Podcast appearances and mentions of larry one

The cavnessHR Culture Podcast – A talk with Larry Naylor – President/COO of Naylor 2 Enterprise, LLC (N2E) – SDVOSB https://www.cavnessHR.com Larry's Social Media!! Website: https://www.naylor2enterprise.com/ Larry's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ldnaylor/ Larry's Resources!! For anyone that reaches out to us. Let us know that they're looking for an opportunity to receive some awesome transformational leadership initiatives in their organization. If they contact us and let us know that they heard this in relation to this podcast, we are going to provide discounts to them for that. Daniella Larry is the President and Chief Operations Officer for Naylor 2 Enterprise. N2E is a Veteran and Minority-owned small business that provides corporate training, development and administrative management consulting services to U.S. and international organizations. At N2E, he's responsible for the conduct and business operations of global transformative leadership and consulting service initiatives. Earlier in his career, Larry gained extensive leadership experience while serving 20 years as a commissioned officer in the army, where you retired as a Lieutenant Colonel. He spent 13 years with L three Technologies, Inc, a $10 billion company where he was the Director of Training and operations for global trade and master trainer. Responsible for providing leadership training to 38,000 employee infrastructure. So Larry is like super leadership guy. He's probably the most qualified leadership guy we've had on our podcast so far. He's got a bachelor's, Master's, all kinds of training certificates, most recently got a coaching certification from Georgetown, I believe. Larry is very active in several different organizations, including the Society for Human Resource Management, Association of United States Army, and the Society for International Affairs. So Larry, can you tell us something that you are working on these days? That is super exciting? Larry Absolutely Daniella, I would have to say several things are going on right now. But what most exciting is to be able to work specifically for a law enforcement agency. We are working to put together a leadership program. What that program does is it's transforming the department. To see that happening right in front of your eyes, where people from the sheriff down to the sergeant are realizing that there is a better way to do things and to watch them self transform. To recognize that wait a minute, I am. I am I'm different. Because I see myself now I'm, this is amazing. It's exciting, not barring the fact that leadership when you look at the essence of leadership, and when you sit people down and talk to them about the importance of it, and how you can see the lights come on.  Daniella It's so interesting that you mentioned law enforcement, and people tend to think of law enforcement teams, military teams, as some of these very high-speed organizations as Oh, they're just great teams, right? They're great teams, they have great leaders, they don't need to work on it. But you're saying that they do need to work on and they are working on it, which is great. Larry Absolutely. I think most organizations realize once someone comes in, and there's a moment of silence, and it allows them to reflect on who they think they are, as opposed to who and what they should be. They do realize that we probably could do some changing here. Especially in law enforcement organizations. Maybe we should think about looking at another way of doing things, approaching people talking to people and things like that. I think the military is doing that and, of course, I'm a few years removed now. But I'm hearing out there in the winds that the winds of change are starting to blow where the old school military of because I said so is changing now to be more encompassing of the group. Bottom line the mission still needs to happen. But just because you ask others, instead of just telling them and commanding them. Once you ask them, they will probably follow you with the same zeal, purpose and commitment. Because they feel like you love them enough to ask them their opinion and allow them to do it. So I think that's where we're headed. Daniella It's interesting, the bottom line is the mission still needs to happen in any corporation, right. But a strong culture and a strong team is going to get you to your mission so much faster. I think what the modern sort of leadership is starting to learn, and it's starting to realize. think in the military for the longest time in the in sort of the special disciplines, we already knew that. Right? So in intelligence, which is what I did, we knew that I can order how much can I order my guy to analyze and give me the best information? Not much, right? If he's not motivated to do it he can order a bare minimum of outcomes. But you can inspire kind of a lot more and if you let the experts live in their expertise like they will give you so much more information than you even want. Larry Yeah, that's true. That is true. Daniella Okay, so Larry, you became an Officer in the Army, the year before I was born. You retired a few years before I commissioned. Which means for the listeners that even though Larry and I are comrades in arms, we both served in pretty different militaries. As Larry kind of already alluded to. So Larry, as we heard, is now basically a leadership expert. He was telling me about some of the changes that he's noticed in the definition and practice of leadership over the years. Can you tell us a little bit more about that, whether that was your time in the military or your time in the corporate sector. Larry So as you said, Daniella, I started out in 86 and my first assignment was in Germany. That's the whole Cold War era. I'm a 23 year old kid out of college. I was taught and bred to do what needs to be done, salute the flag, make it happen. I grew up through that time, from the wall, the Cold War, the wall coming down, and then through Gulf War One, and into 911 and deploying into Afghanistan, 101st, in 911. So I think my career spans a lot of different things in there. A lot in a short amount of time. In that 20 years, we went from cold war all the way to post 911.  Larry So what I've what I learned as I continue to mature in the military, I grew up in an environment where you just do what you're told to do. You don't necessarily question, you just execute. You do that, well, you succeed. Then you go to the next level, and you expect everybody under you to do the same thing and they execute and it just works. I will say, when I moved from Afghanistan, coming into the Department of State, I spent about five years there at State Department, I had just left Afghanistan, and I flew back to the United States. There I was, and the environment was different. The language was different and the actions were different.  Larry I struggled because I didn't understand that there was a transformation that was taking place from the military side to coming to the United States Department of State. The leadership styles were different and then from there, I went to corporate America. The leadership styles were absolutely different. I would say that I kind of lived through that to state government, local government, excuse me to federal government, and then to defense contracting. I realized that leadership is distinctly different in each one of those areas. But ultimately, today, after I had an opportunity to teach leadership, to, as you said, a 38,000 employee organization. I live leadership and probably didn't even realize how much you learn and gleaned out of being a military person over the years being thrust into it. Today, after understanding and believing that this is my calling, now. I do see that there are different ways to lead. I have started to look at the transformational leader. Larry If you can't love me, you can't lead me. Now, most people would say, I don't believe in that touchy feely part of things. Just do what I say, well, love has a big meaning. Love means, do you love me enough to whereas the leader, would you sacrifice yourself for me. Would the leader sacrifice themselves, so others may gain versus sacrificing others so that they gain? That's one of the things that I think is really important. As we get into this new type of leadership, we start to realize that you can't lead the way you used to. We're in an organization, we're in a time where four generations are together, and therefore generations worth of fault. There are all kinds of diversity things that are going on now. That same square hold leadership is probably not going to fit in today's round hole. So I have started to realize that a lot of changes that are taking place in leadership, and we're at the cusp of this transformational leadership shift. It is great to be there and I have a lot to offer. I'm looking forward to hopefully getting in front of even more people and explaining to them and getting them to realize that there is an another more effective way lead people to the things that you want them to accomplish. Daniella Now it's interesting, Larry, that you said people find talking about love and leadership to be touchy feely. Most people would probably categorize military leadership as not touchy feely. But the first thing we learn as leaders in the military is that leaders eat last. The whole concept of that is exactly what you said, you through eating last are signaling. I am willing to not eat if there's not enough food, which means, you know, going way way back to homo sapien fighting for food. I am willing to die for you are in modern day 2019, signaling to these people. I'm willing to die for you. Will you let me lead you? That's a very hardcore, not touchy feely concept.  Larry It's funny, you should say that Daniella, I use that term a lot. When I'm teaching leadership, leaders eat last. For some people, it's like what I have to eat first because I need to have nourishment to be able to lead the people. it is a sign of sacrifice, a sign of devotion to your people. So grasp that leaders eat last. So good, good point. Daniella I think probably for all of us, you mentioned being a 23 year old kid right out of the Academy, right or out of ROTC? Larry Out of ROTC, that's correct. Daniella I had a similar experience 22 year old kid out of a commissioning program and you are obsessed with being the best. You think you need to outperform everyone else? How long do you think it took you to realize that being a leader was not about you, but was about your team? Larry It's funny that you should ask that question because there is a paradigm in there. Back, in those days, there was the zero defect army. I mean, you have to be near perfect, or you walk on water, and you just get wet to the ankle. I mean, you had to be that person. So what it caused is this, do not mess with me, don't touch me, because I got to be perfect. So micromanagement was a huge thing. All kinds of things came into play that caused people to be that way. Now, that's one end of the pendulum. The other end was that people started to realize in that era, what it caused was people's inability to feel like they could make a mistake. Or feel like they can allow their people to do things and use their own intuitive nature and ideas. It created this environment where you just felt like you couldn't do anything other than got to be perfect. It's got to be spot on. It causes you to grow up in an environment and a culture where you struggle with making a mistake.  Daniella You're speaking to my heart because there's so much danger in the zero defect environment. By the way, it's still a zero defect environment for women in the military, and a lot of other industries, of course. But I am very glad to hear that these great leaders like you and leadership trainers are thinking about this. Larry We're teaching a law enforcement organization here in a few days, called women in leadership. I am starting to realize even more as a black man. I used to feel like I've got to do 110%, just to be equal with everybody else. Now I'm thinking about what it must feel like sometimes and in a workplace environment, as a woman. Who is intelligent, who is absolutely capable of doing even more than many others. I wonder if they have that same feeling that I have that I really can't explain and articulate. Daniella I think I can articulate it. So when you are a member, this of course my personal belief. When you are a member of a minority group, of which women are still considered one. You represent that entire group in a way that a member of the majority doesn't. So, for example, when you Larry, as a man in the military, messed up. Did something wrong made a mistake, you were Larry, the soldier making a mistake. When I mess up and make a mistake, this is why women shouldn't be in the military. Right? So Daniella Young had to carry the weight of representing all females on her shoulder in the military because we're such a minority there. You probably had this experience as a black man in corporate America or somewhere else that you represent all African American people in all of your actions. That is far too heavy of a burden for any of us to carry. Larry Also with that, because it is true, where you feel like you are representing as a leader. You're representing the greater organization or people. So everything you do is going to maybe impress others that are watching to have a perception of everybody that's like you that. So it causes you to feel like you have to ensure that you present yourself the best at all times. Which comes back to part of that theme that works within you as as a leader where you feel that has to be the case, and you're constantly making sure you push yourself to do that. Because you're you're representing something much bigger than you. Daniella I'd be interested to get your opinion on this. When you allow people to see holes that you have or places where you're not perfect? Well, other people might have skills in those areas that are on your team that have a specific skill in that area that you wouldn't have known about. Larry There are five principles that I kind of adhere to, when I'm doing training. Empathy, esteem, support, share, and involve. Most of the time, leaders will give someone responsibility to do something. But because there's zero defect mentality, or they feel like it can't be done, as well as if I if we're not doing it. They tend to remove the responsibility to the individual. Because Okay, if they turn in a 50% solution, you're like, okay, I'll tell you what, I'll work on it from here. Most of your subordinates realize that's what you do. So they only do half anyway, because you know, you're going to take it and do it.  Larry But if you can figure out a way to involve your people, to where they take that as their own, and they actually feel great doing it. That's what makes the difference. A lot of times, leaders do not realize that you cannot function. These people are the wind beneath your wings. They are the literal air that you breathe. So if you do not empower them, and give them and involve them in the opportunities to do great things, without removing the responsibility, allow them to do it. If it's not done to exactly what your standard is, based on your perception of what right looks like, it's okay. As long as it's ethical and legal, moral and safe. Because what's going to happen, it's going to snowball, it's going to pay bigger dividends down the road.  