Inside Outside Innovation

Tim Campos, former CIO of Facebook, is now founder and CEO of Woven, a startup tackling the world of calendaring. Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation Founder had a chance to talk with Tim about the future of innovation, how IT infrastructure has changed, what it's like to work in a high growth startup, and what it's like to rebuild a company from scratch. Interview Transcript (To read the entire interview transcript, go to http://insideoutside.io )Brian Ardinger: On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Tim Campos, the former CIO of Facebook and new entrepreneur with a company called Woven that is tackling the whole world of calendaring. We had a chance to talk about the future of innovation, how IT infrastructure has changed, what it's like to work in a high growth startup, and then what it's like to rebuild a company from scratch. Inside Outside innovation is the podcast that brings you the best and the brightest in the world of startups and innovation. I'm your host Brian Ardinger, founder of InsideOutside.IO. A provider of research events and consulting services that help innovators and entrepreneurs build better products, launch new ideas, and compete in a world of change and disruption. Each week we'll give you a front row seat to the latest thinking tools, tactics, and trends, and collaborative innovation. Let's get started. Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host Brian Ardinger, and as always, we have another amazing guest. Today is Tim Campos. He is the former CIO at Facebook from 2010 to 2016 he was a VP of it at semiconductor company, KLA-Tencor, and he has recently jumped back into the startup scene with his own company called Woven.  Tim, welcome to the show.  Tim Campos: Thanks for having me. I'm super excited to be here.  Brian Ardinger: I'm excited to have you on board because I think you can speak to a lot of the things that our audience is interested in hearing about.  Everything from startups to corporate innovation, and you seem to have played a role in a variety of those different types of spaces and are continuing to do so. Let's start in the Facebook world. How you got there and what's it like to work with a high-growth company when you have to double the productivity of employees when they're growing at 20 X growth rate.  Tim Campos: It gets crazy enough just to double the number of employees.  And to do that time and time again every year. Yeah, so I got to Facebook. It was really a big culmination of a lot of aspects in my career.  When I started, I was an engineer, software engineer, and I've always loved technology and building.  I spent the first half of my career in software engineering and then got exposed to IT at a startup when I was working in a software as a service company. And that really taught me. Two things. One, what you build and what people use those different perspectives and technology as you do that. But also there's a business around technology and that's really what got me interested in information technology and how I became CIO. And ultimately that landed me at Facebook. But my life has very much been defined by building things that help make people more productive, help people get more stuff done and that taken care of steer through what I'm doing today with Woven mind startup as a productivity software company and this is what we exist to do, is help people spend time on what matters most.  To read the entire interview transcript, go to http://insideoutside.io 

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, Brian Ardinger, IO Founder, sat down with Brendan Synnott, a serial entrepreneur, having cofounded companies like Bear Naked, which he sold to Kellogg, Evol Foods, and now Pact, an e-commerce organic fashion brand.  In this interview we talked about Brendan's opportunity to become an entrepreneur early on in his life, how he grew his company from zero to sell to a major corporation, and how he thinks about creating new innovations and new spaces.    Interview Transcript (To read the entire interview transcript, go to http://insideoutside.io.)Brian Ardinger: On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sat down with Brendan Synnott. Brendan is a serial entrepreneur, having cofounded companies like Bear Naked, which he sold to Kellogg. He's found companies like Evol Foods, and he's now working at Pact, a brand-new e-commerce fashion brand.  In this interview we talked about Brendan's opportunity to become an entrepreneur early on in his life.  How he grew his company from zero to sell it to a major corporation. And how he thinks about creating new innovations and new spaces.   Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast that brings you the best and the brightest in the world of startups and innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, founder of Inside Outside.IO, a provider of research events and consulting services that help innovators and entrepreneurs build better products, launch new ideas, and compete in a world of change and disruption. Each week we'll give you a front row seat to the latest thinking tools, tactics, and trends in collaborative innovation. Let's get started.  Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host Brian Ardinger, and as always, we have another amazing guest.  Today with me is Brendan Synnott. He is a serial entrepreneur having cofounded the companies like Bear Naked Granola, which he sold to Kellogg. He started companies with Evol Foods, pet companies, candy businesses, and now he's in the fashion space with a company called Pact. Welcome to the show Brendan.  Brendan Synnott: Thanks so much for having me. Looking forward to talking about innovation. It's my favorite subject in business.  Brian Ardinger: You have got a lot to talk about and you've had a very eclectic career over the course of the last decade or so, starting and forming businesses that have gone from nothing to something.  Have you always been an entrepreneur and what led you to the path of entrepreneurship?  Brendan Synnott: I think I've always had that spirit in me. I was blessed by having two grandfathers that both had started their own businesses. One was a printing brokerage and one was a engineering firm. Both small businesses, but I grew up with that culture within my family about saying, you can do what you want. You can see it go after it. And then that led me to always starting little businesses growing up. I remember going to the Costco when I was a kid and buying 150 lemon heads or you know, for $8 and then go sell them on the street. Or go sell them in school or whatever it may be. And I had a number of businesses before I hit my first big one.  But it was something that I was always just like, ah, let's go try it, let's go get after it. let's go see what happens.  Brian Ardinger: I think you got your big break when you've cofounded Bear Naked in the granola space and you eventually sold that to Kellogg. What were some of the early lessons of entrepreneurship that you can share with our audience? To read the entire interview transcript, go to http://insideoutside.io.

In this episode, Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation Founder, talks with Gleb Tsipursky, Author of Never Go With Your Gut: How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Business Disasters (Avoid Terrible Advice, Cognitive Biases, and Poor Decisions). They discuss bad business decisions, why they go wrong, emotions impacting decision making, making best case plans, iterative planning, great leaders, and high-impact shortcuts Interview Transcript (To read the entire interview transcript, go to http://insideoutside.io.)Brian Ardinger: Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast that brings you the best and the brightest in the world of startups and innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, founder of Inside Outside.IO, a provider of research, events, and consulting services that help innovators and entrepreneurs build better products, launch new ideas, and compete in a world of change and disruption. Each week we'll give you a front row seat to the latest thinking tools, tactics, and trends, and collaborative innovation. Let's get started. Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host Brian Ardinger, and as always, we have another amazing guest. Today with me is Gleb Tsipursky, he is a cognitive neuroscientist, an expert on behavioral economics and decision making. He runs a company called Disaster Avoidance Experts. He's worked with companies like Aflac and IBM and Honda, Wells Fargo, and many, many others. Welcome to the show Gleb.  Gleb Tsipursky: Thank you so much for having me on, Brian. It's a pleasure.  Brian Ardinger: I'm excited to have you on because you've got a brand-new book out called Never go with your gut: How pioneering leaders make the best decisions and avoid business disasters, and it's also very pertinent to our audience. This whole world of innovation and how do you make decisions in a world that's constantly changing. Let's start off with a little bit of background about yourself.  Gleb Tsipursky: I was fascinated by how my parents made some bad decisions with each other, and it got me fascinated in decision making. You know, my dad, he was a real estate agent, so he had the variable income and he hid some money from my mom and bought a house on the side. And when she found out she was really pissed. And that led to a big blowout fight, which led to them separating for a while and then they got back together. But you can never really rebuild the trust again. And then when I was growing older, I came of age. In 1999 is when I was 18 and all the dotcoms were booming. WebVan, Pets.com and so on. All of these businesses, which. By the time I was 21 they all went bust. And that was really frustrating for me as someone who was observing it and seeing all these people who are supposedly smart, wealthy people, investing ordinary citizens, you know, people whose retirement went down the drains when things went bust. And I'm someone who really cares about people. I have utilitarian values. I want the most good for the most number. And so that's really motivated me to study decision making. What causes people to make bad decisions. What caused them to make good decisions and how we as individuals, leaders, investors, innovators, can make better decisions going forward. Why Decisions Go Wrong Brian Ardinger: Why do decisions go wrong?  