In the third episode of this series, Beth and Dan interview Lizzie Fuller (Azure Solution Specialist, Microsoft), Matt Furse (Practice Development Manager, MIcrosoft) and talk Girls and Tech with Sarah Moran from Girl Geek Academy. 

Links:

Women in Tech - Girl Geek Academy

Microsoft Mondays – Geek Academy A.I. Series – Coding in Python, Javascript & 3D modelling - Girl Geek Academy

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TRANSCRIPT For this episode of The AI in Education Podcast Series: 5 Episode: 3

This transcript was auto-generated. If you spot any important errors, do feel free to email the podcast hosts for corrections.

 

 

Hi, Beth. How are you? Oh, not too bad, Dan. I'm fighting uh the uh CO bug at the moment, so I'm still hanging in there at work. How about yourself? I'm I'm not too bad. Uh yeah, it's rife at the minute, isn't it? And Lee isn't with us today cuz he's ill. We don't know what's wrong with him, we think. think it could be the co virus, but who knows? It could be some space virus with with Leo. Some quantum thing. Oh, well, the last thing we need is another pandemic, Dan. So, let's hope he hasn't bought anything weird from him from all these space conferences. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So, today's uh uh podcast is going to be quite exciting because we've got some guests, Beth, haven't we? Yeah, we have. So, we were reflecting in our conversations about what we might do to recognize women's history month in March and also women's um international women's day on the 8th of March and I know I attended a couple of events and and did a couple of things but it really got me thinking about some of the amazing work that our colleagues uh deliver and develop and um run right across the country. So I naturally thought about Lizzie and Matt who are joining us today. Hi Lizzie. Hi Matt. Hello. Hello. Thanks for having us. Excited to be part of this podcast. Yes. So, we would love to learn a little bit more about you and you're part of what we call an employee resource group dedicated to um girls in technology. Can you tell us a little bit about what kinds of roles you have at Microsoft and why you got involved in this special um ERG group, which is the the special group dedicated to girls in tech. Yeah, sure. So, um perhaps just as a quick intro, um I'm Lizzie So I'm an Azure cloud specialist for financial services. So my role is all around helping clients in financial services. Um help them leverage the power of cloud computing um to create more resilient businesses, deliver better customer experiences um think about how to use data and analytics to better understand um and serve their customers. And over the past three years, you know, feel very blessed to have had the privilege to serve on the diversity and inclution inclusion council for Microsoft Australia. Um and so in this role, Matt, my partner in co we've been co-chairs of the girls in STEM initiative and that's all around providing access and opportunities for girls across Australia. Um and exposing them to STEM subjects and career pathways. Um yeah, to answer your question, Beth, around why I'm passionate about it, um I think it's, you know, everyone, um I try to believe everyone is equal, but we just don't um all have equal opportunities and access. And you know when I reflect on my own journey, I very much fell into technology by chance but stayed in it by choice. Um and when I started working at Microsoft actually in the edgy team with Dan, um you know, I realized what an amazing industry it is to be a part of. Um you know, where you're really encouraged to take risks, be bold, help imagine the future. Um And growing up, you know, I was never exposed to role models in the industry. And I think there's a lot of misconceptions around what a career technology looks like. I think from the outside in there's the perception that you need to be a hardcore coder or be technical, but that's really not the case. You know, unless you're an engineering, there's a breadth of roles across product marketing, sales, um, strategy, advertising. And so there's both the opport you need to be in those roles, but also if you want to be technical and be a cloud architect or be an engineering, you can be do that. You can do that as well. And so I think we need more women to be part of um building the future. Um and so um that's why I'm so passionate about it. I might just hand over to Matt to say a quick hello as well. Thanks Lizzie. Yeah, thanks for having us on today. Down in breath. Um yeah, Matt says I I work with startups and uh different software companies in Australia. to to work through building partnerships and building products on our cloud. Um, which is a lot of fun. Get to work with lots of different diverse organizations across the place. Um, also a father of two kids, one of which is a six-year-old girl and Scarlet. And we have a lot of fun um, home with technology. And uh, yeah, like Lizzie said, I've I've kind of come into this thinking to myself, we can we can do more to help help um, women and and girls do, you know, achieve more with technology. demystify our industry and get them more into roles. Um, you know, because it can be challenging to to kind of get into this industry. Um, and so, yeah, really relish the opportunity to work with with Lizzy and and the brilliant um different people that we work with across the business to actually drive that kind of agenda. Like it's been it's been a really uh insightful journey and one that I've I've really enjoy been enjoying. So, one of the companies that you working for, we're going to introduce in a second. Sarah's just joined us on the call. So, we'll say Hello in a second. But