Daniella Larry, we're gonna have to wrap up soon. Unfortunately, I know. We could go forever. We'll have to have you back on in the future. Larry I would love it. Thank you. Daniella So Larry, are you providing a gift or a discount for listeners today? Larry Yes, I am. As a matter of fact, I would love to, for anyone that reaches out to us. Let us know that they're looking for an opportunity to receive some awesome transformational leadership initiatives in their organization. If they contact us, and let us know that they heard this in relation to this podcast, we are going to provide discounts to them for that. Daniella Perfect, and  what's the best way to contact you, Larry. Larry So the best way to contact us is if you would, you can go to our website, it's www. Naylor2 enterprise.com or you can actually look me up on LinkedIn, Larry Naylor, I'm out there. You can actually see a lot of the information that we have. But if you go to our website, you can see some of our capabilities in leadership and in coaching, as well as international and global trade compliance and things like that. We'd love to come and talk to your people. We love what we do. We're passionate about it, because it makes a greater greater America, greater culture, greater world that we're living in. So we're so looking forward to doing those types of things. Daniella Perfect and all of the links and how to get in contact with Larry will be on our show notes, which are found www.cavnessHRblog.com. Okay, Larry, 20 seconds, what's one piece of advice for our listeners? Larry One piece of advice for our listeners. Leading is an art form. Leadership is a gift, but the ability to portray that so that your people will follow is where the magic actually happens. So I would empower all of the leaders who are out there, and it goes back to the beginning of what I said. Leadership Is loving your people, sacrificing yourself so that others may gain. Then in the end, you will realize that was what you were set out to do from the very beginning. Leaders lead from the front and leaders eat last.  Daniella Larry, thank you for so much for sharing so much value on our show today. Can't wait to have you back on and thank you to all of our listeners Remember to be great every day. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Larry Payne, Ph.D. is an internationally respected yoga teacher and back specialist. The L.A. Times named Larry “One of America’s most respected Yoga teachers”. He co-authored Yoga Therapy Rx, Yoga for Dummies and The Business of Teaching Yoga. Larry is founding president of the International Association of Yoga Therapists, founder of the Corporate Yoga program at the J. Paul Getty Museum, the first Yoga teacher to offer Yoga classes at the World Economic Forum, co-founder of the yoga curriculum at UCLA’s School of Medicine, and the founding director of the new Yoga therapy certification program at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. In this episode we talk about: How him and richard miller met How he got into yoga and the people he was fortunate to study with How yoga is a stress reducer How Krishnamarchya adapted yoga to be about the individual (vini yoga) The evolution of today’s yoga What Prime of Life yoga is How Yoga Therapy started How his want for material things has changed over time What his purpose in life is    https://samata.com/ Prime of Life Yoga International Association of Yoga Therapists Class on Common Aches + Pains

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Heidi Roizen Managing Director, Mobius Venture Capital Date: August 15, 2007 NCWIT Interview with Heidi Roizen BIO: Heidi Roizen has spent her entire life in the entrepreneurial ecosystem of Silicon Valley, first as an entrepreneur and ultimately as a venture capitalist helping other entrepreneurs build the great companies of tomorrow. She is currently a Managing Director of Mobius Venture Capital, a venture fund with over $2 billion under management. In that capacity, Heidi serves on the Boards of Directors of Reactrix, Ecast, Perpetual Entertainment and AuctionDrop. Heidi began her career in 1983 by co-founding T/Maker Company, a software publisher and developer for early personal computers including the IBM PC and the original Macintosh. As CEO, Heidi led the company for over a decade, raised two rounds of venture capital and ultimately consummated a successful acquisition of T/Maker by Deluxe Corporation. In 1996, she joined Apple Computer as VP of Worldwide Developer Relations. After one year at Apple, Heidi decided to return to her entrepreneurial roots, this time as a Mentor Capitalist and ultimately a Venture Capitalist. Heidi has also been actively involved in the trade associations critical to the Valley. She is a past president of the Software Publishers Association and served on its board from 1987 to 1994. She also represented the venture industry as a member of the Board of Directors of the National Venture Capital Association from 2003 to 2007. She also served on the board of Great Plains Software from 1997 until its acquisition by Microsoft in 2001, and is a past Public Governor of the Pacific Exchange. She is also a frequent guest lecturer at Stanford as well as a speaker at conferences for technologists, entrepreneurs, or women executives. Heidi holds a BA and an MBA from Stanford University. She is married to orthopedic surgeon David Mohler and has two daughters. Lee Kennedy: Hi. This is Lee Kennedy, board member of the National Center for Women and Information Technology, or NCWIT. And this is part of a series of interviews that we're having with fabulous entrepreneurs, women who have started IT companies in a variety of sectors, all of whom had insightful stories to tell us about being entrepreneurs. With me, I have Larry Nelson, from w3w3.com. Hi, Larry. How are you doing? Larry Nelson: Oh, great. It's wonderful to be here again. And one of the things that is so exciting for us at w3w3.com is that we are helping support, I think, the most fabulous program that we've experienced since we got in the radio business in '98, and the idea that we're helping inspire young women, girls, getting into IT, looking into that, as well as being an entrepreneur. But now, we're also getting phone calls from business leaders, people in schools, who say, "This is such a great program. We'd like to help promote it, too." Lee: Well, that's wonderful. Larry: One of the interesting things that we have here that's a little bit of a twist is that we're interviewing an entrepreneur who became a venture capitalist, and also, of course, then, therefore works and helps support entrepreneurs. And we're very pleased that we're interviewing Heidi Roizen, who is a managing director of Mobius Venture Capital. And we've got a little bit of a twist here. Lee and I are here in Colorado, and Lucy Sanders, the CEO and founder of NCWIT, is in California, at Heidi's home base. So, Lucy, let's get started. Lucy Sanders: All right. Hi, everyone. I'm sitting here with Heidi in her beautiful home in Atherton. I've been here a few times, and I just think it's so much fun to be here and interview you here in your office. Heidi Roizen: Well, thank you. I hope the dogs don't participate. Lucy: Or they might. They might have something profound to say. Heidi: They often do. Lucy: One of the things that makes it so exciting to interview you is that when I think, about Silicon Valley, I think, about you. And I think that you're synonymous with Silicon Valley. You've done a lot, as Larry mentioned. You've started companies. You're in venture capital. You were educated here at Stanford. You're a part of the community... Heidi: I was actually born at the Stanford Hospital, which I think, I'm probably the only one in Silicon Valley... Lucy: And why don't you spend a minute or two bringing us up to speed about what you've been doing lately? Heidi: Well, I am currently serving on four boards. They keep me very busy. They are all companies that are definitely not in their "two guys and a dog and a laptop" stage any longer, but they're all still companies that aren't through to the end of the road yet. So, lots of interesting challenges in terms of recruiting, customer acquisition, strategic business development, and all the normal things one goes through in startup land. So, I'm working on those companies, and then I'm working on a few entrepreneurial ventures on the side, helping out some friends. I always love having my fingers in the very, very early stages, and so I like having a few of those to work on as well. Lucy: Well, and I happen to know you're very generous with your time for nonprofits and for Stanford students. Heidi: Yeah. Lucy: The last time I was here, we had a great dinner, where you brought them back to your home. And I think, you're going to have some great advice for us, so why don't we just get right to the interview? Heidi: OK. Lee: Well, Heidi, I'll jump in and ask our first question, and that's: how did you first get into technology? Was it when you were a child or in college? And then, what technologies do you think are really cool today? Heidi: OK. Well, the first question is one that I think, if you're born and raised in Silicon Valley, at this time ‑ born in 1958, graduated from Stanford, undergrad in 1980 ‑ you couldn't help but apply for a job and end up at a tech company. So, even though I was not a technologist ‑ in fact, my undergraduate degree is in creative writing ‑ I ended up as the editor of the company newsletter for a little startup called Tandem Computers. Lee: Wow. Heidi: And that's really where I got my first inkling that there was something really exciting about the computer industry. What I realized, at that time, was I kind of looked around, and everybody getting ahead either had an engineering degree or an MBA. And it was a little late for me to go get an engineering degree, I thought, but I figured the MBA thing looked like a pretty good idea. So, I went back to Stanford and got that, and really fell in love with personal computing at the time. It's hard for people... I mean, I sound like such an old geezer when I say this. But, I was the class of 1983, and there were only three people ‑ I was one of them ‑ who owned their own personal computer at school. And now, can you imagine being a graduate student and not having a personal computer? You'd be hopeless. So, started my company right out of school and just never looked back. I had the good fortune to have a brilliant programmer as a brother, who really didn't like the business side, and I loved the business side. And the thing I like to tell people, often, who are non‑technologists, who wonder about being in the technology field, I tell them, "You know, need a mix of people." I don't have to know how to build a car to drive one. And in fact, I'd say, particularly in my early times working with my brother, who was the genius programmer, sometimes he'd build features that were so genius that only he could use them, and they weren't very practical. So, I think, sometimes it's good to be the petunia in the onion patch, as I used to call it in the development hall. Lucy: Tell us a little bit about the technology that you're thinking about as being the next wave of technical, cool gadgets. Heidi: I think, gadgets is always a slippery slope, because there are gadgets that I just love. I mean, we're investors in Sidekick and Sling, so we definitely have some gadgets companies out there. If any of you have seen a Reatrix system in the malls and in the theaters, and the Reactive television systems, or an Ecast jukebox ‑ we've got tons of portfolio companies I can tell you about that all have exciting gadgets and technologies. To me, where I'm focused right now is I've been thinking a lot about the demographic that is me ‑ the woman who still wants to look good and feel good, who has more free time, who has more money, who, however, still has family obligations, has a career. We're hitting 50, and when our parents hit 50, we thought they were pretty much close to death... Heidi: Now, we are shocked to find that we are 50. And I think, what's interesting is that the Silicon Valley ‑ and it's a little bit like Hollywood ‑ get so focused on youth and the youth culture and the spending money that youths have and advertising to youths. And while I've got nothing against young people, I think that the people my age and women my age have been an underserved demographic, when it comes to utilizing the web as a medium for exchange, as a community, as an outlet for all sorts of things and a place to go learn about things. And I'm seeing more and more activities around that, and I can't tell you how many times... this is probably hitting all of my same‑age brethren entrepreneurs, but we're all sort of getting up and saying, "I don't really want to start the next teen cell phone. I really want to start something that my friends and I could use." And so I'm seeing a lot of really interesting companies come about, a lot that combine community with some of the really innovative things that can be done online. Lucy: Give it some time. Heidi: Yeah. Lucy: Give it some time. Larry: Yeah, you bet. I'm not that old yet. But, anyhow... Lee: That's right, Larry. Larry: They're laughing... Heidi: Somebody once asked me to predict the future of venture investing, and I said, "Just about the time we finally invest in the ultimate weight‑loss pill and the instant‑tan pill, culture will change so that it's not cool to be thin and it's not cool to be tan, and we'll lose again." Larry: Oh, boy. My personal friend, Mark Twain, said, "Youth is wasted on the young." Heidi: That's right. Larry: Anyhow. I can't help but ask this, Heidi. Many people don't look at venture capitalists as entrepreneurs, but anybody who is a managing director, believe me, they are entrepreneur. But, of course, Heidi has the background and experience of being an entrepreneur. She's now continuing to support and work with entrepreneurs. What is it about you that makes this all happen? And what makes it tick, in terms of an entrepreneur? Heidi: Well, there are so many answers. And I've had the pleasure to listen to many of your wonderful speakers on this series before myself, and I think, a lot of things have been mentioned about tenacity and creativity and mission and a passion about what you're doing. There are so many things that I can think of. And of course, if you look me up on LinkedIn, I refer to myself as a "recovering entrepreneur," which is a little bit of an inside joke at Mobius. We're recovering entrepreneurs. Heidi: I think, what I had to learn, going from being an entrepreneur to being a venture capitalist, is it's like being the quarterback and then being the coach. When you're a venture capitalist, you do work behind the scene, you do help a lot. But, they're sort of not your losses, and they're not your victories. And if you're doing your job right, the entrepreneur is on the cover of "Time" magazine, not you. When you're an entrepreneur, the buck stops here. It's funny. I just went on a walk with a fellow entrepreneur of mine, and he was talking about a friend who used to be a vice president of a big company and is now the CEO of a small company, and one of the things he was saying to her is, "Now you understand how the buck really stops here." Heidi: And I think, for me, what really defines an entrepreneur is something that somebody said to me once. When I was running T/Maker, we had this product line called ClickArt, which is still around today, and it's basically electronic clip art. But, you have to remember, when we did that product in 1984, there were no scanners; there was no PostScript; there was no anything. We were literally sitting artists down, at 128K max. We didn't even have a stylus. They were drawing with the mouse in 72 DPI to create electronic clip art. I mean, that's as basic as it was. And when we shipped that product, I remember staying at a trade show, and I can't remember how many people came up to me and said, "Wow! You know, I thought of that, too." Right? And in the back of my