I'm going to give a brief summary of Suzanne's much more eloquent summary and notes, and then we'll go to some additional questions. There were some wonderful questions that were left over from the sessions, and so we're going to need to do that. I think today we had several lessons, some of which reiterated the last session, but it's very nice to see reinforcement of these items. Individuals, what we can do is that part of the thing that we must do is to be intentional about developing the next generation of STEM leaders. Dr. Sumana pointed out that leadership training for underrepresented scientists targeted to them is incredibly valuable, and that such training very much needs to be introduced into graduate level programs, particularly that don't just focus on academia, but focus on leadership at large. Dr. Husband's feeling, feeling husbands pointed out that passion, knowledge, courage, listening with intention, collaboration, transparency, and principles are very important to keep in mind as we develop ourselves or continue our paths of leadership and our training of potential leaders. And President Lindquist pointed out that what we do in higher education is the heart and soul of change that can occur. We've learned from Dr. Kaufman the value of applying the S-curve to our own careers to think through the course that we wish to take and to plot the individual steps as we go and to study how they work and what our next step should be. And from Yo-Yo Ma, we got the wonderful concept of scouts and working at the margins, those things that lead us to the edge of knowledge and bring back new knowledge to the crowded group at the center of the beach. Again, Dr. Sumana pointed out that there are some people who are more natural leaders than others. And of course, one of the great problems that we need to address is what aspects of leadership is one blessed with at birth and which things can be taught. And of course, teaching doesn't just mean in school, but also within the family and within the subculture of our greater national cultures. It is incredibly and incredibly important to seek, find, and have mentors, sponsors, advocates, and allies, people who will support you, who will point out things you should do, those who will make it possible for you to do those things, who will really sponsor your growth. And also networks are an incredibly important thing. Peer networks, those from the same group, mentors who can teach you what they know. The women groups of peers who get together, the importance of ability to create peers. We've learned today that you need not be the head of an institution in order to begin to introduce change into that institution, but deliver changes needed if we really want to make that inflection point so that the composition of our institutions reflects the composition of our country. And we have to protect ourselves. We cannot let our leaders burn out. We, as leaders, must have people to fall back on, partners, families, friends, all of those things are very much important to have in our lives. Organizations that formally do work advocating for individuals from different groups like Saknas, Abercams, there's any number of groups and often within professional societies there are subgroups that should be sought out and encouraged and supported by those institutions and societies. Organizations like the Cal State system are very important in terms of showing and propagating shared governance, a culture that supports underrepresented students and staff and that provides mentoring and apprenticeships such that Dr. Sumana described. And then leveraging the power of the university system to affect change. This could happen nationwide. We need to find means of communication so that we learn about those successful things and we figure out how to scale them in different institutions. One of the things that we know is that every college university is different and that different organizations have different internal cultures and within those cultures they need to be looked at and see how these programs can be fit into those structures in an organic way. And finally, a lot of the racism, sexism, etc. that occurs comes about because of learned behavior within our organizations. We have to unlearn or relearn our history. I would say we need a more accurate representation of our history. We need to start telling, we need to tell our truths so that the society as a whole can see those truths. And I would point out that is because of these widespread inaccuracies in our understanding of what our national history is that we have built into our culture systemic problems that lead to continuation of under less opportunity for certain groups within the country. And of course science communication or communication of science is not limited to scientists although we need to get a whole lot better at it and we can best learn that from our colleagues in the social sciences and in the arts and humanities and we need to be more talkative to each other. So scientists need to learn from people in the humanities to tell our stories because facts alone, we have learned certainly in the last five years, facts do not on their own convince people who have already determined something that is not true to be true. It's stories that do that. It's listening to why they feel that belief. It's countering with why they might consider other kinds of belief. And finally, not finally I keep saying finally, but that's because I am coming close to the end of this, is that we need to leverage existing DEI efforts and companies. We need to be prepared for the company to leverage what you do within that company to make itself look good. That's okay. Institutions are more than the sum of the people within them and sometimes your interest and the interest of the organization will not coincide. And so you need to know that and you need to be prepared to deal with it within the institution and within your own work. And as Yoyo Ma said, culture turns the other into us. So when we share our stories, when we truly listen to each other's stories, that is when we begin to realize that it's not us and them, it's us as a very interesting complex and diverse whole. And so Suzanne ends by saying, so perhaps all of us scouts who've been out there on the edges need to become leaders who rebel with a cause, as Sharon McCrane stated, to come together to form networks that