- (Josh Hiscock)
So thank you all so much
for being here this evening.
My name, for those of you
that I have not met yet,
is Josh Hiscock.
I'm the associate vice
president for alumni relations
at VCU, and I'm very, very excited to be
with all of you tonight
for this special event
here in San Francisco, here in Los Altos.
I'm really thrilled for many reasons.
One is that VCU is very
committed to its alumni.
We are here for an event that's part of,
what we're calling the ELEVATE Tour.
ELEVATE is our new strategic plan
for alumni engagement at VCU.
For many, many years you had to pay
to be a member of our alumni association.
If you didn't pay to be a member,
you didn't really get contacted.
You weren't very engaged.
We only had 13,000 paid members
of our alumni association,
but we had 193,000 alumni.
So, proportionally, you can see
where the problem is, right?
Most of our alumni who were
not paying to be members,
were not hearing from the university,
and so our alumni leaders from
our alumni association board
and the staff of our office
of alumni relations said,
what if we changed the membership model,
make it free for everybody to be a member,
and really just engage people?
Create a new plan for how to do that.
And that's where the ELEVATE
strategic plan came from.
ELEVATE is an acronym.
Expanding leadership
enrichment and volunteerism
for alumni through engagement.
It's kind of a mouthful,
(crowd laughs)
that's why we just call it ELEVATE, right?
That's what acronyms are meant for.
So, ELEVATE is a new
strategic plan that says,
you know what, let's do
social events for alumni,
but also life-long learning opportunities
to connect to research,
arts, culture, faculty.
Let's do professional
industry networking like this
where we bring people together,
not necessarily on the
degree they received,
but on the industry in which they work
or the industry in which
they're interested.
Because all too often somebody
gets an English degree,
but very few people
work in English, right?
They deploy their English degree
in some other field or profession,
and we want to make sure
people are connected
in ways that are relevant.
Because our goal as a university
is to engage 25% of our
alumni every year in some way.
So right now that would be
about 50,000 unique alumni.
We want you to open our
emails, come to events,
volunteer your time with the university
perhaps as a mentor,
either in person or online.
We'd love for you to be
a part of our chapter
here in the greater San Francisco area
to really help keep programming going,
or perhaps to make a
gift to the university
to student scholarships or
something that might move you,
that you're passionate about.
Just being involved in some
way is important to VCU.
Jay Davenport, my boss,
who's our vice president
for development in alumni relations,
and Dr. Michael Rao, university president,
are both very committed to alumni.
They've increased my staff
from a team of five to 15,
they've given us a lot more
programming money to work with
to be able to be creative in
delivering more programming.
Not just in Richmond,
but around the country,
which is why we're rolling
out the ELEVATE strategic plan
with a 23 city international tour.
We'll do 22 domestic
cities, and we'll travel
to our VCU campus in
Doha, Qatar in February
to share more about our
strategic plan with alumni.
And rather than just talk
about it, be about it.
That's why since we've
been here in San Francisco,
we've done basketball watch party,
a recent graduate networking night,
we're here with you today
for an industry panel
about the agents of innovation,
and we've also done a
breakfast with our president
and a number of alumni this morning
down in Fisherman's Wharf.
It's an explosion of
opportunity for alumni,
and we're excited to
talk to you about that.
But enough from me, I wanna
turn it over to our moderator
for this evening's panel, and
I'm happy to answer questions
at the end of the evening
for anybody that wants
to learn more about what we're doing.
We are live on both Facebook
Live and Instagram Live
across the country and across the world.
No pressure.
(crowd laughs)
They're like, I thought I was
talking to a crowd in a room.
The room's a little bit larger,
but the reality is, we
wanna do more of this.
If you are not in a
place at a certain time,
you shouldn't miss out
on great programming.
You're gonna hear amazing things
tonight from our panelists,
really insightful thoughts,
things that might draw questions
you wanna ask that
somebody across the country
might wanna know the answer to.
So we're thankful for all of those people
tuning in tonight on
Facebook and Instagram.
You have the chance to ask questions.
We'll be monitoring both
accounts, and so feel free to ask.
Type your question in, and
we'll circle back to you
when we can to get those answered.
And just know that when we leave
to head to Los Angeles
tomorrow, on Thursday
we have a panel with a number
of arts entertainment grads,
and we're gonna be live
streaming that as well.
So that'll be on Thursday night
at 6:30 Pacific, 9:30 Eastern Time.
So that'll be a fantastic panel, as well.
So lots of great content
from the West Coast.
Good things happen here, right?
So we're excited.
I'm really pleased to
introduce our moderator
for this evening's discussion, Jeff Beck,
who is the CEO and
co-founder of AnswersNow,
a licensed clinician, an entrepreneur,
Jeff is passionate about helping families
work through their unique challenges.
For a while, he served
as a family therapist,
and he recognized that parents
of children with special needs
were lacking immediate,
personalized, reliable help,
and he saw that need and
wanted to act upon it.
AnswersNow grew from that.
It's a platform that
simplifies on-demand support
for caregivers of children.
Prior to AnswersNow, Jeff
had done a number of things.
I'm just gonna read these
so I don't get them wrong.
He worked for Virginia Care Partners,
which was a subsidiary of HCA,
a major health administration corporation.
He was the director of
community-based services
at St. Joseph's Villa.
He has a masters of social work from VCU,
so an alum just like all
of you in the room tonight.
He lives in Richmond,
Virginia with his wife, Amy,
who is a part of our
alumni relations staff,
and a future alumna, herself,
and their five-month-old son, Sonny,
who has made the trip
to California as well.
He has visited at least
three states this week,
so he's doing very, very well.
And we're very excited that Sonny
is with us on the trip as well.
VCU cares about families,
cares about alumni,
and I think Jeff is a great
example of an alumnist
who's helping to put all
those things together.
So please give a round of applause
for our moderator for
the evening, Jeff Beck.
Thank you everybody.
(crowd claps)
- (Jeff Beck)
Alright, so it's my job to make sure
I introduce these three incredible people.
And I'm gonna read from my phone
'cause I have not memorized their bios.
So we've got Vern in the middle.
Vern is originally from
Rochester, New York.