mind, I thought, "Yeah, you thought of it. But, we did it." Heidi: And I think, for most of these things, it's that "one percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration." There are so many ideas that just die on the vine because a person doesn't go out and try to actually do them. They think they're a cool idea, but other things get in the way and they don't really work hard at it. And not only do they not work hard at the creative process, but the process I'll loosely call is the destructive process. With entrepreneurs, one of the things I respect the most is, when you come up with an idea, that instead of working on it for the first five days about how you're going to accomplish it, you spend five days trying to prove that it's already been done or it's not doable ‑ not because you're being pessimistic, but before you engage in the creative process, sometimes you have to go and say, "What else is already out there?" And one of my pet peeves as a venture capitalist is when somebody comes and pitches me an idea, and I say, "Have you ever heard about blahblah.com?" And they go, "What's that?" And I get on and I show them, and it's the exact company they were talking about building, but it already exists. My feeling is, today, particularly with Google and other search engines and the Internet, you can find a lot of this stuff out there, and you need to go out and look. But, I do think, ultimately, a long and winding answer, but the short answer is it's like Nike, man. It's "just do it." If you just do it, that's the only way to be an entrepreneur. If you're not willing to just do it, you're never going to be an entrepreneur. Lee: That is such great advice, Heidi, because so many people, even when they just go out and do it, it's not that first idea that they even end up doing sometimes. It's just having the guts to get out there and start the business and get in that industry and figure out what it is. Heidi: That's right. And ask a lot of questions and meet a lot of people and kiss a lot of frogs. Larry: Yeah. Heidi: It's always easy, in retrospect, to say, "Why did I take that meeting with that person?" But you don't know because, just as likely, you could take a meeting with another person. And I just had something happen this weekend, where I was helping someone on a music project. And we were talking to someone who was totally unrelated, and they just said, "Oh, what are you up to?" Totally unrelated to the music industry. And we told him what we were doing, and he said, "Hey, I'm good friends with..." And I won't name the names because it's all proprietary, but let's just say one of the most Grammy‑winning artists in the world. And he said, "I'll give him a call tomorrow and see if he's interested in helping you with this." So, it's like one of those random, like that's not what we were even there to talk about. But, that's how the conversation ended up going, and it could take us in a really exciting direction. You just never know when that kind of serendipitous stuff is going to occur. Lucy: Your remark about 1984, when you were doing T/Maker and you had to have the ClickArt, I just have to go back to that for a moment and say, in 1984, we were trying to draw things in P‑Roth inside... Lucy: That's not revolutionary. Heidi: Yeah, yeah. I remember the first time I showed my husband QuickTime, whenever it came out ‑ 1989, whatever. And I'd bring home my file, because we were under nondisclosure with Apple. And I'd show him this postage‑sized, grainy thing, and he goes, "Wow. I am really underwhelmed." Heidi: For me, as a computer geek, it was so exciting to see television on a computer. And for him, he was like, "Uh, honey? Have you looked at our TV set? It's like a lot better than this." Lucy: Because I know you, I think that one of the things that makes you a great entrepreneur is, in fact, you see potential, and you're willing to take the risk to develop the potential. Heidi: Yeah. It does make one quite dangerous. It's that joke about the person who buys houses because they see the good in every house. And I tend to be a person who sees the upside in things. Which I think, again, in order to be an entrepreneur, you have to be an optimist. You have to believe things are going to work out your way. But, you have to be realistic. And that's where I, again, for lack of a better word, call it the destructive process ‑ testing your idea, going out and thinking about the boundary cases: "What's the worse that could happen here? What's the worse that could happen here? How am I going to prepare for it?" And also going out and really combing the markets to make sure that what you're doing is unique, or, if not unique, that you're going to be the best somehow. Lucy: Well, along the way ‑ you've been here in Silicon Valley. You were born here. Heidi: Yeah. Lucy: And you've got a great network. And we are really curious to also understand who helped you the most. Who would you look to as being your mentor? Heidi: I was very fortunate to be born into a family where entrepreneurship was not a bad thing. I think, it's one of the things that makes California such a great place and will play a continuing role in the world economy is because we are just a culture, for 150‑plus years, of people striking out and doing something on their own, and failure not meaning social failure. You can be a business failure and still hold your head up and go to your kids' school and not be embarrassed about it. Lucy: "I failed today." Heidi: "I failed today." It's part of the process. I think that, for me, my father was a great role model for me because he was an entrepreneur. He was always thinking. He would say things to me like, "Today is the best day of my life because I have every day before today that I can draw on what I learned to apply to today." So, he was just that kind of person. And he wasn't like Mr. Rogers. I mean, he was just a great role model about how one could look for the opportunity in everything. And he was a very poor immigrant. I think, he graduated from high school. I'm not really sure. His dad died when he was 12, and he had to make money for the family to make ends meet. I mean, he had one of those really hard upbringings that made him very grateful and thankful, and very creative and resourceful. And he treated me like one of the boys. He never said to me, "Oh, you're a girl. You shouldn't do this," or "You can't go to graduate school," or "You can't do anything." In fact, if I said I couldn't do something because of being a woman, he would scoff at me. And my brothers joke that I'm the most like him... Heidi: So, he actually made me in his image, not my brothers. But, I was very lucky about that. I was very lucky, also, just to be in the computer industry in the late '70s and early '80s, because I really did get to grow up with the people who are the leaders in the industry. And so somebody said to me, "Wow! How did you get to be friends with Bill Gates?" And it's like, "Well, started 25 years ago." [laughs] Heidi: He was easier to get to then. But, it's things like that, that I think, I just had the great fortune to have a front‑row seat and be a participant in an industry that I really believe has changed the world. So, it gave me a lot of opportunities to learn from other people and have mentors and role models. Lee: So, Heidi, when you think about all you've done in your career ‑ building your own companies, being an investor ‑ what has been the toughest thing you've had to do in your career? Heidi: You know, you face so many tough challenges when you are the CEO and "the buck stops here." Someone once said to me, "Gosh, you're so lucky. You're the CEO. You have so much freedom." And I laughed, and I said, "You don't understand that when you're the CEO, you have the least freedom, because you can't just quit." I raised that money. I hired every one of these people. I gave those venture capitalists my commitment that I was going to bring it home for them. I'm not just going to walk out the door. I remember walking into my company every day. We had about 100 employees. And I would count the cars in the parking lot, and I would think about the car payments and the mortgage payments... Heidi: Everything that was dependent on this company. And so I would say, still, to this day, that the hardest thing you have to do is lay people off. I mean, the hardest thing you have to do is downsize your firm. It's not as hard to fire someone. This is an interesting thing. I would much rather terminate somebody for cause than lay people off because we can't afford it. When you terminate someone for cause ‑ and "for cause" is a real legal term. I don't want to use the legal definition of that. But, what I really mean is, when somebody's not a good fit for the job they're in, I find that it's really in their best interest to tell them and get them to move on to something else. And while that is sometimes hard, I think, it's the right thing to do, and I think, it's the right thing to do for the person. And I've often found that you check in with them a couple years later, they're better off where they are, even though this can be very difficult. I do think, going through the dot‑com bust and having to lay people off, knowing that there wasn't going to be another job they could just waltz into, was a really, really hard thing to do. To me, those were the hardest things I ever had to do. In fact, my T/Maker employees still joke about this time where we had our first loss ever and we had to lay off some people, and it was Christmas. I was about four‑months pregnant. I said to my husband, "I've got to do it myself. I hired all these people. I'm going to do it myself. I'm going to give each one of them the news." So I'm in my office, and they're coming in, or I'm going to their offices. And I'm pregnant, and so the hormones coursing through my veins. So, I am sobbing through these terminations, and they are comforting me. Heidi: They feel sorry for me. But, I have to lay them off. Sobbing, sobbing, sobbing. And I say to my husband, "This is the worst business day of my life, where I'm terminating some people who've been with me five, six years, and I just feel terrible. And it's Christmas, and I had to tell them, 'No bonuses for you guys, and you're getting laid off.'" I said, "Please go to Blockbuster and rent a funny movie so that when I get home, I can take my mind off of it." So, I come home, and what had he rented, but Chevy Chase's "Christmas Vacation." Heidi: And I don't know if you guys have seen this, but of course, the whole story is about a guy who believes he's getting a Christmas bonus and builds a swimming pool or something, and then he doesn't get the bonus, and he ends up kidnapping his boss. Heidi: It was just one of those moments: I just didn't know whether to laugh. I'll never forget that moment. I still cry when I see that show. It was on TV last Christmas, and I'm like crying through it. My kids are looking at me. They're like, "Mom, it's a comedy." Not for me. Lucy: Not for me. In fact, my answer to this question is the same. I think that laying people off is clearly one of the hardest things that I've ever had to do. Heidi: Absolutely. Lucy: We've heard a lot of great advice so far in this interview from you about entrepreneurship, and the Nike "just do it," and who cares if you've thought about it? Just get it done. Heidi: Yeah. Lucy: And other types of advice around doing your homework and seeing the potential. If you were sitting right here with a young person and you were giving them advice about entrepreneurship, what else would you tell them? And one of the things that comes to mind is a conversation we had sometime about networking. Heidi: Yeah. Lucy: And I thought you had some of the best advice about networking that I've ever heard. Heidi: Well, I have a ton of advice about networking. I'm a little typecast as a networking speaker because Harvard did a case on me a number of years ago that really is about my philosophy of networking. And when they approached me to do the case, I said, "Why would anyone want a case on this? It's all just common sense." It's kind of like that book: "Everything I needed to know about networking, I learned in the second grade." But, it's just commonsense and practical and courtesy. And so, they did do this case, and I do speak on the case a lot. And my fundamental belief is that it's very rare that anything happens as a singular effort. Yeah, you can go climb ‑ well, even climbing Mount Everest, it's a team, right? And entrepreneurship is a team sport with very many lonely moments. So, you have to be the one. I'm working on this project with someone. I got up at four o'clock in the morning a couple of days ago because I thought of something, and I knew if I waited till morning, it wasn't going to be the same. So, I had to get up and come down here and sit at the computer for an hour and write up my thoughts while they were fresh. I think, there are a lot of times when you're just singularly approaching something, but I think, you have to know how to ask for help, and how to give help. Students say this to me all the time, they say, "Well, I don't have anything to give." You always have something to give, everyone has something to give. Good lord, you can come and talk to me and baby‑sit my children while you're talking me. I had one guy who traded me, I would talk to him about his business and he was a personal trainer, so he would train me while I was talking to him about his business. Heidi: And I think that one of the errors that people make in networking is they try to hard to gather business cards, and they don't think about "What is my connection with this other person, and what do I have to give them? What in return am I going to ask them for?" Again, I will bring it back to this other comment, a lot of times you don't know how the other person is going to help you, and you're not quite sure always how you're going to help them. Sometimes, it's quite surprising, but if you put yourself open to that, and you use some of the modern tools ‑ like I've become a real LinkedIn convert, because I love being able to get on LinkedIn and see who my friends know that I might want to talk to about industries completely foreign to me and vice versa. If somebody has a good friend from college who now wants to do something in the out of home advertising market and sees I'm on the board of Aventure and would like to talk to me. I don't mind doing that stuff because I sort of feel like there's this great, you know, we all help each other in this community and I'm a little bit of a believer in that kind of pay it forward. It's interesting right now because in Aventure I'm working closely on, I have to reach out and ask for a lot of favors, and I've been very aware that for a lot of my current roles in life I'm the one that asks for the favors than asked. Now that I'm doing the asking it's interesting, I'm uncomfortable. I'd much rather do a favor for someone else than ask somebody for a favor. It's my nature, and it's the nature of many people. But, I think that you have to get good at understanding "What am I asking for? Is it appropriate for me to ask it? Is the person capable of delivering it? Is it an appropriate amount of time for them to send and do something for me? And what could I possibly do for them?" I always try to make sure that people know I'm quite open to doing something for you in exchange, and by the way, no is a perfectly good answer, too. If I ask you a favor and the answer is no, just tell me no. I'm very comfortable with that. Lucy: That's great advice because so many people they really are either afraid to network, or don't know how to network, and that just makes it really clear. Heidi: Networking is also very awkward; somebody from Stanford called me