All right, you guessed it print it out email time This one is entitled. How do you cope with being alone in the woods? There's actually a lot in that question to unpack. I have a lot of a lot of things to say even about that one sentence But I'm gonna read I'm gonna go ahead and start reading the email I've been thinking about moving into the woods for quite a while being independent of the city system brings lots of financial Benefits, but at the same time it breaks connection between you and your family friends and relatives Right now now I understand that and I'll talk about that, but I'm gonna keep reading it Thanks, get that he throws you a curveball here right now due to corona I haven't seen any of my friends for quite some time lack of social interaction is making me crazy I'm depressed. I can't imagine living imagine myself living in the woods. It seems terrifying You seem to be so happy in your videos. How do you manage to stay happy and motivated? What's your secret? Is it that you just don't have much spare time in the woods? So let's go ahead and bring Talk about the elephant in the room because I know on this channel.  I moved out into the woods, and I'm probably writing my manifesto I haven't seen a human in months and I'll probably start sending out bombs. Okay, that's a joke if you're if you're watching from the FBI So that is a meme. That's a recurring joke. Let me tell you I am not alone in the woods at all Not only, you know, do I do the basic social things going to church two three times a week? I'll usually have dinner with friends once or twice. I'll usually see people pretty much every day I mean there are some days I stay if I don't have any work or anything else to do I just want to stay here alone. I can But of course I see people all the time I can go to the small town close to me And I can just walk into any store and talk to someone if I you know, I feel like I want to talk to someone so the idea of Me or anyone else who moves to the country being alone. I mean some people do that They try oh, I just want to live a couple months alone or something like that Sometimes I don't know people do that, but I do not I live I have probably more social connection than I ever did in the city I don't want to say that maybe some sometimes I talk to people more in the city But I am sure certainly not deprived of any kind of social interaction. So that is a meme It's a joke we make and so if anyone has the idea that oh when I tell you to move into the woods I'm telling you not to talk to another human that is absolutely not the case and what I I think one time one thing I talked about on that stream I had With woes or whatever the other week is a lot of people use these terms like self-reliance Sometimes self-help sometimes being independent of the system as this guy says All of those are mean buzzwords. Okay.  They might be more independent.  I know I'm I'm totally effeminate for that. I need to start hunting but anyway So let's talk about now the the funny thing about this email You probably caught on to the irony of this email because he says oh, I don't want to break connection with my family and friends And I'll reread the sentence after that. He says right now due to corona I haven't seen any of my friends for quite some time lack of social interaction is making me crazy. I'm depressed I can't imagine myself living in the woods. It seems terrifying. Okay, let me tell you what the Lockdown was like down here, which of course no one cares about no one out here is afraid of dying unless you're you know 95 no one is afraid of dying of a virus that kills 0.001 percent of people who have it If you inflate the numbers So out here when the lockdown happened and people didn't you know people couldn't go into work I had for I actually had friends staying at my place We had dinner pretty much every other night with other friends in town.  It's not just back to normal It's back to normal, you know back to how things were in the 1940s. All right So like there's anyone complaining about how terrible things have gotten in cities You will not have to worry about things out here. So Yeah, social interaction. It just seems strange for me strange, you know to me for someone who's like living in a 1984 dystopia In a city where they're locked down and they can't see their friends and they like the only way to talk to their Friends is on zoom, you know being monitored by a government government agent probably And they're worried about moving to the country because they won't be able to see their friends that they can't see anyway Okay, I'm a little confused by that now I do sympathize with the thing this guy says but he seems to indicate that his family lives in a city now friends You know, maybe this is mean to say but friends are replaceable Okay, like I know a lot of you guys who were right out of high school You're like, oh, I'm gonna keep up with my high school friends Might be a waste of your time I mean if you have someone who you really like and you're just you know ride or die or something Maybe but like the listen I've moved for many places in my life and I will just tell you I don't usually keep friends from the previous location It's much easier to actually have friends where you live. I'll just tell you that and as you guys know I don't do social media or any that stuff So anyway, so friends, that's an easy thing to replace Even even if that sounds a little cruel, but hey if your family lives in a city Hey, man, that's that's great but You know, I just don't really feel like and I think it's very important to be connected to family One of the reasons I moved out here is because I have some more distant family members most of which I didn't know before I moved down here, but Either way, like I do think that that's important and I don't think you should throw your family under the bus But in this case, I mean, it's not abnormal for you You could move out an hour or two from the city and you could probably actually see I don't know if this guy's living with his parents or not But it would not be that difficult to see them It'd probably be easier nowadays because you can actually go out and do stuff in the country Whereas you can't go out and do stuff in the city in a lot of places You gotta wear gotta wear your little cuck muzzle and stuff like that So that is one thing So I think the previous year now you might say, oh, I'm saying all this stuff assuming corona and Assuming the corona lockdowns are gonna last forever Here's the one thing I want people to to take away from this or the whole corona stuff Like but all of the things I recommend to people move being independent moving out of the city those are things that I was recommending far before this stuff happened, okay, and Once it happened it just in a microcosm it shows you an example of how easy Like this is not a pandemic that killed 10% of people or got anywhere close. Okay So like imagine if something actually big happened in a city that they didn't like inflate Imagine if something like actually bad happened That helps you realize how reliant on the system you are this this previous experience of all this kind of I mean 2020 people I actually really hate it when people like oh man 2020 that was such a terrible year 2020 is a forced meme It was a normal like objectively it was a normal meme but because of forced memes from the media it was a miserable life for many people, okay But if you're living in the country, it doesn't make a difference, but either way whether Real tragedies or fake tragedies happen. It is better to be out here It is better to have a normal life rather than more of a bug man life when you're reliant on You're relying on so many things out of your control and hopefully this year has this previous year has shown you Exactly how little control you have over your alleged life. Okay in the city So again, I am not living in a cabin And it's not that I never see people That is not how it works. If you think that that's how what you have to do to live in the country That's not how it is.  This is just normal life. All right So don't don't be afraid I would be much more afraid of living in the city right now because you have no you have the sword of Damocles above your head Any manner of things could totally destroy your life at any point in time and things are frankly Liable to get worse in the future. They might improve in the short term But that liability you have is only increasing as time goes on. Okay, so that that is it


The World Health Organization is facing a potential shake-up aimed at preventing future outbreaks from destroying lives and livelihoods. Health ministers agree to study recommendations for ambitious reforms made by independent experts to strengthen the capacity of both the UN agency and countries to continue pathogens. Under the resolution submitted by the European Union and adopted by consensus, the member states are to be firmly in the driver's seat of the reforms through a year-long process. The new virus has infected more than 170 million people and killed nearly 3.7 million according to Reuters' tally of official national figures. We've seen with Ebola, we've seen with other diseases, they can amplify and spread in our communities and our healthcare facilities, unknown, unseen and undetected until they then spread within countries and between countries, endangering all of humanity. They can then kill us and disrupt every aspect of our lives. They exploit our interconnectedness. They expose our lack of coordination, our lack of solidarity, our societal inequities. In short, the pathogens are winning this fight right now and that should not be the status quo and it should not be something we accept. Therefore, we really do welcome the recommendations within the resolutions and also the proposed decision to take this forward to an international agreement or framework convention and preparedness and response for pandemics.


