things like that from the get go instead of chasing after it after the fact. As much as you can, you know, show provide yourself as a partner rather than doing things afterwards, I think makes a huge difference. I've seen some IT folks that have been really passive. You know, the the management is just passive and just kinda rolls with things. And then I've seen others who are really proactive, and they're the ones that really do help the group be more of a of a partner than just rolling with whatever comes their way. Awesome. Super, super helpful. And I think kind of like an inspiring, you know, story to hear how you guys talk about, you know, really elevating this part of the organization into those c suite conversations, you know, into, you know, the forefront of AI. Right? I mean, employees and teams wouldn't be able to do what they do with those amazing new tools if, you know, they aren't secure, if they aren't, you know, compliant, if, you know, people don't actually even know how to set them up and use them most effectively. So maybe kind of taking that and thinking a little bit, like, how are you guys using AI in your world today? You know, obviously, we've talked about how you're enabling other folks, but, you know, are you using it, you know, in your day to day universe? And if so, you know, is it helpful? Is it not? Like, you know, be honest. And maybe Erin will will start with you on that one. It's a bit of a cheat code to start with me because I work for an AI company. But hilariously, this is a fun fact. I'm actually, like, a pretty hefty Luddite in my personal life. One of the things that I stress, like, throughout the entire enablement process or the use of AI, especially, end user or individually based AI tooling, is that critical thinking should be a part of your process. So I cannot stress that enough that having kind of the push pull against, like, the ease of use of this, very, very rapidly evolving technology and also retaining your ability to ask critical questions, communicate really effectively, have become even more effective. So in terms of usability, like I have like a very broad, I would say, like spectrum understanding of what is happening now. And, overarchingly, I think in terms of like AI development, if we're just stomaching all of the macro pieces of the conversation and moving into like, what do we have to do with work? One of the most interesting tidbits that I've actually run into now working for a company that enables IT teams by way of help desk ticketing service enablement, and automation, is that more often than not IT professionals, I think maybe by a subset security professionals, but Jen, I think you can probably speak to this better than I can, are spending more time understanding both the nuance of the actions that that, that the technology can take and enabling it for other teams. So it's almost like there's a work back that's happening right now where teams that are required to essentially invest in educating, deploying, and building out this kind of product are doing so on behalf of others. And so we're now very well educated on how IT works in marketing, how IT works in, products, how engineering might be using it. And now we're working back into a position where they're actually using it for themselves, and are probably the most optimal people in your business that you have to do what Becky is talking about, to be the people who can advise, critique, and scrutinize like what your tool stack should be because of that. So ultimately, I do think it has a lot of effectiveness. I think there's also a conversation that's happening within the IT community of what does this mean for the evolution of our careers, and are we going to be replaced? And, right, like, there's gonna be 50% that are gonna say yes and 50% that are gonna say this has been additive. My pivot on that is we have a skills gap that we need to fill, and that's a whole other conversation for a whole other day. But, right, like, what we're essentially doing is we're asking people to speed run into being, like, advanced in their career a lot earlier, which takes me all the way back to the beginning, which is critical thinking and good communication become your friend. So I think it has a place. I think it's the world we live in. There was a quote that sat with me recently that was like, there is no differentiation between tech and AI. Now tech is AI. You know, that can make you feel a certain way depending on how you wanna interpret it. But, right, like, with that in mind, right, like, takes you back to a lot of the quote soft skills that we've all talked about thus far, which is like that enablement factor. And then the way that you interface with the people who are asking you to invest in these tools becomes even more important. Yeah. AI enablement is an interesting spot. You know, we're just having discussions recently about how we as a company need to actually, like, fund AI enablement. Because with without doing that, without identifying who is enabling AI, I feel like just someone in each department ends up having to be the person who knows how to use AI. They're the person teaching you how to build an agent, train the agent, pick your model. And I think that's kind of unfair to a whole lot of people to suddenly say, hey. That what you were doing, that's not really what you're doing anymore. You're now in charge of being the AI person. Whereas, like, I kind of just stood up and said, hey. We're okay by being the AI people. Like, we can help you. Our help desk is AI enabled, so it is looking at responses we've given, looking at our documentation, looking at official documentation to provide answers to end users. But now I'm also billing an agent for my team, looking at our private internal documentation, looking at official sources for help, looking at some other sources that we all look at for IT help, to get answers. Mac admins is a great example. We're a Mac shop. We utilize that community a lot, so it can look at that for answers. But at the same