Diversity is finally being embraced by the tech world, as was clear at the seventh annual CloudNOW Top Women Entrepreneurs in Cloud Innovation Awards that were held on January 29. This year’s event was groundbreaking, selling out quickly with more than 300 attendees and held for the first time at Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California.

Jocelyn DeGance Graham (pictured), founder of CloudNOW — a non-profit consortium of the leading women in cloud computing — spoke with Lisa Martin (@LisaMartinTV), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the CloudNOW event. They discussed the groundbreaking firsts at CloudNOW’s seventh annual conference.

[Editor’s note: The following answers have been condensed for clarity.]

You have a lot of firsts that I wanted to cover. Your CloudNOW community now boasts over 1,500 members. There’s over 300 attendees [at the awards ceremony]. Tell us what was really unique about how easy it was to attract this audience.

DeGance Graham: We’ve never had such a great response for this event. And some of that could just be the timing. It is finally an idea whose time has come. There just seems to be such a groundswell of understanding the importance of inclusion and diversity — and beyond that, actually creating belonging.

More and more, I feel there’s such an actual enthusiasm we hadn’t seen before. So this year, we didn’t actually publish tickets or let people know that tickets were available. Everything was essentially sold through word of mouth.

Another first is not only being here at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, California, but also having Sheryl Sandberg as one of the keynote speakers.

DeGance Graham: It is such an honor. She is one of the women who has been so important in terms of the seminal movement of women in tech. Like many women, I read her book Lean In years ago, and the fact that she’s here with us tonight at the event after having inspired an entire movement is really significant, and we’re just thrilled.

Another unique first this year is recognizing 10 female tech entrepreneurs who are technical founders of venture-backed businesses. Tell us how you’ve been able to achieve that — because their backgrounds are diverse and the technologies they’re designing and driving are really incredible. 

DeGance Graham: This year was an absolute breakthrough year for many different reasons. There are organizations now like AllRaise.org that are supported by women VCs, and there just seems to be an entire groundswell of female founders. And we were able to align the criteria around female technical founders.

I’m really hoping that moving forward we’ll be able to continue with that as more and more women realize that they should be starting businesses and they can get venture backing.

Give me some examples of how you’re helping to make a difference that really resonate with you and that give you inspiration for your 2019 goals.

DeGance Graham: For me, one of the most heartening things about the organization is the work we’re doing together through our scholarship program. So we’re identifying the next generation of both female and minority leaders in tech, and we’re investing in them through our STEM scholarship fund.

This year our funders include Google, Intel and Facebook, and we’re really hoping to be able to expand that scope next year to increase the number of students we’re helping.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the CloudNOW “Top Women in Cloud” Innovation Awards event.

Photo: SiliconANGLE