First is thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here. Uh Just wanted to say hello to all of you for giving me the opportunity to be part of this amazing global con uh conference.So the topic that I'm here to talk about is the digital economic development led five women using cloud in tech. So my question to all of you is who is in tech? Just say I'm in tech. So that way I know how many people are in tech. And if you're not in tech, just say I am exploring tech. So that gives me a pretty good idea as I present my slides as uh uh as she talked about it is, yes. Uh I do a lot of work in the tech, but mostly I focus a lot on helping the female tech founders to build a multimillion dollar business in the enterprise ecosystem. That is what makes me very, very excited every day. Get up in the morning, think about it and also as a tech founder, it really helps you. So as you're uh uh answering, there's another question I would like all of you to get engaged Wow, I love that there's lots of people intact. So the next question is what is the hardest part of understanding about digital economic development with cloud and A I? Thank you Anna for having me here.

So my question is what is the hardest part of understanding about digital economic development with cloud and A I Yep, exploring tech. Go ahead and take a moment, go ahead and tell me what's the hardest part of understanding about digital economic development with Cloud and IA I as you're going through it, here are some of the things that usually uh my community talks about. It's very unclear, I don't understand what does economic development mean and what is digital economic development mean? So that's usually one of the the challenge that most of the audience face, even when you are in the tech industry, you don't know what economic development really stands for.

The second one is the economic development feels overwhelming term because you're into building solutions but not really focused on job creation. Yep, it is complicated, it is continuously evolving and it's overwhelming for women to really think from a perspective of economic development perspective.

So that's another area that mostly people talk about. The third area is there are too many options on economic development because economic development was traditionally moving a business from one location into moving into a different location. And there were economic development, people who would work with them and create local jobs. But now there are lots of option with the tech industry. And also a lot of the thing is yes, it is exposure and location in terms of the geographical um uh uh the geographical position the company stays. But here's my promise. I will help you all today to really understand digital economic development and also empower you to take the right action and you being in the tech, you're in the leading industry because we are a trillion dollar industry and we are going to create the next generation jobs. And with the pandemic, more and more digital technologists are going to be the digital responders in the ecosystem and those jobs are going to be expanding. So now let's talk about why do we want to create the digital economic development? So there are a few principles I always talk about is the reason why we need to think about it is to increase our representation in tech. Right now. The representation is declining from the board position to leadership position and also into the employee base.

And because of the pandemic, more and more women feel very, very afraid to be in the tech. OK. The second one is really focusing on a lot of new innovation because we are 50% of the world population, right? And then what we want to do is ensure the innovation serve us. And that means we have to be involved, we have to be represented to really make sure that the solutions are coming to life. Third one is we want to foster economic opportunities. The whole uh uh um uh principle of going forward and building a tech solution is to create economic opportunities and the opportunities would be jobs, it would be deals, it would be new venues for you to grow and new content that you can create, that creates new revenue, so mostly focused on a lot around the economic opportunities.

So let me talk about my personal still as I as a technologist, I was in the Microsoft and Oracle, I spent a lot of time being a corporate executive. And when I left the corporate world and started to build a business and it was extremely hard, I couldn't get the funding because I was building an enterprise ready business. The second one was, there was not a whole lot of communities that were focused on the economic development piece. And number three is um it was extremely hard to find the right Avis who could really help you mobilize that journey for a female tech founder to be successful because you need access to a lot of resources. So what I'm going to talk about the case study for the woman in Cloud really built. The reason it was built is because of the personal pain I was personally going through. I said enough is enough. I will put my, I will put my foot forward and start to really build a transformation plan for the industry and see if we can make an impact.

So as I was doing the whole research, there was some of the data that we started to see is less than 1% of the female tech founders are awarded tech contracts in the enterprise ecosystem less than 1% because those portfolio is over a billion dollar portfolio and it's less than 1%.