Matt, do you want to do you want to tell us about how you've uh how you uh came about meeting Sarah and the team? Yeah. So, I think Lizzie and I um you know, we we had this kind of idea that we we would try and involve more more young girls basically in in in STEM faculty. We thought, how do we use Microsoft as a place to do that? Like, do we and this is this was pre pandemic. So, we were thinking face to face. We were thinking events and and we started reaching out to people across our business who have more experience in in this um in this group of people that you know group of girls than we do. And they um you know they kind of forced us to to rethink some of our preconceptions and to to think about you know how do we help the the least advantaged um in that group you know the ones that maybe don't have internet or a computer like how do we get them into you know involved with technology. Um so those you know really started broadening our horizons and thinking through you know what what else could we do and how do we do it differently um and we got introduced to the magical Sarah who's um who's just joined us. Hi Sarah. Y who's been on this mission for a long time. Uh so Sarah has been um involved you know trying to trying to help rebuild the internet um with girls for for many years. Uh and so we you know we we started getting involved in just learning really and starting to understand what do they do and what can we do and how can we do something more together if we brought Microsoft and and Sarah's organization the Girl Geek Academy. If we brought them together, what could we do that's different and bigger than ourselves? So, um, yeah, but I don't know if you want to introduce yourself, Sarah. Nate, what a segue. Um, yeah. Um, hi everybody. Thanks for having me today. Um, I'm the co-founder and CEO of Girl Geek Academy, and we have five co-founders in total. We've been, um, we've come from a range of different technology backgrounds from games through to making and 3D printing, um, high growth tech startups, um the full gamut of roles and industries. And uh yeah, there was just a point where we said um you know, imagine if all of our friends who we used to love tech with when we were young had remained in the industry over the long term like we had. Um and so you know, we realized if we'd have started teaching 10 girls 10 years before, we could be hiring them today. And that's definitely the um the spirit within which this partnership um centers is being able to say, well, let's actually work with high school girls and make sure that they know that we're not going anywhere and we will be there for them through those important steps um those career decisions we make in year seven 8 n 10 right through to deciding where we're going for university um and so that's been the beauty of this partnership and while while this has been evolving the pandemic hit um so you know it's it's been uh quite a ride uh in terms of you know we were going to have um originally we were looking at high school work experience programs that would be delivered face to face and almost like a school camp for for work experience which is probably still needed but um young people just can't access that at the moment and so um the innovation that has come out of this is really great. So you're partnering with Microsoft at the minute as well right and you know you've done a few things in the past as well. So like and I know we see you everywhere and on social media is like it's phenomenal the impact you're having over the last year the things you're doing and and the way you're actually um getting into those schools and getting into uh meet meet all the girls and get them together and get those programs going. So, in the in the Microsoft partnership, you know, and we can talk beyond Microsoft here. It's just it's not an official Microsoft podcast. This is just something that we we're doing in an education team, what kind of things are you doing generally? And then how how's that kind of now morph into the things you're doing like the Microsoft Mondays and and the like that we're doing with us? Yeah. So, I'd probably describe it in three different buckets. Um, one is what are the activities that we do with young people that we've found works to um, works over the long term. There's then how do we reach those young people and how do we connect with them whether that is in schools or outside of schools during school holidays um, and other um, like the timing of connecting with young people and then also then how do we connect with industry and what does that look like and and what does that shape up to be? And I think those are three very different things but it's the magic um bringing them all together that is what that makes that all work. So in terms of what we work on um it's really looking at um young people's interest in technology at different times. So I always make a joke that you know you wouldn't uh go to a high school and say you know what I'm I'm going to teach you how to build a high-tech SAS startup in year seven. Like that's just not anything anyone Yeah. I mean I would when they wanted I was there to deliver. But but what young people are interested in is like, "Oh, I want to build games with my friends." And you're like, "Okay, cool. Well, let's just use the same tools as you will probably need to build a high-tech SAS startup, but we're going to build games." And so really thinking at um you know, what are the things that we're trying to do? And you know, as as some young people get older, it becomes about well, who am I? And how do we use technology to explore concepts of identity and and who I'm going to become and what I can do to contribute