Gleb Tsipursky: The most important reason why decisions go wrong is that we don't notice how our emotions influence our decisions. The research on this topic and cognitive neuroscience shows that our emotions drive about 80 to 90% of our decision making, and we don't realize how much we're driven by our emotions.  People make their decisions often based on their best reactions. They feel something is right and therefore they do it. They feel this information is true and therefore they believe it. To read the entire interview transcript, go to http://insideoutside.io

As one of Inside Outside's most listened to podcasts of 2019, enjoy our interview with Jeff Gothelf. It was originally published on July 16, 2019.   Jeff Gothelf, Co-Author of Lean UX, Sense & Respond, and Lean vs Agile vs Design Thinking talks with Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation founder, about building a culture of innovation.  Key Ideas - Shifting from outputs to outcomes. - Changing incentives. - Find the person and team with the political capital to prove out the validity and scalability.  - Reward learning in a way that focuses on ideas that are likely to succeed.  - Incentivize learning and being transparent.  - Story telling and marketing of efforts. - Overcoming national cultural traits. - Language and ideas are universal, but hard to implement.  - Failure of the Corporate Innovation Lab. Create an innovation path.  For More Information For more information, check out Jeffgothelf.com.  If you enjoyed this podcast, you might also enjoy: Ep. 37 – Josh Seiden & Jeff Gothelf, authors of “Sense and Respond” Ep. 90 – Teresa Torres w/ Product Talk Ep. 103 – Andi Plantenberg on Entrepreneurial Capabilities in Teams Ep. 140 – Melissa Perri, Escaping the Build Trap Author and Produx Labs CEO Find this episode of Inside Outside Innovation at insideoutside.io.   You can also listen on Acast, iTunes, Sticher, Spotify, and Google Play.   FREE INNOVATION NEWSLETTER Get the latest episodes of the Inside Outside Innovation podcast, in addition to thought leadership in the form of blogs, innovation resources, videos, and invitations to exclusive events. SUBSCRIBE at Insideoutside.io

As one of Inside Outside's most listened to podcasts of 2019, enjoy our interview with Olivia O'Sullivan of Acceleprise. It was originally published on June 18, 2019. Olivia O'Sullivan is the Head of Corporate Engagement at Acceleprise, a B2B SaaS accelerator. Accelerprise invests in early-tech companies building enterprise technology. Olivia's focus is on mid-market and enterprise companies interested in collaborations with startups. Her background includes work in advertising and on product and innovation teams for McDonald's and Dow Jones. Olivia spoke with Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation Founder, about corporate/startup matchmaking, trends and Acceleprise's future. Key factors in selecting startups include: - Understanding the founding team. Can they solve the challenge?  - Traction and product market fit. Want to accelerate growth.  - Thresholds and levels of expectations.  - Collaboration on the product.  Emphasis on the initial period where you make introductions. The missing piece is how to transition into providing impact.  - Make sure two groups of people are set up to participate with each other and engage in a partnership.  - Provide long-term strategic support. - Innovation doesn’t happen in a silo. Need a long-term strategy. Participate in the ecosystem before you see change.  Corporations are in different places in innovation - Companies wanting roundtables and market intelligence. - Companies with established processes and venture teams.  New Trends  - Ten years ago, there were lots of corporate accelerators. Now a lot of established independent accelerators doing great work. - Now more meaningful partnership doing co-collaboration with startups. - Financial services companies are partnering with startups. - Health tech - Unlocking the power of data in the health world.  What are the core skills for entrepreneurs? - Long-term vision and steps to get there.  - Someone who will get the work done to get over hurdles.  - People who are connectors on the corporate innovation side.  What’s next for Acceleprise - Kick off upcoming programs in SF and NY - Investing in another 20 companies. Already invested in over 100. - Opening office in Toronto.  