Vernon is a 2012 graduate
from the School of Business,
with a bachelors of science
degree in information systems.
Prior to his accomplishments
of graduating from VCU,
Vernon graduated from high
school at the age of 16.
During Vernon's studies as a student,
he would be recruited by Capital One
to join to financial company
at its McLean, Virginia
based headquarters.
His first position would
be in the technology
development program as
quality automation engineer.
This is where Vern developed
the C1 mobile banking application.
After being at Capital One for a year,
Vern shifted career tracks and focused
on application security,
where he self-taught himself
how to trade stocks through
a vigorous reading program.
The shift from security to financial tech
would eventually lead Vern to being placed
in Capital One's Capital Markets division,
where he supported derivative trading
and helped with the
university recruiting efforts.
Currently, Vern is the CEO
and co-founder of Hallo.
Hallo is a tech startup,
building a solution
to help early-stage job seekers
find actionable information
about companies in the job search process.
Hallo is an Expa Labs company,
currently based out of Silicon Valley
and working directly with
the co-founder of Uber,
Garrett Camp, as well as Hooman Radfar,
founder of AddThis, to build the platform.
Melissa Nearly is over on the end.
She's a software engineer at Apple.
She works on the device management team,
whose mission is to ensure Apple devises
can be used seamlessly in
group or distributed settings,
such as classrooms,
hospitals, or businesses.
Melissa graduated from VCU in 2016
with a bachelor of science
degree in computer science.
In 2014, she became the first VCU student
to earn an internship at BMW.
She spent two years in a co-op
on the mobility solutions team at BMW
in Greenville, South Carolina.
Probably not quite as
cool as Silicon Valley.
(crowd laughs)
Where she learned the craft
of iOS app development.
She credited this opportunity
for not only teaching her skill,
but for introducing her
to life-long mentors
and friends in the iOS community.
She began working at Apple in 2017
and has enjoyed the switch
from building iOS apps
to building iOS itself, along
with watchOS, tvOS, and macOS.
In her free time, she loves to gallivant
around San Francisco,
keep in touch with fellow
Theta Tau Kappa Gamma alumni,
crush her siblings in Mario Kart--
Is that N64 or is that the new--
- Oh no, it's Switch.
- The new, upgraded version.
- Yeah.
- Engage in deep, meaningful conversations
with her cat, Gus, and
watch VCU basketball games.
And Alan Calderwood.
Alan graduated with a
bachelor of science degree
in engineering, as well as
a bachelor of science degree
in mathematics at VCU in 2015.
Prior to starting his career with Google,
Alan worked part time for a
few startups in the Bay Area.
Alan began working at Google
on the Android platform
and the Pixel Experience.
He has recently moved teams internally,
and is now working on an Android TV,
primarily focusing on the
server side, and does fine work.
In his free time, Alan enjoys
hanging out with friends,
playing games, and
working on side projects.
Welcome our panel.
(crowd claps)
So the first question I'd
like for all of you to answer,
so we can just kind of go down the line.
The mics are off.
I'm not gonna use--
Can you guys hear me if
I do not use the mic?
If you guys want them, they're back here,
if you don't, if you
don't mind, feel free.
So I wanna hear a little bit about
your first experience, each
of you, with technology.
So when did you know you
wanted to work in tech,
what was the first computer you worked on,
just tell me a little bit
about the first time you got
really excited about technology
and the field beyond.
- (Allen Calderwood) 
So probably the first time I got excited
with tech was back in middle school.
I used to play RuneScape, which
maybe a lot of people have,
but they used to have
these like scripting bots
and things for like cheating the game.
(crowd laughs)
So those were interesting,
you could program 'em
and configure 'em and
such and that kind of led
to me taking programing
classes in high school.
And actually you know, oddly enough,
when I went to college,
I was only a math major,
I didn't actually go into
computer science directly,
but was I hitting the end of my sophomore,
beginning of junior year, and I was like,
oh, I need a minor to graduate.
Well, I've always done programming,
I'll minor in computer science.
I remember my first
computer science class,
I had an amazing TA who
was a great mentor to me,
and he helped me learn a lot,
he helped teach me everything,
like so much, and really
pushed me to be really great.
And that was really what pushed me to,
be like oh my gosh, I need
to get a career in this,
I need to go on from
here, 'cause I love it,
and it's part of my life now.
- Do you remember the, can
we get a shout out to the TA?
Do you remember what their name is?
- He's actually right there in the back.
(crowd laughs)
- Jackson, David Jackson, best friend,
we hang out every so often.
- That's awesome.
(crowd laughs)
- We actually moved out
here at the same time.
- Oh really?
- He graduated with a PhD though.
- [David] We were roommates
for like two years.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- We made it that long.
(crowd laughs)
- Thanks for coming out today.
- Yeah.
- Yeah Vern, same question.
When did you get excited about technology,
remember the first computer you were on,
just let me hear a little
bit about your path.
- Yeah so, both of my
parents worked in technology.
So my mom, she graduated in marketing,
but she started her career at Xerox,
so I'm from Rochester,
New York, Xerox Park.
As we know, they did a lot of great stuff.
She started her career there, so you know,
we had computers in our
house and that kind of thing.
But my dad also started his career at EDS.
My dad graduated as a mathematician.
He started his career at
EDS as a COBOL programmer.
So I saw both of my parents,
that's how I skipped a grade
and graduated at 16, 'cause
I was really good at math,
'cause my dad was really good at math.
But yeah, I've always seen
computers and that kind of thing.
So basically my parents were
super into technology early on.
- Toss to the back.
- Coincidentally, similarly
to both of these guys here,
my path to technology really
actually rooted in math.
My love for math and my kind
of excel, excel in that field.
It was kind of a domino
effect really, that led me.
I started off in high school
working as a math instructor
at this place called Mathnasium,
and I really loved it.
And I remember, I was the
only high school student
that they had at that time,
so they would ask me like,
oh, what do you wanna, where
are you gonna go for college,
what do you wanna study?
And I was like, I have no idea.
I remember one day, I
finally, I think I was having
a really good day at work, and I was like,
I just love math, I wanna
do math all the time.