up once and said, "Can I network with you?" What is that is that like my pen pal or something? Lucy: Just network. Heidi: Let's say you want to meet someone, and I guess, with the powers of Google and the Internet and all that, you might want to meet some important person. If you have no context, it's going to be a very fruitless conversation. But, every one of them, their kids go to school, they are on a charitable board, they may enjoy a certain kind of athletic activity. I'm not saying become a stalker, but generally, for example, if you want to get to know a person and they happen to be on the board of a charitable organization go find out what the annual fundraiser is on that charitable organization and volunteer to work at it. Chances are you're going to be able to meet that person over time if you get involved in something like that. And, by the way, you're doing something good too. That's again, one of the powers of Silicon Valley ‑ both good and bad ‑ you've got to be careful, you've got to find out if other moms and dads on the soccer sidelines have MBAs because everybody's kind of in this business. Heidi: It is interesting that you have so many different places where you meet and run into people, and so many people I do business with are friends of mine in other context. Lucy: So Heidi, you had talked earlier in the interview about different characteristics that you thought were really important to help entrepreneurs grow and build companies, but when you think about yourself, what are some of your personal characteristics that you have that have helped you to be successful as an entrepreneur? Heidi: Certainly tenacity. I mean, I'm very tenacious about... you put me on something I'm on a mission and I'm not going to let it go. I like to learn new things, so I like to push myself and try to learn something new. I think, when you're constantly learning it helps you get a better job, [laughs] and in so many areas. I'm definitely a people person, I love talking with people, I love meeting people. I'm very comfortable asking people for their opinions and I think, I'm a pretty good listener. So, I think that that also helps me be an entrepreneur, because you learn from other people, you gather opinions, you mold what you're doing. Frankly, it helps you in terms of going back to asking for favors, giving favors, recruiting people. People generally want to work with people they like and people they respect, which is another thing. My belief is that I'm going to be in this world for, I hope, a pretty long time. One thing I've learned being almost 50 and being in the Valley all this time is that you run into the same people over and over and over again. So, don't burn a bridge unless you've decided that's the best course of action. I like to sleep at night. I don't like to do bad deals, and I don't like to squeeze the last nickel out of somebody just because I have the upper hand. I like to live that way. While there's always different opinions about anything you do, I try to test everything. Does this match my ethics? Can I sleep at night? If my husband or my kids knew I did this, would they think less of me as a person? I like to live that way. I think, an entrepreneurship is not a zero sum game. Your gain doesn't have to come out of somebody else's loss. Larry: Boy, I'll say. You know, Heidi, one thing I've learned to do is that I'm going to call you "Coach" from now on. I just want to clarify one little thing. You said something earlier about kissing the frogs, or was it kissing your dogs? Heidi: Yeah, kissing frogs. Although frogs wish it was kissing dogs. Larry: Yeah. And you also just mentioned that you should ask for help. Do you want to introduce me to Bill Gates? Heidi: No. Larry: No. OK. Heidi: That's a good one you bring up, because it is one of those, how do you manage a relationship towards a person who's very important or famous? One thing I had to decide early on is, I just set certain rules. And I've gotten very comfortable saying "No" to people. So, people will say to me, "Can you introduce me to Bill Gates?" And the answer is, "No, I can't," because if I did that for everybody, they would.... And the hardest part is people thinking, "I have the best charity in the world. I have something that would be so interesting to the Foundation. Please help me get to the right person. Can you please send this to Bill and Melinda?" And I say no. One of the things that gives me comfort in saying no is that I say, "Look my own husband runs a charitable organization called Refugee Relief that does medical assistance in countries under conflict. He'd be a perfect candidate, and he hasn't even asked Bill and Melinda for money." One of the things I try to do is live by my own rules. The other thing I try to do is, for example, when I sold a company from my portfolio to Microsoft I didn't even talk to Bill about it. I'm not going to mention, "Hey, I'm selling one of my portfolio companies" to him. It's not relevant. I really try to respect that, particularly people who are in positions like Bill where everyone's approaching you all of the time, you need to be respectful of the pressures on that person's time. I think, that's one of the reasons why Bill and Melinda and I have a good and long‑standing relationship. They know that I respect that there needs to be boundaries there, because they don't have the luxury of living normal lives. Larry: Yeah, that's fact. By the way, of course, you know I was just saying that to.... Heidi: Oh, I know. Larry: However, last week we interviewed Brad Feld and he did say, "Hi to Heidi." Heidi: Oh, that's so sweet. I adore Brad. Larry: All right. Let me ask you this question. In your approach to your professional life, you do so many things. How do you bring about balance? Heidi: That's an excellent question. If you'd like I can bring my 12 and 14 year olds in here right now to continue the counterpoint to that. Larry: oh. Heidi: I do try to set limits. In my house, although we have wireless access, I'm not the person who walks around with my laptop and uses it everywhere. We certainly have a "no laptop in the bedroom" rule. I don't tend to watch TV and do email at the same time. I have a home office that I come in to do my work and then I try to leave it. I also try to have a commitment with my kids. If I say, "I'm going to stop working at seven," then I'm going to stop working at seven. I mix business and pleasure a lot. I have a lot of social engagements with people. I have a lot of people over for dinner. I try to engage my kids in some of that, because luckily at their ages they find some of that very interesting. In one of the projects I'm working on right now, I ask them for advice a lot. I've been able to pick their brains a lot about it. And they've been really great. I tell them, you know, if I'm having a bad day, you know I had a bad day about a legal contract I was working on. And because it didn't get done I missed a window of production for something. And I said to them, they said you know, "Why are you in such a bad mood?" And instead of saying something like, "Well, I had a bad day at work." I said, "Well, let me explain to you. This company needs a piece of paperwork before we can contract this production facility. We didn't get the piece of paperwork. Now because this production facility can only do things in, you know, they have another client the next three weeks that pushed me out a month. So, here's a one day delay on a contract that's going to cost me a three week delay on the production. And that's why I'm so mad about this today." And so that what is the thing? A teachable moment right? You know, I try to bring them in to the things that I'm doing. But, it is important sometimes to just close the door and say, "I'm sorry I'm not going to do this." I try very hard not to schedule meetings on the weekends. I try very hard not to schedule meetings at night. I try to really limit my travel because it is very disruptive to my family when I travel. And so, I try to make accommodations. Lucy: Well, and your daughters are wonderful. And having seen them at a couple of dinners. I mean the integration works really well. Heidi: They're pretty cute. Yeah. Lucy: They're pretty cute. It works really well because they get to see a lot of different people over here. Heidi: Yes they do. Lucy: That they wouldn't ordinarily see. They lead unusual lives. Heidi: We had a nice conversation about Norwegian and other things this morning. So, it was very good. Lucy: They were very funny. Heidi: And they do provide very funny moments. One time actually, Bill and Melinda were coming over for dinner. And Nicky was playing on her Xbox. And she knew Bill was coming over and said like "Can I have him sign my Xbox?" "Oh, I guess, you can ask him to sign your Xbox." Which she didn't ultimately do when he came over because she was too embarrassed. But, she said to me, "Microsoft, yeah, they make the Xbox. Do they make any other products?" And I just had to laugh. Heidi: You know, the eyes of a thirteen year old is like all they make is the Xbox. Lucy: Well you really have achieved a lot. And you have front row seats to a lot. And I have no doubt, fifty or not, that you are going to be on the front row for many, many years. Heidi: Not done yet. Lucy: Not done yet. So, tell us what's next for you. Heidi: Oh, I'm so excited about what I'm doing. But, I can't tell you. Sorry. Lucy: I'm going to jump across the desk and strangle her. Heidi: I know. I know. I am. You know I'm continuing to do my work with Mobee and then a company that we work on. And Brad and Jake my partners there. I mean, you know, we have a great relationship and I'm enjoying that. But, I am definitely an entrepreneur at heart. In fact I've been thinking, at some point on my link and profile. Right now, it says venture capitalist and recovering entrepreneur. And someday soon it's going to say "Relapsed entrepreneur and venture capitalist" because I just can't help myself. Heidi: So, I just started a little company. I actually funded it yesterday. I'm fortunate enough to have provided my own seed capital. I joke to my husband. I said, "It's very important tonight because we're having cocktails with my lead investor," which of course was me. [laughter] So, we laughed about that. So, I have a little start up that I'm working on, which I will hope to tell you all about really soon. But, it's not quite baked enough yet. So, you'll just have to wait. Lucy: I just hope it's about fifty year old women. Heidi: You will, you will buy one of these products. Well, I'm going to give you one. And Lucy. Larry Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Heidi RoizenInterview Summary: Born and raised in Silicon Valley, Heidi spent the first part of her career founding and growing tech companies. Now she enjoys helping entrepreneurs build companies as a coach instead of a player. Release Date: August 15, 2007Interview Subject: Heidi RoizenInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry Nelson, Lee KennedyDuration: 34:33

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Gillian Caldwell Executive Director, Witness Date: August 9, 2007 NCWIT Interview with Gillian Caldwell BIO: Gillian Caldwell took the helm as the CEO for Global Witness in July of 2015. Prior to that, she was the Executive Director of WITNESS (www.witness.org), which uses the power of video to open the eyes of the world to human rights abuses. By partnering with local organizations around the globe, WITNESS empowers human rights defenders to use video as a tool to shine a light on those most affected by human rights violations, and to transform personal stories of abuse into powerful tools of justice. Since its founding in 1992, WITNESS has partnered with groups in more than 60 countries, bringing often unseen images, untold stories and seldom heard voices to the attention of key decision makers, the media, and the general public -- prompting grassroots activism, political engagement, and lasting change. A film-maker and an attorney, Gillian has experience in the areas of international human rights, civil rights, intellectual property, contracts, and family law. At WITNESS, she has helped produce numerous documentary videos for use in advocacy campaigns around the world, including Outlawed: Extraordinary Rendition, Torture and Disappearances in the "War on Terror";System Failure: Violence, Abuse and Neglect in the California Youth Authority; Books Not Bars; and Operation Fine Girl: Rape Used as a Weapon of War in Sierra Leone. She is also co-editor and author of a book published by Pluto Press called Video for Change: A Guide to Advocacy and Activism (2005). Gillian was formerly the Co-Director of the Global Survival Network, where she coordinated a two-year undercover investigation into the trafficking of women for forced prostitution from Russia and the Newly Independent States that helped spur new anti-trafficking legislation in the U.S. and abroad. She also produced and directed Bought & Sold, a documentary film based on the investigation which received widespread media coverage. Gillian lived in South Africa during 1991 and 1992, investigating hit squads and security force involvement in township violence, and has worked in Boston, Washington, D.C., and New York on issues related to poverty and violence. Gillian has been awarded the Echoing Green Fellowship (1996-1998), the Rockefeller Foundation Next Generation Leadership Award (2000), the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship Award Winner (2001-present), the Tech Laureate of the Tech Museum (2003), Ashoka: Innovators for the Public as a special partner (2003), Journalist of the Month by Women's Enews (2004), and the Skoll Social Entrepreneurship Award (2005). Gillian is a member of the Social Venture Network, promoting new models and leadership for socially and environmentally sustainable business in the 21st century, and she is admitted to the Bar in NY and Washington, D.C. She received her BA from Harvard University and her J.D. from Georgetown University, where she was honored as a Public Interest Law Scholar. Larry Nelson: This is Larry Nelson, with w3w3.com, Colorado's Voice of the Technology and Business Community. And we are a very fortunate proud partner with the National Center for Women and Information Technology, or, as we call it, NCWIT. And we've got a three‑part interview here; we're doing a wonderful interview with a very strong entrepreneur that we are very interested in talking with on some interesting topics. And we're here today with Lucinda Sanders ‑ we call her Lucy; all of her friends do ‑ who is the CEO of NCWIT, as well as Leigh Kennedy, who is on the board at NCWIT; and she's a serial entrepreneur herself. So, Lucy, welcome to the show. Let's get into it and introduce your guest. Lucy Sanders: Well, today, we're introducing Gillian Caldwell, who is the executive director of Witness. I have to say, Gillian, after really looking at your website and understanding what the mission of Witness is, it's a very compelling mission that you have. And your tagline, "See It, Film It, Change It", I thought, was one of the best tag lines I've ever seen for the mission of an organization. Can you give us a little bit of background about witness? I know you started it in 1992. Gillian Caldwell: Yes. So, witness was founded in 1992 by musician and advocate Peter Gabriel. He was struck, when he was touring with Amnesty International, by the isolation of the human‑rights defenders that he met in countries around the world who had had their stories of abuse denied and covered up and forgotten. And he had with him, at that time, in 1989, a handheld video camera; it was a Hi8; it cost about $1, 800. And he was using that camera to record their stories and their experiences; and he