For More Information For more information on Acceleprise or to connect with Olivia check out https://acceleprise.vc If you enjoyed this podcast, you might also enjoy: Ep. 139 – Northwestern Mutual’s Vivek Bedi on Digital Transformation in the Financial Industry Ep. 137 – Deloitte’s Michael Frankel on Growth, Hybrid Talent & Corporate/Startup Collaboration Ep. 127 – Vanguard & CEC’s John Buhl on Lean Startup at Scale Find this episode of Inside Outside Innovation at insideoutside.io. You can also listen on Acast, iTunes, Sticher, Spotify, and Google Play.   FREE INNOVATION NEWSLETTER Get the latest episodes of the Inside Outside Innovation podcast, in addition to thought leadership in the form of blogs, innovation resources, videos, and invitations to exclusive events. SUBSCRIBE at insideoutside.io

In this episode, Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation Founder, talks with Jennifer Brown, Author of How to be an Inclusive Leader: Your Role in Creating Cultures of Belonging Where Everyone Can Thrive and host of the podcast The Will to Change. They discuss talent recruitment and retention, approachable diversity and inclusion, leadership practice, well-intended obstacles, case studies, and recognizing biases for AI. Interview Transcript  (to read the transcript go to insideoutside.io)Brian Ardinger: Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast that brings you the best and the brightest in the world of startups and innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, founder of Inside Outside.IO, a provider of research, events, and consulting services that help innovators and entrepreneurs build better products, launch new ideas, and compete in a world of change and disruption. Each week we'll give you a front row seat to the latest thinking tools, tactics, and trends, in collaborative innovation. Let's get started. Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and as always, we have another amazing guest. With me today is Jennifer Brown. Jennifer is a leading diversity and inclusion expert. She's host of her own podcast called The Will to Change, and I wanted to have her on because she's an author of a new book called How to be an Inclusive Leader. Welcome to the show, Jennifer.  Jennifer Brown: Thanks so much, Brian, I'm happy to be here.  Brian Ardinger: The topic of talent and diverse talent, especially when you're talking about innovation that comes up over and over again with our audience.  Let's first talk about your background. Then we can talk about the book.  Talent recruitment and Retention Jennifer Brown: My background is eclectic. A lot of people that do this work had winding roads. We like to laugh about the fact that there's not a lot of professional degrees to study diversity, equity, and inclusion. I was an opera singer and I ended up having to leave the field because my voice kept getting injured and I found my way to the world of leadership development because as a performer it was clear I wanted to be on the stage and needed to be on the stage, and so I found my way to become a corporate trainer. I eventually got a second master's in HR, change management, organizational development. I was an HR professional internally for awhile. And then I really got the itch too, worked for myself, and also be able to have the freedom and the agency to tell the truth as a sort of third party. And that was all 13 years ago. So since then, I've had my own company. I've built my team. We have about 20 to 25 folks. Today we consult mainly large organizations. Big household name kind of companies on their diversity and inclusion strategies. And within that, there's training services that we provide. We work on affinity groups and we do consult on talent, both the recruitment of that talent and also importantly, the retention of that talent, which honestly is in many ways where the rubber hits the road. It's sort of, if you can get them in the door, can you keep them question, but I'm also a member of the LGBTQ community, so I have my own powerful diversity stories as a woman in business.  Brian Ardinger: I wanted to have you on the show to talk about the book, because unlike a lot of diversity books out there, it felt very approachable. It set the stage that, Hey, you're probably gonna mess up with this stuff as you're trying to learn it, and that's okay. The topic of diversity and inclusion is sensitive for whatever reason, and you laid it out there like, Hey. That's okay to feel awkward or not okay with all of this at the very beginning, as you grow your skillset and grow throughout that. Why did you try to write a book and how did you come about bringing this topic together? Find the transcript of this episode of Inside Outside at insideoutside.io