And one of my coworkers
who was actually in
Georgia Tech's School
of Engineering was like,
if you love math all the time,
you should study computer science.
And I was like, okay.
Then I did, and it worked out.
And if it hadn't really been
suggested to me, I don't know.
I already knew I wanted
to go into engineering,
but I hadn't really ever considered
computer science before then.
So that's really what pushed me.
And you know growing up, I
was excited about technology.
I think our generation, along with maybe
the generation older than us as well,
we were kind of the first
generation to really be like
better than our parents at computers.
(crowd laughs)
And that was always like
an exciting thing for me,
because my parents would try to put rules
and restrictions and time limits,
but I could always get around them
and that sort of thing.
But that was never in my mind
like, oh, I'm good at this,
it was just like, oh, I'm just sneaky.
So I remember being
really excited about that.
I was always on the computer
messaging my friends
on AIM and that sort of stuff.
But that was never really a
connection until I was suggested
computer science, and then I went for it.
- Awesome, thanks.
All three of the roles
that you said, you know,
Google, Silicon Valley startup working
next to the co-founder of Uber, Apple,
all of your roles have been captured
by pop culture, entertainment,
TV shows, movies.
Walk us through what a day
in the life looks like.
Do you take a floating car to work?
Do you pass Steve Jobs murals?
Tell us what a day in the
life, what the office is like,
what your five-star free meals are like,
(panel laughs)
your 25 hour work days where you're trying
to get startup off the ground.
Just each of you, I'd love
to hear a little bit about,
you know, walk us through
a day in the life.
- Sure, sure.
So for me like, most days are pretty good.
(crowd laughs)
I usually roll into work at like 11 am,
and that's honestly pretty normal.
I think noon is a little late,
but it's not like that
abnormal in the Bay Area.
Because ultimately, it's
all about hitting deadlines
or like meeting exceptions,
and I've been doing it
for three years, and no
one's said anything, so.
So roll in, answer a
few emails, et cetera,
go to lunch, there's like
10, 20 cafes or something,
just like free lunch, it's pretty much
anything you want, you can get.
That's probably my favorite
part next to coming in late,
and then, then usually
just kind of programming
for like, the day, maybe like
one meeting, dinner at 6:30.
Maybe program a little more, depending on
if I have some work leftover from the day.
- So typically dinner on campus?
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I haven't used my kitchen in years.
- Nice, nice, perfect.
What about you, Vern?
- (Vern Howard) 
It's super busy.
I'd say that, I guess I'll start.
The best part about, my
office, you mentioned,
like Garrett and all
those guys in the office.
I mean it's interesting
to see someone like that,
who's built, who many people stumble upon,
sold eBay, bought it
back, Uber is huge, right?
Super nice guy, super smart.
So our office is not that
big, he gave us office space
in San Francisco on Mission.
If you guys are downtown, you know me,
you can come by, it's super cool.
But the office is pretty lively.
He's in there, who built Uber,
this guy Vítor who built Twitter,
he's the person that
started Twitter at 19,
remember Foursquare, Naveen's a partner,
he built Foursquare, and then Hooman,
who built AddThis and sold it to Oracle.
All those guys are
floating around the office,
you can basically get time
with them whenever you want.
But my days are pretty intense.
I wake up at like 5 am, go to the gym,
the gym is like a daily part of my life
because my days are so intense
that I have to have
something where I cool off.
I play lacrosse, so I think I'm gonna join
a lacrosse league here
in San Francisco soon.
But it's basically like gym,
5 am, get to Orangetheory,
burn a ton of calories, go to work,
and I try to get ahead of
the emails on the East Coast.
We built our platform and
we didn't know how fast
it was gonna scale.
We started off with maybe like
12 schools in our platform,
and now there's 143 universities on there,
so I'm managing all those relationships.
I have to get ahead of, kind
of like the prime time hour
on the East Coast to talk with students,
talk with candidates,
talk to like schools.
Usually don't take lunch at all.
I manage a lot of the
product stuff on our team,
so my co-founder, he
runs a lot of the tech.
So I usually meet with
these guys pretty frequently
to see what's going on.
I told these guys that we were launching
a new version of our product next--
This Sunday, actually,
so we're doing migrations
for that now, and it's like super intense.
And we're supposed to go to
Japan in like two weeks too.
We're gonna do that, fundraising,
it's like really intense.
You're always like managing relationships
because you wanna have these
self-introductions to people,
so when it's time to
raise you're not like,
hey, give me 10 million dollars.
You're like hey, remember me, I told you
what I was gonna do here, give
me 10 million dollars, right?
But yeah, we usually don't end our days
until maybe seven or
eight, but when I get home,
I'm always on my phone.
This is like a thing, I know with my mom,
she's probably like watching this,
but every time I go out with anyone,
I'm always on my phone, like all the time.
So yeah, it's like a 24 hour job.
But we don't, we don't get free food.
We get Uber Eats, but
our office is super nice.
We're spoiled in that sense
that we have a really good
staff at our office
that kinda like give us,
they give us a lot of party
food free kinda, food sometimes,
so not a lot of work like the other stuff.
- (Melissa Nierle)
Cool.
Mine is a little bit
more aligned with Alan,
working at a big company,
although I will say,
and I hope they don't get
mad at me for saying this,
but at Apple, there's no free food.
So just sorry to squash--
- Subsidized, subsidized.
- It's subsidized but we
still don't, it's not free.
So let me just squash
your dreams right there.
And my own.
Very similar, our team,
at Apple, everything I--
you know what I say is really gonna be
my experience for my team.
All teams at Apple are different,
all teams really have the
autonomy to make their own rules,
their own schedules based
on how best they operate.
So my experience is really
personal to my team.
But we have core hours
between 11 am and 4 pm,
which is when you're pretty
much expected to be there,
and then people can either
come in earlier than that
or later than that, with
whatever their schedule is
for the up, booming hours.
I usually come in later.
I live in the city, I
meet down to Cupertino's,
so I come in later and I stay late,
so I miss those peak traffic hours.
My day-to-day, I work in
the new Apple building
if you guys have seen
it, it's like circular.
It's like a rune shape,
and that's really cool.
We moved in around last year at this time.
It's really nice, it
kinda almost feels like
working in an art museum or something.