There are people who are destined to embrace endless pain and suffering, and there are people who desire to dream. Everybody dreams, of course, but does anybody want to dream more than the people of North Korea? Their lives are spent inside a virtual prison without even knowing about the truth or human rights. My hometown is North Korea, and near the Chinese border. I remember when I was seven years old, there was a big crowd of people gathered together near the railway bridge, and I saw my first public execution. Also, I remember seeing flashing neon signs across the border in China compared to the constant power shortages in North Korea. I began to think that the government propaganda that all countries is the best in the world.  Sometimes I wonder if the baby is still alive now. After that, I made a dramatic decision to go to China in search of freedom, but I quickly realized I never feel safe in China. I always had to hide my identity because of Chinese policy on repatriating North Korean defectors. Whenever I saw the Chinese police car, I was terrified that they would try to catch me. Eventually, I decided to come to South Korea. I had long to put my feet on this soil even in my dreams, but I didn't know the way to get here. After a long time in China, in 2008, I was finally arrived at Incheon International Airport in South Korea, and I was declared myself a North Korean seeking asylum. Settling down in South Korea turned out to be a lot more challenging than I had expected. When I was sick, I couldn't call out my mother, my friend, my relatives were so far away. Among the difficulties, I encountered many problems were the hardest. I often found it difficult to pay rent. I also even went through an identity crisis. Am I a South Korean or a North Korean? Why am I? Sadly, there was no country I could call proud in my own. After a year's confusion, I finally managed to find meaning in my new life.  They were forced to remove the remote area. I agonized over the East for a while, and I decided to go back for them. I met them at a Chinese border. I helped them escape from North Korea. We traveled to the border of Laos, and I made a broker for I paid money already and to take them to the South Korean Embassy in BNTN. On my way to the airport to return to South Korea, I received a call that my family had been caught as they crossed the border. When I heard this, my whole world was broken. I entered Laos without any knowledge about the country, and I didn't speak English, and I had no clue where my family was. Again, I felt powerless and frustrated. Facing the reality, there was no one to help me. I paid numerous fines, and I spent 50 days of going back and forth between the immigration office and the police station. I was finally able to meet my family again. Another nine months later, we were eventually reunited in Seoul. In South Korea, here, I'm continuing to learn English in order to boost my prospects with North Korean defectors to try to get us up to stabilize their lives, but their lack of English is a handicap. Therefore, I started studying English a lot, and in 2011, I was admitted to the Korean University of Foreign Studies. I put all of my efforts into all of my activities. Then one day, I found that great opportunities were coming to me. I hope that my brief story can help you guys to gain more insight into the difficult struggle facing many North Koreans. There are countless North Korean families just like mine. They have to suffer immensely to gain freedom and to live together in peace. These people need continued support and attention of the international community to help them achieve their dreams. I firmly believe that if we all work together, we can help North Korean people and make this world a better place. Thank you.


So Tania says I've been dating this guy for a couple months now and I've been dating this guy for a couple months now and now he's asking me to move in with him and I said no I'm not ready for that kind of mood, a move. Now he's upset and he told me if I'm not moving in with him we're done and I agree we can just be friends. Was I wrong for not moving in with him? Help me man. No I mean if you're not comfortable with that and you're not ready for that, first off if you're looking for marriage and you know you're not you know and he's like hey move in with me and you're not in some kind of weird situation where you need to move in with him or something like that then my suggestion is that you wait until you have some kind of promise of marriage before you end up moving in with him. Because you know if it's just been a couple months and it's just like you know because basically what's going to end up happening is he's going to end up getting a lot of his needs met that he wants to get met that men normally would only get met if they were married. And so if he's getting those needs met and you're not getting all of your needs met assuming right now that you want marriage which I just had a conversation with some woman the other day about this. She's like well what if I don't want marriage and it's like okay great whatever it doesn't matter right. And I'm not advocating that you should or shouldn't want marriage you know I think whatever you want is fine but if you do want marriage then my suggestion is that you don't get into a situation where he's getting all of his needs met and you're not getting all of yours met. And so I absolutely don't think that it's you're wrong for not wanting to move in with him. I you know I don't I don't think that you should ever just want to move in with a guy just because he wants to wants you to move in with him. And if he's threatening the relationship because you aren't moving in with him that's a huge red flag anyway because he's threatening the relationship. And so you don't want to be with a guy who's ready to throw a relationship away completely because you have a boundary right so you put up a boundary in his reaction is to threaten the entire relationship that's a that's a problem that's a big problem. And so it's good that you know that now and that you know that that's going to be something that you're going to see more of in the future if he wants something and you don't want it. He's going to threaten the relationship and so that's it's good it's good that you know that now. And so I you know I don't know what the rest of your situation looks like but yeah I don't think you're wrong at all.


This study investigates the improvement of soil moisture active passive, SMAP, sea surface salinity, SSS, over five river dominated oceans globally using three machine learning approaches, random forest, support vector regression, and artificial neural network. The results show that all models improve SMAP SSS product by up to 28% reduced in root mean square error for validation, with random forest yielding better performance than the other two methods. The calibration and validation IMSs by RF were 0.203 and 0.556 practical salinity unit, SU, while those of SMAP SSS were 0.774 SU. The improved SSS well captured spatiotemporal patterns of SSS for both low and high salinity water in all five regions, and the proposed approach can be used operationally to improve global SMAP SSS product including other coastal areas and neopolar regions in the future. This article was authored by Yuna Jang, Young Jung Kim, Jung Ho Im, and others. We are article.tv, links in the description below.