In this episode, Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation Founder, talks with Gregg Garrett, Managing Director of CGS and co-author of Competing in the Connecting World: The Future of Your Disruptive Industry is Already Here. They discuss innovation both inside and outside, disruptive forces, ecosystem commanders, maturing models, and leadership skills. Interview Transcript  (to read the transcript go to insideoutside.io)Brian Ardinger: Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast that brings you the best and the brightest in the world of startups and innovation. I'm your host Brian Ardinger, founder of InsideOutside.IO, a provider of research, events, and consulting services that help innovators and entrepreneurs build better products, launch new ideas, and compete in a world of change and disruption. Each week we'll give you a front row seat to the latest thinking tools, tactics, and trends, in collaborative innovation. Let's get started. Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and as always, we have another amazing guest. I want to welcome again, Greg Garrett. He is the MD at CGS advisors. He's a coauthor of a new book called Competing in the Connecting World: The Future of Your Disruptive Industry is Already Here. Welcome back, Greg, to the show.  Gregg Garrett: Hey Brian. Thanks for having me.  Brian Ardinger: It's been a couple of years since we talked last. Obviously that's a long time in this world of innovation, so I want to get you back on to talk about some of the things that you've been doing. The new book that you've got out called Competing in the Connecting world. Let's start there. Give the audience a little background, what you were doing and then how you got to this book.  Gregg Garrett: Yeah, so the book is a culmination of experience over probably decades really, but about six years ago. I started teaching a course at a university here in Michigan called Oakland University, and they asked me to develop this course and we called it competing in the connecting world because I was noisy in an advisory session one time and said, are we really preparing students and future leaders to compete in this connecting world, in this future world? Are we just doing more of the same? They said, well, we probably aren't, or we could do it differently. Could you help us to develop the course? Taught it for a few years. This is an MBA and graduate engineering course and realize there's really very little written. A lot in the media world and article world, but very little written formally around it. So my coauthor, Dr. Warren Ritchie and I grabbed a lot of what we were teaching in the classroom, a little bit while we were speaking a publicly, and also what we've been consulting on, living ourselves around digital and transformation in general, and put it in a book. Brian Ardinger: So let's unpack that a little bit and give our audience a background about yourself. You've done a lot of time in Fortune 100 world as an executive. You've done a lot of consulting and investing in that. So you've seen a lot from both sides of the puzzle, both inside organizations and outside of organizations. What made you decide that this was a topic that you wanted to dig into and and what have you learned?  Gregg Garrett: Yeah, so you've got the history right. Bunch of years with large firms, and then the last nine years being a very small firm, 20 person boutique transformation organization, working back with some of those large firms, but then also working with the medium size and scaling. And do a lot of mentoring inside of different accelerators and whatnot. So I've got one foot in each of those camps, the startup, the scale-up world, and then the large entity trying to transform world. To read the transcript or for more information, go to insideoutside.io 

In this episode, Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation Founder, talks with Aaron Hawkins, former Head of Global Prime, now Whole Foods and Fresh Last Mile Delivery Strategy, at Amazon. And currently the VP of Digital Product at Northwestern Mutual. They discuss eCommerce retail at Kohl's and Amazon, drop shipping, customer experience, PR-FAQ, customer truisms, financial services at Northwestern Mutual, and Agile. Interview Transcript  (Read the transcript at insideoutside.io)Brian Ardinger:  Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast that brings you the best and the brightest in the world of startups and innovation. I'm your host Brian Ardinger, founder of InsideOutside.IO, a provider of research events and consulting services that help innovators and entrepreneurs build better products, launch new ideas, and compete in a world of change and disruption. Each week we'll give you a front row seat to the latest thinking tools, tactics, and trends, and collaborative innovation. Let's get started. Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host Brian Ardinger, and as always, we have another amazing guest. Today we are recording live at the Fall Experiment conference here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.And with me today is Aaron Hawkins. He is the former head of Global Prime now Whole Foods and Fresh Last Mile Delivery Strategy at Amazon. And he's now currently the VP of Digital Product at Northwestern Mutual. Welcome to the show Aaron.  