was struck by the potential of those stories and that technology to bridge the gap and connect audiences all around the world to those realities and ensure they weren't covered up and forgotten. And Witness was founded just a few years later, in the wake of the beating of Rodney King, which, of course, was shot by a handheld video camera, which galvanized an international conversation about police brutality. The Reebok Human Rights Foundation provided the early seed funding in 1992. And witness began as a technology‑transfer organization, with a primary focus on donating handheld video cameras to human‑rights advocates around the world. Over the last fifteen years, since we were founded in 1992, Witness has evolved considerably. And, at this stage, as you suggest at the outset, our focus is on enabling people to see it, film it, and change it. We don't just provide the camera: but we provide both the technical and strategic support that human‑rights defenders need to document the violations; ensure that they can, in a compelling, story‑driven way, explain not just the problem, but the solution; and get that media in front of the audiences that can make a difference, whether it's a Congressional subcommittee trying to decide whether or not to allocate armed forces and funding in the context of the genocide in Darfur, or whether it's a local judicial official who is being influenced by the evidence that's being presented before him on a videotape. Lucy: Well, and I think, in looking at your site, as well, you're using all the Internet and Web 2.0 technology now to really create this worldwide audience. I mean it's a very compelling use of technology to achieve social good. Gillian: What's really exciting at this stage is that I'm just about to launch something called "the Hub", which will basically be a kind of a YouTube for human rights or, as I like to think of it, a YouMyWikiTube for human rights. If you imagine the technologies and the philosophies of YouTube, MySpace, and Wikipedia, you get close to what we're trying to do at the Hub, which is a site that will be premiering in the fall of 2007. So this is a destination, a website, to which anybody anywhere could upload visual imagery, whether it's photographs or video, or possibly even audio content, of human‑rights‑related issues in their communities, here in the United States and around the world. They can upload it and opt in to a community of people that care about those issues and support campaigns for change. Lucy: Well, so, it's real evidence of how technology supports social entrepreneurism. And that gets me to my first question about technology in general: what technologies do you see on the horizon that are really going to make a difference for you, in addition to the Web 2.0 and Internet types of technology? Gillian: Well, of course, the cell phone, and particularly video‑ and photograph‑enabled cell phones, are really making a difference. I mean, historically, when people thought about the Rodney King beating, they thought "Oh, if you can just capture the abuse as it happens, it will make all the difference"; and the reality is that, with the larger video cameras people have historically used, you're unlikely to be in the wrong place at the right time. But, now, with the handheld cell phones, so many of which are video‑enabled and photograph‑enabled, there is a brand new opportunity to capture that abuse as it happens. If you think back to the London Tube bombings, just a couple of years ago, when a so‑called citizen journalist was reporting live from inside the London Tubes and the BBC moved ahead to create an email address to which anybody could email imagery of news‑related stories in their community, you start to realize that the cell phone is actually really revolutionizing the way we access information, as is text‑messaging and, of course, the Internet, which really didn't exist when Witness was founded. Lucy: And the cell network is very ubiquitous as well, especially in developing countries. Gillian: Right. I mean we still have a massive digital divide: but the beauty of the cell networks is that many of the countries which have historically been confronted with that massive divide will be able to leapfrog over the physical infrastructure, as those cellular networks are strengthened; and we'll be able to embed larger and larger files and transmit larger files over the cellular networks. But it is a concern, still, of course, when we think about the challenges of the Hub. And to take, for example, perhaps a humanitarian‑aid worker in Darfur, who happens to be on the spot as a genocide unfolds, who captures some of that imagery on their cell phone, and who wants to upload it to the Hub so that maybe the Save Darfur Coalition, in Washington, D.C., can then download it and provide that to the Congressional subcommittee: that aid worker faces several challenges. First of all: What's the bandwidth? What's the cost? What's the expense to upload that content? And does he have the strength of signal to do it? And secondly: What about the security risks? Here's a big issue for us, because, of course, if we log the IP addresses of the people who are uploading content, even if we enable them to upload the content anonymously, they really may be at risk, and we could face a subpoena, as Yahoo! Did in the case of Chinese dissidents. So the simple size of the file, of the video file, as it stands, makes it very difficult to encrypt or anonymize those files and it does put people at risk. So the technology is still insipient in terms of really fully enabling what we're talking about. Lucy: It is interesting how you've continually used the latest technologies to help in the pursuit. So, if we switch gears a little bit and we think about you being an entrepreneur: why did you decide to be an entrepreneur, and what is it about entrepreneurship that really makes you tick? Gillian: Well, I mean it's interesting that I have been sort of dubbed a social entrepreneur by a variety of organizations that recognize people in that field, whether it's Ashoka, or the Skoll Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, or the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, really going back to about 2001. And a social entrepreneur is defined variously; but it's really understood as somebody who's really taking an innovative and sustainable approach to an old problem. And what Ashoka says about social entrepreneurs is that they're born that way. And it's funny: it isn't a primary identity for me; but, more and more, I do understand myself as somebody who's genetically inclined towards innovation and towards growing new ideas and towards thinking really tactically and strategically about what's sustainable. But my passion is not earning income: my passion is doing work that feeds my soul; and that's why I've always invested myself in work that delivers social value.. Larry Nelson: Gillian, who in your life really helped, supported your ‑ whether it was genetically inclined beginnings, or was it a mentor that came along the way? Was it a particular group that really had a major influence on your direction? Gillian: Well, I think, like so many people, the most formative influences for me were both my family ‑ particularly parents, who were not, themselves, deeply involved at a political level but who really had what I would call progressive values and who were very driven by integrity, in terms of how they thought about the world ‑ and then, of course, my teachers, particularly my history teachers, in grammar school and in high school, who introduced me to Amnesty International. I began running my high‑school chapter of Amnesty International when I was 12 years old; and I recall organizing weekly Urgent Action letter‑writing campaigns with students, getting dozens of students to write letters to President Zia‑ul‑Haq, in Pakistan, at the time, about political prisoners. And I remember organizing a school symposium on torture. And, I think, there, again, not just my parents and their support of my commitment to doing social‑justice work, but the teachers that encouraged me. And then additionally, interestingly, the work of an artist by the name of Leon Galag, who died quite recently, but who did a series called The Mercenary Series, which was very powerful, enormous canvases of mercenaries in Latin America torturing political prisoners. And, strangely enough, because I lived in the back of an art gallery in SoHo, in New York, when I was growing up, those paintings were in my living‑room for a period of time. In fact, I've often commented that, in these paintings, in The Mercenary Series, there was always a perpetrator looking at you looking at them, almost making a witness out of you and demanding that you do something about it. So I see a very consistent narrative thread, in terms of my focus on social justice and my focus on enterprise, going back to the days when I used to host regular bake sales on the local street corner to try to earn a little income. Lucy: I'd say this is genetically baked into you. Leigh: No pun intended. I thought it was really interesting, too: you're a lawyer. Did you pursue a law degree in support of your social activism? Gillian: Yes. I decided to get a law degree because I wanted additional credibility and depth, in terms of doing policy‑oriented work. I didn't intend to practice, although I did enjoy the short period of time in which I practiced, both at the administrative level, representing disability applicants, and then also working with special‑education cases and discrimination cases, before I got involved in a big undercover investigation on the Russian Mafia and their involvement in trafficking women for forced prostitution. And that undercover investigation utilized hidden‑camera technologies. We posed as foreign buyers interested in purchasing women. And that was my real introduction to video advocacy, as I now call it. But the law degree was always intended to help give me a little bit more credibility, a little bit more depth. And I didn't ‑ I couldn't anticipate at the time that it would be as useful as it is, of course, in the context of running an organization like Witness, where, you'd think, most of my legal training would come into play in the context of human‑rights law, when, in fact, most of what I really deal with on a daily basis, through the three pro‑bono law firms that support our work, has to do with intellectual‑property and trademark protection. Lucy: That's what I was going to ask you about: digital rights management. But that's probably a discussion for another time. Larry: Yeah. Leigh: So, Gillian, when you think about your career as a social entrepreneur, what's really been the toughest thing that you've had to do? Gillian: The biggest challenge is recognizing that the only thing that will be constant is change, particularly in an organization like Witness, where you're focused on integrating new technologies into social‑change work. You have to stay adaptable and evolutionary, which means you're never standing still. So, while I've been running witness for almost ten years now, I can honestly say that the organization looks, feels, and acts very differently from quarter to quarter. When I started, it was just me; and, at this stage, for fiscal '08, we're going to have a budget of $4.2‑million and a staff of 30. So that's a very different operation than it is to run something that's just two or three people. I think the other thing is that, if you're working as an entrepreneur in a social context, you're constantly in the midst of a so‑called stretch assignment: you're learning as you move through the process. And what's so important is being sure that you're really thoughtful about reaching out to get the advice and guidance and support that you need along the way, and that you build a system and an infrastructure of support surrounding you, because it may not always exist within the organization itself, but there are people that have done it before and you're not always needing to reinvent the wheel. Lucy: Well, and speaking of advice: if you were sitting in a room with some young people, what advice would you give them about entrepreneurship? Gillian: Well, again, I look at it through the perspective of social enterprise. So, for me, the most important advice I could give anybody is to stay committed to evolution; and that means that you have to live as a learner. I think that Gandhi once said that we should live like we are going to die tomorrow but learn like we will live forever. And I really believe that's the case: if we aren't open to learning, and if we don't spend as much time listening as we spend speaking, we can't do anything well. So I think that's the most important thing: to stay adaptable, to stay evolutionary ‑ and to build leadership. Somebody who really is a leader is ultimately somebody who takes all the blame and none of the credit. And that's a hard thing to map your mind around; and, at times, it is a bit of a thankless task, because there's just as many nuts and bolts as there are opportunities for big‑picture strategic visioning to take place. But it's really important to stay humble and to stay open and to stay learning. And, as you mature, over time, you realize that, the more you know, really the less you know, I think. Lucy: That's really true. I have to say Gandhi is ‑ I love his quote: "Be the change you want to see in the world." Gillian: Yeah; well, that's also about really living your values. I think it's so easy to compartmentalize our values and to try to articulate them through the check we write at Christmastime or the bottle we put in the recycling bin. But the reality is that living your values is a full‑time occupation, and it really requires us to challenge ourselves all the time to think and wonder: you know, "Was the thought that just passed through my mind racist?", "Was the dynamic that I just participated in unfair?", "Am I carbon neutral?" I mean all of this is about integrity and about values and about being a productive member of the planet. Lucy: So, speaking of characteristics: when you think about yourself, what personal characteristics do you think have given you advantages in being an entrepreneur? Gillian: Well, I think I have a lot of assets in that department, which have served me really well. One is stick‑to‑it‑iveness: I am dogged and determined, and I will find a way; and that's absolutely necessary. You have to have passion driving your commitment; and I believe, if you're passionate, you can achieve whatever it is that you set out to. It's also important to have solid organizational skills. A lot of entrepreneurs are visionary but aren't fortunate enough to get the skills of discipline and the organization and detail orientation that is required to pull off an enterprise. So, for those people, I think, it's so important to recognize that and surround themselves with people that do complement them well in that way. I think the other issue, of course, is the strategic thinking. And, there, it's making sure not just that you give yourself space and opportunity to think strategically, but also that you create environments in which strategy can evolve through collective conversation. Too often, people at all levels of an organization are not involved in creating and participating and designing a strategy for an organization. And that's what builds ownership, and I think that's what builds better long‑term solutions... Larry Nelson: Gillian, with a background like you ‑ you've had this organization, now, for ten years; you now have a budget of $4.2‑million; you have 31 employees. Here's a question: how do you bring about balance to your personal and your professional lives? Gillian: Well, the quickest way to get some balance is to have some children. And