time, like, I don't know, you know, you hear people saying, oh, I started using this AI tool and I used my token so fast. Well, right. Like, maybe it shouldn't have been a chatbot. Maybe it should have been an agent that you trained to, those kind of experiences helping direct people to the right AI fit, is also important right now. I think that's so real. And to your point about having people who train or teach others inside their organization, I mean, we've gone through a ton of enablement internally at Rippling for product managers getting set up on Cursor. And I feel badly for the engineers who had to spend time with me, you know, making sure that when I'm trying to put up a PR, I'm actually doing it correctly, and it's not creating more work for someone else in my organization. Right? And, you know, that training and that understanding is is is, you know, such an important piece of of the enablement kind of equation. Right? It's not just here's your tool, you know, it's how do you actually use your tool in your work function, in your specific department, and how does that actually not just unblock you, but make sure that it's unblocking lots of other people as well in the same kind of same kind of moment. Yeah. At the end of the day, we have the same problems too. Right? It all comes back to IT. It's still, you know, you still have, cost justification you have to do. You still have adoption that's required for that. You potentially have, like, provisioning and deprovisioning of those applications as things change. Right? So, like, those things are still a huge part of it. But, like, understanding that value set and then how you evaluate it, I think, building on what Joan was saying, has become that much more important for us because it's just so rapid now. So, yeah, automating away officially. I know like everybody could probably take a shot every time we say we have to automate away something. But, like it has really become that much more important now as a subset of this. So understanding the complexity of what your tools can do for sure. I've been seeing, two types of conversations. I've been leading a lot of AI conversations within one of the communities I run, because I'm kinda the one that's been involved with it most. And so we're talking about best practices. We're talking about governance and security and all these things. And so people are using it for for different things. Right? And some of them, it's about how do we work smarter and how do we help people do some of the rote things and just kinda get the busy work out of the way for them so they can work, you know, do some of the deep critical thinking and get rid of all the the other stuff. And so they're they're looking at how they wanna be more efficient. And then I'm seeing some of the other conversations about whether or not they're going to get rid of positions because of AI. And so that that's a tougher one to sit and watch. I think Block, the company that runs Square, is getting rid of about 40% of their workforce because they feel like they could do it better with AI. So those are the really difficult conversations to have about seeing companies who are actually deciding to reduce their workforce because of AI. From my perspective, I would rather see it help people do the harder work or free people up to do the harder work that needs a human eye rather than just using it as a a cost savings. But, you know, we're not always the ones that get to make those decisions. So those are the those are the more frustrating things that I'm seeing happening with AI that I wish weren't happening, I guess. Yeah. Maybe kind of dovetailing off that. I think, you know, to your point even earlier, Becky, about being in those CEO level conversations, those executive level conversations about whether it's AI or something else. You know? I'd love to, you know, hear maybe a little bit about some of the challenging or most challenging moments you've had in your role as an IT leader and, you know, how you've sort of handled those difficult moments, whether that was pushback from leadership on a decision you've made or, you know, feeling like a cost center and kind of being, you know, put in that corner. How have you, you know, handled some of those challenging moments as an IT leader? And maybe we'll kinda stick with you, Becky, and and continue down some of those conversations you were mentioning. I think I think having a good group of peers that you can talk to about things like that and being able to bounce things off of people who are either at the same level or have been there before is is really helpful so you're not doing things in a vacuum. I have some friends who, you know, have been in the c suite and have been IT leaders for a long time. And it's really helpful to me to talk things through with them to get advice and counsel so that I don't just go off the cuff. And I I tend to be I I need to be a little bit more politically savvy about things instead of just, you know, going off the cuff and, you know, being being annoyed at something and and snapping something off the top of my head where I need to give it more thought and think about the impact of of things because I can be I can be a little bit snarky, which it doesn't always doesn't always play well. I wonder why. So I think, you know, just making sure that you temper your reaction and take time on things is is sometimes where I might struggle. And so, you know, just having those mentors and peers to talk to has really been a good way to help when when things are kinda feel like they're kinda going sideways or you just need some advice and counsel on how how do I handle this? What the heck do I need to be doing here? Because they're not listening or I don't agree with this this decision, and I really wanna disagree vehemently, but maybe I need to temper that a little bit. So I think it's really easy in IT also to just say, oh, you needed that thing done. It's done without explaining how you made that decision or how you went about that. And, like, those