Aaron Hawkins: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.  Brian Ardinger: Hey, I'm super excited to have you on the show for a couple of different reasons.  One, you've been in this space of innovation, obviously working for Amazon in the retail space, and all the disruption that's going on. Love to talk a little bit more about your experiences there, and then obviously you're now to a new role, moving back to the Midwest, where you're from. Let's start the conversation with talking a little bit about your background and how did you get into innovation.Aaron Hawkins: Yes, my background is that I really have been permanently in eCommerce retail my whole career. I started at Kohl's working for their website, and when I joined Kohl's, they were about a $15.5 billion retail business and that was primarily through their stores and their website was doing about $140 million at the time.  When I joined it, it was way under penetrated and they were looking to expand and I sort of just lucked out and got an opportunity to really start up in a scrappy kind of pilot mode, a drop ship program, which is a direct to consumer model where they leverage suppliers and manufacturers and distributors capabilities to ship in individual units to end consumers. And it was a great opportunity for Kohl's to expand because it was pretty low capital investment on their part. And so piloted a program there in 2007. And that really grew. I think by the time I left Kohl's to go to Amazon, their website had grown to about $1.7 billion. And so it was basically doubling itself every two years, which was incredible growth. And that really afforded me the opportunity to go to Amazon and work for their North America drop ship program, which was really how they got started. They started drop shipping books way back in 1995 and so it was a pretty mature program, but it had gotten a little stale. And so they brought me in to think about ways to refresh it a little bit and also to start leveraging some of their fulfillment capabilities that they had developed over time and you know, two day prime shipping had been a pretty well established thing at that point. I think they had 55 fulfillment centers by the time I joined. Read the transcript at insideoutside.io

In this episode, Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation Founder, talks with Swetha PB, Head of Product at Brilliant Hire, an SAP startup. They discuss hiring screening, SAP support, innovation talent, and building a startup within a large company. Interview Transcript   (Read the interview transcript at insideoutside.io)Brian Ardinger: Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast that brings you the best and the brightest in the world of startups and innovation. I'm your host Brian Ardinger, founder of Insideoutside.IO, a provider of research, events, and consulting services, that help innovators and entrepreneurs build better products, launch new ideas, and compete in a world of change and disruption. Each week we'll give you a front row seat to the latest thinking pools, tactics, and trends in collaborative innovation. Let's get started. Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host Brian Ardinger and we have another amazing guest. Live today from the Fall Experiment conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with us today is Swetha PB from Brilliant hire. Welcome to the show. Swetha PB: Hi everyone. Brian Ardinger: Swetha thanks for coming out. You are with a company called Brilliant Hire, Head of Product, and Brilliant Hire is a startup, but it's an interesting startup because it's spun out of SAP, which is a large corporation.  So we want to talk a little bit about that particular process, but before we dig into that, let's talk a little bit about how you got involved in innovation in the first  place. Swetha PB: Yeah, definitely. So since college days innovation or problem solving and trying to figure out creative ways of doing things with something that interested me a lot and being part of SAP, there are a lot of opportunities being hackathons or a lot of different ways that we could explore that part of us.  And I think that was what brought us together even to start this brilliant hire and what it is today. Brian Ardinger: Tell the audience a little bit about what Brilliant Hire is all about.  Swetha PB: Brilliant Hire is a screening as a service. We provide a SaaS based software that helps reduce the time and effort involved in the hiring process in an unbiased manner. We all know that hiring is broken and we hear to solve the first part of it by, you know, what do using your time, effort involved in that. Brian Ardinger: How did it come about that you wanted to try to solve this particular problem and how did SAP become involved in this?  