and build that over time. Can I ask a question on that? Sorry. to interrupt you there to flow. But it's really interesting. You talked about like um that long-term engagement and it on on a flip side of it and and this this is for Beth and Elizabeth and and uh Sarah and the call I suppose but you know where where where girls disengaging what what from a female point of view what what is your insight yourselves on where that disengagement happens because it must something must happen somewhere along this continuum where you know, from small kids that that grow up and they lose creativity and lose their inspiration. Is this something fundamental that happens to so that you've got to re-engage? Sarah, how how controversial am I allowed to be? As controversial as you are. Well, look, I I will say there's a couple of things. Um, I I think so when we meet with young girls, they have an interest, a passion, and a capability to do everything. So, you know, um they are good at art, they are good at drama, they are good at music, they are also good at maths as well as being good at technology. And so, what happens is there's this fight for attention and and a fight for their time. And that's also structurally connected to our um education system. You know, when you when you go through years 7 to 10, you get all the electives and they give you a taste of everything. And then they say, "Uh-uh, but you can only do six for years 11 and 12. And the six that rank really highly to get you that magical big mega mark for university is blah blah blah. And technology is not one of those highly scalable, highly sought after um subjects. So I I don't know that the interest goes away, but we push these girls to not choose technology and not stay in technology by the systems and the structures around that. Um and that's a real shame and I think it's something that is addressable. Um and I am busy working to with young people who want to be engaged in that space. But if I had an extra couple of hours a day, I'd probably be on the phones to the influencers who who make the decisions about that because I think it's really sad that we get a lot of girls and we can retain their interest till year 10, but we watch that drop off um in years 11 and 12. And part of that is also class numbers. So if a class is too small, the class doesn't run um because you can't justify a teacher to a class of five people. So even as like we've had experiences where we've increase the number of girls from 5 to 8 that are interested, but that class still won't run. Therefore, it goes back to zero in year 11 and 12. So, that's my controversial take. Fair. Sarah, I was just interested in um so, as a parent of a seven-year-old girl, she said something really interesting me interesting to me the other day. She attends an all girls school and so she was making comments about maths just being for boys. And one of the reasons why I wanted her to go to in all girls school was that she would see every subject as being a girl subject. But I thought, you know, gosh, where could she have got that concept that maths is just for boys or maths that, you know, there's something unpleasant about maths? And it made me think about how me as parent projects some of these subjects and um you know, mommy's not the most PC of people at any point in time, let alone you know, trying to calculate things. Uh do you do you think a lot about how like what parents can do and what you know what we can say about jobs and it makes even harder when parents don't even know like unless you're working in the industry you don't really know what to say about these jobs either. So it's it's a tricky challenge but maybe as the industry we could we could do a parent guide to talking to your kids about tech jobs or something. That was definitely something that was one of our early learnings early insights. So we started a program called Miss Makes Code um in 200 2016 and we got federal government funding to help support roll that out um to support teachers teaching the digital technologies curriculum. And so we taught a heap of teachers and then people were like great, can you just teach my kids directly? And so we did some um some smaller versions of that program, but we ran them as child care days. So during school holidays, we'd say, "Hey parents, drop your kids off with us. We'll we'll take them up." Um and at the end of the day, the parents would come to us and they'd knock on the door and they're like, "What what did you teach them?" Because I never got taught coding. I didn't get taught these concepts and I still want to alone. And we're like, oh, because um then the realization came that we need to teach parents and children together in primary school um so that they also have a role model back in the home. So, how do you have those conversations? And we worked with um Women's Health East in Melbourne to actually um and and a number of different women's health organizations to help us with a gender equality curriculum around that. So, how do you have conversations with parents about hey, you know, what do we mean when we, you know, influence stereotypes around this sort of thing and and how do you change that? Um and that's definitely something we you know we need to work on all the way through. So that um issue is very different to the issue that girls face in high school. And I think to your point Dan about like what what is the fallout, it's a heap of just micro activities that happen that slowly nudge girls away from these pathways and when they all stack up it's a big hard no. Um and you know even even I'm the victim of that. I studied I learned code when I was five and I studied tech right through until until year 