are conversations I have as I'm, like, building people in their IT careers is, okay. You're ready to start stepping into, like, a senior role, a staff role, like, have those conversations not only within the team so other people can say, well, actually, I would have done it this way. What do you think of that? But also, so as you talk to people at, you know, outside your department or at more executive levels, they understand, like, the work that's going into doing that thing. It's not just a box that you magically ticked. There was all these things involved. And I think, you know, Becky had mentioned being visible, and I think that is really important. It's easy to be invisible as an IT team that they only really noticed us when stuff is broken. So flipping that and, like, making your work visible and making your what's going into your work known, I think, is also important. Yeah. That's a good point. And sort of you both kind of mentioned, like, mentorship, whether it was, like, help from mentors for things that you were doing or Jen talking about mentoring others. Like, how have you guys found mentors in this community? I mean, I know, you know, it's definitely a more male dominated universe, but even just in general, like, how have you guys managed to find kind of that community and mentorship in the IT world? I'll I'll start with, Erin since we kind of Yeah. I mean, would be remiss if I didn't plug the Mac end in Slack in this very moment. It's kind of like, you know, a core function of me existing. Right. There are two channels in there that are very dedicated to career development and re and, like, conversation. One is jobs chat. If you're also looking for a job, jobs board, actually, we'll call it three. I love doing stuff in threes. For leaders or developing leaders, there's the leadership channel as well. And bonus, the MacAdmins Foundation is also sponsoring a mentorship program as well. So if you're going, I don't know how to find a mentor, we can help you find a mentor. We actually do matching on a quarterly basis. We're in the middle of our first, official run of that, and then we will be opening submissions for people to find folks they can talk to. For me personally, I mean, yeah, the 'tis Women's History Month, so let's call it what it is. Yeah, the, the ratio of diversity in IT is still not very strong. I really don't feel like being argued with about that. That is the, what the data says. However, that doesn't mean that there aren't people who can advocate for you, especially if you are either an underrepresented group or a group who maybe is a little more atypical, as aligned to the department and, you know, like ethos of IT, I. People like me. And I just went out and found, quite honestly, I found dudes who were gonna mentor me and mentor me in the way that was actually gonna be beneficial to me and wasn't based on any of the things that you feel like are going to are are are extra challenges in your world. Right? I know how to manage those. I've been walking in this world for forty years doing it. I could handle my shit. So at that point, it was how do I how do I have these conversations in business? Are you going do I see you being an effective leader? Can I glean something from that? And just seeking out the people that you want to be the individuals who are going to guide you throughout many evolutions of your career is hugely important. And literally just go and ask them. You kinda gotta just like step up and take the risk in doing so. And a lot of the times that I found myself going to find those folks or how I knew that they were probably going to be an effective mentor for me was where I was watching them make radical change within their either organization or at the company they worked, or within or were well referenced within my peer group as people that others turn to. And if they did not have capacity to mentor me, then I asked them for recommendations. And those have evolved into me being one of those people. I'm very lucky to have been sought out as a resource in this way now, but it is because I've essentially just like continued to pass it on. So don't forget to ask for what you need both, right? Like maybe of your leader or manager. Some of, actually, all of us have been in that position on this call. All of us have been leadership and impress that upon others. So it's the reminder for yourself that that's available. And then the other thing is, I think having Becky's point of commiseration is key. You learn a lot by commiseration and just shared experience. And I found some really, really, really cool, like, opportunities and even more so just like cool solutions to problems that were highly complex, especially when you are, you feel a little bit siloed in leadership or you have to like kind of contain how or what you are sharing. And so finding your peers was huge. Cocktail helps for me. You can pick your poison. I don't really care, but a cocktail helps for me. Cocktail, coffee, all of the above. Yeah. We accept all drinks at this table. So I think it's it was kind of a, I don't know, pivot point for me with someone said like, hey, what got you here isn't what's gonna get you there. And like it you know, I was pretty far into my career at that point. Like, I had kind of figured, oh, this how I work. This is how I manage this. Right? Like, I've kind of had defined all of those things. And then when I said, hey, how do I get to this next level? The answer was, well, not doing that. Really. Like, not quite that. Like, you need to expand that or grow in this way. And and I will kind of echo Erin and say, like, it's great. It's amazing to me when I can find women in, like, higher level IT positions. Like, that's great. But also, that's not always very common. So I have had to kind of figure out the the men that are in those positions, who are the right who who's the right fit for me to talk to about this? Or who's the right person that I'm gonna talk to them? And they're gonna say, oh, hey, Jen brought this up. Or they're gonna