Reminds me a lot, actually,
of the VMFA back in Richmond,
but all the walls are
almost like, they look
like white marble, they're white.
But it's really cool.
They've done an amazing
job of landscaping,
there's like flowers and different types
of trees everywhere, and
then you can look past down
to the foothills with like the mountains,
and so it's a really
beautiful building space.
And then I program for a lot of my day,
but also depending on where
in the develop cycle we are,
there'll be a lot of meetings,
whether it's like planning
meetings, future meetings,
HI meetings to go over things,
as well as meetings with
QA so I can explain to them
a new feature and I can
tell them the best way
that they should be testing
a feature that I've built.
So yeah, I would say
depending on where we are
in our development cycle, my
day can be anywhere from like,
anywhere from 10% meetings to 40% meetings
depending on where we are.
I usually do eat lunch
and dinner at the office
just because I like to work,
so it's hard to pry me
away from my keyboard.
But if I have plans in the city
of course, I'll leave early,
and no one is keeping
me there for any time,
so I'll leave early and
make it back to the city
for plans in the evening if I have any.
But yeah, I guess that
pretty much sums up my day.
- Awesome.
Vern, I won't tell you
how to run your company,
but I think a Google
or an Apple acquisition
(panel laughs)
sounds pretty sweet.
- I would actually cry right here.
(panel laughs)
- I'd love to hear, you know,
we're here with a bunch of alumns.
VCU alumns out here in San Francisco.
I'd love to here, why did
each of you choose VCU,
how did it prepare you for
this cush or crazy lifestyle
that you guys all live
and the work that you do?
- Do you wanna start, man?
- So yeah, when I--
Well basically, when I
graduated high school,
I had no plans of going to
college at all, actually.
I literally left high
school and told my mom,
I was like, oh, I'm
just gonna help you out
I'm from a single-parent home.
Told my mom like, I'm
just gonna go get a job
and help you out.
So I actually went to work at
UPS, which was interesting.
Work at UPS like loading trucks.
One day this guy, my
manager at UPS was like--
I was loading the trucks, basically,
not efficiently, but
trying to get done faster,
I would like build a wall
and just throw all the boxes behind,
so if your package was
like damaged it was me.
He was Vern, you shouldn't do that,
I told you not to do that,
you're never gonna do anything
with your life but work here for me.
I quit that day, and my dad was living
in Richmond, Virginia.
I called him, he was
working at Capital One.
I called him like, yeah,
I need to go to school,
but I don't even know the process,
I have no idea what I'm doing.
He was like, yeah, you
can try to go to VCU.
I came down, checked out VC--
like he literally came
to get me that weekend.
I went to VCU, and I met
Miss Day, Marilyn Day.
She's around here somewhere, actually.
So shout out to Miss Day, she
actually got me into school.
I got there and they were
like, hey your grades,
like your test scores are
great and you're super smart,
but you're not gonna get into VCU.
So I was like okay, shoot.
Miss Day was like, you can
actually matriculate in.
I was able to take, I
had to pay out of pocket,
take three classes a semester,
I paid out of pocket,
and I worked on the side as a math tutor
at Hale Park Middle School.
So I could only take three
classes per semester,
I had to get a 4.0 GPA and
then I could matriculate in.
So Miss Day put me in like, Advanced Java,
Discrete Mathematics, a couple classes,
and I had to get a 4.0, and
then I matriculated in to VCU.
Did all the college stuff.
Pretty much how I got
into school actually,
so seems like a grind.
- Yeah so, I visited VCU when
I was a senior in high school.
I was mostly looking in state.
I'm from Virginia as well,
and so I was mostly looking
in state of the schools in Virginia.
I went to the open house for
the School of Engineering,
and you know, there's
like a breakout session
for all the different disciplines
within the School of Engineering.
And that event really
solidified it for me.
I really enjoyed the breakout
session for computer science,
and I thought Dr. Cios, who was the,
I believe still is, the
head of the department,
I just really had an affinity towards him.
I thought he was really cool,
he seemed to really care
about things, he was very
much a straight shooter.
One thing that he said was
that there's a big focus
on undergraduate here at VCU,
and that really stuck with me
because I know that at other universities,
people only really care about the research
of graduate students
and that sort of thing,
and I didn't want to be
lost among the crowds.
Also, David Jackson was
demoing one of the things
he had built, and that was really cool.
He let us come up and
mess with it and stuff,
and I was like, oh, this is really cool.
And it was just a really
great environment.
I had gone up to Dr. Cios at the end,
like I was really bold looking back,
and I had said to him like I really,
the school of VCU has
sent me a scholarship
and you know, I want
VCU to be more, I want--
if there's any other
scholarships I can apply for
will you let me know because I want
to maximize that opportunity for myself.
And he was like cool, give me
your email, I'll let you know,
and I was like great thank you.
And then within a couple weeks,
I actually got another letter from VCU,
from the School of Engineering
for a computer science
scholarship, and I was like whoa.
It seemed like it was really
an environment of like,
if you ask, and if you
really want something,
they're gonna help you get that,
and they're gonna help you
achieve whatever you wanna do.
And so I really liked that,
it really made me feel
like there was a personal touch there,
and it felt like I already--
I hadn't even started there,
but I was being heard.
And that really meant a lot to me,
and so that's really why I choose VCU.
- I feel like I had a
pretty similar experience.
Like I said earlier, or even like David
and Dr. Cios too, their focus
really was on undergrad,
and being there for students.
That was definitely the most
I took out of the scene.
It was just that there
was so much resources,
if you ask for it, if you work hard,
you get it, and that was just
like an awesome experience.
As far as choosing VCU, I was essentially
a huge slacker in high school.
I went to Hanover High School,
which is like 15 minutes
up the street, and I was
like, I don't know what school
to go to, I'll just apply to VCU.
And I remember, it's so funny,
I drove downtown, and I handed in
my application to the admissions office,
and then I come back to
my car, parking ticket.
(crowd laughs)
- Rite of passage.
- Yep, exactly, in full swing.
Alright, I'm welcome.
(crowd laughs)
- That's awesome.