change organizations. And so I'm going to stop with that lovely summary, which I somewhat mangled from Suzanne. And now we will go to some questions. And so I'm going to go catch up with those questions here. As soon as I can find my question and answer box, here we are. Okay. And I think we are enough people still that I think probably we won't highlight. And Jane, please give me the high sign as we approach our adjournment time. So one of the questions that, thank you, one of the things that we have, one of the questions we got from Keith Trujillo was meant for the last three panelists, but also really applies to any of the other panelists who are still with us, which is that right now we're living and working in a political environment where there is our many who are cynically working against DEI and attempting to hide historical facts essential to the understanding of the current situation. And of course, moderators, I think you should consider yourself part of these groups as well, that I mean, people who can answer questions. So these, they're in attempting to hide historical facts essential to understanding the current situation. So what would your advice be on how to move forward in the current climate? And now I can't see all of you. So please just speak up, panelists. Otherwise, I'll be forced to answer myself. And I suspect that you will have better answers. Well, I'll take a crack. Oh, there we go, Cynthia. Well, I wasn't sure if I should type it in or whatever. And that's another just a great question as all the questions have been when you look through the both the Q&A section and the chat box and that. But for me, it comes back to, again, know what it is you're talking about and having good data, good information, good research, and keep presenting it and then presenting it in different formats and then different vehicles, whether it's using social media, whether it's publishing an article or an editorial in the opinion page of your local newspapers and that but reinforcing what you know and believe to be the truth, you know, pushing out those facts, you know, and I'm here in North Dakota, there's a group going on relative to the issue of literacy, journalism literacy. And how does that play out particularly in the last 18 months, two years and everything that happened on the political side and that and who is telling the truth and whose truth is it, but how do you assure and my point and being part of that group was that my understanding of journalism as a profession is that it is about truth telling. There's credentials like like being a licensed physician or nurse or scientist, there's protocols relative to peer review in that. And so believing in that knowledge that we know is truthful, good factual knowledge and then sharing that in the different vehicles that are good for us. For me that becomes storytelling but integrating the data, you know, little tidbits of data in that and telling people, talking to people on their level and in their way and in their language. Thank you. And I would add that one on one helps. I have a very big family as well. I don't have 14 siblings, I only have five. But I do have 17 nieces and nephews, over 100 first cousins and 31 going on 32 grand nieces and nephews and we are a extraordinarily wide range of opinions and political viewpoints in the family. And we all still, for the most part, talk to each other. And one of the things that helps is of course shared history because of our family. The other thing that helps I think is the ability to listen to each other with respect. Some of my dearly beloved are quite different in their convictions than I am. But they ask me questions about things and I try to understand where they are coming from and answer the question in a way which is neither condescending nor assumes anything but really to explain why those facts are, I assume they are facts, why I trust those recommendations. Sometimes I have never used the term clinical trial but I do describe how the testing of those things were done and that seems to help as well. Anyone else before I go on? Okay. Now another question comes from Rati Phanawalla who says, when your STEM students get to the STEM workplaces, they will need to show leadership in order to get lead roles as team leaders, etc. What specific leadership courses do STEM graduates take to develop their leadership skills? Do they see the value of these skills in the STEM workplace as equally important for success as tech skills? So I'm going to start with this and someone else can pitch in simply by just start talking. Which is to say that what I tell students, I tend, this question tends to come up with students in particular when I go talk to undergraduates and graduate students. They want to know how do they become leaders? How do they make that first step? We heard some very good advice from Jade earlier and in that he was very proactive and so I will say be proactive and they will say well how do you be proactive? And I say because they say we don't feel comfortable asking these things and I really do believe that all STEM students would benefit from courses in acting because that's what I did for much of the time was to say okay I'm going to pretend like I belong here. I'm going to pretend that I am not an introvert and I'm going to just ask or seek out this person that I'm sort of afraid of and that really couldn't get you started. The remarkable thing that we know now from studies in psychology and so forth is that if you do something and you pretend that you are something long enough that you will find yourself more and more acting like that or maybe it's just age. Would anyone else like to weigh in? All right then. So this was an anonymous attendee who has a question for me which is it was nice to hear about my role in Saknas. Wouldn't it be powerful to have an event in which Saknas, Aces, Ship, Nezbi, Noboshay, Swee that's the Women Engineers and other organizations combined once every three or five years to hold a combined national conference? Well that's a very interesting and thoughtful idea which has come up over the years I must say. There's a lot of cross membership in all of these organizations and so there's people who are members of all of them or a good cross-section of them. I'll put it before the folks who are making these decisions now and we'll see what can happen. We could do it in terms of a kind