Kaiser Permanente Norse Practitioner in Palmdale and I should be chosen for the 2019 Tournament of Rose Parades Kaiser Permanente float. Why? Because I have rhythm, I have soul, music moves me and it makes my patients move and makes them healthier. Thank you.


from our studios in the heart of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, California. This is a CUBE Conversation. Hello everyone, welcome to a special CUBE Conversation here in Palo Alto, the CUBE Studios. I'm John for your host. We're here with a special panel, talking about the new brand of tech leaders in this era of cloud computing, data, AI, and engineering excellence. With us, we have Christine Heckart, the CEO of Scalar, JP Cristina of MarthMorthy, SVP of Engineering at Copa Software, and Pavna, saying VP of Engineering at Glassdoor. Guys, welcome to come to the CUBE Conversation. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Engineering, you guys are all running engineering organizations. You've been a former engineer, now running a big company as the CEO, engineering lead company. This is a big trend that's clearly defined. No one needs any validation. Cloud computing has certainly changed the game. AI is certainly the hottest trend with respect to data, machine learning, and the benefits there. Changing the cultures of companies, changing how things are built, how people are hired, you're starting to see a complete shift towards old way and new ways. I want to get your thoughts about the engineering opportunities. What does engineering excellence today mean in this modern era? Well, for us, we talk a lot about mastery and setting up an environment where engineers have a chance to build their own mastery, but they can also have the necessary tools and technologies to be master of their domain. And these domains, especially if it's cloud-based, they're very distributed. They're very, very fast-moving. There's a lot of continual risk. So you have to set them up in the right way so they can be successful. Papna, what's your thoughts?  Yes. For us, it's very important that the environment, the working environment for engineers is organically inspiring. And what I mean by that is when every engineer knows why are there, what are they doing and how their work is impacting the company and the business niche it is, at the same time, we are making sure that their interests are aligned with our projects and work in a way that we are also, in a healthy way, extending and stretching their skills. When their work has a purpose, and that's what our mission is, which is we want to make sure that everybody finds an opportunity where they feel there's a purpose, it's purpose-driven, that's when we feel like it. That's a great environment where they will be inspired to come every day and deliver their 110%. JP, excellence in engineering. I mean, this is what people strive for. So, excellent points from both of them. And I think I have a slightly different take on it as well. Today's businesses, we are asked to respond really, really fast. We hear the term agile everywhere, John, right? So it's about how do we respond to the needs of the business as quickly as you can? And it becomes the mantra for the organization. Having said that, there is another side to it. The dark side is technical debt. That's something we all have to grapple with because you're moving fast, you're making decisions, you're hoping things are right, you want to prove your thesis out there, but at the same time, you don't want to put yourself behind so that it might come and bite you later. So it's finding that balance is really, really important and that becomes the focal point of the organization. How do you move fast? But at the same time, how do you not slow yourself down in the future? That's a great point. I want to get probably your thoughts on this because open source has been really a different game changer from the old way to the new way because you can work with people from different companies. You can work on projects that are going to be betterment for other people as well. So it's got a communal aspect to it, but also there is an element of speed. At the same time, agile forces this kind of concept. So technical debt, you want to move fast, but you got to recover. You got to kind of know how to get there. How has open source changed that in your opinion? Well, number one thing that open source allows all smaller companies, especially bit more companies is that now you can take on an open source project and start rather than starting from ground zero, you can start somewhere where it's already helped and you have a framework ready to start working on. So you're not, every single time you're building or thinking of a new idea, you're not starting, okay, now let me just go start from ground up, right? So you already are at a certain level. The second area where, like you said, we are agile, we have open source, but we also have certain level of customizations that the customer is needed or application needs. And that's what inspires engineers as well, which is taking the challenge of, okay, we have a code base now, let me build something more interesting, more innovative. And then what they also love is giving back to the community. We are not, the companies are not just tech community and engineering team. We all have a bigger engineering community now, the whole tech world. And that's what makes a big difference for us working in Silicon Valley to even be part of that and contributing back to the community. JP, talk about technical debt when it comes back to the modern era because you can go back, it's been around for a while, technical debt concept is not new, but it's always been kind of the water cooler conversation with the core lead engineer and the team. The OSCs have a term called feature creeping. They know the old days, don't get at the feature creep. Agile kind of takes that away because if you're applying technical debt properly, you're managing the velocity of the project. So the question is, how has technical debt evolved to the management levels of senior engineering managers? Because that seems to be a key variable in managing the speed and quality of the teams with managing the technical debt. And it's now a management issue. What are some of the conversations? So again, it depends on the stage of the company and the stage of the projects you're in. If you're in a really mature software environment where you're not making a lot of change, it's okay. It's not the primary conversation of the topic. But if you're trying to capture a market or to prove out an idea, it becomes the fundamental thesis for getting things out there quickly. Now getting things out there quickly doesn't mean you get to let users suffer. You have to build it in the right way, needs to work, but at the same time, it needs to be just enough so that we can get the feedback from the users. And at the same time, you probably would have left out potentially features. And maybe you didn't even make certain decisions on, let's say, high availability or scalability. Maybe you want to prove it out in only one region of the world and so on. So you have to find those balances and it becomes part of the planning conversations right in the front. And as you go into the further iterations of the product, it becomes part of the prioritization conversation with the product managers because it's not just about getting one part done and getting it out there, but as it reached the full level of maturity that you would want. I'm sure there's a lot of debates about in the engineer organizations because your engineers are very vocal, as you know. So you can fall in love with your product. If it's a time to market, maybe taking some technical debt to get product market fit. And that's my baby though when you got to re-platform or rescale it to make it scale, bring it to your point you mentioned. How do you guys manage that? Because this becomes a talent management. Some people say, oh, you got to manage the Ecos, but if some people are managing the projects and they're going too far over their skis on technical debt, you got to kind of rein that in. How do you guys manage the people side of the equation because it's an art and a science at the same time. What's your thoughts? Well, I'll say this. Supporting all aspects of change, right? That's also, as an engineering leader, it's a core responsibility and a quality priority for us. Not just the technical debt, but also the market shifts, technology shifts. We have new tech coming in. We are evolving every technology. So how do we adhere to and make sure that it's very important that engineering is supporting and kind of coming up with these technologies at the same time, we are not just pulling down to their version upgrades and all of that. So to, in a just, it's a core aspect of leadership to make sure that you, as we are supporting these changes, we are also making sure that these changes are not pulling us down. So there should be proper quality checks. There should be proper conversation and roadmap items which is saying that it's not a tech debt, it's more of a tech investment. And we are talking about, so that we are in lock steps with our business partner and not behind. So that now we are saying, okay, we need a whole quarter to develop new things. So it's an aspect of making sure a team is motivated. So this comes back to culture. Next question I want to get you guys' thoughts on is, building a positive work culture. You have an engineering led