I'd love to hear about,
I mean, you can start,
I want to hear a little
about what are some
of the biggest challenges
facing each of your industries.
So in your role at Google,
what are some of the things
that you think are some of the
biggest issues or challenges
that you personally are
facing or organization
or technology in general are facing.
- Yeah, yeah.
Probably organizationally, I
feel like there's a big rush
to find applications for AI.
It's definitely like the cool thing.
Everyone who comes in wants to do it,
and everyone in schools
are super excited about it.
Everyone wants to contribute there.
And a lot of people, they'll
study AI, like machinery,
in their free time and try to transfer
to a position like that,
but getting it to produce
good results, like better than
a just a normal heuristic,
is really, really difficult.
It's actually, just knowing
how hard it is to apply AI
just makes self-driving cars
seem like that even more crazy,
which is an extremely dynamic
problem if you think about it.
There's so much that can happen.
Like someone can run on the street
or whatever and then blah, blah.
And you know, that's solving that,
but finding applications for AI,
I think that's really hard,
one of the biggest challenges.
- Yeah I'd love to hear your perspective.
In your 25 hour day,
what are some of your biggest challenges?
- I think as an industry as a whole,
one of the biggest
challenges we're seeing,
and too, we were just talking about one,
it's like culture, startups.
You see all these big
companies that blow up,
and they're, how the hell are
they killing it this hard?
Because they build it
with five or 10 people,
and they're like hustlers, right?
You don't realize it, as
your company starts growing
so fast, you don't realize
you're hiring people
and you're not thinking
about, you want inclusion,
and just other things
like cultural aspects
that you just don't think about
as your company's growing
so fast, honestly.
Because you're just like,
I need an iOS engineer,
I need like this guy, I need
a DevOps, you're just hiring
talent and you're just
scaling this company so fast,
you don't really think
about a lot of those things,
so we're seeing a lot
of cultural challenges.
And that's something we were
just talking about before this.
And then I think the second
thing is like bubbles, right?
You see a lot of people out here raising
a lot of money.
(crowd laughs)
- A lot, man.
- Like a lot of money, yeah sorry.
Raising like a lot of money.
And you're like, what are you doing again?
And it's creating these bubbles.
I think one of the biggest
things we see right now
is the scooter bubble
if you live out here.
- Oh goodness, yeah.
- Scooters.
- They got in the trend too.
- Yeah I mean, they're everywhere,
but I mean, as you think about it,
you're kinda like, it's nice to have,
but is it like solving a problem,
are we getting back to the bases,
or did they just raise a hundred
million dollars for what?
So those are the two things I see,
is like fundraising
bubbles that are killing
fundraising in general and markets,
and then I also just
see the cultural thing
when you're building a
startup, it's challenging.
- So you're long pizza robots?
- No.
(panel laughs)
- There's a pizza robot
company, it raised--
- It actually raised--
- 200 million dollars to deliver pizzas.
It's pretty interesting
- It raised a lot of money.
- Yeah that's really interesting,
I never thought about that.
The bubbles in the startup space, right?
So yeah, I echo what Vern
said about the culture,
and I think internally to our industry,
you know, diversity's a big thing.
Apple does a great job of this I will say,
like I am really happy
to, on a daily basis,
work with other engineers who are women,
senior engineers who are women,
junior engineers who are women,
and that is really great,
as well as, not just women,
people of color as well.
But still, when I go into a meeting
and everything that's kind of on--
It's not really something
I try to think about,
but in the back of my mind,
I'm, you go into a room
for a meeting and you're
kind of counting on like,
okay, how many women are represented here,
how many people of color
are represented here.
And as well, that's also
something I think about
when I look at events we have,
whether they're internal,
like all-hands meetings
with our executive board,
or WWDC every year, I'm
looking at unconsciously,
I mean consciously, but
like without trying to,
I'm looking, do we have
women presenting on stage,
do we have people of
color presenting on stage,
because that visibility's
really important,
and it's important for
young people to see that
so they can see themselves
in this industry,
so that they know it's possible.
'Cause like I said, I
didn't have computer science
on my radar until one person
suggested it to me off a whim.
So internally, I think
that's a big challenge.
Externally when we talk about
consumers of technology,
I think a big thing we have to think
about is privacy of data.
Luckily I work for a company
that I think shares that concern.
Apple is the first to say
our product is our device,
is our computers, our
phones, like our iPads,
not our users, we're
not selling our users,
we're not selling your ad
profile, that sort of stuff.
Whereas a lot of companies in our space,
that's like how they make money.
And so we got to stick
to our guns about that
and stick to our morals and our values,
so you know, it doesn't
matter how much money's
on the table when that's involved.
We want people to feel
safe using our products.
It's not just a problem
for the tech company,
but also like the consumer
to make them a little aware
about, look like, maybe at first glance,
you don't think it's important,
but we just want you to be
really the owner of your data
and be in charge and feel
like you're not helpless
when it comes to your data
and your persona online.
So yeah.
- Great, that's awesome.
I talked a little bit about, past earlier,
you know the entertainment
industry and the way it builds up
working at Apple, Google and a startup.
What are some common misconceptions
people have had about you
or asked you or said to you,
and how can we combat some
of these misconceptions
and communicate what you
guys do more effectively?
- You guys go.
(panel laughs)
- I mean honestly,
misconceptions, it's like,
I don't know, I feel like
I've come across too many?
Actually, there are a few, right.
I think a lot of people,
especially with being not Apple,
a company that relies on
user data to kind of operate,
a lot of people extremely think that
we're just trying to
get everything we can,
sell it or whatever, and do some really,
I don't know, messed up stuff on the user.
Unfortunately, things like that happen,
I mean you see in the news,
like with Facebook a lot,
but I don't think anyone's
actively trying to get data
just 'cause they can.
It's like, a lot of times
there's so many steps
and checks and barriers,
it's like if I want to put in
any feature that collects user data,
I have to store it in a
very specific location,
I have to state exactly
what I'm gonna store,
it has to be reviewed by like
a bunch of councils, which--
this is like the big
company part of it, kinda.
But it's there for user safety.
And there's so many
protections for the user,
just to avoid things like these situations
that kind of feed into this misconception
that like, we're just
collecting it to have it.