Swetha PB: So that's a very interesting part of our journey. It came out of what is called today in actual terminology, as user innovation. So I and my colleagues, the two other co founders of Brilliant Hire, would ask to take part in interviews. We were asked to scale a team from four to 40 all in a month. So that was a challenge for us. So we had to go on weekends. This is all back in India. Go on weekends, take interviews for these roles. And what made us realize, though we were spending so much time interviewing candidates, only 30% were going into the next round of interviews. There's a 70% rejection rate right there. So this kind of shocked us. We started one like, you know, explore, is this a problem just with us, just within our company or is it present over the, you know, all industries. That's what we tried to solve and we started on, we started to explore, we started talking to lot more recruiters. We did a lot of research and understood, yeah, this is a problem all around and hiring is clearly broken. And that got us excited and we're like, okay, let's see how we solve the problem. And inside SAP, there are a lot of hackathons that keep happening. And good for us that one of the hackathons hired smart HR as the topics. So it was a great time for us to like, the problem that we faced, how do we solve it? Read the interview transcript at insideoutside.io

In this episode, Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation Founder, talks with Nancy Wang, Head of Product at AWS Data Protection and Founder of Advancing Women in Product (AWIP). Brian and Nancy talk about women in tech, a Midwest AWIP chapter, mentors, diversity, and product development. Read the interview transcript at insideoutside.ioBrian Ardinger: Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast that brings you the best and the brightest in the world of startups and Innovation. I'm your host Brian Ardinger, founder of InsideOutside.IO a provider of research, events, and consulting services that help innovators and entrepreneurs build better products launched new ideas and compete in a world of change and disruption each week will give you a front-row seat to the latest thinking, tools, tactics, and trends and collaborative Innovation. Let's get started.  Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host Brian Ardinger. And as always we have another amazing guest. This week we are live from the Fall Experiment conference here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And today with me on the show is Nancy Wang, head of product AWS data protection.  She was formerly with Google and she's the founder and CEO of a nonprofit called advancing women in product. Welcome to the show. Nancy Wang: Thank you Brian. Thank you for having me here. As some of you may know Wisconsin is where I grew up. So I grew up in a small town in Upper Northwestern Wisconsin called Menominee and it's there that I grew in love with the midwestern lifestyle.  And also with the Midwestern culture. So part of me working out in the west coast and coming here is that love to bring more of the West Coast mentality in Silicon Valley entrepreneurship to the Midwest area  Brian Ardinger: You've been doing it for a number of years. So you've got broad experience of building products for some of the biggest and best companies in the world, Google and now you're working at Amazon.  But one of the key aspects of why I wanted to have you on the show is to talk about your nonprofit and the idea of how do you create a more diverse tech environment? Let's talk a little bit about your nonprofit. How did it come about and what is all about?  Nancy Wang: I founded Advancing Women in Product or AWIP for short in 2017.  And the reason behind that was, you know, I found myself as one of the only woman in the room. Even though I had a great community of male mentors and sponsors and also managers who moved me forward in my career. I wanted that touch in connection with a female who I could look up to and so that was really the idea and the mission behind founding AWIP was that I wanted other women in the Next Generation not to have the same diversity challenges as I faced moving forward in my career whether it was starting out at the US government working for the Department of Health and Human Services. or moving to Google, then a venture backed startup and now Amazon. So part of our mission is to create skills-based workshops, as well as create Circles of executive mentorship, where our 12,500 strong community can come together and really Advance their careers, because seeing is believing. And I firmly believe in that when you see folks you identify with, whether that's gender and other characteristics, you then believe that you can get there as well so change for a AWIP starts at the very top. So we work with our community of ambassadors, who are. Executives in various fields to come together and either create policies or pipelines to make sure that women are well represented in the highest levels of tech leadership. Read the interview transcript at insideoutside.io