10 was a major at high school. And then um so I was doing computer science. I even did two subjects of computer science in one semester. Um and then I had someone who was teaching out of field. So they weren't a coding teacher and they didn't like that I did my website pink and they told me it must be wrong. And I was like, "Oh, I'm wrong. Am I? I'm wrong. Am I? Well, this is wrong for me. Thank you very much. Goodbye." And that's when I left. Like it's just a stupid little thing. Um but as a 18-year-old girl who wanted to build a pink website. I was pretty annoyed. I'm like, "Check my code. It is flawless. How dare you? Goodbye." But, you know, it's just the little things that people can say that after so many, you know, when it all stacks up, it's the straw that breaks the camel's back. And out you go. So, the program, that's some amazing insights from from from you both there. Um, the the um programs you're doing then to counteract that, like the stuff you're doing with Microsoft and and the Matt and Lizzy have been helping kind of coordinate some of what what what do those programs entail at the minute and how do people sign up for them? So, Microsoft Mondays we run um on a Monday afternoon after school which makes it accessible to New Zealand uh young people which is much after school. It's quite a lot later um but also you know for the broad majority of Australians they can access that but to them it was really interesting when um when we were doing a lot of uh homeschooling um the young people that you know the young women uh and nonbinary people would type in the chat, "Oh, I don't want to go to another, you know, if I have one more online class, I just don't know what I'm going to do." And I was like, "Okay, I just have to ask, you know, you're in an online class right now." And they were so amazing. They were like, "No, this is a community." And it was just the like, you know, the key um summary of success is when your young people feel like this is fun and engaging and something that they want to participate in. Um so every uh Monday afternoon, so 5:00 Australian Eastern Daylight Savings Time is when we meet. Um, and it's great. It's, uh, you know, hundreds of young people collaborating. Uh, it's chat based, so they don't have to have their camera on. In fact, they're not allowed to have their camera on. Um, and we do lots of activities around AI specifically, which is quite great. Lizzy or Matt, do you have anything you want to add to that? Yeah, I think um, going back to the comment around the dropping points, right? Like when did girls disengage from STEM subjects? Um, Before we started this program, we spent um the hours and hours talking to Sarah, talking to um universities, nonprofits, schools going what is the dropping point for young women to participate in STEM subjects and where would where would sort of um our focus and energy make the biggest difference? And what we heard over and over as Sarah mentioned was really that 7 to 10 kind of age bracket where we see the highest dropout of girls. Um, and I think that, you know, also impacts their subject selections for years 9 and 10, impacts the university selections and then their careers. And so I think it's, you know, a lot of girls make those decisions around year 9 going, "Oh, it's just I'm going to choose XY Z without actually um it actually has a huge knock on effect." Um, and so um I think during the pandemic, gosh, two years ago now, crazy um we kind of noticed an opportunity and Sarah said something really funny. She said it's kind of got weird to hang out online anymore. You know, I think prior to that, it was still strange just hanging out online with strangers, but I guess a silver lining of the pandemic is it kind of normalized that. And so um because of that, we were able to build something that was scalable um to help um reach girls across Australia in a way that we could have never done um through inerson events. It would have taken um so much more time and energy. travel, etc. Um, and we really wanted to make sure it was free, girls could access without any socioeconomic barriers. Um, and we have almost a thousand girls as part of the program now. Um, and it's amazing to see the projects they've built from having no coding background at all to building an app where they can host their artwork, creating animations, AI games. They've created their own password generators. Some have started their own businesses. It's um pretty amazing um to see how how these um this community of girls have kind of found one another and found likeminded um like-minded spirits in a way. It's interesting you've used the word community as well because it sounds to me like they've they've found their tribe and found friendships out you through this kind of shared interest which is the thing that will keep them perhaps in the industry as well. And that was my question of how how you drive that because you know we all seen the shiny toys and you know we had the same thing whether it's girls or boys stuff like micro bits and things you know the teachers will go yay let's get involved with micro bits and then we crack on with the micro bits and then what happens is terminator just goes down how do you keep that momentum going yeah I think um it's all of the uh cultural rituals that are that are centered around that you know the fact that it is at the same time every week the fact that it's weekly it's not a one-off workshop on one piece of tech technology and the center really is about friendship and connection. So we've definitely found you know we ask the girls it's like do you have friends at school that you can relate to about technology and your interests and a lot of them