of a oh this is not anonymous it's Nora Savage at NSF who asked that question. Hi Lydia this is Ratty. I asked that question that you just answered about leadership training for students in undergrads and grad school for STEM and you answered with the acting which I think is a great idea. I strongly believe that especially for underrepresented minorities, underrepresented groups it's such a big transition to get to the workplace and start moving up a trajectory which is the same or higher a faster rate than what they have been on and not take two years to find themselves and move around in the organization to find some place where it's nicer for them but to have twice the amount of leadership skills that you require on average to survive and thrive as an early career. So I believe that it's no one's responsibility right now not the colleges and not the workplace that the underrepresented groups get that additional training well in time so that more of them can succeed. So I strongly believe that and I would love for someone to say no it's not necessary you just learn your technical skills and do whatever other things apprenticeships and that's sufficient even though the playing field is going to be so uneven for you it's sufficient for you to do a good job. That is a quite wonderful comment Ratty and I think that this is being recorded of course so we'll have and there are people taking notes of various kinds so we will be in touch with you as we write our reports because this sounds like it could be a recommendation starting with the National Science Foundation and perhaps going elsewhere. So in terms of stories let me just say in terms of stories as a manager I was 39 years in tech and I retired as a vice president and I can tell you as first line second line managers we looked at the new people coming in and we at once within a few days sort of said you know watch this person they're going to be they have great potential we had seen no output from that person and we targeted people for assignments because we saw potential and so this type of thing is so common even today that if our students haven't heard of these things because they've applied themselves more to the technical arenas only then I think they are at a disadvantage. That's a good point and there is one example that I could point to which is the Keck Graduate Institute which is one of the colleges and I'm now blocking on the city in California Claremont one of the Claremont colleges it's a graduate institution which takes undergraduates who are both science and non-science but all of whom are interested in positions in the business world primarily in biotech and technology one of the requirements for all students is that they must set up and complete an internship at a company and the companies who take these students it's a serious internship they have to do they often go on a team and they have to complete a project for the company and report on it and get graded on it by the company and by the professor in the institute and this has started many of those students on the path to being able to learn things and KGI itself in its classroom teaching how it introduces students to these concepts fairly early the degrees that they give range from masters to PhDs and we were told I'm on that board and we were told by the CEO of one of the companies a big biotech in California that they found that students from KGI advanced more rapidly through the company did Sloan students or Harvard MBA students because they had been introduced to these concepts so early so yeah I'll take time here but I will I will contact you because I have very I think it's a very important thing given this seminar today was about leadership and I would like to follow up with you on this terrific I'll look forward to that do we have any other comments from participants raise your hand or from the folks who are on panelists or moderators just speak up many could not stay today I must say that in planning this I truly neglected to think about the holiday effect and of course it is January 6 as I said at the beginning so there we are hi this is talks for show can you hear me yes I can hi I this was great I apologize I cannot stay for the whole thing in the very beginning but this has been very inspirational and fascinating I want to thank and really Pearson for inviting me to be a part of this these this series of panels but I wanted to I wanted to speak to the comments of preparation of students unless I'm mistaken I what I heard was that the onus is on the students to you know to get the training not on the universities and not on the business places and you know if we're trying to broaden participation and we're trying to we're trying to broaden participation I would I would turn back and say the owner should be on the people who are trying to bring the students in right which include the organizations which include the the institutions but I'm not just going to say the onus on that is on them I'm going to step take a step further and say the NSF is already doing this the NSF is already requiring this unless I'm mistaken they have the engineering research centers and a part of that is workforce development the part of workforce development is you know it's critical internships they have to partner with a minority organization with a minority institute for higher education etc etc and part of it is they have to recruit retain and graduate and provide internship relationships and internship opportunities to underrepresented students secondly the NSF has the LSMRCE as we know and has a bridge to the doctorate so these are these are you know these are settings in which the NSF is able to do this anyway I know I'm the Evaluation PI for LSMRCE and they have a great relationship with a couple of in with Fermilab and also with oh gosh the second one skips my mind but the students are required and expected to do exactly what my predecessor talked about you know in terms of commenting so I would push back and say that not only is the onus on the NSF but the NSF is already doing this anyway very good and I would then add to that that NIH also has become aware of this and has been for a while there are several universities major R1 research intense universities who were told by NIH that their graduate training programs were at risk because they did not have any it was not clear that they were serious about diversity