I have two of those: I have a girl, named Tess, who's just about to turn five, and a boy, named Finley, who will be three shortly. And that really, really necessitates a balance, because I will not miss their childhoods. So it enabled me to really walk the walk and talk the talk when it comes to balance. You know, I have certain lines that I draw, in terms of the number of nights a month that I will be away from my children, and a commitment regarding the number of hours I want to be with them at the beginning and the end of each day. So that's really important. The other thing that is so important to me, which I'm really grateful to have been able to bring back into my life, is exercise. And I think everybody finds balance in different ways: some people, through spiritual practice; others, through meditation; and, for me, exercise and, at this stage, running is really critical. So I do run five to six days a week, for roughly 45 minutes; and that's a way to really stay balanced and attuned. Lucy: Well, Gillian, you've really achieved a lot. We haven't even really mentioned it on this interview; but you are an author. You're clearly a passionate activist. You're a lawyer. And, also, you're a techlaureate, from the Tech Museum, which is very impressive as well. You've achieved so much. Oh: and a mom, with great kids. What's next for you? Gillian: Well, interestingly, I'm not somebody who's ever had a clearly designed career path in mind. I'm fortunate that I've been able to work throughout my life in the things that are absolutely engrossing to me and that really make me feel passionate. So I don't have a next step in mind. One of the things that I am increasingly concerned about and do want to direct my attention to, in the context here at Witness and conceivably beyond that, is really the issue of the climate, which is collapsing around us. And I think, first of all, that we are sleeping on the job, in terms of recognizing how serious the issues are, and, second of all, that there is this arbitrary divide between the field of human rights and the environmental movement. And, in fact, if we don't work cohesively together to analyze the intersections between climate collapse and human rights, we're really going to be in trouble. Just by way of example: there will be, and already are, millions of environmental refugees as sea levels rise. Take a look at Bangladesh: much of Bangladesh will be underwater, millions of people forced from their homes. There is already, all over the world today, wars over resource extraction, whether it be wars for oil ‑ of course Iraq comes to mind there ‑ or gold or other natural minerals, which displace hundreds of thousands of people in countries and force them to confront unspeakable violence. There will be the massive spread of vectorial disease. We're already seeing that in disease mutations which function in higher‑temperature environments. So I really see that as a place for a lot more focus and energy; and I'm passionate about seeing what I can do, at Witness and beyond, in that area. Larry: Gillian, I have a feeling that you're going to see it, film it, and change it. Lucy: We really want to thank you for everything you're doing for our world and at Witness. We really appreciate the time that you have taken to talk to us. Gillian: Thank you so much for having me. Lucy: I just want to remind everybody that the podcasts are hosted at the NCWIT website, www.ncwit.org, and also w3w3.com. Larry: That's it. Gillian: And you can go to www.witness.org to learn more about the work. Lucy: Wonderful. Thank you very much. Larry: One more link. Leigh: Thank you, Gillian. Lucy: Bye‑bye. Gillian: O.K. Thank you. Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Gillian CaldwellInterview Summary: Gillian Caldwell is the Executive Director of WITNESS, which uses the power of video to open the eyes of the world to human rights abuses. A film-maker and an attorney, she has always believed in the power of images to change people's minds. Release Date: August 9, 2007Interview Subject: Gillian CaldwellInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 20:50

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Elizabeth Charnock CEO and founder, Cataphora Date: July 24, 2007 NCWIT Interview with Elizabeth Charnock BIO: Elizabeth Charnock is the CEO and co-founder of Chenope, a bootstrapped startup that creates analytics that predict the future of an organization based on the observable behaviors of its members based on whatever data is available. Prior to that Elizabeth founded Cataphora and led it from concept to profitability, funded entirely by revenues from clients and without any outside investment. The company's genesis was a fundamental insight that Elizabeth had about a revolutionary approach to information retrieval. Starting from that idea, and a kitchen table group of four employees, she has guided the growth of Cataphora to over 100 employees. The company has seen three consecutive years of at least 100% growth in revenue, customers, and employee head count. In 2006, the company moved into a dedicated new headquarters building in Redwood City, California, and opened an office in Washington, DC, two blocks from the White House. 2006 also saw the granting of all claims in Cataphora’s fundamental technology patent, which Elizabeth co-authored. In leading Cataphora’s success, Elizabeth has drawn on her prior experience as an entrepreneur and CEO, and on her extensive knowledge of information retrieval technology and business. Prior to starting Cataphora, Elizabeth was CEO and founder of Troba, an industry leading Customer Relationship Management software company which she sold in 2001. Her previous experience includes management and senior engineering positions at international high tech companies such as Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems. She started her career at Unisys in Plymouth, Michigan, where she ran a human factors laboratory. Elizabeth has lived in both France and Germany and speaks both of those languages. She has been a dedicated jazz dance performer. She enjoys travel, as well as spending time at home with her whippet, Ragnar, and African Gray parrot, Howard. Elizabeth holds a BS in Theoretical Mathematics from the University of Michigan Honors Program, which she entered at the age of sixteen. Lucy Sanders: Hi. This is Lucy Sanders, and I'm the CEO of the National Center for Woman and Information Technology, or NCWIT. With me today, is Larry Nelson, from w3w3.com. Hi, Larry. Welcome. Larry Nelson: Hello. I'm so happy to be here. Lucy: And Lee Kennedy, who's a co‑founder of Tricalyx, a new company here in Boulder. Lee Kennedy: Hi. Lucy: Lee is also an NCWIT director. So, today, we're interviewing Elizabeth Charnock, the CEO and founder of Cataphora. Elizabeth, welcome. Elizabeth Charnock: Thank you. Larry: Boy, I tell you, I'm so excited to be a part of this. It's a great program, and sorely needed out there, which is what really makes it extra special. Lucy: Well, Elizabeth's company is just extremely interesting to me. Elizabeth, I see, from looking online, that you're a patent holder? Elizabeth: That's correct. Lucy: And your company works on email. You must have some pretty sassy algorithms there, trying to figure out the content [laughs] of email. Why don't you give us a bit of information about your company? Elizabeth: Sure, I'd love to. First of all, it's not just about email. In fact, the idea that the company is founded on is that search is really no longer just about content. The search algorithms that are out there now, with the exception of Google's, on the Internet, all have very much to do with classifying documents according to content. And most documents used to have quite a bit of content, making this fairly easy to do. So you can see how many times, for example, the word "chicken" appears in a document or the word "hammer" appears in a document, or how many times the words "hammer" and "chicken" co‑occur in the same sentence or paragraph or so on. But now, in the world we live in, people are so wired‑‑we all have Blackberries; we've got Treos and the equivalent devices; we use IM‑‑with the result that email, and even informal memos, are a whole lot less formal and less long than they used to be. So, what our technology is all about is weaving together these different, smaller items into a searchable object that's meaningful. So, what we've done is changed the boundary of search. So search, for us, is no longer about an email or an IM or a phone‑rep message; it's about the dialog that can be put back together with our algorithms. To give a concrete example of this, while it's become a bit hackneyed at this point; let's say you have a message, of whatever form, whose entire content is just, "Yes, let's do it." Well, what does that mean? Larry: [laughs] Elizabeth: Does it mean, "Let's go commit securities fraud"? "Let's go embezzle that 300,000 bucks"? Or maybe it just means, "Let's go fishing." Right? How are you going to know? It used to be that the answer was in the same document. Now the answer may be two or three documents or items away. And that's what our company's all about. Lucy: Well, it is really interesting. And I think the algorithms must really be pretty fascinating. Larry: Boy, I'll say. One thing I can't help but wonder, just as kind of an opening question, is how did you get into technology? And then maybe a second part of that question is what do you think is really cool today, in addition to what you're doing? Elizabeth: How I got into technology, originally, as a child? My father is an electrical engineer and very, very much, I think, pushed me that direction, initially‑‑especially since I was an only child, so I was his one opportunity. But when I was in college at the University of Michigan, they had a program in mathematics that was trying to subvert what everybody at the time thought was almost just a law of nature, which was the fact that no significantly original, or significant period, mathematics had ever been done by anybody over the age of 27. Lucy: I remember that. Elizabeth: So somebody endowed the University of Michigan with a program to try to push promising mathematicians through their PhDs, with a little bit more time before their brain turned to mush at the age of 27. And the program was so much better than anything else that was out there that, even though I had no intentions of being a math major when I entered college, within a few months it was pretty clear that that's what I was going to do. And that's what I did. Larry: Wow. Lucy: Theoretical mathematics degree. That's amazing. Lee: It is. Elizabeth: People don't believe me now. They assume I must be a lawyer because of the field that my company is currently operating in. [laughter] Lucy: And just as a follow‑up with that, as you look out into the technology spaces today, what, in addition to some of the things that you're working on at Cataphora, are you thinking personally are just really cool? Elizabeth: This is going to sound a little silly, perhaps, but I think there's going to be a lot more things out there like this. I don't know if any of you guys have a Roomba‑‑you know the robotic little cleaning vacuum... Larry: [laughs] Lucy: In fact, Helen Greiner has been one of our interviews as well, from iRobot. Elizabeth: It's a wonderful thing. And I think that they could have done more, in terms of making it more, I don't want to say cutesy, but something that would maybe appeal to a broader set of people. I actually bought it for my husband for his birthday just because I thought he'd think it was cool. Larry: [laughs] Elizabeth: And I think that home robotics that actually do something useful, that are engaging and are not ridiculously expensive, I think, are a big area. I think there's still a lot to be done, obviously, in the area of search, apart from what Cataphora is doing. It's not uncommon, in the work that we do‑‑which is, at this point, mostly investigation and litigation‑‑to get literally 10 million items or more for a case. And these are not Enron‑like cases; these are more run‑of‑the‑mill sorts of cases. Lucy: Wow. Elizabeth: And so, while we're right now focused on the enterprise aspects of it and the legal aspects of it, there are obviously the personal information management of it all that I think is a really interesting problem. And some of the social networking stuff, I think, while a lot of it is somewhat trivial, some of it's really quite interesting. If you can build special‑interest groups for different types of research, or for people who are really expert or compassionate about a certain, very specific kind of thing, I think that's technology very well used. Lucy: I agree. It's huge. And it's changing so many things: the way people market, the way people find out what their interested in. It's amazing. Larry: Hmm. Lucy: Well, Elizabeth, you mentioned your dad as an EE, and he had influenced you into technology. What made you become an entrepreneur, and what about being an entrepreneur makes you tick? Elizabeth: In my case, those who have watched me progress, especially since I've come out to Silicon Valley‑‑because I'm from Michigan originally‑‑I think would say that it had to do with the fact that I was, again and again, in situations in much larger companies where I could see that the company was in decline, and there really was nothing much that I could do about it. And I wanted to have a center of excellence around me. I wanted to do work that I was proud of. I wanted to be working someplace where it was good to get up in the morning and go to work. And that sort of drove me to wanting to roll my own. For example, I joined Hewlett‑Packard at the point that it was starting to decline, and saw what that looked like, and it was just a very frustrating place to be. And it was interesting for me to see the "Wall Street Journal" extensive coverage of the firing of Carly Fiorina, and they were noting that many of these problems really pre‑dated her, even if she exacerbated some of them. And I was just so happy to see that, after 10 years, that now it was out in the open. But yeah, I spent a good several years there, and similarly joined Sun at the point it was arguably starting to decline. And I felt that I could do a better job, and I wanted to do a better job, even if at a smaller scale. Lucy: So, in terms of entrepreneurship, many people have mentors or people who influence them along the way. And we were just curious who your role models are. Who influenced you, and how did they influence you? Elizabeth: As an entrepreneur in different ways, John Nesheim‑‑the guy who writes the books on startups, he's best well‑known for writing the book, "High‑Tech Start Up" which here in the Valley is considered the Bible for starting a startup‑‑is an adviser of the company and is a really great mentor. At this point, he really spends his life teaching high‑tech entrepreneurial ship at Cornell, and writing books about it and advising a few companies. So he's seen many, many, many variations of the movie. He's very wise, and he's always willing to help. Julie Wainwright, who was the much‑maligned CEO of Pets.com during the bubble, I think is a really good person, and has a lot to offer in terms of, well, when you take a fall, you get back up on the horse‑‑has a great deal of personal grace and elegance. And Philippe Courteaux, who hired me into their elite, who I believe is the only four‑time successful CEO in Silicon Valley history. Obviously, there's a huge amount to learn from. Larry: Wow. I was not aware of that fact. I'm going to have to look more up on that. Lucy: You've got another book to read. Larry: Yeah, I do. Two other books... Lucy: [laughs] Two other books. Lee: That's an impressive list of mentors. Larry: Boy, I'll