will say um as we anecdotally thought might be the case is that no no I'm the only girl in my school who likes this but when you multiply that by the number of schools across Australia you suddenly have a large population of girls they just feel alone in their own school um and you know and and there's very much a bring a friend culture. So, um you might you might come along first time on your own, check it out, and when you go, "Oh, this is actually really cool." Then you're happy to tell people about it and um introduce others along the way. I think also um we have some very dynamic presenters. Um so, um our presenting team um who deliver the workshops, they are, you know, in their early 20s. Um they're young and cool and funky and not that far older than the girls in high school. And so, there's that real aspirational, oh, I could be like them one day. Um, which is really important that we build in and the idea that they could be like each other. So, we um, you know, when we work on different projects, we share them back with that community and say, "Hey, this is what we this is what we built last week and here's what everyone did, you know, not as homework, but just for fun in between the sessions." Um, we also have a quiz at the end of each um, one. So, yeah, there's a lot of competitive fun at the end um, which is definitely something that um, uh you know we sort of did just for our own fun and then it's like wait hang on fun is core to this this the success of this so um yeah so it's a little bit of technical activity the mentoring from the Microsoft mentors has been amazing as well so we've been able to get people from Microsoft to come in and share their experiences and we let the girls ask them direct questions um and so they'll put them in the hot seat and um ask all sorts of questions that you know these these young people would otherwise not have had access to. There are Um, I still have a couple of months as being defined as a young person by Japanese standards. Would I be too old to join this this Microsoft Mondays group? Um, sounds amazing. It does. It does, doesn't it? Pretend you're in year 7 to 10. Um, but if not, you should definitely come as a mentor. So, um, that's, you know, that that's that feedback loop because we get so much out, you know, from my conversations with the mentors. I don't know, actually, Matt and Lizzie, can you speak to any, um, feedback you've had from the mentors about their experience? Yeah, I mean they they seem to get a lot from it. Obviously the girls are fast and furious, right? Like there are thousands of comments and questions and and unexpected, you know, questions sometimes as well. So I know talking to some of the mentors that they they get a lot from being asked, you know, those those kind of questions about their life, their background, their journey, how they got to where they got to. Um, and just being able to be authentic on those calls and share that with such a broad audience. But just also the energy they pick up from it. There's quite a lot they get from just knowing there's such an engaged community of girls down there just asking questions, wanting to get into understanding what's happening at Microsoft, what's all that kind of stuff. So, I feel like there was um there's a real energy that the whole process has built up and uh yeah, it's definitely it's definitely something that that they get a lot of reward from. Um just just knowing that they're encouraging the next generation of technologists into into well, not just Microsoft, into the entire industry. Um but to your point, Beth, I think also what this has proven for us is that the model works. So that idea of thinking of it like a sport where you go to it every week and you you know you practice your game and you hang out with your friends and then I'll see you next week. Um is definitely something that works. So that could also work with um you know adult work um adult cohorts in industry um as well as parents and young people. So we we've tried a little bit of the parents and young people um approach. We found um we do that in school holidays. We we've partnered with Sunil We've partnered with a number of other partners to do that sort of in the midm morning during school holidays. Um and what it does is it means that you know the parents and young people can do the activity in the morning and it gives them an activity to work on for the whole day where the young person feels like they have the confidence to go and do that. So um yeah as Lizzie said I I did make a joke that pre pandemic it was creepy to hang out with young people online like can I hang out with your kids please? It's a weird thing to say whereas now people are like can you please take my children? Um and so a very, you know, a very flipped script in that respect. So, um, yeah, it's it's great to have been able to test the model and it's working. Yeah, look, I I'm sure it is. I had the opportunity to connect with some South Australian women this week who were older, so university students looking to make that leap into technology, but an awful lot of those um women were graduating with degrees that were not tech focused and were looking to now pivot into technology. So, I think what you're doing is influencing ing it far earlier and trying to get people to think more um focused on that kind of uh career trajectory as they go through schooling. But I think it's not going to be a silver bullet. Anything that we can do to try and re-engage women um we need to do and I don't know if you saw the tech council report of a couple of months ago and that incredible point around social mobility and um using technology jobs because they're so highly paid. and they