How do we combat it?
Do you ever scroll through
your Facebook feed,
and it's like, oh, here's your data,
check up on your security
or your account security
and all this stuff, and see what apps,
you know, are asking
for your data and stuff.
I think more things like that help,
but I don't know, it's a hard fight.
- Yeah, yeah.
- I would say, Alan this might,
you might resonate with this too,
one big misconception is
like, what do I do/am I IT,
in a sense, where it's like you go home
for the holidays and you become
your family's personal IT,
right?
(panel laughs)
It's like oh, I have this
iPad, this stopped working,
can you fix my phone, can
you do this, can you do this?
I'm like, oh my gosh.
I can help you fix your
stuff as much as anyone
who owns a phone can,
I'm gonna tell you like,
did you turn it off and
turn it back on again,
like that sort of stuff, but I don't,
I don't know how to fix phones really,
like I'm writing an operating
system that goes on the phone,
so like, I can't really
fix your phone for you,
I'm sorry, please go to an Apple Store.
Of course I'll look at it, you know,
but that's, I think, a huge misconception.
You know, I'm not like IT help type stuff.
Which is fine, like I don't
really know how to combat that,
I'm not sure.
- More tech literacy.
- Yeah, more tech literacy maybe.
'Cause it's just like,
oh she works in tech,
and I might as well be
a genius at Best Buy,
like it doesn't, there's no
real difference to people,
which is fine.
But that's just something
that always kind of amuses me.
And then I have friends and family,
oh, like I'm looking at
how much does this cost,
is it better to the plan
with Sprint, this and that,
and I'm like oh gosh.
(panel laughs)
Like I don't do the
business side of it either,
so it's like, I have to look
up how much our products cost,
like I don't know, people ask me
when the next thing is coming out.
One big misconception about
me, because I work at Apple,
is that I know everything
about Apple products.
And I'll be the first
the to tell you, I don't.
I'm just as in the dark as you are.
I can't tell you when the
next XYZ is coming out
because I don't know.
So yeah, those are two big
ones I deal with, and just,
part of it, I can combat
it with my own transparency
and also just like tech
literacy for people,
like the difference between
someone who can fix things.
What I've started telling people is like,
you wouldn't call up a, like an architect
to fix your toilet,
like unplug your toilet,
versus someone who knows
how to stop a blockage,
how to unblock something,
versus someone who built the building.
- That was a good one.
- Thank you.
- I don't know how to follow that.
(crowd laughs)
For me, misconceptions,
I don't know any mis--
I think, not out here so much,
but when I go back to the East Coast,
it's funny to meet
people and they're like,
oh you're a CEO, like a tech company,
it's like you think we're
going to baller parties,
and like wearing Bernie Men--
- Where's the Tesla?
- Teslas and like all this stuff,
and I'm like, no dude, we're
working 24 hours a day.
I think that's like a huge misconception.
Also when you raise money,
everyone's instantly like,
oh you're rich.
You know this is not any
of my money actually,
it's like literally invested, right?
So that's funny, it's
super funny to explain
to older people, like my grandmother.
She's like, so what's going on?
What're you doing, and how much money?
Do you have to pay that money
back, like what's going on?
Those are the lower level
misconceptions that I have.
There's no way to really combat it
besides educating more people
on the industry of startups.
I mean everyone here,
they're so used to startups,
so they're just like,
oh you're eating ramen.
It's like a thing, right?
But movies like Social Network and--
- TV shows.
- Founders.
- Silicon Valley.
- Yeah, Silicon Valley, and like Founders,
Eric Spiegel and Bobby from
Snapchat, those guys I mean,
you see that kind of
larger-than-life style,
like larger-than-life lifestyle,
you're like oh, every CEO's like that.
I mean, some CEOs are like that.
Like their CEOs--
(crowd laughs)
- They were and there are like that,
so I think it's a process,
and a lot of people
look at the end result of everything,
they don't look at the
process, right, it's a process.
- [Woman In The Crowd] Jeff.
- Yeah.
- [Woman In The Crowd] We have
a question from Instagram.
- Oh.
- [Woman In The Crowd] So Prim and Proper
on Instagram has a question for Melissa.
- Oh cool.
- [Woman In The Crowd]
What advice might you give
for women who might want
to enter the tech industry?
- Yeah so great question.
My advice would be number one,
so I don't know the person
asking the question,
where they are, if they're a student,
if they're already in their career.
- They're prim and proper though.
- Yeah, but they are prim
and proper, so that's points.
But I would say, first of all,
you have to have perseverance.
That was something I learned
in school, like in college,
for me like, school was always something
that came easy for me.
When I started programming,
my first thought was like,
oh, I'm not good at
this, and I need to quit,
and I need to drop out of
school because I can't do this.
And it was a new thing for me.
And that was really how I
learned how to persevere
was learning how to program
and becoming good at that
and learning the frustration.
So push through, that's
my first point of advice.
My second point of advice
would be to get a mentor,
like someone you trust,
someone who believes in you
and has your back.
I have been really fortunate,
like they said in my bio,
to have my, the internship
I had when I was in college.
I met some really great mentors who,
the way I describe it
is they, I had a voice,
but they like gave me a microphone.
And that is really what helped me.
They didn't try to speak for me,
they didn't try to speak over me,
but they were the ones
saying, Melissa can do it,
Melissa can do this, like she can.
And I really needed that at
the beginning of my career
because I had no confidence, I was,
like I was afraid to talk
to people in my classes
because I didn't, I was
afraid people would think
I was stupid and that sort of thing,
so having mentors that I trusted
and that really believed in me
was the best thing I did for myself.
And that's what I would say to people,
you know, women starting out especially,
and minorities and anyone who
feels like the pressure is on
like, two fold, kind of?
So yeah that's my advice.
Thanks for the question.
- I have just a couple left,
so this would be a good, if
anyone has one in the audience,
feel free to shout it out.
Cool.
So how often have you guys
been back to Richmond?
What do you like about changes, dislike,
when was the last time
you were back, yeah?
- I just talked, so.
(panel laughs)
- I go back pretty often.
I have lots of family
and friends in Richmond,
I probably go back every six weeks.