amongst their faculty or their students and one of the speakers who unfortunately could not have to cancel for today was going to talk about her work at Duke University and turning that around into a situation where the student graduate student body is much improved in terms of its ability to attract and retain students from diverse backgrounds that she's been so successful that now she's been asked to take that same on same problem on with faculty and at MIT many years ago when I graduated from that school with my PhD I was on their visiting committee for a decade and was my job was clearly to raise my hand and say what are we doing about diversity and my colleagues there whom I admired very much would say we don't have to do anything the best come to us which missed the point it took NIH telling them that they needed to get their act together before they had instituted a program to bring underrepresented students into the programs during the summer and pretty soon the faculty were saying why didn't I get one of those students this summer and now they are doing better they've got a long way to go yet in terms of both students at the graduate level and faculty so there are efforts underway and I think one of our challenges is to propagate these as I said and find out you know what works and then let people know and put the onus on the organizations to provide these training necessities let's call them to students as they proceed because you know the whole point of a graduate education is to prepare students to be useful and to learn new things and to be leaders as part of this we have just a couple minutes left Lydia it's 528 thank you very much oh is there anyone who has one last comment and then we will adjourn and I want to thank all of the speakers and moderators it was quite wonderful and I think is that Suzanne's hand up I'm back yeah I'm so sorry I had to disconnect I don't know I'm sorry I've been so disconnected I don't know if you all have talked about this but I think the other piece that I think we sometimes forget is yeah we tend to build the pipeline from the bottom up and then there's a lot of merit to that clearly there's an anti-factor but I think there's also merit in thinking about what happens to mid-career faculty and the degree to which we retain them and also put them in positions where they can aspire to leadership positions I think very little attention has been paid to that piece and I think it's a place where we need to intercede and I think NSF should be poised to do that excellent point thank you and on that good note I want to thank those of you who have stayed with us to this end here these will the recordings for I think all speakers will be posted on the website and will be freely accessible and we will make them publicly accessible we will notify the world that they're available at some point after the last workshop is completed it sometimes takes a little while to get them up but they will be there I greatly appreciate your participation the questions were just wonderful and I thank you and have a good evening and let's hope for the best in this new year hey Lydia one final thought will there be a survey coming out oh yes thank you very much Jane you will get a survey in about a few minutes or a minute or less please respond we take those surveys extremely seriously both in terms of how we conduct the next workshop which is January 20th and how we will prepare these reports that we are going to do both for NSF and for the general reading population so please do respond to that survey we really would like to know your thoughts and see the answers to those questions and now I wish you all a good evening and we'll see you I hope on January 20th thank you very much


I remind members that, if the amendment in the name of Miles Briggs is agreed, then the other amendments will fall, and the question is that amendment 263.1 in the name of Miles Briggs, which seeks to amend motion 263 in the name of Shona Robison on tackling poverty and building a fairer country, be agreed. Members should cast their votes now. The vote is now closed. The result of the vote on amendment 263.1 in the name of Miles Briggs is yes, 28, no, 71, there were 22 abstentions, the amendment is therefore not agreed. I remind members that, if the amendment in the name of Pam Duncan-Glancy is agreed, then the amendments in the name of Maggie Chapman and Alex Cole-Hamilton will fall, and the next question is that amendment 263.3 in the name of Pam Duncan-Glancy, which seeks to amend motion 263 in the name of Shona Robison on tackling poverty and building a fairer country, be agreed. Are we all agreed? The Parliament is not agreed, therefore we will move to a vote and members should cast their votes now. The vote is now closed. The result of the vote on amendment 263.3 in the name of Pam Duncan-Glancy is yes, 54, no, 67, there were no abstentions and the amendment is therefore not agreed. The next question is that amendment 263.4 in the name of Maggie Chapman, which seeks to amend motion 263 in the name of Shona Robison on tackling poverty and building a fairer country, be agreed. Are we all agreed? The Parliament is not agreed, therefore we will move to a vote and members should cast their votes now. The vote is now closed. The result of the vote on amendment 263.4 in the name of Maggie Chapman is yes, 70, no, 50, there were no abstentions and the amendment is therefore agreed. The next question is that amendment 263.2 in the name of Alex Cole-Hamilton, which seeks to amend motion 263 in the name of Shona Robison on tackling poverty and building a fairer country, be agreed. Are we all agreed? The Parliament is not agreed, therefore we will move to a vote and members should cast their votes now. The vote is now closed. The next question is that amendment 281, for example, is agreed, therefore the name of Maggie Chapman, which seeks to amend motion 263, be agreed. The next question is that amendment 283, for example, is agreed, therefore the name of Alex Cole-Hamilton, which seeks to amend motion 263, be agreed. Ie ddod o'r ddwylliant o ddwylliant o'r ddwylliant 263.2 yn ymddiw yng Nghymru Alex Cole-Hamilton, ond mae 26, no 94, nid o'r ddwylliant ac yn ymddiw ymddiw yn ddod o'r ddwylliant. Yr eich ddwylliant yma yn ddwylliant 263 yn ymddiw Shona Robison, yn ddwylliant o'r ddwylliant i ddwylliant i ddwylliant ymddiw ymddiw yn ddwylliant.