And when you really slice and look at the digital transformation, it is still smaller. I would say closer to 0.1 to 0.3% of the total enterprise um portfolio is really spent with female tech founders. And there are many reasons why. The second one is, we all know that it is less than 2% of the VC investments are being invested in female tech founders. The third one is if you look at the tech channel where the real deals are happening, there are less than 3% of women tech founders actually engaging and collaborating to do business. And the last one we all have seen is less than 5% of the women are holding a leadership position in the tech market. So based on this particular challenge, we said, I went to my friends and said we need to really focus a lot on driving and impact, really focus a lot on creating a movement that is required. So we said, let's use the collective power and collective access network to create a woman in cloud and it is a community led it's an economic development organization really taking action to create a billion dollars in net new global access for women tech founders by 2030 in partnership with enterprise brands.

The three focus area we do is around entrepreneurship. We really want to make sure women are building cloud ready enterprise ready cloud solution for the enterprise ecosystem because it takes a lot of effort to build a tech ready solution. The second one is community build a diverse cloud talent and also create a business network where women can easily do business, they feel comfortable because that ecosystem did not exist three years ago. Now we are, we are a growing ecosystem and third is focusing on a public policy advancement around making sure that our supplier works are working in favor. Second, we are also making sure the A I ethics are coming in place as the tech is going to be adopting more and more cloud and A I and we as women have to step in into the power to ensure that the A I is not really hindering or displacing more women led jobs. So why do we exist? We really focused on is the gender parity in the tech solution building. There's a lot of education and skill building organization and then we have community building organization. The thing that one was missing was the economic development and we focused a lot on creating the access and acceleration of the tech founders in the enterprise ecosystem in partnership with the fortune brands. So how does we play together? We have three audiences.

We serve the first audience is our entrepreneur focus. So we have a very comprehensive solutions that are created for them. One is creating a cloud accelerator in partnership with Microsoft. So we take an entrepreneur through a six month journey, really ensure their solution is entered price ready.

We also have a solution marketplace which allows the women to really showcase their solution. And then we basically create a portfolio of solution to an price and then invite them in the buying process. We have signature events and on my team, riser leads the signature events and we do four of them from a annual summit which really focuses on a celebration and then we really drive into a lot of business development and also thought leadership work. And the last one is the empower her access campaign which is happening right now. So if you're an entrepreneur, please take a moment to take the survey, apply for an award. It's a digital advocacy campaign. The second one is focused on the entrepreneurship like uh uh enterprise focus.

We help them with diverse recruiting because more and more women are coming into tech. If they are coming, they also need to find is that rapid job placement in tech. We also have a billion dollar access coalition where we talk about it and unlock the solutions for women to easily do business with enterprise. And then we focus a lot on leadership development for women to really unlock access, economic access for other community members. The last one, we actually focused a lot around the community focused is skilling and certification. Right now, we are actually underwriting digital skilling scholarship and that's like $1000 value. And we have uh collaborated with enterprise to ensure that your certification is underwritten.

And that allows women to get into tech easily. You have a digital network and also a I Ethics Policy coalition. So if anything resonates with you, please connect with us because it will help us really make the movement. So our momentum is we have done a significant momentum collectively, like we are able to reach 100 million women across our 26 ecosystem partners. And also we have our own community that we can reach around 30,000 people. So this really allows all of us to really come as a collective power and create collective access for women to be successful. So here are some of the women who have gone through our accelerator. And then if you look at the impact, they were able to grow the company, they were able to raise funding, they're able to expand in different markets. And those are the kind of successes we are able to see with the female tech founders. So by so now that you understand, is like how the digital economic development works. So what kind of action do you want to take? And how do you want to measure your success? Take a moment and give me an answer is now that you understand a little bit about the economic development, what kind of action you are interested to take and how do you want to measure your success? Take a moment?

So there are three things that I would ask you as you are thinking about it. Um How did we develop the 26 ecosystem partner? Theresa, I'll answer that one in a moment. So as we go through the um the, the partnership, the first, I think that we had to really be clear on what are we trying to do? The first thing was, is making sure we make the tech force tech workforce accessible for women. So really fill the 8 million jobs in the tech industry because that is the gap. The second one is create more tech innovations in the market and disrupt the billion dollar markets. And third is win the B to B cloud contracts which allow us to create a billion dollars in access. Because if we have um 100 companies, fortune companies pledging a million dollars and working with a female tech founder, we create a billion dollar access. It's not hard. And what it does is create significant uh jobs in the ecosystem. So as you think through is um um the uh concept in your mind of what kind of digital transformations that you need to do or kind of the digital economic development? I want to give you this quote so that you have in your mind as you're thinking about uh economic development.

