Tech Transforms Episode 26: Unstoppable Women of Web3: Learn and Be Curious with Sandy Carter

About this Episode

Sandy Carter, Unstoppable Domains SVP and Channel Chief again joins Carolyn and Mark, this time to discuss the importance of diversity in technology. She gives us an exciting inside look at her event, Unstoppable Women of Web3. Sandy walks the walk when it comes to getting women and girls involved in tech. Follow her on social media to get the latest updates!

Episode Table of Contents

[00:55] The Vision for Unstoppable Women
[05:42] Unstoppable Women Are Learning About IOT and Machines
[11:09] A Dream to Start the Groundswell With Unstoppable Women

Episode Links and Resources

The Vision for Unstoppable Women

Carolyn: So we have Sandy Carter back. The last time we talked to her, she gave me the 101 on Web3 and FTs, crypto. My head's still swimming a little bit but I'm actually really excited about it. She did a great job and one of the key things that Sandy talked about was for Web3 to be the vision that she has for it and to be really strong, it needs diversity.

Today, we're back with Sandy Carter, renowned technologist, bestselling author, and current senior VP at Unstoppable Domains. She's one of the leading pioneers in the digital business and also a former Fortune 25 business executive. She is a leader focused on helping companies with innovation and digital transformation through culture and technology like AI and the internet of things.

So let's jump into it. As an advocate for diversity and women in technology and your involvement within girls in tech, what advice would you give to women pursuing roles in technology today?

Sandy: There's a couple of things. Technology is moving at such a pace that I think you need to develop this learn and be curious notion. Probably, what you're studying today in school or what you're doing today at your job will change significantly.

Top Jobs Today for Unstoppable Women

Sandy: I was on the diversity group for the World Economic Forum and one of the interesting pieces of data that they shared with us was that the top jobs today in technology didn't exist five years ago. So unless you're going to be stuck in an old legacy role which will decline over time, you've got to be continuously learning and curious about what's coming so that you're ready to go in a lot of those new areas and those new fields.

Carolyn: How do we stay current? Getting a degree is a good foundation and things are changing so often. What are some conferences or certifications that you would recommend for women in tech?

Sandy: There is a lot of really good material out there. There's so many classes and things that you can take just to refresh yourself, like YouTube.

One of the things I do is to dedicate time every week. I mark an hour in my calendar every week. It probably could be more, but at least, an hour every week to check out something that I don't know about. Maybe it's quantum computing or spatial computing or a new thing that's happening in Web3. I'm always constantly on that front edge.

I still remember when I was with IBM and I got selected to lead a lot of our artificial intelligence work. People were like, "Wow, you're so lucky to get to do artificial intelligence." I would say, "No, I'm not lucky. I've been studying this. I took two classes at MIT. I've been playing around with this. I was learning and being curious about it so that when this opportunity came, I was ready."

Where We Are Today With Technology

Sandy: So if you're just doing your day job today, I don't think it's enough. In fact, I have two daughters and they love Alice in Wonderland. One of the parts I love so much about that book is, Alice said, "I had to run twice as fast just to stay in place."

And that's where we are today with technology. I think you can't just focus on your current role. You always had to be learning about what that next role might be or might hold.

Mark: You got your degree in computer science at Duke University. It's not surprising to me that you're the innovator and entrepreneur that you are in this arena. But how do we get women involved in technology at a younger age? How do we get them started with Math and Science so that by the time that they get to college or they get into the professional world, they're already teed up for this?

Sandy: I think there's a couple of ways that we do that. One, I love what Girls in Tech are doing and truth in advertising. I am Chairman of the board for Girls in Tech. One of the things we do at Girls in Tech is host workshops and hackathons for the younger generation but we make it relevant to what they like. For example, a lot of young girls like fashion. So, we did a fashion tech hackathon.

They get to create a ring with an IoT sensor in it and if you press the sensor, it would call for their parents. It was beautiful. The ring was beautiful and so they were all really interested in it.

Unstoppable Women Are Learning About IoT and Machines

Sandy: As they were learning about the ring, they were learning about IoT and machine learning. We put it in an application that was right for them. The other thing we did at AWS is teaching reinforcement learning which is even a higher level of artificial intelligence. We created a race car, it was called Deep Racer. It has IoT sensors around it and it races around a racetrack. You know a lot of young girls like to race cars. It's fun. We had kids all over the world racing these cars.

What they were really doing is learning again, IoT technology, cloud technology, and AI. I think it's about us putting it into their language. I’d also say when I lived in New York. We fought really hard to get computer science to be mandatory in high school. I also think there are policy issues for states. I just saw the governor of Colorado when we had an event in EatDenver. He says he wanted his state to be the number one digital state. Miami wants to be the city of crypto. In order to do that, you have to train your kids, the next generation at earlier ages, as well.

Mark: How do we do this at scale? How do we get the groundswell really moving across the country to do this? Maybe we can do it in pockets but I think we've really got to generate a groundswell.

Sandy: That brings me to an announcement that we are going to be unleashing on March 8th which is International Women's Day. Obviously, a lot of women are mothers and aunts. They have an impact on the next generation and themselves as well.