Assalamu alaikum warahmatullahi. I would like to share a few thoughts about how we can develop a stronger relationship and a closer relationship with the Quran. We know that this is the month of the Quran. This month of Ramadan is the month of the Quran. Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala tells us in the Quran, شهر رمضان الذي انزر فيه القرآن. The month of Ramadan that the Quran was revealed in it. And so we know from looking at the biography of the Prophet ﷺ that he focused more on the Quran during this month and read it more, twice with Jibril ﷺ. We find the early generations, the Sahaba and the Salaf, they would read the Quran in other parts of the year, but they focused and they turned their focus onto the Quran. And this is something that I found when I was studying in West Africa in the Mahdara of Marabat al-Hajj. One of my teachers before Ramadan came, it was my first Ramadan, he asked me, he said, Rami, what are you going to study in Ramadan? And I had not thought about it the way he was looking at it and the way the culture there, drawing from the early generations is, I said, well, I'm going to continue studying my fiqh, the book that I had started. He said, Rami, this is the month of the Quran. And so I encourage you to memorize Quran. And if you're going to study something else, have it about purification of the heart. And that's what I did. I memorized Quran during the week. And on the weekends, I did extra readings on books on purification of the heart, the tongue, specifically by Sheikh Mohammed Molloud. It's a book that I was going over in the Halakha series before the lockdown there at MCC and the community. And it was the best Ramadan ever or one of the best Ramadan's ever that I experienced. And so every Ramadan, we should do whatever we can to turn our lives back to the Quran, to recite it more. And each person is going to have a different way of turning to the Quran. For some people, it's reciting it themselves. For some people, it's learning how to recite it. For some people, it's listening to it. For some people, it's studying the tafseer. For others, you know, whatever it might be, every Ramadan, we should draw that much closer to the Quran. And again, it can be in many, many different ways. What I wanted to share in these series that I'm going to do, this will be the first of four videos, is to talk about one element of the Quran that really amazed me when I learned about it. And this is something that we have to remember that according to one of the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, that the Quran has secrets, that every generation will uncover some, some of those secrets. So we know that in terms of rules, ahkam, and belief systems, itiqadat, and our aqida, those have already been derived. We don't have to approach the Quran and say, oh, what this hadith means is that there are rulings that can change, or maybe the early generations didn't know about it. No, we know that the rules were already discussed. But there are other subtleties. There are other subtleties of the Quran that every generation, there's something that you can uncover in your generation. So when you approach the Quran, approach it like that, like it's an adventure to try to find out what is another mystery or a secret of the Quran that I can have access to. So what I wanted to share with was about this concept called ring structure, or ring composition, which it's studied in literature in terms of looking at literature, whether it's biblical and religious texts, or even if it's literature going back from the Greek literature onwards, but looking at how things are presented. And when I first heard about it and started looking at some of the verses and how they show there is this mirroring pattern to the Quran, it really blew me away. And there's a number of articles. We'll link some in the description in the video here. But if you look at some of these images, and even if you're watching while you're watching the video now, I know some people like to multitask. You can put ring structure for on or ring composition for on and just type on images and look at the images of some of these. I'll be discussing to Surah Al-Baqarah and Ayatul Kursi about this during this video. So what the idea is, is that when you look at the Quran, there is a structure to it. You know, sometimes some people when they start reading the Quran, especially if they're looking coming from other traditions where they see the Bible being presented in a very chronological order, then they come to the Quran and they see, well, why is it, why does it move from here to there, it moves in a different pattern. But there is a pattern. And some of the early scholars noticed this and they wrote books about this, Al-Razi wrote about this and others. They noticed that there are patterns. And so they started trying to identify what are their patterns. Like if you notice at the end at Surah, the last juzah of the Quran, juzah amma, a lot of the surahs are actually in pairs. And so each surah matches up in terms of the theme with the surah that goes after it. And this is why some of the scholars said it's good to recite surahs from that juzah immediately after each other so