organization, Christine, you're leading that now. It's a startup. You guys are growing real fast. A lot of, you got a lot of engineers there. So probably a lot of opinions on what that looks like. What is the culture equation? Because this sets the DNA early on for startup. But as you are maturing organization, you got to attract the best talent. Some say, well, we work on, we solve hard problems. That's kind of the cliche. But ultimately you do have to kind of have that the problem solving aspect. You got to have a culture. What is a successful work culture for engineering? So everybody talks about engineers want to solve hard problems. I think that's true. But as Povna said earlier, if you can help every engineer connect what they're doing every day to the higher purpose of the organization, to the problem that you're solving, and how that makes the customer's life better. In our case, we're a company by engineers for engineers. So our engineers get really excited about giving other engineers in the world a better day. We have taken it one step further recently by starting a peer network because one of my observations coming into this organization is there are so many peer networks in IT because it's been a 30 year industry. There are tons of peer organizations for CEOs. There are tons of peer organizations for CMOs. But there really aren't for engineers. And if we want to help engineers really develop their career and their full skill set and therefore develop into their full potential, it's about more than just training them. It's about giving them context and full social skills and giving them places where they can learn not just from the other engineers in their company, but from engineers across the industry at their same level. And maybe from very different industries and maybe in very different environments. So I think in our case, really trying to bring these peer networks together has been one way that we can not only pay it forward for our own engineers, but also help a lot of other engineers around the industry. How are you guys handling the engineering talent? Retaining, attracting, and keeping the best balance? So I think that's where the whole company comes together in my view. So as an engineering leader, it's not just that I set the tone of my engineering org as to what that hiring is top priority. It's where the whole company comes together. You're recruiting team to build the stellar interview process. You're, you know, heads of other orgs to make sure that across the board you're helping define a mission for your company that resonates with your candidates who would wanna work with you. So it's a collective effort of building a stellar environment. For us, Glassdoor, one of the few values is transparency. And we live and die by it, which means that when someone is hired, they need to see that we, within the company, we are transparent. So we share a lot of data, a lot of information, good and bad, with every single person in the company. It's never hidden. At the same time, we build and set that trust in them to say, okay, it's confidential. Make sure that it doesn't leave the company. And it's been 11 years, and it has never been the case. Well, Glassdoor, you don't wanna have a Glassdoor entry on Glassdoor. You gotta be transparent, that's for your culture. That is true. And culture matters.  You will see, so the reason, this is what Glassdoor stands by for as well, right? Building transparency within the company culture. And more and more, as we see many stories that we have seen from various companies, and sometimes I get a bad story too, and I get an invitation, oh, you're from Glassdoor. But that helps. Overall, we are living and working for users and professionals. Trust is big for you guys. Absolutely. Professionals who are in this world looking for a job and life because you're spending a lot of time at work. So we want you to get up every day and be inspired and happy about where you're going to work. And for that, that's why we are sharing a lot of insights about the companies from reviews and ratings and CEO data to make sure that when you make your decision of the next move, you can be fully trust, you can be fully confident that the data we are sharing with you, with that, you're making a good decision. J.P., your thoughts.  We've got a great coverage of your annual conference in Vegas recently in Cube Coverage. Your company on paper looks like you're targeting one segment, you have a lot of range in your technical platform with data. How are you guys articulating to engineering? How do you keep them? What are some of the stories you tell them to attract them to join you guys? So number one thing is about the talent that we already have in-house. So people want to come to work at a place where they can learn, contribute and also further career as well both inside Coupa and as they leave. And coming into Coupa, they look at it and they say, oh, you have a wide variety of things going on here. You're solving a business problem, but at the same time, the technology stacks are different. You are on all the best clouds out there. So that's an easy attraction for them to come in. But also, it's not just about getting people and how do you retain them? And we've been lucky that we had very low attrition for many years right now in the engineering organization, especially in the valley, it is a big deal. And I think part of the things that drives that is the collaboration and the cooperation that they get from everybody. And it's an age old saying, diversity and thought, unity and action. So I really promote people thinking about various ideas and alternatives, but there is a time for that debate. And once we agree on a solution, we all pull in and try to make that successful. And when you repeat that often and it becomes part of the culture and the way the organization operates. As a follow-up to culture, one thing that's become pretty clear is that it's global. Engineering, you mentioned the valley, very competitive. Some startups that they get on that rocket ship can get all the great talent. If you're a public, everyone gets rich, everyone's happy. A good mission behind it, win-win. Outside, some startups have to attract talent. You've got a startup going on here. You might have a good kernel of great engineers, but you have development environments all over the world. So remote is a big thing. How do you manage the engineering with remote? Is it time zone-based? Is it put leaders in charge? Is there a philosophy in Amazon? Has a two-pizza team? Is there a big thing? Get small groups. How do you guys view the engineering makeup? Because this becomes a part of the operational tension but operating model of engineering. Thoughts? I can go first. I think there is a tension between keeping teams working on one problem and not distributing it across the world for efficiency reasons. But at the same time, how do you allow for continuity? Especially if you have a problem in one area. Can somebody else from another region step in in a different time zone and continue on that problem? So that's always a problem. And then the other one is in a landscape like ours, which is not uncommon for many, many companies, it is not that they built a lot of fragmented things. They all need to work together. So having a level of continuity within the various remote centers is really critical. And everybody has their own recipe for this one. But the ones that works for us, and I've seen that played out many times, is if you can get a set of teams to focus on certain problem areas and become experts in those. Are cohesive within their team work, physical space. And then also have enough critical mass within a center that gives you the good balance between working on one thing versus knowing everything. So that works for us. I think that's the way to go. That sounds like an operating system. It is. Kind of two-couple, highly cohesive. And you need to have the right technical leaders on both sides and be willing to collaborate with each other. Pop the thoughts. I want to emphasize on the last statement, you really need strong, good, really trusted leaders in the location to kind of then inculcate more bigger team and everything. Glassdoor grew from one location to four locations in the last three years. And one thing that we learned after our first remote location that we started was that when we seeded our new remote location with few people from the original location, that helped start the similar aspects of what Glassdoor stands for and our core ethos and values. And then as we added new people, they just kind of easily, it just transferred to them. So that helped us in a big way. And then we moved to Chicago with the same idea and of course, Brazil now with the same idea. So knowledge transfer, culture transfer. It all makes it easy when you have few people seeding from the original location. That was core for us. Pop actually started their first remote office in San Francisco, which has now become their headquarters. So she has a lot of experience. Yes. Every one of scaler's customers globally, we sell to engineers. So we're dealing with our customers who are dealing with this problem all the time. And in addition to culture, one thing that seems to bubble up regularly is can, do you know when they need a common tool set and where they can do their own thing? How do you balance that? And where do you need a single source of truth that people can agree on? And again, where can people have different points of