At the Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Computing, woman from across the world gather to not only advance women in the technology industry, but also dive into the details of their work, as attendees represent a wide range of industries and technology backgrounds. Intuit Inc., a finance and accounting software company, maintains a strong presence at Grace Hopper with more than 112 employees in attendance at this year’s show.

“It’s a fantastic opportunity for us to network with women in technology and talk about actually what’s cool, not just the issue around fixing the numbers, but actually we talk about capabilities, you know, what’s really important for our craft,” said Raji Arasu (pictured, left), senior vice president of platform and services and chief technology officer of development at Intuit.

Arasu and Marianna Tessel (pictured, right), senior vice president and chief product development officer of the Small Business Group at Intuit, spoke with host Rebecca Knight (@knightrm) on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio. They talked about the types of conversations happening on the ground during the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in Orlando, Florida. 

Leadership by example

In addition to sharing strategies for building a more inclusive workforce, the conference is also a place to discuss technological advancements that are implicitly achievements for the women behind them. Arasu, a seventh-year Grace Hopper veteran, has found that conversations among the booths center around specific issues in technology and product being solved, more so than systematic approaches to inclusion.

“I sense that we’re talking about the real problems around technology. The conversations around the specialties that are required in data science or maybe architecture, maybe engineering. … I think at the keynotes, maybe at the higher level, it’s a lot more about developing women and addressing the problem and probably building the leadership. So, there’s probably two flavors that you find in this conference,” Arasu said. 

Where the rubber hits the road, there are lots of technology challenges being addressed by high-performance product organizations at Intuit. The most effective product teams are not always built because of diversity initiatives, however. Tessel’s product teams include women simply because of their technical talent and leadership ability.

“Women are just awesome. And they make … outstanding engineers, outstanding leaders, and every time I have a group of … all sorts of people, again all kinds of diversity, it’s just a stronger group. … Be awesome, not just diverse,” Tessel said.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.

Photo: SiliconANGLE