that we can keep the structure. So to jump right into Surah Al-Baqarah and we've just gotten through finishing this Surah Al-Baqarah a few nights ago. And it's the longest surah in the Quran. But there is a theme there. There's many themes there. But let's look at it the way that those who, the researchers who are looking at ring composition or ring structure in the Quran. So what ring structure is, is you look at, it could be A, B, C, D, C, B, A or A, B, C, D, E, D, C, B, A. It goes down and then it goes and then it mirrors itself. And so the A's in terms of themes will match up. The B's will match up. The C's will match up. The D's will match up and if it's E. And then what they're showing to is that the core central theme that is there, everything's leading up to that central theme and then it mirrors itself back. So let's look at Surah Al-Baqarah. We just got finished listening to it or reading it in our tarawih prayers just a few nights ago. So the first theme in A is believers versus disbelievers. So there's that presentation of who are the believers and the disbelievers. And the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam challenges the disbelievers to produce a surah and God gives life and resurrect. So that's A, basically the idea of believers and unbelievers. Let's go to B. B is Moses delivers law to the children of Isra'in. So we hear a lot of those stories. We are hearing the stories of Benny Isra'in and Moses' interaction and going to the mountain and coming back, all of that. So he's delivering the law to the children of Isra'in and the children of Israel. They're reluctant to sacrifice a cow. That's B. Then C comes as Ibrahim was tested. There was the test of Ibrahim. The Ka'bah was built by Ibrahim and Ismail and they make a prayer that their descendants submit to God and they actually make a prayer which is the prayer of the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. That's why he says, I am the dua of my father Ibrahim alaihi sallam. So we got A, believers versus unbelievers. B, Moses and delivering the law to Benny Isra'in. C, Ibrahim was tested. He builds the Ka'bah and D. This is the central element or this is where it begins to mirror back. The Ka'bah is the new prayer direction built by Ibrahim and Ismail. Sorry, the Ka'bah is the new prayer direction. This is a test of faith and encouragement to compete in good deeds. So if you remember, the original Ka'bah was for the Muslims to face Jerusalem and the Prophet, it was hard for him because he loved Mecca and he wanted it to turn back and Jerusalem sacred to who? To the Muslims, but also to the Benny Isra'in. And so now Allah was telling us about Benny Isra'il and the story of Benny Isra'il and the tests that they experienced and what they went through and their Qiblah, which is Jerusalem, now for the Muslims is changed to the Ka'bah. So that's the central is the changing of the Qiblah. Now it mirrors backwards. So the sea, the next sea, Muslims will be tested and instructions about pilgrimage to Mecca and warning not to worship ancestors and multiple gods. So this sea goes back to Abraham because it says Muslims will be tested and the instructions on the pilgrimage to Mecca. Well, the first sea was Abraham was tested. See Muslims were tested, Abraham was tested. The Ka'bah is built by Ibrahim and Ismail and it's mirrored in that next one as the instructions on the Hajj and not to worship the ancestors, meaning Allah is telling the Arabs, stay on faith because that's what your grandfathers, Ismail and his father, Ibrahim, that's what they were calling you to. And then B, the next B, the Prophet delivers law to the Muslims. The first one was Moses delivers law to the, to Benny Isra'il and the Muslims are encouraged to enter Islam wholeheartedly and this mirrors the theme or the subject of the Benny Isra'il being followers of Musa and believers in God, but they also slaughter or they also, they, when they were ordered to slaughter the cow, which the surah is mentioned after, they didn't do it. So Allah is telling us, this is what Benny Isra'il did. They were submitters to their religion, but they didn't submit at that moment completely. So we want you as Muslims to submit completely. And then A, believers encouraged in the struggle versus the disbelievers. So some of those early interactions between the Muslims and the disbelievers, the Quran is telling us to have that steadfastness. And then Ibrahim challenges the king, the rising of the sun and then God gives life and resurrects. So this A at first was believers versus disbelievers. The prophet challenges the disbelievers to produce a surah. Ibrahim's challenge was Abraham challenges the king to affect the rising of the sun. Try to do that because the king asked him, what is your Lord? My Lord gives life and death. It's like, I can do that. And he killed one servant and let one go. He said, well bring the sun from the west as Allah brings it from the east. So Ibrahim gave him a challenge that he couldn't do. And the prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam gave a challenge to his people, bring a surah that they couldn't do. So if you look at the mirroring of this, it's amazing and it gives us that much more understanding of the Quran as we're following along, realizing there is, and this story is affecting us, even if we don't understand this, but it gives us that much more appreciation. It's like studying astronomy.  