view? You're talking single sources from code base to what could be whatever. Like in our case, it's, yeah, if you're going to troubleshoot something, where are the logs, the truths in the logs? Or are you going to have a single source for that? But for other people, it could be the data that they're bringing in or how they analyze the business. But if you can be proactive about understanding when is commonality of tools, of approach, of philosophy, of data, whatever, when is commonality going to be what we drive? And when are we going to allow people to do their own thing? And if you can put that framework in place, then people know when they have the latitude and when they got a snap to grid. And you can move a lot more quickly. And there's kind of a technical debt that isn't code-based. It's more about this kind of stuff, right? It's tool-based. It's process and culture-based. And if you can be more proactive about avoiding that debt, then you're going to move more quickly over time. And the video conferencing, very important. You should be able to jump on a video conference very easily to be able to connect with someone rather than just a phone call. So all of these face time, different ways of face time. Technology plays a big role. This is a modern management challenge for the new way to lead because it used to be just outsourced. Here's the specs, remember the old PRDs and MRDs? Here's the specs and you just kind of build it. Now it's much more collaborative to your point. There's real product and engineering going on. And it's got to be, it's evolving. This is a key new ingredient. Because the expectation on the quality of product is so much more higher. The competition is so much more higher. And when these engineers build it, in a lot of cases, they have to operate it now. So like you say, whether it's a free service to a consumer or it's an enterprise, the expectation is perfect. No downtime, no hiccups. And the reward incentives now become a big part of this now, new way of doing things. So I got to ask the natural question, what's the reward system? Because Google really kind of pioneered the idea of, oh, it's like 20% of your time, work on your own project, that was about a decade or so ago. Now it's evolved beyond that to free lunches and all these other perks. But it's got to appeal to the human being behind it. What are some of the reward mechanisms you guys see as management that's helpful in growing, nurturing, and scaling up engineering organizations? Well, engineers are human. And as every human, autonomy is critical for any aspects of motivation. And that's what plays the core level. And of course, lunches matter. And other perks and benefits matter. Snacks, of course. Good coffee machine definitely is the core of it. But autonomy of what you want to do and is it aligned with what we want or what we are trying to deliver and the aspect and the information of, I did enroll this out, what was the impact of it? That new should go back to that engineer who built that. So threading it through to the end and from the start is very core for everybody to know. Because I want to know as I'm going every day, how is it helping? And we really try, I personally try to make sure that each human on the team, regardless of their function, that we understand their potential and their career aspirations. Because a lot of times the normal ladder, whatever that ladder is, might not be right for every person. And people can pivot and use their skills in very, very different ways. And we need to invest in their ability to try new things. If it doesn't work out, let them come back. So we try to spend time as a company for engineers, not just in our company, but beyond, to really help them build out their own career and build out their own brands. Engineers more and more can be on TV shows and doing blogs and building out their own personal brand and their point of view. And that gives them impact that goes beyond the one piece of code that they're writing for a company in a given day or week. JP, you guys, when public stock options, all these things are going on as well, your thoughts? Yeah, I just came back from a trip to my newest Dev Center in Hyderabad, India. It's funny, I had sessions with every team out there. The number one topic was food. They were so excited about food. So there is something, you know, primal about food. Having said that, I think, price and recognition, the age-old things, they matter so much. That's what I've seen. When you acknowledge what somebody has done and kind of feedback to, like Pavna was saying, the impact that it creates, you know, it's a lot more fulfilling than monitoring incentives. Not that they are not useful, you know, occasionally they are, but I think repeating that and doing it more often creates a sense of, okay, here's what we can accomplish as a team, here's how I can contribute to it. And that creates an overall sense of purpose. Awesome. You guys talked about tools as a commonality, it's kind of key. There's always going to be debates about which tools, which codes, languages to use and coding, et cetera. But this brings up the notion of application development as you get continuous development. This is the operating model for modern engineering. What's the state of the art? What are you guys seeing as a best practice as managers to keep the machinery humming and moving along and what's on the horizon, what's next? You know, in my view, I would just say, so what's humming and what's state of the art, I think AI is core to most of the systems and applications, the core aspect of pretty much every company, as you see, and that's the buzzword even in Silicon Valley, for the right reasons, is how we have built our platforms and systems and ideas, but now let's make it smarter. And every company now has a lot of data. We are swimming in data, but it's very important that we can pick and pull the core insights from that data to then power the same product and same system to make it more smarter, right? The whole goal for us ourselves is we're making our platform more smarter with the goal of making it more personalized and making sure that as users are navigating our pages, they are seeing more personalized information so that they're not wasting their time. There we can make faster decisions in more rich data set, which is very catered towards them. So building that intelligence is core. And with continuous integration comes continuous risk, right? So no risk, no reward. And so we live in an era of freemium, free services, so why not take the risk? You don't have to do an A-B test, you've got digital, you can do A-B-C-D and use all kinds of analytics. So this is actually a creative opportunity for engineering as they get to the front lines you mentioned earlier, getting part of the empowerment. How is the risk taking changing the management? You know, I deal with a class of users who are willing to pay money, so I don't know if I can talk a lot about the freemium aspect of the problem. But there's always desire for new functionality if you want it, otherwise you don't want it, right? There is a lot of risk averseness that's still floating around, especially in the enterprise out there today. And it is a big tension that you have to deal with. And if you are not careful, then you can introduce problems. And today when you're operating on the cloud and you're servicing thousands of customers, a small change can bring down the entire ecosystem. So you have to take it very seriously, you're helping others run their business. And that means you have to invest in the right tools and processes. So you guys are obviously a freemium business model, but still engineers got a test of, they want to take the risks. So is it a cloud sandboxing? How is the risk taking managed? How are you guys encouraging risk without having people hurt them? Yeah, you don't want to over burden engineers to the point they feel stifled and they cannot do anything. So there is a right balance. So there are many techniques we follow. For example, we roll out the software to a staging environment so customers can play around and make sure things are not breaking for their comfort more so than for us. But it is an important part of the equation. And then internally you have to invest a lot in planning appropriately. There are the high risk content on the features and then there are the low risk ones. You want to think about experimentation frameworks, you know, A-B testing and so on. And more importantly about automation and testing. I don't think if a customer logs a bug and finds that problem, they don't want to see it one more time ever, right? So you really have to make sure that those things don't happen and you have to invest in robust automation around testing processes because there isn't enough time for the complexity of these applications to test anything manually. These were automation with the cloud comes in. Containers, Kubernetes, new types. All of those things, you know, you had to enable engineers with the technology set so that they can test at scale. You had to provide access to production like data because you had to worry about privacy, security and all those aspects. But at the same time, they need to have access to the variety of configurations that are out there so that they can test it meaningfully. So you have to invest in all of those things. And then I'll take it back to kind of where we started this which is the human factor with continuous delivery is this continuous risk. And it doesn't matter if this engineer is supporting a free consumer application or the highest end of enterprise. When something goes wrong, their stress level goes through the roof. And, you know, how can we equip these people to solve problems in real time, to have that visibility, to have whatever tool set or data, whatever they need because at the end of the day, a bad day for an engineer is a day when something is breaking and they're the ones that have to stay up all night and fix it. And a good day for an engineer, a human being, is the day they get to go home and have dinner with the family or not be woken up in the middle of the night. And there is- Or kite surfing or whatever they do. Yeah, whatever they do.  