say, I'm gonna bring you into this meeting about that. Like, those people enabling my career are the people I seek out regardless of their gender. That being said, also, you know, I have a young child, and someone said to me the other day, children can only envision careers that they're told about, that they know about. So for me, that's also been important. I've been involved in, like, programs here where they place high schoolers and internships in tech companies or tech firms because I do think that's important. Like, you actually understanding what's involved in a tech job, not just, oh, like, you fix that or, oh, you make some software. Like, there's there's a whole gamut of tech that you could be in. So let's talk about that and figure out what's the right fit for you. And I think you hit on something there too, which is like the the nuance between mentors and and sponsors as well. The people you wanna go talk to for, you know, advice or suggestions who may or may not be at the company that you work at and you've had and built that relationship over, you know, a long time. And then sponsors who's that person inside your company who's going to, you know, as you said, Jen, like, bring you to that meeting, bring you to that opportunity and sort of open those doors for you and sort of building that roster of people, I think, is so important too. You know, you mentioned, like, who is the right person to ask this question to? I think it's, you know, not to say everyone needs 20 mentors, but it it's sort of nice to have the you know, to get to know a lot of people and sort of have some folks, you know, who you can call in different situations and different moments depending on where you are in your career and what you need to kind of make that next that next step up or that next level up. Have some colleagues who call them their board of advisers. Like, that's their their group of people who, you know, advise them on career things. They might mentor them a little bit, or they might bring up their name in a room that they're not in because, you know, you want someone who who will do that for you. Like, oh, you know, Jen would be good for that project, or her skills really fit this, and you should go talk to her and maybe bring her in on this. You know, things like that. So, you know, I think that's what we all need really. It's hard to build. The Wall Street Journal does like a board of advisors thing too, which is kind of fun. They interview executives and they actually like talk about who their boards of advisors are. It's such a great way to describe that sort of group that you need to help you be successful. We sort of touched on this a little bit in sort of, you know, the community of the IT world. It's, you know, definitely still a male dominated universe. You know? With a lot of managers on this call. Like, I'd love to hear how you guys think about building an inclusive team and an inclusive space. And maybe we'll start with with you, Becky, on that one. So it can be it can be difficult at times to get like, when you're trying to recruit, it can be difficult to get your recruiting team to recruit in the way you want to to have that open inclusive recruiting. So a lot of times, it's how you how you build your network. If you're trying to get, you know, additional non male identifying people on your team or, you know, on your projects and things like that. I I really try to build a group of people or even just in my regular network, try to make sure that I I follow people, and I talk to a lot of people who are different than me. And so I'm not in an echo chamber. So I I'm really just trying to to make sure that what I do is getting a lot of input and then trying to encourage the people I work with to do the same. Like, don't don't just go in your echo chamber. Like, get get a variety of input from a variety of people. And if we can recruit that way too, I'm I try really hard. Sometimes sometimes that's difficult depending on your company and who you're working with. But even in even in the things I volunteer with, trying to make sure that we broaden broaden our scope of of who we talk to and who we work with. Yeah. We mentioned community a little bit. And, you know, in addition to just making sure I'm working with our talent acquisition people to say, hey. Where are you sourcing candidates from? And here's some other sources you can get those people from. Also, like, we have I'm in Wisconsin. We have multiple women in IT organizations in Wisconsin depending on your region. Those are, you know, at least nationally, probably internationally. Also, if you attend conferences, always try to find if there's like a women in IT event at those. Those are great conversations. Not only if you're looking to make a step elsewhere, but also if you're looking for someone at for your team. You can have a whole group of technical women and say, maybe one of these are gonna be a fit, and maybe we can suggest, you know, they look into this position. But, yeah, community building in addition to, you know, like, sourcing is great ways to help. There's a women's channel on the Mac Admin's board, and we try to share positions that are open that might be a fit for people and say, hey, you know, we need we need some women in here. Please go look at and apply if you can. Because that's another way. Or, you know, share it with your friends because women can share it with other women and try and add some additional people to the pool. I've also, like, reached out sometimes if I've seen higher level women in a technical position step out of the company, leave the company, I've flagged to people like, hey. That's a big loss for us diversity wise. Be like, can we make sure we have eyes on that and that we're considering that when we're trying to bring in candidates? Because sometimes people aren't thinking about that. Oh, yeah. For sure. I think there's a there's a theme here of, like, outbound recruiting is everyone's responsibility. Right? And just because the visibility isn't there immediately