are um agnostic as it relates to a lot of aspects in terms of where you've studied and your um cultural background, you know, those jobs can be used as a massive tool for social mobility. And so for me, I think really um anything we can do to encourage more women into these industries is going to increase the social mobility of women in Australia. Whereas at the moment, I think we're very much um dominating the more lowly paid industries. So, so I feel really passionate about moving more women into into technology. Can I ask you all, do you think the tech industry could do a better job in creating clearer career pathways for women and people in general, especially for entrylevel roles. And I was really surprised when I was talking to these women um who were kind of graduating. Maybe it's an indication where they're at. in their education, but a lot of them were saying, "Well, how do I even get into um a career in tech? How do I begin to work for a company like Microsoft?" Are you seeing those types of questions coming up in in your group? Is there a better way that we can help to um you create clearer pathways for for women, especially some of the women that you have in your group? Is there a way that we can better connect them or keep in touch with them so that we can help them in the future as well? I have thoughts. Sorry. Go Lizzy. I think um I think there's two aspects to this. I think there's one aspect I think a lot of people talk about which is a pipeline problem which it is true. We do have a significant pipeline problem when you look at you know the stats around only 17% of IT graduates and um IT and engineering graduates in Australia are women. That has a knock on effect on our industry or only 30% of our industry are women. I think that is a valid point, but I think um you know it's not the only challenge. I think there's fundamental systems issues that we need to change as well. I think if you look at industries where women are dominant, where they um graduate university, so for example, if you look at um law graduates, 60% of um university graduates for law are women, but you don't see 60% in the boardroom. And so there's fundamental systems changes that I think we need to drive through through the course of a person's career. Um whether it's graduate programs, aligning them with mentors, um and helping them sort of progress with those first leadership roles and management roles. I think there's more that we we need to do there. Um and then also it's how do you support um I think with gender equity it's not just it's not just a women's issue. I think it's a human rights issue. It's how do we make sure that everyone has access to the same opportunities and um jobs and pay. And so I think you know when women um often go on maternity leave we talk about a super gap. You know when women go on maternity leave and so how do you um address those systems things like making sure women are supported as they go on maternity leave super hey you know gender pay gaps where you know you see it you know um a lot of technology companies they actually a review of um the gender pay gap across the company and they'll fix it when they um when it happens. And so sometimes it's for women, but a lot of the times is actually for men as well. So I think it's um it's both solving for the pipeline issue, which I think um we're doing through this program, but also solving for the um systems issues that need to happen within organizations. Yeah, great answer. Um Sarah, you I think you mentioned you had thoughts. You've had further time to to percolate. Um I I think that uh the industry does have a responsibility to contribute to the education of that pipeline. Um I get a lot of people knocking on my door going, "May I please have a fully trained engineer who is ready to go, please?" And I look at them and I say, "Well, what have you done to help pull pull people into your industry?" Um and they're not willing to invest the, you know, the money and resources into doing that um all the time. And I think um there's a risk that we end up with um permanent juniors, you know, people who have invested in their own education and then can't get in the door because no one wants to then train them up to be um you know, contribute to their skills development to be senior developers, you know, um and in more senior positions. And I think that needs to be looked at more broadly whether or not it is through something like a tech traineehip, you know, where where we have the process um that is clearer in other industries. I think um I I think there are pathways into other industries about where you do what you where you do what activity in what part of your career and that is really opaque um in technology um across the board which is just a waste to me. I mean you know we need the talent um we're happy to pay to recruit them once they're trained why don't we spend you know even just a percentage of that money um in the pipeline but I you know I have massive respect for Microsoft's investment in that um you know and I often point to people to the Microsoft programs if they're looking to make career transitions um you know And a lot of the programs that you've set up and built, Beth, specifically um are what I would point to as a leadership model for for doing that. Um I just wish there was a way to encourage more of that activity. Sarah, I spent 3 years of a lot of blood, sweat, and tears trying to get companies to take on entry- levelvel people, and we we tried very very hard to build that up as a 50 5050 split between women and and men. Um through the traineeship program, but it was I found it really hard to to build that pipeline of women in the program, even though