And thank God we have, you know, teams of engineers that do that for all of us. And they're human beings and there's a level of continuous stress that we've injected into their lives every day. And to the extent that we as companies and managers and leaders can help take some of that burden off of them, the world becomes a better place. And how they're talking about the whole being seeing the results of their work too is rewarding as well. Right. And Scaler does a lot of stuff there. So I have to call that out. At the same time, you know, a lot of very good nuggets JP brought up, but one more thing that has shifted in terms of how a process or practice works is more and more engineers now participate very early on in product development phase. And they try to understand what is the context and why are we doing, and we do a lot of user research to understand that process so that they have full context that they are building and developing. So they are more of a partner now and not an afterthought. I think Agile and DevOps to me has proven that the notion of silos and waterfall practices has democratized and flattened the organizations out where interdisciplinary crossovers are happening. Oh yes. And this has been an interesting art of management is encouraging the right person to cross over the right line. And in other words, you give people a little taste but sometimes they may not be long and you got to kind of, these are called herding cats in the old days, but now it's more of managing kind of interests and growth areas. That original DevOps model though, if anybody read the Phoenix project like years ago, but it was really about bringing different points of view. It's a diversity thing. It's bringing different points of view around the table before the first line of code is written so that you're thinking about every angle on the problem and on the ongoing operation of whatever you're building. Well, let's talk about diversity and inclusion and diversity. I always like to say it's inclusion and diversity not diversity and inclusion because male and females are involved. We have two females in tech here. This has been a discussion. We still don't have the numbers up to the senior levels within engineering in general. What has to happen to move the needle for women in tech and or inclusionary people involved in engineering to get the right perspectives? What's needed? I'd start with JP because he's actually a huge champion and without the men involved, we don't have a solution. Inclusion and diversity JP, your thoughts on this was super important. Yeah, number one is recognition in my opinion, John. I mean, I was telling Christine yesterday, I just came back from India as I told you, took a picture out there of my management team, came back here, looked at it. There is no female, no woman, right? It's crazy. I mean, it's not that we are not trying and we had the same problem when we started our center in 2015, right? There was a group picture of the team. There were two women on the team. We put a lot of effort into it and two years later, a significant chunk of the organization has got women embedded in the teams and it came because we tried. We went out, looked for those who are good in this area. It's not that we compromised on the qualifications. It's really about putting some energy into getting the right resumes and then looking at it. The other thing we are also doing is cultivation. You have to go to the grassroots because there aren't just enough women engineers. It's unfortunate for whatever reasons they are not taking up that profession. I mean, there are enough studies written on it.  And that helps, even if 10% of them choose to take up this profession, it's going to be a big boost. And we have to do a lot more of those in my opinion.  What's your view? Well, I'll say this, you know, for the people who are participating in helping drive this mission, just like JP, I say thank you, especially for men who are participating in it. We cannot do this without you. But for all the people who are, if they're not participating in helping drive this mission, I'll share this one data. One of the initiatives that Glassdoor drives is gender pay gap, which is also an outcome of not having diverse outlook at all levels in the workplace. And we, in our economic research team, they did a study and they shared a projection of when will we close the gender pay gap? It's 2017. That's depressing. So for me, when I hear people who say, you know, they don't want to participate or they don't think this is the right approach of solving for diversity in workplace, I say, okay, but that's not the reason for you to not participate and stay out of it. Join it, join it in your own way. But it's only when all of us can see it as a real problem and participate, just like JP, as you said, grassroots level as well as outside. One of the example that I tell my team when they say, you know, we don't want to drop the bar, the quality bar, I say, sure, don't drive it, but don't drop it. But if you have two candidates, one with a diverse background who might be applicable to the same job in two to three months over someone who's slum dunked today, let's invest in the person who is bringing the diverse background for two to three months and then make them successful. That's not dropping the bar, that's still supporting and investing in helping the diversity. My good friend, Ian Heats, you saw at IBM, they put out a survey that said diversity, inclusion diversity first companies have a competitive advantage. So the investment is so much about lowering the bar. It's more of bringing a perspective because we're talking about software here. Software has male and female and the audiences are not 17% female. But it's not just, you know, I add two things to the comments, all of which I agree with. One, it's not just a pipeline problem. It is a culture problem where people have to feel welcome and it has to be a comfortable environment and they have to believe that their diverse point of view matters and it doesn't matter if they're men or women. But there are lots of times when we all make it hard for somebody with a different point of view to enter the conversation. So we have to do a better job of creating the culture. And secondly, there's a saying, you have to see it to be it. We have to see people of diversity, gender and of every other type, cognitive diversity of all types at every level in the company.  And I spend a lot of my time helping women and people of color and diversity get on public boards. But if you go back seven years ago, we were 14% women on public boards and it did not move. And it did not move and it did not move. And in one year it popped over 20%. And that's before the loss. So, you know, you make these linear projections, we can with effort actually make a difference. It just takes a very concerted effort. And in this case, particularly for engineering and for leadership, it is making a concerted effort at every level from board to CEO, to executive team, to all levels down, making sure we have inclusion and diversity in those ranks. This is a modern management challenge in the new way of leading. Managing this process. This is the big challenge. This is the big challenge. Folks, thanks so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. Final question for you guys is, what is, if you could summarize the new way to lead in this modern era, from an engineering standpoint, building out a company, building a long durable value creation where it's company or product or service, what is the key, key to success? As a leader. As a leader. As a new brand of leaders. I would say, you know, this lot goes into, I'm sure you need to know engineering and all the strategic aspect of your job. But the core aspect I feel is, as a leader, my success depends on the quality of relationships I'm building with my team and members that I work with. So that goes into the people aspect, the people connection that goes into it. Jay, pick your thoughts.  I also feel understanding the problem and driving for results. You know, it's not just about building something, it's about building for a purpose. What is it that you're trying to accomplish and continuing to refine that and working with the teams is so critical for success, especially in a fast moving environment. Christine. Yeah, I agree. It is all about the people and I think old and new, this hasn't changed. People need to feel like they belong and they're being appreciated and they're being heard. Scale, Glassdoor, CopaSoft, where you guys do great work. Thanks for sharing the engineering inputs to leading successful companies. Thank you, John. Thank you for the leadership. Thank you. Thank you so much, John. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. Thanks for watching.