does not mean that the candidate does not exist, which basically means, like, really, when it comes down to it, it's the same thing that we all ask when we're in the recruiting process. Is this the right person and the best person for this role? And just because, right, like, there's a skew in every set of resumes or in every set of interviews does not mean that right, like the the best candidate isn't available. Internally, this is also the time where I usually remind folks too is like no leading questions in interviews. The questions are, are do they have the skills? Can they do the job? It has nothing to do with culture add and culture fit. If they're doing really well at the job, they're an effective communicator. You know, they've shown, oh, no. They've shown that they can, you know, like, understand and create effective solutions for the business that they are asking and trying to work for. There's your candidate. There's your hire. The rest of it should not matter. If I turn my camera off, doesn't matter. Totally. So maybe one last question, to wrap things up. I feel like there's been a lot of great tips and tricks throughout this conversation, but I'd love to kind of just go around the horn one more time and, you know, ask everybody for, you know, your biggest piece of advice for people building their IT careers today. So maybe we'll start with you, Jen, and then kind of work our way around. But, yeah, what's what's your kind of parting piece of advice to those who joined us today? I would say, like, we all know that there's IT in every company. Like, there's there's an IT team anywhere that you could join. But I think it's really important to for people to understand what their company does. What is their product? How do they sell their product? How does what you do contribute to that process and what the company is doing? Because that allows you to grow outside of just like, oh, your computer crashed. Oh, your computer died. Oh, that's not working to, like, enabling the business and, like, having those conversations. Yeah. Erin? Don't minimize yourself for the sake of business. Personality and diversity of thought and, you know you know, showing up maybe wearing something a little different or with a different cadence in your speech or your tone or anything should not be the thing that disallows you from advancement and experience and opportunity. And yes, there are ways that we all have to subscribe to the social contract that is work, but it doesn't mean you have to give up your whole self in the process of doing it. Awesome. And finish us off, Becky. One of my biggest things is, you know, make sure that you can live with a company you're working for, that you can, it it kinda plays on a little bit of what Erin was saying, that you can be yourself, that you can have fun, and that you can enjoy working with people you work with because I've seen too many people who just kinda lose themselves in their job because it's oppressive and the management is just, you know, making them work a lot or just we've all worked for bad bosses. And life is too short for that. So do what you can to find a company that you can align with their their philosophy and align with the work they're doing. And if that doesn't work for you, then do what you can to find something else. And I know the the work trying to find work out there is horrific right now, but life is too short to work for a shitty company. So do what you can to find find something that you can enjoy. Awesome. Well, on that note, I want to thank everyone for joining today, our attendees, our panelists who have so many great things to share with us. We're so, so thankful for you making time, and look forward to continuing the conversation elsewhere. So thank you so much for your time today. Thanks for having us. Yeah. Thank you. Alrighty. Can everybody hear me? Hello. Hello. Thank you. Let me echo Erica and everyone else, on our lovely panel there to, to say thank you for for coming. I think, you know, I we always like to see a lively session going on in the chat between everyone who's here to listen, but these are really amazing comments to read back. So I really appreciate everyone kinda leaning in on that today and just making this the community event that we wanted this to be at the outset. So what I'm gonna do while that that survey is up is I'm gonna talk about a couple more events that we have on the docket coming up in the next few weeks. So if you enjoyed today, you know, some more stuff that you can you can come and join us for. So first of those is gonna be a session with some of our solutions consultants. You might call them sales engineers at other companies, but some of our most wonderful and techiest of of colleagues here at Rippling IT are gonna be talking about basically how to use Rippling IT to, you know, simplify, consolidate your tech stack for long term growth as you scale. That's something that we're quite passionate about here at Bling IT. It should be able to work for, you know, the smallest companies out there, earliest of start ups, and grow with you in a way that is you know, still prioritizes that ease of use. So we've seen that that story many times with our customers, and we would love to kinda walk you through how the platform allows you to do that. So that is that is same time next week, the following week. Actually, no. Not the following week. Two weeks after that. Yeah. April, we're gonna be doing a really cool event in anticipation of a product launch that we have coming up. But we're going to get a really fascinating, knowledgeable CISO named Cain McLadry to join us and two of our, regulars on webinars around here, James and Carter, who you may recognize if you've ever been to one of our events before. We're gonna be talking about compliance, specifically, like, security frameworks like SOC and ISO and those sorts of things and how, you know, it can be tempting to think of these as checklists and checklist items in aggregate to kinda oh, we just need to get this done in order to