we're sitting I think at 40% female participation in the program, but it's just so hard to get companies to sign up to invest in young people as trainees in the tech industry. And you're exactly right, they just want to employ people who are fully baked. And as an industry, I think that that's no longer you acceptable. We need all of us need to invest in the potential of people and give people that um foot in the door kind of whether it's even work experience although unpaid work experience presents a bunch of other problems but trainee ships graduate programs internships I think are the ways that we can move the dial and and hopefully you know this can be tackled at a federal government level because you know we've looked at carrots and sticks but we're you know there's not very much that Microsoft can do in relation to that I think there be some mechanism for apps or employment reform to to perhaps provide carrots and sticks. But um it's incredible. I think what you're creating is a um is a a lasting change. And one thing I've learned in in the programs that I've run actually is just how life-changing some of these opportunities are. And you perhaps never know or never be able to fully quantify the impact that you've made, but I'm sure you've changed a lot of people's life experience. you know, life journeys and and their chances in the future. So, um, you know, on behalf of of the the podcast, but, you know, I think everyone at Microsoft feels incredibly proud of what you've achieved and very very grateful for um, these efforts on behalf of all the girls um, as well. So, thank you so much and thank you for sharing your story on on the podcast today. Thank you, Sarah. I do have one more question actually. Yeah. Can I just respond to what you just said? Oh yeah, of course. Yeah, please do. Um the benefit of having been around for 7 years is that, you know, people who were asking me um for women in tech seven years ago uh and haven't done anything and they're still asking me, I point to what they could have done along the way. Um and I'm hoping that now that they might be able to see the impact that some of these programs are having. The other benefit of being around for seven years is that to your point, I can actually now say there's a woman that founded a company. There's a woman that, you know, got her foot in the door here. We have um we had a partnership early on with General Assembly and so the you know the the progress of women through boot camps who then actually companies who do take on those women out of boot camps I can actually point to those women now I can point to those girls I can point to those parents um which is a real longitudinal um sort of data set which I I haven't seen exist anywhere else and um the weird thing for me is that I've realized we're still standing and we have so many women who have had to give it up along the way and behind the scenes oh there are people who wish we did not exist. Um but uh we're not going anywhere. So glad to hear that. Oh yeah. I mean Microsoft that helped make that happen. It's so it's so true. Like Beth, you also said how you know how it's been a long journey trying to get stuff done. You about seven years trying to get this done. And right now every founder I talk to, every business I talk to is trying to hire and they can't. And so now everybody's trying to bake the birthday cake whilst they're at the party. Yes, and it's too late. So, we need to start baking cakes right now. All of us, every company, I think it's the most important thing to understand. Investing in that talent now will yield returns right down the track. As Sarah said, they'll be the next founder. They'll be the next Yeah. you know, dev lead, the next head of whatever. And they and they'll they'll bring others in as well, right? If they had the right experience. And more to the point when you call Beth or myself. Yeah. You've you've done the work. I'll give you the women. Yes. Yes. I I do like that rule. And you know, Sarah I think to your point, what I see companies tend to do is they let perfection get in the way of good. You know, these programs are never going to be perfect, but let's start by starting. Let's start by helping 10 people. Let's start by kind of scaling that up over time. And this is what I think you've done through the partnership with Girl Geeks is that you're testing as you go, which is what the technology industry does, right? So, you're you're kind of growing and scaling and and you you know, yes, there are things that might you learn along the way, but you're constantly improving and and you're doing stuff. So, I'm I'm still having conversations with people, you know, four four years down the track who are still talking about the same things and they've done nothing about skills in the meantime. We've trained, you know, 300 people and we've got new programs coming out all the time. So, um yeah, not that not that we have the answers to everything, but uh at least we've done something about it and um hopefully change lives along the way. So, thank you so so much. And our listeners can't see your glasses, Sarah, but um they will know your glasses if they follow you on social media. Can you remind us where you get all your amazing glasses from? I actually get them from a woman in Shenzen. Um again, I used to have to visit her face to face, but now we can just FaceTime or, you know, we we can jump on a video. The world is so much smaller now. Oh, well, you have to hit me up with a contact. Thank you all so much for joining the podcast and we'll put all of the information about Girl Geeks and Microsoft Mondays in the show description so that people can follow it up. Thanks again. Thanks.