People ask one question. Why? Why Hussein? Why not someone else? The answer is, Hussein Ibn Ali made a stand 1400 years ago for the rights of poor, for the rights of humanity. He made a stand for justice. He made a stand for equality and today, 1400 years later, we are continuing the legacy. We're taking his legacy forward. The best way to take his legacy forward is help the London's forgotten ones and give back. So today what we're doing is we're doing a Christmas special where we had different areas. We had the CB workshop. We had free haircuts. We had food tables. We were given cupcakes. We were talking to the public, getting them signed up. It was a big event. We do this every week but today as it's Christmas, it's a Christmas special. We did it on a large scale where we're trying to get a wider audience and get as many people as possible. Ames and objectives of Hussein itself is to inspire the community within the London and all over the world. It has about 80 chapters all over the world. The second objective is once they're inspired is to spread the name of Ames and also do the right actions like feeding the homeless, doing blood drives, doing charitable work, giving water bottles to the public and to the homeless people themselves. Events like this, so this is a social inclusion event. We are not only just out here doing what we usually do but we're also doing it for Christmas. So it's a two-way social inclusion. So not only we're trying to bring the Christmas festive spirit to the homeless people on the street but we're also trying to integrate. We're trying to show that the community of Muslims within London or all around the world, we are not separate from the society. We are pretty much part of the society. So we don't have any barrier, we don't have any division from whatever our neighbours, our community that we are living in. We are actually part of it. So we ourselves celebrate Christmas not probably in a sense in which from a religious perspective but from a very festive spirit, from a very self-giving and receiving energy that it brings. My name is Anna. I'm the team leader for the CB Workshop. The CB Workshop is one of the three things that we do at Hussein. One of our key parts of our food drive and the other key part is the CB Workshop and the other one is the housing database that we're hoping to bring about in the new year. It's difficult especially when you're homeless trying to get to one location to another and when you're applying for jobs and not having a permit address on your CV even though you're going to get your next meal, your housing, your shelter, your basic sanitation. I think there's so many obstacles to overcoming the problem of homelessness that this is just us trying to do one thing and one step to try to make the process a little bit easier. I love the team workers who say they approach me and they say listen you want to come and help us with the haircuts. I say why not, let me try it. So one day I come to the Chairman Cross station across over the Zimbabwe Embassy. I'm standing here and I'm giving a haircut and before you know there's 20 people waiting for me. I appreciate it. I love that. It makes me better, stronger and wiser. As it's Christmas and it's a busy period with larger audience, especially in a place like central London. There's a big crowd trying to come down and walk on these streets. It's a very good platform in order to promote Imam Hussein. There are many people out there trying to see what's going on and the increase. When they walk over, as there is a busy period, there are many people out there that are intrigued and they want to know what's going on. With the food drive, they're very interested and as given the current climate, not many people are out there trying to do positive work. So with this positivity, it inspires people and it gives a message out there that there is still positive people out there and there is someone out there for everyone. Imam Hussein, his whole life was based around giving to people. So I don't have to tell you guys but you guys probably know more about it just by watching Imam Hussein TV that from the very young age until the moment he passed away, he was all about giving and not only just giving but very selfless giving. I mean, we have his really famous, really well-known quote saying that the most generous of people is one who gives to whom he has no hope of return. So you just give for the sake of giving and that brings a lot of, I wouldn't say self-contentment but also about as an energy that actually permeates out into other cultures or other social groups or other people and that sort of brings about a bigger social cohesion, a bigger unity within people. So charity by itself is about bringing people together and that's what my motivation is. Please don't forget to support what you're saying. If you don't know, ask the question. Don't judge and if you can contribute, contribute.  So thank you very much. My client is waiting and he doesn't like to wait. Sorry. Yes! Merry Christmas, my friend. Rabbit!