I think I was there over winter
break, the middle of break.
And so Richmond is actually like,
it's crazy how much
construction is going on.
I feel like my freshman
year, it was so cool.
I was sitting up in Brandt,
like the 14th floor,
and they're like building Raising Cane's,
like right outside my building.
(crowd laughs)
And I was like, cool, construction.
And they're building like West Grace
North and South and stuff.
But now they've rebuilt the park,
they've built up the
Contemporary Arts Center,
they've revamped the size of GRC,
I think another engineering
building is coming.
Yeah okay so, there's just
so much growth going on,
which is crazy, it's, the
amount that VCU is growing is,
it's awesome.
- Yeah I went back to Richmond
for the holidays, for Christmas.
My dad actually lives
right across the street
from Broadview, Belvidere, so.
- Oh nice.
- I'm like, I see
everything that's going on.
Richmond's building up nicely.
I'm actually going back to Richmond again
to speak on another
panel for my fraternity,
so I'm in Kappa Alpha Psi, in April.
So yeah, I'll be back
in Richmond in April.
- I was just there also.
So I'm also from the Richmond area.
I grew up in Southside,
within the Chesterfield area.
So that's where like, kinda
home base is for me with family,
so I go back for holidays.
I was just there in December
for break and stuff.
And then I'm not sure the
next time that I will be back.
(laughs) I need to figure that out.
- It's so far.
- Yeah exactly, it's so far.
- It's so far.
- It's like you know, it's
just like a big endeavor
just for a weekend, you
wish you could just go
for a weekend, but it, you know.
It's like most of the time is spent flying
if you're only there for like a weekend.
- It's so true.
- But I love going back and visiting VCU.
I was there with a couple friends
when I was home for Christmas and stuff.
I felt a lot of nostalgia for it,
which is like, I don't feel
nostalgia for a lot of things,
so that was kind of interesting.
(panel laughs)
No, VCU is great, they've built it up.
It was cool seeing the ICA, the
Contemporary Art place open.
I still need to go to it.
I like that it's continuing to grow,
but I hope that it still
maintains the charm of Richmond.
It's funny because when I was going there,
my parents are also Richmond,
and so when I would say like,
oh yeah, I'm going to a friend's house
and they live in this neighborhood,
they were like, oh my gosh,
you can't go over there,
it's a terrible part.
And I'm like well no, it's all VCU now,
so it's not really.
So it's interesting like
with that transformation
of what our parents, who were
born and raised in Richmond
think of Richmond, versus
like what it is now.
Every time I go back, I
see a VCU basketball game
at Siegel Center, just
because I love VCU basketball.
It's hard for a school
that's in an urban setting,
because you wanna expand,
you wanna continue
to build up your name, but
you don't wanna be like,
a gentrifying, just mob, and so it's,
you gotta walk that line of
keeping the community in tact,
not just, not like forcing people out,
but also like, have strategic growth.
So I know it's a hard for VCU to do,
and I commend them for doing
that and walking that line.
- So you answered this a little
bit for the online question,
but I'd love to hear one
piece of practical advice
you would give somebody who wants to walk
in the shoes you're
walking on, walking in.
- The advice I would give
is to kinda follow this guy
and hustle, you have to
hustle, you have to work hard,
'cause like, if you just
kinda shuffle through,
you can go far, but if
you really work for it,
you can go even further.
You can do things you never
thought were possible.
I feel like in tech, you
have to hustle really hard,
you have to learn the skills,
you have to do what you want,
you got to step outside your comfort zone,
you gotta speak to people who are worth
a million times more than you,
you have to do all kinds of crazy things
and be open do doing it all,
and yeah, that's my best advice.
- Mine is I guess, don't be
afraid to ask for something.
So every CEO is probably
like a Steve Jobs stan,
I am as well, right?
But I remember he did this interview,
and he was just like, you know,
he needed something when
he was first building Apple
and he literally called up David Packard
from Hewlett-Packard, and
was like, yo I need this.
And he'd never received a call from anyone
asking for anything, so he literally just
sent it over to him, right.
And I noticed, especially
when I first got here,
a lot of people were
afraid, they were walking
around the office, and like,
Garrett's walking by today,
he's there, but I'm not gonna like--
And I'm like no dude, I need
to talk to someone at Uber,
I need to do this, I need to do that,
and so many people don't
ask someone something
because they're afraid
like, they're a billionaire.
They're humans, right?
So if you wanna get ahead,
you're gonna have to communicate
with these types of people, and especially
if you see yourself
aspiring to that level,
you're gonna have to
learn how to communicate
and interact with those types of people.
So I would just say, don't
be afraid to ask for things,
because all they can say is no.
You're still back where you
started, probably, right.
- I think that's great advice,
and also that was advice
that was given to me for
the first time in my life
when I was at VCU from
Laura Lomsa who works
in the career center in
the School of Engineering,
shout out to her, she was amazing.
- She is amazing.
- I would just like, pop in her office
and be like hey, I know
you aren't expecting me,
but I need your help.
And it was just like
for the weirdest things
that I could have, whatever.
But she was always there for me,
so I really appreciate that.
And one thing, I had to,
I was emailing actually
the Dean of the School of
Engineering for something,
and she, I asked her to
reread my email for me
before I sent it, and
she read my whole email,
and she was like, you never
asked for what you wanted.
It's all this flowery language,
dancing around the topic,
like you need to just come out and say it.
And I was like oh, that's
a really good point,
like I probably should.
I learned that lesson
there, and that's something
that I've really taken
with me where it's like,
you can't just expect
something to be given to you,
there's a saying like,
closed mouths don't get fed,
that sort of thing, where
it's like, you have to ask
or no one will know what you want.
And then as far as practical
advice goes, get an internship.
So many people contact
me, like cold email,
I want to study computer
science, what should I do,
or like, what field should I go into?
And I get it that technology's wide,
breadth, just so many things.
You should get an
internship, get a couple,
figure out what you like,
figure out what you don't like,
'cause that's just as important,
and then go from there.
You don't have to start
at Apple at the beginning.
I didn't, I had other
jobs and stuff before.
And it was really helpful
for me to figure out
what I liked and what I didn't like.