But when you understand astronomy, you have a deeper appreciation. And one of the names of verses of the Quran, Ayat is actually Najm, is a Najm and Nujum. In fact, some of the scholars said, when Allah swears by the Mawaqah and Nujum, the places or the setting of the stars and all, he's also swearing by the places that those stars, meaning the Ayat were revealed. So this is taken from a book called Structure and Quran Interpretation by Farin F-A-R-R-I-N who's a scholar and a researcher of literature, Arabic literature and the Quran specifically and he eventually became Muslim. And there's others who have discussed this online and done some of the images that show that. Now you have this entire surah follows this pattern and even within the surah, you also find smaller areas where there's ring structure within that. So if we look at Ayat al-Kursi and there's an image there that shows how Ayat al-Kursi also follows this. So the first part of it is Allah is saying, Allah, there is none worthy of worship except he, the ever living, the ever watchful. It mirrors directly to the last part of the ayah and he is the most high, the most supreme. We take the next one. Neither drowsiness nor sleep overtakes him. That mirrors the second to last and their preservation tires him not. The third part of the surah, to him belongs whatever is in the heavens of the earth. That's mirrored to the third to last section of the ayah. His throne extends over the heavens and the earth. Fourth part of the ayah, who is there that can intercede with him except by his permission, mirrored by and they encompass not a thing, his knowledge of his knowledge except for what he wills and right there in the middle is the core, the heart of this ayah. He knows what is before them and he knows what is after them. So SubhanAllah, take a look at that, the article that's linked, it has these images. It shows the structure that I discussed about surah al-Baqarah and there's other surahs as well in the next video. I'll discuss some more ayahs and if you're interested, you can look at ring structure in the Quran or ring composition in the Quran and you can learn more about this. Jazakumullahi khayr, may Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala draw us all closer to his book and may he give us better understanding of his book and may he give us implementation of his book. Jazakumullahi khayran wassalamu alaykum wa rahmatullah.


Welcome to JSA TV and JSA podcast, the newsroom for telecom and data center professionals. I'm Dean Perine coming to you from ITW 2021. And joining me today is Mr. Robert Kenney. Robert is the Chief Revenue Officer for Connected to Fiber. Robert, welcome to JSA TV. Dean, thank you very much. I really do appreciate the opportunity.   Sure. So Connected to Fiber is an industry cloud SaaS platform connecting the buyers and sellers of not network connectivity in an amazingly efficient manner, driving speed and accuracy into a problem that's in scale is, we think of it as a $30 billion industry problem. And we're bringing that speed and accuracy to this problem, leveraging technology. And it's all built around location truth is our term for it anyway, location accuracy. And if we can provide the buyers and sellers of network connectivity with accuracy around the location, who has connectivity location, what type of location in a massively efficient manner, we're solving a big problem in the industry. Yeah, it certainly sounds that way. And other people seem to agree with you earlier. You guys have, it seems like to me for the last two years there's been like one milestone after the next with Connected to Fiber. But just recently I saw where you guys landed on the Inc. 5000 list. So congratulations on that. Obviously that means there's some substantial growth there. So why don't you tell us a little bit about what your growth has looked like and really where you see it going? Yeah, I mean, I think, first of all, I'm celebrating my one year anniversary at Connected to Fiber. So I can't take a lot of credit for the good work that's been done to date and enabled candidly the Inc. 500, excuse me, Inc. 5000 recognition. Maybe next year for 500. Yeah, we're working on that. But no, I think it's massive for Connected to Fiber. I mean, really truly a validation of what we're doing in the marketplace and the recognition of the growth we're driving and so forth. And candidly, I think it's an honor for any company to be recognized within that group of fastest growing privately held companies. And while we're really fired up about having earned that honor, we also recognize we're really just at the infancy and the starting point of what we need to get done to continue to be a market maker around driving efficiency into the buying and selling process for network connectivity. For sure. And I think that my next question really does apply to what you just said. And specifically, you folks just a couple of months ago, maybe at the beginning of the year, you announced a significant funding round. