Monique Morrow has had a diverse career. She has undergraduate degrees in French and geography, but her parents encouraged her to embrace technology, so she later got a master’s degree in IT and telecommunications management.

Morrow and her team are working on the idea of building a “humanized internet,” which will tackle one of the biggest problems facing the world today: proof of legal identity. This is the project for which Morrow won her “Top Women in Cloud” award.

Morrow, CTO and evangelist of New Frontiers Development and Engineering at Cisco Systems Inc., sat down with Lisa Martin (@Luccazara), host of theCUBE*, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio, from the CloudNOW 5th Annual “Top 10 Women in Cloud” Innovation Awards in Mountain View, CA. (*Disclosure below) CloudNow is a non-profit consortium of leading women in cloud computing and converging technologies.

Morrow and Martin talked about Morrow’s career and diverse background, the various influences and support she had from people that encouraged her to succeed, and how that diversity and encouragement helped her create her “humanized internet” project. She also discussed her forthcoming book, “Internet of Women: Accelerating Culture Change.”

Humanized internet and freedom-as-a-service

Morrow is a strong advocate of using technology for humanitarian purposes, and it is in this area that she and her team created the concept of the “humanized internet” in which “freedom-as-a-service” is at the core. She has proposed using this internet model to focus on what is considered by the UN to be a serious issue in need of resolution: proof of legal identity, or in terms of Morrow’s humanized internet: “identity-as-a-service..

“Why I’m here tonight is because of something that is so passionate for a group of us in the industry, and that is providing identity to 1.5 billion people who do not have it, and it’s identity-as-a-service through the eyes of a refugee,” said Morrow. “This is really the work that is nascent and in progress, and I’m very, very excited and passionate about this work and the potential to change the world.”

‘The Internet of Women: Accelerating Culture Change’

In September, Morrow released her first book, “Internet of Women: Accelerating Culture Change,” in which she collaborated with three other co-editors. The central theme of the book revolves around the technical contributions of various women in countries around the world, and who are attempting to bring technologies to their respective countries, and in doing so, modernization and business opportunities.

“It’s about narratives of wonderful women in 30 countries, including social scientists, about these women not only creating technology, but also looking at technologies to develop new entrepreneurial opportunities,” said Morrow. “And so we are very, very excited about the impact that this book has; rather than just talking about dire statistics, we believe women are doing fantastic things globally throughout the world.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the CloudNOW – 5th Annual “Top 10 Women in Cloud” Innovation Awards. (*Disclosure: Some segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE are sponsored. However, no sponsorships have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo by SiliconANGLE