The Next Generation of Technology

Sandy: As we started looking at Web3 which is the next generation of technology, we started noticing that there is already a discrepancy in a lot of the numbers and a lot of what's happening. For example, only 15% of bitcoin holders today are women.

There are about 150 top crypto companies, only five are women. Men invest in this Web3 space so much more prevalently than others. Only 9% of women say they even understand Web3. So we're going to announce on March 8th this thing called Unstoppable Women of Web3. The whole mission is going to be around making this Web3 accessible for all. We want to help them with the first step.

We're going to give away 10 million dollars of free domains as the entry point for Web3, and we're going to be action-oriented. We've got education that's launching, networking that's launching. We have real-life events and virtual events that are launching to help women support women in this mission.

Now part of this, we're going to do a one-hour YouTube live session on March 8th. We're also going to host a 24-hour Twitter space with a different guest speaker sometimes every half an hour. So it's a big ordeal. One of the things I'm really excited about, for example, Nyla Hayes. I don't know if you guys know her. She's 13-years-old. She is a young woman who started creating an NFT collection of her art. They're called the Long Neck Ladies. She's made millions and millions of dollars.

How Unstoppable Women Accomplish Things at a Young Age

Sandy: She is Times' first artist in residence and she's going to do one of those Twitter spaces on how she accomplished this when she was 12. Now she's 13. How did she accomplish this at a young age? We're going to have women talk about what blockchain is. What is decentralization and what is digital identity? All the elements of Web3 and why we think the future of Web3 is female-focused. There's tons there.

We're hoping, our mission and our goal is to create that groundswell. That will begin on March 8th with all this education. We've partnered with over 57 different companies, big companies, small companies, Web3 companies from Google and Deloitte to folks like blockchain.com and BlockFi. Some of them work really well, and of course, Unstoppable Domains, to make this happen. I feel that if we all come together to be action-oriented, to have the 8th be that first push of the groundswell, this will continue.

We're also going to publish a top 100 inspirational women of Web3 and we're going to do a speakers bureau of women. The reason I want to do that is, I was announced as keynoting at South by Southwest on what Web3 is. You would not believe the number of people coming out of the woodwork now who want me to come speak because they want diversity. They're like, "How do we find other women doing this?" Well, we're going to create a speakers bureau so more women can be front and center.

A Dream to Start the Groundswell With Unstoppable Women

Sandy: So sorry that was a long-winded answer but I am so excited about what we're doing. My dream is that we do start that groundswell with all of these unstoppable women that will just expand and expand and expand.

Mark: It seems to me that at many universities and colleges throughout the United States, the number of women that are enrolled in schools might be over 50% across the board. But I really would like to see a lot of that moving to data science, computer science, those types of schools. So I appreciate the insight on it.

Carolyn: Honestly, I'm having chills as Sandy's talking because we talk about the need for diversity. We talk about the need to get more women in tech and girls in tech and we know the stats. We've got somebody who's walking the walk. I mean you're doing it. So I am so excited to get this out to our listeners.

Thank you for sharing this with us. We will get these links out to all of these different things that you mentioned so people can go. Do you want to give us your top three things to do right now for everyone, not just women? Top three that we can do to be involved.

Sandy: First, I would just say number one is to have that desire to learn. It is hard but make sure that you attend one of these Twitter spaces. They're half an hour, an hour investment of time and you'll just get excited. You can ask questions and just learn.

Discord and Telegram

Sandy: Twitter spaces work a little differently, it's a link where you can set a reminder on Twitter. It’s a little different but I'll share those with you. Then for the YouTube live, we'll do a YouTube live that's one hour on what is Web3. Just like the last session that we did on what is Web3, that's a whole hour on all the details with visuals. I'm a very visual learner and so that will be a visual. We'll get you that link right away so that you can help people do that.

The second one is, I would say just interact. Both of you are asking questions today and I think that interaction is how you learn. It's also how you figure out who some of your trusted advisors are so when you need to ask a question, you can do that. There are also two tools that most Web3 people use, Discord and Telegram. If you're not on those, you could go explore them.

Then the third thing, I think you have to experience it. You have to play with it. If it's Web3, you can't learn it in a book and then talk about it credibly. You've got to do it. You're going to run into challenges like I did. I ran into challenges too and I consider myself pretty techy. Setting up your domain, linking it to a wallet, figuring out how to buy Eth or bitcoin is a daunting experience. But once you go through it, you'll get hooked on it and what we call it as going down the rabbit hole. Then you want more and more.

How Unstoppable Women Develop Their Skills

Sandy: That would be my three things: learn, interact, and play. I think that's really how you develop a set of skills that are hands-on.

Carolyn: I'll give a fourth. Again, follow Sandy Carter on LinkedIn. I know that you share your word of the day and you share insights that you have. That's a really easy way for our listeners to get involved and to learn. Thank you so much for your time today, Sandy. I really appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule for us.

Sandy: Thank you for the honor of being on your podcast as well. I really appreciate it. Thank you, both, for helping me to evangelize what's happening on March 8th. I really do want it to be all of us working together to push this agenda forward.

Carolyn: Absolutely. Thanks to our listeners for joining us today. Please like and share this episode, this is an important one. We will talk to you next week on Tech Transforms sponsored by Dynatrace.