According to the Boston consulting group, if a women and men are equally participate as entrepreneurs, the global GDP can ultimately boost it, you know, from $2.5 trillion to $5 trillion it's actually a good business. So our framework that we use, which is the economic access activation framework, there are few things that we allow our members to do. We say, OK, as an individual, you may say, I don't know how to create access. So as you meet with anyone in our network, the first is, what kind of access can you create? Can you create access to jobs for people in your organization? If it is, please invite them to be part of the job talent workforce. Second, if you have great advisors in your network, your friends, who are your exact sponsors, help them get connected to an advisor. Third is a resource access. If you have an amazing resource, come and share that resource and become a part leader in articulating how to go about helping the other entrepreneurs or leaders in the ecosystem. If they're looking for investment, create access to the investment easily. And the last one is talent.

If you are looking for talent or have talent who wants to get in the tech industry, make it easy. So when you are working with women tech or women in cloud or any organization really focus on getting more women talent into these communities to create access. And the last one which is the hardest and the most expensive is cloud tech access. If you cannot really make the cloud technology, easily accessible for women, then it becomes extremely hard to take action. So as you think about what the global crisis that we are dealing with, and that's why I want, I want each one of you to really unlock your access because there are three core issues that are brewing. One is the lack of representation of women in the tech force. If you look at it, there's a significant women who were there, it was 37% like five years ago. If you look at right now, it's at 27% and it's declining at a fast rate. So we really need to come together as a collective to ensure the representation happens at the board, happens at the leadership happens at all levels in the ecosystem so that we have a voice. The second one is the lack of supplier diversity allocation more and more because of the pandemic, the budgets are shrinking significantly.

So you want to make sure is you, you are unlocking having those conversations with your um supplier ecosystem and ensuring that women can do business in your company easily. And third one is the displacement of the women who are leaving the job. And if you look at it what in India itself, it's 17 million people who have lost the job. And in the US is close to 4.5 million jobs that are lost. So there is a huge displacement. But the most scary part is with a I, it's 100 and 80 million jobs that will be lost in the next 20 years. And we want to make sure we are coming together and protecting the jobs or re morphing the jobs that is required for women to really be represented in the tech industry. So my ask is an invitation for all of you to come and join our global crisis. So the way I would love each one of you to think about is four ways. One, you can become an advisor. If you think that you can advise women into any, any topic that they're looking for, it can be leadership, it can be cloud development, it can be access into the supply ecosystem or if you're an investor come and advise them, sign up as an advisor within our ecosystem.

Second is if you have a topic, if you have a voice and you want to talk about a specific angle to really integrate women into the tech workforce, we want you to become a speaker. So we have a lot of opportunity. Third is become an ambassador. And the last one is if you have the budget to influence, go ahead and become a buyer. And with that, there are few opportunities for all of you to engage, there are awards that are being created. So please uh uh you know, nominate your favorite company or a favorite leader. Second is join our community and be part of the ecosystem to really advance female tech founders. And the last one is if you want to really connect with us, join our network and from there, we can start the conversation with you. So hopefully that one was very helpful for all of you. And then Teresa, I would love to take that conversation as how to develop 26 ecosystem partners through the linkedin, so we can go in the depth conversation.

Thank you so much Chra and I'm sure people will be finding you on linkedin. There was lots of commentary in the chat. You clearly have so much insight. Um And it's so interesting to see many of these facts by numbers, right? Like if we're trying to make some points and trying to share this information with others, it's great to have some of those facts by numbers. So thank you so much for sharing. Um For the sake of time, I'm going to allow you to exit the stage and jump right to our next speaker. But thank you so much to see you in the chat area.