- [Woman In The Crowd] We have
another question from Instagram.
This is from Taylor Lamb.
So she asks, what is a book that you would
gift to someone or recommend?
- Depends on the part of
your life you're at, right?
If you're trying to get
a job at Apple or Google
or something, I'd give them
Cracking the Coding Interview.
That's like the, it
literally says on the cover,
how to get a job at Amazon or whatever.
But if they're already in their career,
I would give them this
book called Critical,
or Crucial Conversations.
And it's an amazing book,
it talks about how to,
how to kind of really have a conversation
when it's a sensitive
topic, when it's really hard
to get what you, to get what
you want or say what you need.
I've read a good portion of it,
kinda skimmed through
it, audiobook and such,
but I learned so much just from
the little bit I have read.
- So I think that was good advice,
that's a really good book too.
I mean there's probably
two books I'd give.
One is Pitch Anything,
it's a book about this guy
who's like teaching you how to sell.
I think selling is one
of the biggest benefits,
and it's like a tool in
your toolbox, no matter
if you're working at a startup
or a at bigger company,
you're always trying to
convince someone of something,
whether you're a manager or you're a CEO
or you're an employee
trying to talk to your boss
and saying, we need to do this,
we should add this in our roadmap.
You're always trying to convince someone,
so I think that's like a huge skill
that a lot of people just step over.
And then the second one is The
Hard Thing about Hard Things.
I don't know if you guys have read that,
but I think Ben Horowitz is super smart,
and I think the book's dope
because he uses rap songs
to label the titles, I
think that's super clever.
And it basically talks about
the ups and downs of running a company.
And I mean, throughout the book
you just see his incredible
hustle, I mean you look
at him now and you're
like, wow he's killing it,
but he went through so much stuff.
I mean literally like,
running out of money,
and he raises a couple
million dollars in like a day,
right, you're like how did he--
You know it's just like, extreme
perseverance, it's great.
It's a great book, so.
- Yeah, I'd recommend what
Alan said, along with,
there is one book that a lot of places
recommend their engineers read called
The Pragmatic Programmer,
which is pretty good.
And then another one called Clean Code,
which, I forget the author of that now,
which is just about the odds
and ends of writing good code.
But that's like, those are
very specific to what I do,
so I don't know, I need
to, it sounds like,
brush up on my reading.
(crowd laughs)
I feel bad.
- [Woman In The Crowd]
We have another question.
This one's from Facebook.
So this is for Vern.
Can we hear more about Vern's startup?
What is it all about?
- So essentially--
- Pitch it.
(panel laughs)
- I'm not gonna pitch you guys at all,
I'm so tired of pitching.
As you guys know, I went to VCU.
There was a couple of companies
that I wanted to actually
talk to when I went to VCU,
and unfortunately, those
companies didn't come
to our career fair, and
that's no knock to VCU,
there's just a lot of
companies don't have the budget
to come to every school, right,
they gotta go to their top-tier schools,
which they call their target universities.
I worked at Capital One,
helped do some recruiting,
and I noticed right off the bat,
we were only going to the
same universities every year,
and I was like well
dude, how're we gonna hit
these diversity inclusion bills,
and like bring more students
in through the pipeline
if we're going to be doing
the same thing every year.
They were like, Vern we
don't have the budget
to talk to every school, so I was like,
I'm gonna build something
so that every company,
regardless of the size of their brand,
can press a button and
launch a live event,
much like we're doing now,
and students can ask questions
to great people like this
who work at Google, Amazon, Facebook,
and say how can I get a
job there, what did you do,
what you look for on a resume?
And they can actually
talk to direct recruiters,
even if they don't come to VCU.
And I just noticed, this
is like something I used,
I actually was gonna work at Snapchat
before I started my company,
and I literally reached out
to a recruiter and asked him like,
what does he look for on a resume,
and he told me, and I got an interview,
and I went to an advanced
region interview with Snapchat.
And I was like, I'm gonna build this,
because if I can build
this, if I can do this,
I can build this so
everyone has the access
to the information,
and it seems to me that
information access is the
key to diversity inclusion
and solving a lot of the hiring goals,
because if you don't know
what skills are needed
to get a job with Google
or get a job at Apple,
and you don't know
anyone who works at Apple
or works at Google, how're gonna get a job
at Apple or Google,
right, you have no way.
So we literally did one thing really well.
The app is literally only a company,
like Apple can host a live Q and A,
and students anywhere in the US can join
and ask questions for an hour.
After that hour, the recruiter
gets every piece of data
and datasets, and it's protected data,
but we share it with the recruiters,
and they can actually
reach out to students
and share it with students
that they really wanna engage.
So if they hire one
student at VCU at Apple,
when it's time to recruit
again, she's an alumni,
so she's gonna be more willing to look
at another student from VCU,
which helps more VCU
students get hired at Apple.
Same thing with Howard
University and other schools.
- What's the site?
- So it's hallothere.com,
we're launching a new this
Sunday, so, if all goes well.
The development is, these
guys know, it's like crazy.
But yeah, we're super excited.
We posted over at Thirty Seventies Events,
Pinterest, Slack,
Facebook, not Google yet,
not Apple yet, Capital One,
some pretty big companies,
so we're super excited.
- That's cool.
- You talked about fundraising,
what fundraising level
are you at right now?
- So we raised, just
now, we raised 750,000,
so Garrett Camp and those guys at Expa
put in 625,000, and then
we had another investor,
he built most of the network
solutions Tyson's Corner,
which were bought by Amazon,
which as you guys know,
Jeff Bezos and those guys
are moving to Tyson's Corner,
put in some money as well.
We're gonna go back,
usually raise on milestones,
so we have a product
launch, we're signing like,
three bigger contracts with companies,
and then we just hire a key,
killer player on our team.
I wanna tell you guys, but she's so good.
But yeah, we're gonna go
start raising again in March.
- Cool.
- So yeah, product probably
a pretty big run out.
Thinking like, seven, seven to 10.
Yeah, yeah.
- Any other questions
for our awesome panel?
Thank you so much, really
appreciated everybody,
this has really been cool.
- Thanks guys.
- Yeah thank you.
- Thank you.
(crowd claps)