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that funding round and ultimately what it is enabling you to do? Sure, yeah, thank you. It is a significant accomplishment. It's our Series B funding round, which there are not a lot of software companies that have been founded and built over the last four or five years that can speak to getting to the point where Series B funding is achieved. But I do think it's massive recognition of the fit that we have in the marketplace based on the number of customers we have, the growth in the business and so forth. So you look at fit in terms of the problem that we're solving and investors have realized, okay, these guys are making some things happen. You couple that with an absolutely massive addressable marketplace and investors want to get involved pretty quickly. So we're really excited about it. All of our initial investors, original investors have stayed in the business and we've added new investors to the equation. So we're pretty excited about it. With that, certainly any Series B investment comes responsibility in terms of how you're gonna use your investor's capital to build your business. And we are putting that capital, excuse me, to work very efficiently right now. And we're really targeting on three big areas to drive scale into this particular business. We're adding lots of new team members across the entire business, whether it's data scientists, engineering, sales, marketing, every function in the business is being built out to enable the scale that we need to really take advantage of the opportunity that sits in front of us. Number two is our product portfolio and a big investment in product. We're looking to continue to enhance all of the products that we already have and also continue to bring new products to market to support the demands in the marketplace. But one of the ones that we're literally announcing today is customer bid management. And we feel like that's a game-changing announcement and game-changing product offering and it's the funding from our investors that are enabling that kind of work to get done. And then finally is continuing to drive depth and accuracy into our data. We consider the data moat that we've built to be a competitive advantage. You couple that with the ecosystem that's taking advantage of it. And that's really our secret sauce. So we're continuing, whether it's with data scientists personnel and or the acquisition of data, that's a third portion where we're making significant investments in the business. Awesome. No, that sounds wonderful, but I am not gonna let you go without telling me a little bit more about this bid management solution that you quite literally are just dropping. Why don't you tell us a little bit more about bid management and why it's so important? Yeah, thank you. We are pretty fired up about it. Customer bid management is an enhancement to our CPQ or our configure price quote product offering that already exists in the marketplace. And what we're continuing to drive scale into how our customers are buying network connectivity. So think about the buyer of network connectivity an MSP case in point that is got an opportunity for a several hundred site or even several thousand site opportunity to deploy a technology like SD-WAN. Traditionally, that has been a great opportunity that everybody gets fired up about. And then all of a sudden they realize the work that's gonna need to go in to be able to go identify the right connectivity at the right location at the right price point. What customer bid management is enabling is to leverage our software and the inclusion in our connected world platform to leverage that technology to automate that process. So being able to push a request out into the marketplace within our ecosystem of 6,000 plus providers of network connectivity and allow them to respond to you against those particular locations driving a significant decrease in fallout which is sort of an industry term for inaccurate data. And secondly, driving the best possible price point for the particular type of network connectivity that buyer needs. So think about having done it in past days with spreadsheets and lots of spreadsheets and waiting for people to respond and translating all of the information on those spreadsheets and the potential errors that might take place. Introduce technology, introduce the connected world, our software at the click of a button you can push that out into the ecosystem and have people responding to you in near real time kind of fashion. So with that, there's no one else that can do that right now in the marketplace. And we feel like we're just gonna continue to differentiate and push our lead as industry makers in this particular space. Well, congratulations. That sounds pretty great to me. And Robert, thank you for joining us today. We really appreciate it. My pleasure. Enjoy it thoroughly. Before I go, if folks wanna know a little bit more about Connected to Fiber, where should they go? Connectedtofiber.com. Outstanding, Robert, thanks again. We really appreciate it. Awesome, thank you. You got it, you got it. And thank you viewers for watching JSA TV and JSA Podcasts. We'll see you soon.