say. Elizabeth, I do have to point out that I was born in Michigan, so I understand. But I chose Colorado. I wanted to be surrounded a bunch of really neat people in a wonderful climate. Lucy: [laughs] Little plug there for Colorado. Larry: Little plug. Elizabeth, if you were to look back at the different things that you've been through‑‑and I'm sure you've had a couple of the tough moments‑‑what's maybe the toughest thing that you had to live through during your career? Elizabeth: Unfortunately, there's more than one... Lucy: Like or us all. Elizabeth: This is my second company. My first company was during the bubble, and we ended up having to sell it after the individual VC left the VC firm after the bubble burst‑‑at the point that many venture capitalists were no longer getting along with one another. And that was very, very difficult, not just because it was failure in some sense, even though we ultimately were able to sell it and at least get everybody a job, but because it was so unfair, in the sense that we had met all of our goals, we had exceeded some of our goals, and there was an exogenous failure event, as one person put it. And that's very difficult to explain to people who have really put their heart and soul into something. Obviously, it was a very difficult time, yet one of the things I am most proud of was that many of those same, original people joined this company, Cataphora, and made it possible for us to get to the point we are now‑‑which is to say we're a 100‑employee company in the Valley that has never taken a dime of investment from anybody, not even ourselves. Lucy: And I noticed that in some of the information on the web about your company. And I can really empathize with some of these unfair events in the world of startups. I was on the board of a company where a venture capitalist, in a Series B round, backed away at the very last minute, when, if that company had chosen to just bring more partners to the table originally, the company could have kept going. And as a result, gone. Larry: Yep. Lucy: That can be very, very hard. Elizabeth: I think that, as a practical matter, one of the things that very few people understand about the startup world is that there is very, very, very little‑‑and in fact, arguably no‑‑accountability on the part of the investors. Lucy: So it's clear you've been through a lot of challenges. Elizabeth: Yes. Lucy: If you were sitting with a young person and giving them advice about entrepreneurship, what kind of advice would you give them? Elizabeth: Something, actually, that is very much stressed on John Nesheim's site, at least when last I looked, which is that if failure will completely destroy you, you should not go down this path. Lucy: Hmm. Larry: Good point. Elizabeth: Kind of an odd thing to say, perhaps, on a website of that nature. But it's a very important one, I think, because, statistically, depending on whose numbers you believe exactly, 99 percent of all startups fail. It depends at what point you start measuring. At what point does the startup become significant enough that it exists? Does it have to incorporate? Does it have to have people spending significant amounts of time on it? Where does conception occur? If you want to look at it that way. No matter how you measure it, the vast, vast, vast majority fail‑‑some for avoidable reasons, some for unavoidable reasons. Some were perhaps ill‑conceived. But for whatever the reason, statistically, you're very, very likely to fail. And if you can't accept that initially, then it's perhaps better to stay in that larger company, then to go out there and follow somebody else who's taking the load on their shoulders more than you are on yours. Lucy: And so I'm sure you have a network of friends who are in various stages of startup companies. And if they fail, what do you tell them to console them? Elizabeth: The main thing I say is, hopefully, you learn something from it, whether it's something to do with things to do again, things to avoid doing. If at all possible, what you learn about yourself, what you learn about other people that you are in the endeavor with. And you, at this point, have to make a real decision, not a knee‑jerk one, as to what you now want to do. Lucy: Well, and I think that that's very wise advice. I'm sure that that wisdom is part of what has given you your success as an entrepreneur. What other characteristics do you have that you think have given you advantage? Elizabeth: I would certainly say that one of them is persistence and discipline. So that's two, but obviously they're interrelated. Levelheadedness is something that I always tell people at Cataphora is a huge, huge, huge component to startup success because, without it, it's almost impossible to take the long view of anything. If you can't take the long view, then you're not going to last very long. The former VP of marketing here at my last company said, "Well, the startup experience is like a roller coaster, but with the key difference that when you're high, you're on the top of the roller coaster." You can either make $800 million or dominate the world. The reality is that you're not actually as high as you think you are. But the inverse is also true. When you're at the low part of the roller coaster, you're probably not as badly off as you feel that particular day. And trying to avoid riding the roller coaster, I think, is a really critical part of success. Obviously, there's passion for it. I think people greatly underrate the importance of leadership, character flexibility, and all those traits that make other people follow that person into the fire. Lee: And they have to want to follow you, especially in the startup world. Elizabeth: Exactly. Larry: Boy, I tell you what, you mentioned earlier that many people joined your company that you have today that were with the other company. That really does say a lot about you and the management team you put together. Lucy: So, Elizabeth, considering this is the second startup you've done, how do you bring balance into your personal and professional lives? Because we all know startups are seven by 24. Elizabeth: Nobody ever likes this answer, but the truth of it is you can't do both. Maybe at some point you can, but startups are 24 by 7, so either you have enough people at the right positions to really delegate everything to you in such a way that you can not have to work massive numbers of hours. But I've never really seen that happen in practice. I do work less than I did two or three years ago. Probably a year or two from now, I'll work a little bit less. But if you want 40 or 50‑hour weeks, startups, but especially being a startup CEO, is not for you. I do make sure I exercise and do yoga and make some time for the things that I really have to. Fortunately, my husband works here, so that is a simplifying assumption. Lucy: [laughs] That is something that you do to bring balance. Make sure that you employ your husband. Larry: One of the things that author, John Nesheim, had brought up about, "If failure is going to crush you, " or something to that effect, I think the idea is, also, if the entrepreneur has this fear of failure, that's what they really also have to avoid. Lucy: Right. So, Elizabeth, you've really achieved a lot in your career so far. What's next for you? Give our listeners a little hint of what you're thinking about for the future. Elizabeth: Well, we think Cataphora is a great opportunity. As anybody who's been out there in the tech world knows, it's not just a matter of having a really good idea; it's also the timing of it. Timing is everything in these things, and so we intend to stick with this for quite a while. And who knows? Maybe my next one will have to do with robots. Larry: [laughs] Elizabeth: But right now, I am very much focused on making Cataphora the next big software company. And I think it can be. And that's what I'm looking forward to doing. Lucy: Well, and in fact, with the robots, we'll make sure that you and Helen get together. Larry: [laughs] Lucy: Helen has shown us little pictures of Roombas in costumes and things like that, which are pretty exciting. So, we really do want to thank you, Elizabeth, for your time. We know you're busy. And I know our listeners will really appreciate hearing your views on entrepreneurism. I wanted to also congratulate you on your "Fast Company" Fast 50 article. It was a great picture. I loved it. The caption, like, "So don't mess with Elizabeth Charnock, CEO of Cataphora." Larry: That's why we were so gentle to begin with. [laughter] Lucy: We really do appreciate your time. Thank you very much. And I wanted to remind listeners where they can find this podcast. It's at www.ncwit.org. And it will also be syndicated on... Larry: www.w3w3.com. Lucy: And please make sure you pass this podcast along to a friend. Thanks very much, Elizabeth. Elizabeth: Thank you. Lee: Bye‑bye. Larry: See you soon. Bye‑bye. Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Elizabeth CharnockInterview Summary: Starting with a good idea and a group of four kitchen-table employees, and funded entirely by revenues from clients (without any outside investment), Elizabeth Charnock has guided Cataphora into a profitable company with three consecutive years of at least 100% growth in revenue, customers, and employee head count. Release Date: July 24, 2007Interview Subject: Elizabeth CharnockInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry Nelson, Lee KennedyDuration: 17:34

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Donna Auguste Founder, Leave a Little Room Foundation Date: June 26, 2007 NCWIT Interview with Donna Auguste BIO: Donna Auguste founded Freshwater Software, Inc. in 1996 to provide companies with tools that would help them monitor and enhance their presence on the Internet. She served as CEO of Freshwater until she sold it in 2000 for $147 million. She went on to found the Leave a Little Room Foundation, LLC, a philanthropic organization that helps to provide housing, electricity, and vaccinations to poor communities around the world. Even as a young girl Donna's interest in technology and engineering was clear; she used to take apart household appliances just to see how they worked. With support from her family she attended the University of California at Berkeley, where some male students refused to work with her on project teams and one professor told her that she had been allowed into Berkeley only because the admissions standards had been waived. However, Donna earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and computer science from Cal and went on to become the first African American woman in the PhD program at Carnegie Mellon University. Prior to founding Freshwater, Auguste was senior director for US West Advanced Technologies, where she met Freshwater co-founder, John Meier. Together they developed Freshwater from a tiny start-up into a multi-million-dollar company with Fortune 500 clients and a suite of recognized products such as SiteScope, SiteSeer, and Global Site Reliance. Early in her career Donna worked at Xerox and was part of the engineering team at IntelliCorp that introduced some of the world's first commercial artificial intelligence knowledge. She also spent several years at Apple Computer, where she was awarded four patents for her innovative engineering work on the Apple Newton Personal Digital Assistant. Although project-development teams often are made up of people who share similar backgrounds, Donna has always sought to create diverse teams for her projects. She says her style comes from her Creole background and from growing up in Louisiana and Berkeley, where diversity was an important part of the culture. Lucy Sanders: Hi, I'm Lucy Sanders. I'm the CEO for the National Center for Women in Information Technology, or NCWIT, and this interview is part of the series of interviews that we're doing with wonderful IT entrepreneurs, people who have fabulous stories to tell. We are going to talk to them about their lives, their work, their passions, everything. We want to get inside of their brains and understand what makes them tick. Larry Nelson is here with me today from W3W3, as we interview Donna Auguste. We are very thrilled to be here in Donna's home with this interview. She lives in a very lovely neighborhood in Denver. I think, as many of you know, she's not only a wonderful entrepreneur but also a social activist. So Donna, welcome. Donna Auguste: Thank you, thank you very much. I'm glad to be here. Lucy: Larry, good to see you again... Larry Nelson: It is always a pleasure, and we are so fortunate just to be able to meet, let alone talk to and interview, some of the sharp people from all over the country. You just happen to be in our backyard. Donna: Yeah. Larry: This is really super. At W3W3.com, we call ourselves the voice of the Colorado technology community, so you fit right in. Donna: Well, thank you. Lucy: So Donna, you have a really diverse background. You are a serial entrepreneur, having started Freshwater Software. You also have worked in large corporations as an entrepreneur, at Xerox PARC, at Apple, and even at Bell Labs. And you've also started a foundation called the Leave a Little Room Foundation, which really emphasizes giving back and global outreach. So, you've done a little bit of everything. I'm really excited to talk to you about entrepreneurship. I think maybe with that our first question will be: how did you first get into technology? You have an extensive technology background. And what technology do you really look at as being cool today? Donna: I first started out interested in technology when I was a kid and the Apollo space missions were broadcast on television. Lucy: Ah. Donna: I was just riveted. When they would show the mission control room, I'd get close to the TV as you could get just checking out all of the details. From that point forward I knew I wanted to be involved in computers and technology and emerging science. Lucy: Well, I think space exploration is fascinating. In fact, some people have said today that that type of grand challenge in computing could spark a whole new revolution of computer scientists and technology innovation. Larry: Yeah, that's absolutely right. You know, one of the things that you brought up that really motivated you to look into it and then really get all revved up about it, we don't seem to have that out in society today for the young people to get to. I don't think we could call electronic games the answer to that. Lucy: It's an excellent challenge. Larry: That's right. Donna: There are some cool technologies out there. You're right— they are different in terms of the degree or intensity of inspiration. For example, renewable energy is an area I'm very interested in. That's an area where I think the coolest solutions will come with the generations who are coming behind us. They are going to be looking at the use of solar, the use of wind, and the use of hydrogen in ways that we haven't even thought of yet. Larry: That's a fact. Now, with all this as a backdrop, what is it that ever compelled you to become an entrepreneur. Donna: To become an entrepreneur... Well, I like inventing solutions to problems. That's something I've always been very curious about ‑ not necessarily looking for obvious solutions, but looking for effective solutions. And I like lateral thinking. I like to do lateral thinking puzzles. I like to do lateral thinking just when walking around visiting businesses or parks or other places. I'm always thinking about how things could be done differently. How could something be looked at in a different way? Since I do that for fun, I thought it would be great to do that for business. Larry: Isn't that a fact? Of course, over the years we've seen you on different occasions get some neat