get this deal done. And I think Cain's message to the world would be that it is not that simple. It is a system. These are testing security. Therefore, you really want your organization to be secure, not just secure secure in name only according to that report. So, you know, that's among the things that we'll be talking about there, just kind of how compliance and security are evolving today and, you know, what you can do to to stay ahead. So after that, the following week, we're gonna sit down with a customer of ours named Nella. She is the head of technology at AC Disaster Consulting, and she is one of our wave makers around here, so kind of a customer advocate for us. And, you know, hopefully, that is because she has had a really pleasant experience using Rippling IT to, you know, automate a lot of the back end IT work that used to be used to fall on her in large part. So we're gonna talk about kind of similar to next week's session how, like, can use Rippling like Nella has used it at a Seq disaster to consolidate and integrate your IT environment and avoid this kind of disparate sprawl of point solutions that that we see a lot out there and are on a mission to change one by one. So come on down for that if you're at all curious about how real customers are are using us to get stuff done. And if you wanna continue doing that, you can join us a couple weeks after that to talk with another wave maker of ours named Josh. He is the VP of InfoSec at Productive. Super smart, knowledgeable guy, really more of a security expert by training, but start up life. He ends up with the IT function within his portfolio as well. And using Rippling, particularly, like, the warehousing capabilities, he's able to just wipe all this extremely annoying device deployment manual work that he did not enjoy doing and was a huge, like, operational burden on their whole team, HR included, that is now gone with us in Toast. So, yeah, that's another kind of success story, if you will. But those are our upcoming events as we wrap up today's event. And, yes, I will get to the raffle at the end. I do wanna make sure that with the five and a half minutes I have left, I will kind of give my quick little rippling IT spiel and then let you guys go. But as I mentioned, in a lot of those sessions, you probably noticed from the titles, a lot of them are about consolidating, integrating, simplifying the way IT is done. And this is just, like, a quick visual representation of what we see as a pretty consistent problem. You have a lot of point solutions that were developed, not with, like, ill intent, but, you know, to specialize in certain areas of the jobs that IT pros need to do on a daily basis, whether that's your IDP or IIM tools, your MDM, you know, SentinelOne for EDR, inventory tools like Retriever, or, you know, GRC tools like Vanta, Drata, Dell, those sorts of things. And they're tied together with, like, workflow builders like Zapier or Workative or those sorts of things. And what we have been trying to do at Rippling IT is unify as many of those things as possible within a platform that is built together and therefore built to talk to itself. You know? Like, these tools are these disparate, like, point solutions are often unable to communicate smoothly. They require a lot of custom scripting to kind of duct tape together. What we have tried to do as our sort of philosophical approach is to make sure that that is minimized as much as possible. And much of the way that we go about that is by basing it off of employee data. We started as an HRIS. It is still, you know, probably what we are best known for. It is also, like, the back end of how the automation engine works. You have a attribute that you know about a given employee, like where they're located, whether they're remote or in office, what office, like what team they're on, what tier of access they should have as a result, all of those attributes, those combine and flow through every other system, and they do so automatically so that your responsibility when you're when you're running the platform is to set the rules that you want to take effect and watch them happen. You know? That that is really the the promise of of what we're doing at Rippling IT, And we would love to to see as many of you guys as would like to, you know, experiment with that and and test it out in your environment and really see what it would look like for you to go ahead and and press that book a demo button and and just see what we're all about and, you know, talk to one of our really knowledgeable SCs about the kinds of custom solutions we can build around your particular needs in your particular business. So that is it for the spiel. What I need to refer back to my Slack here because I forgot the name, but I got you, Nick. Okay. Cool. The long awaited sweepstakes winner. Today, we have Bose QuietComfort Ultra headphones. I'm more of a Sony guy myself, but I do like these headphones as well. And the proud owner of these now is Anna Borcaro from Kansas Leadership Center. So congrats to Anna. Thank you again for coming to Anna and, of course, everyone else. But thank you very much for for being here. I hope you got as much out of listening to this as I did. I really enjoyed that conversation. So we will be in touch, Anna, on how to get those to you. I think that comes from postal, but my colleague Nick will will make sure those those find their way to you. And in the interim, until I see you all again, thank you one last time for for making the time and spending it with us today, and we hope to see you soon. You know, we do a lot of these, webinars and virtual events, and we're really big on that community element. And we love when we have, like, return guests who come and, you know, engage with these sessions and make them more fun and interesting for everybody. So if that's the type of thing you'd be into doing, we hope to see you again soon. But I will leave it there. I've been talking long enough. But thank you very much, and we'll see you next time. Take care.