awards. I know that's always nice. It's nice for you and it's nice for your team. But what is it about entrepreneurship that really makes you tick? What's that push? Is it the other answers, or is it something else? Donna: I would say what makes me tick is the lateral thinking. Because there's always something new to discover, a new way to think about it that may not be obvious from the start. Once that starts ticking in my brain, I usually can't shut it off. Lucy: I wanted to follow up on that because the entrepreneurship we often think about is starting new companies, which you've done. But I also think there's entrepreneurship inside of large companies. Looking back, say, at your experience at Apple, what can you say about differences between entrepreneurship in a large company or outside of a large company? Donna: They're very similar. The problem solving techniques are very similar. In fact, the entrepreneurship is almost a day‑to‑day kind of experience. I'll give you an example from the Freshwater days, which was a small company environment. The particular problem that we were looking at one point was something that could come up in a lot of different situations. We were moving into a new building, and the move date was fast approaching. Talking with the local telephone company, the T1 line we would need in order to run the business was not going to be turned on in time. They had promised us that day, we had set up our move, but it wasn't going to happen. Lucy: Those darn people with those T1 lines. Larry: Yeah, right. Donna: And we were running an Internet business. We had to have a T1 line or we weren't going to be in business. Lucy: Nope, you sure weren't. Donna: So, we were stuck. It happened that across the parking lot from our new building was another building. In that building was a small business that was going to be shutting down. Unfortunately they were going out of business. I walked over and I talked with the person who was closing up shop over there. I said, "Do you all have a T1?" He said, "Yeah, we do, but we're going to be turning it off in a couple days." I said, "OK, hang on a second!" Larry: So, he got you a deal. Donna: Right. I said, "How about if we hook up to your T1 and then we'll pay the bill until our T1 comes on." He said, "Well, we're across the parking lot. How are you going to do that?" I said, "Well, you have a ceiling and we have a ceiling." We actually ended up wiring through their ceiling and through their roof, and with the permission of our landlord, across the parking lot. We dropped it down into our roof and our ceiling. We hooked ourselves up to their T1, and that's what we ran on until ours came through. Lucy: So, it's that same kind of problem solving. You have to really scrap and look for solutions to all kinds of issues. Donna: That's right. Lucy: Along those lines, we were interested in understanding who influenced you or supported you on this career path. Most people have role models, or at least either people they know or people they don't know who they admire from afar that really influenced them. Perhaps you could share some of that for us. Donna: The strongest influence in my life, as you've heard me say at awards ceremonies and other events, is God. When I receive an award or any recognition, I always try and make it a point to have people understand that this is for the glory and honor of God. Everything I do is only for the glory and honor of God, and only through the grace of God. So, the credit is not mine and the influence is not my own. It's the influence of God, my family, my church community ‑ all of those shaped me from my earliest days and continue to shape me all the time now. Larry: I want to congratulate you. Now, with all the different things that you've been through, some of them very exciting like the T1 line that you were talking about, what is one of the greatest challenges that you've faced as an entrepreneur? Donna: I'd say the single greatest challenge has been learning to trust my intuition, especially when the stakes are high. During the years when I was growing up, I learned to pay attention to my intuition and to factor my intuition in my decision making process along with other sources. Learning to trust my intuition when the stakes were really high was much harder. When my business was on the line, my payroll was on the line, and my customers were on the line, I was more inclined to just grab onto other people's advice instead of listening to my own heart. I'll give you an example, and this is one that got a little heated. In Freshwater's earliest days, my board of directors advised me ‑ and these were investors in my business, so I needed to listen to these folks ‑ to really focus on building brand. I wasn't nearly as interested in building brand as I was in building a revenue. I was thinking that we needed customers and we needed money coming through the door. They were saying, "No, we've cultivated many, many, many businesses in the past. What you need is to get your brand in position and to get yourself established as a leader in your space." Well, I didn't do that because it didn't feel right. It seemed to me that although the priorities for Internet companies at the time were not emphasizing revenue, I thought our priorities should emphasize revenue. So, we decided that we had better get busy generating revenue and getting some customers in the door. And it's a good thing we did that, because a little while later the rules changed. Fortunately, we were profitable by then. Larry: Very good. Lucy: Wow, listening to your intuition is an important thing. Do not get away from that. I think that's great advice for sure. Larry: Yes. Lucy: And speaking of advice, one of the things that we really hope to do with this series is influence people to think about entrepreneurial careers. If you were sitting here with a young person, what kind of advice would you give them about entrepreneurship? Donna: I would suggest three things. There are three things that I keep in mind, so I would share those with others to keep in mind. The short version of those three is first passion, second is self‑discipline, and the third is tenacity. I'll tell you what I mean by each of those. In terms of passion, it's important for each of us to know the source of our passion. It's important to know the source of our strength, the source of our intuition, the source of our values and our faith. And to be able to turn to that source, especially when we need direction and we need to make tough decisions, because self‑discipline comes in. Do the homework. You have to do the homework. You have to do preparation. You have to sit down and figure out and study and examine the areas that require analysis, so that you could make an informed decision when you need to. And the third, in terms of tenacity, is being persistent. If the door you need to get through is closed and locked, scout around until you find an open window. Just figure out a way to keep moving forward. And sometimes two solutions merge in the most unlikeliest of ways. Lucy: Well, Larry and I hear this theme of persistence a lot. Larry: All the time. Lucy: A lot. And sometimes it's persistence. Other people put words like relentlessness on the table. Donna: I find that there's a very thin line between being persistent and being a pest. It's OK. Sometimes you have to drift back and forth across that line. Lucy: Well, I certainly find now as a nonprofit CEO, that frequent reminders really pay off with people. It works pretty well. Larry: One of the things that you had mentioned (your little checklist of three: passion, self‑discipline‑‑doing the homework, tenacity or persistence) and I think one of our past presidents, Calvin Coolidge said, "Persistence is omnipotent." So, I think that there's a little bit of power there. But what would be your three characteristics that made you a successful entrepreneur? Donna: I would say those three. I'm passionate myself. And if I'm going to do it, I'm going to all out. And because the source of my strength is my relationship with God, I tend to that relationship. It's very important; I give it a lot of priority. I give it my time. I give it my attention. Prayer is very important to me, and taking the time for prayer is something that rates high on my list. It comes before many other things that can fill up a day. Prayer is where I start. So, that passion is a big part of me. Self‑discipline is part of it. As you know, I'm a musician. I'm a church musician, and I play bass guitar primarily. Practicing my bass guitar, practicing fundamentals, practicing the new and cool and fun songs, it's all fun. It's all enjoyable. And all of that is necessary to lay the groundwork before you go and play an instrument, for example, for the congregation. In terms of tenacity, all of my performance reviews and all those big companies you've listed that I've worked at, year after year after year, my performance reviews, my manager would always say, "very tenacious." I don't know if that's good, or if that's bad. But she's very tenacious. Lucy: I think that's good. Larry: Yeah, I do too. And I've talked to some other business leaders around the area who know you. And they use words like that, "she's tenacious." Yeah. Lucy: I think that's wonderful. Larry: In fact, I think, Lucy, I think you said, "She was relentless." Maybe not. Lucy: No, no. Not me. Not me. Although I am curious to understand more about your foundation, the Leave a Little Room Foundation, because I know that's where a lot of your passion is right now. So can you give us a little bit about what your foundation does? Donna: Absolutely. I'd be happy to. The Leave a Little Room Foundation is based on a very simple premise, that it's a good idea for people to come together and share the different ways in which we've been blessed. One person might have one talent. Another person might have a different talent. Another might have a resource. And if we come together and share our blessings and leave room for God to do what God can do in the midst of all that, then amazing things happen as a result. So, the concrete ways in Leave a Little Room, we do work in Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Uganda. We do different kinds of projects in those countries in East Africa. We've built schools. We've helped to staff and supply hospital clinics. We've put up solar electricity systems, solar powered vaccine refrigerators. In Mexico, we've also tried... It's a little closer to home, where we build houses for people who were living in shacks. And their families, who are doing their best, in terms of working and surviving, but the housing they have available is made of tarp and plywood and, maybe, car parts. And so we go in and over the course of a few days, we build them a new house from the ground up. And it's a wonderful transforming experience each time you do it. Lucy: And did I read that you were also doing some work along the Gulf coast, post‑Katrina? Donna: Yes, we have. And we will continue doing that work there as folks there rebuild. We've been down to Pasqualla, Mississippi as well as to the New Orleans area to help folks scrape out their housing, scrape out rotting wood, floors, walls, and put in brand new components in their house. Lucy: I'm sure that the people are most appreciative of it. I mean, having been from Louisiana myself, we've taken some students down there to do some work in the Ninth Ward ourselves. And this is kind of a transition for our next question, although it sounds like you're very busy person... Larry: Boy, is that a fact. Lucy: We are curious to know how such successful people really do balance their work and their personal lives. Do you have any advice on that? Donna: Well, a couple of things that comes to mind. One is because I'm a technologist on the one hand and a musician on the other, those two activities in my life, which I invest a lot of time in, balance each other in a lot of ways. A left‑brain, right‑brain kind of balance. But also working diligently and attentively head‑down on technology is very different than practicing music as a part of a band and a choir and being out with our community at church, administering to people through gospel music. Those two balance each other. And then the other aspect for me is prayer. Prayer calms me, and recharges me, and pulls me away from the busy activities of day‑to‑day life. To take a walk and view and think about what's important. Larry: You know, Donna, you've done so much and these are nowhere near even your most important highlights, but from Apple to Freshwater Technologies, A Month Ago Labs... Lucy: A Month Ago Labs? Larry: Yeah...and all the other important things. And here you've got this wonderful foundation, Leave a Little Room. You've done so much, and I know you're going to be doing more work here. But what's next for Donna Auguste? Donna: Well, next is everyday and each day that follows. Whatever the Lord puts before me, that's what I do. And one of the cool things about it is God doesn't have any limitations in terms of interesting and exciting things going on in the world. So, what I've called to do from one time to the other can be new and different in each case. The challenge for me is when I'm getting involved in something where there is an area that's unfamiliar to me then that self‑discipline comes back in. I sit down and I do my studying and I do my research. I do my homework so that I can understand enough to ask lots of questions, listen to people, and learn from others. And then move ahead and get it done. Figure out how to get it done. Larry: Fantastic. Lucy: So, you may start another technology company. Larry: Let's start that rumor. We're good. I'll sign up. Lucy: I'll sign up, too. Donna: Actually, there is a very specific project that I'm working on, and it brings together a number of different facets of projects I'm involved in. And it is called Skills 24/7 dot com. It is an Internet video‑oriented type of project. And the idea is that within this environment of Skills 24/7, anyone that is looking to learn in a certain topic area, or a certain subject matter can visit this website and look for video clips that teach on that topic. Larry: Oh, wow! Donna: And the video clips are between five and 15‑minutes in length. And they cover a very specific area of each topic. And when you put them all together in a broad sweep, they'll cover a wide range in each topic. Lucy: Fascinating. Donna: There is another company. Larry: I knew it. Lucy: I knew it. I could tell. Larry: There's no doubt about it. Lucy: Well, thank you very much. I know all the listeners really appreciate hearing this interview, and we should probably remind people where it's going to be hosted. You can find it at the NCWIT website at www.ncwit.org, also at w3w3.com. And can you give people the URL for the Leave a Little Room Foundation in case they want to hear more? Donna: Absolutely. It's www.leavealittleroom.org. Lucy: Well, thank you. This was wonderful. We enjoyed coming to Denver to see you. Thank you, very much. Larry: That's right. By the way, we should also include Skills 24/7 dot com. Lucy: Absolutely. Larry: That's lovely. Alright, and by the way, you listeners out there, would you pass this interview along to others that you think would learn from it, and benefit in some fashion? And they can tune in and listen 24/7 and download it as a podcast. Lucy: Thank you. Larry: All right. Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Donna AugusteInterview Summary: Donna Auguste has had an interest in technology and engineering since she was just a girl. She used to take apart household appliances just to see how they worked. Release Date: June 26, 2007Interview Subject: Donna AugusteInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 17:51