And it is my pleasure now to welcome and introduce the Deputy Secretary of State, John J. Sullivan. Deputy Secretary Sullivan was confirmed by the U.S. Senate and sworn in as Deputy Secretary of State on May 24th in 2017. Prior to assuming office, he was a partner in Meyer Brown and co-chair of the law firm's National Security Practice. Previously, he was chair of the U.S.-Iraq Business Dialogue, which is a government advisory committee on U.S. economic relations with Iraq. He's also had much experience with two prior administrations and a number of senior positions, so he comes well prepared for the role he has now. I am particularly pleased that Deputy Secretary Sullivan is the appointed representative by State Department to be on USIP's board. Our legislation requires that the Secretaries of State and Defense are on our board, and so he is now an official part of our board. It gives us extra pride to welcome here today to talk about humanitarian assistance in 2018. As I noted in my earlier remarks, we've seen an extraordinary upsurge of crisis and an increase in the need for humanitarian assistance around the world. The U.S. has long been a leader in humanitarian assistance financially, diplomatically, politically, and we are called upon like never before to provide the kind of leadership that both addresses and prevents the causes of these rising level of needs. I'm particularly encouraged to see the recent funding plus ups in places like Burma in Iraq and in Afghanistan, and I look forward to hearing Deputy Secretary Sullivan's comments on this. USIP is very committed to continuing our work with the State Department, with the administration on these critical issues. Please join me in a very warm welcome for Deputy Secretary Sullivan. Good afternoon and thank you, Nancy, for that kind introduction and for your leadership. Thank you to the United States Institute of Peace and to the International Advisory Council for inviting me here today. As Nancy mentioned, I'm honored to have been selected to serve on the board as the representative of the State Department. Before I begin my remarks on humanitarian assistance, I wanted to just note that today is a bittersweet day for me because Secretary Tillerson is actually returning to his home in Texas today. He'll remain as Secretary of State through the end of the month, but he's departing the building today and we'll have a ceremony for him in the lobby as he departs. But I wanted to take this opportunity to tell you how much he's meant to the department and to me personally. His work for our country, leading the department, his voice for peace, for humanitarian assistance has been an inspiration for me and I was honored, have been honored to work for him, to have been selected by him to serve as Deputy Secretary of State. And I think if it's all right with you, if we could offer him a round of applause and tribute to his service. He's moving back to a more familiar climate in Texas, which I know suits him well. But I'm delighted to be here at the U.S. Institute of Peace. For three decades, the Institute has been a strong partner of the State Department and USAID as we work to promote greater prosperity and peace throughout the world. As a new member of the board, it's a particular honor for me to address the International Advisory Council. Today, as Nancy mentioned, I want to provide a few thoughts on the U.S. United States role as a global leader in providing humanitarian assistance. I know we don't hear a lot about that topic in the news today. The U.S. role in providing humanitarian assistance. But as we know, all of us in this room know, helping those in need is and always has been one of our country's core values and very much in our national interest. How we assist people in times of conflict, distress and natural disasters reflects how we see the world and is integral to how we execute our foreign policy. The United States is committed to its role as a global leader on humanitarian issues. We understand the importance and necessity of humanitarian assistance even as we work to preclude the crises that spawn the need for that assistance. By helping those who bear the brunt of war, natural disaster or the failure of good governance and policy, we preserve that chance for a more prosperous and more peaceful world for generations to come. Today, the United States remains the single largest donor of international humanitarian assistance. Last year, we delivered more than $8 billion in lifesaving aid around the world. This includes assistance for basic necessities, food, education, health and protection against violence. But it's no secret that humanitarian challenges are multiplying around the world, including in countries that once flourished. I'm sorry to say that we have a tragic example in the southern hemisphere, in Latin America, the crisis in Venezuela, which is entirely man-made, created by a corrupt regime that denies its people not only the ability to choose their leaders, but also the ability to meet their basic needs. UNHCR estimates that 1.7 million Venezuelans have fled their country since 2014, increasingly in search of basic needs such as food and medicine. What's even more striking is that over 1.5 million Venezuelans are expected to flee that country in this calendar year. To help the people of Venezuela and those refugees who are crossing borders into Colombia and Brazil, and all those others affected by the regime's malfeasance, we're supporting regional humanitarian operations that provide vulnerable people in impacted border areas with lifesaving health and nutrition, shelter, livelihoods and protection. Venezuelan President Maduro could help his people by opening his country to humanitarian aid, but instead chooses to tightly limit and control that flow of assistance. We will continue our diplomatic pressure on his regime, but until he decides to make the right choices, we will support the region through humanitarian assistance, including through our announcement on Tuesday that we're providing an additional $2.5 million for aid to Venezuelans who have crossed into Colombia. We also continue to support areas where conflict and terrorism have long uprooted families and taken lives. Just a few weeks ago, we announced over $500 million in additional humanitarian assistance for affected populations in Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan and Nigeria, as well as other countries in the late Chad region. This announcement, along with our programming in South Sudan, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, will continue to help millions of people in Africa who are facing life-threatening food insecurity and malnutrition as a result of ongoing conflicts and prolonged drought. Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to visit Iraq for the fifth U.S.-Iraq Higher Coordinating Committee. Our military has made great progress in rooting out ISIS, and today, 4.5 million Iraqis have been freed from that tyranny, but 3.5 million internally displaced persons are still seeking to return to their homes. Effective reconstruction is critical to ensuring ISIS can never return, and we're committed to working with our partners in the region to help the government in Iraq rebuild. Since 2014, the United States has provided more than $1.7 billion in humanitarian assistance for Iraq, and we continue to provide support to remote a safe, voluntary and dignified return of Iraqis still displaced by the conflict. This assistance also supports the rehabilitation of schools, legal aid to restore housing and property rights, and help millions of Iraqis re-establish their livelihoods. The United States is the largest single-country humanitarian donor for the Syrian response as well, providing nearly $7.7 billion since the start of the crisis in that country. Each month, this assistance helps Syrians and every governorate, in addition to the over 5.5 million Syrians in neighboring countries. And in Yemen, the U.S. has provided nearly $768 million in humanitarian assistance over the past two years. That includes food, water, emergency medical care, hygiene kits, treatment for malnourished children and other aid. At the same time, we have repeatedly called on all parties to ensure rapid, safe and unhindered access for humanitarian and commercial goods, including food, fuel and medicine, as well as aid workers into and throughout Yemen. Turning to Asia, the United States has provided more than $177 million to help those affected by conflict in Burma, including as many as 1 million refugees displaced to Bangladesh. This assistance provides protection, emergency shelter, food and nutritional assistance, as well as medical care and psychosocial support for so many who have suffered from ethnic cleansing. Well, that's a long list and I wish that list was shorter, but it's really just a fraction of the humanitarian needs that exist across the globe. And despite our best efforts, most of these crises, conflicts and natural disasters are not going to stop anytime soon. Most will ultimately require a diplomatic solution, results that we are working toward each and every day. But until those solutions arrive, you can count on the United States to help everyone where we can to alleviate suffering and save lives. But one government or one entity can't tackle these issues alone. We all know that the urgency of the crises we face demands a global response. And as we continue this humanitarian leadership, we will also continue to emphasize the importance of coordinated, effective and efficient international responses, as well as the need for other governments and other actors in the private sector to step in to contribute to humanitarian efforts. This multifaceted advocacy, including through our engagement with the United Nations and directly with partner nations around the world, focuses on expanding the number of donors, increasing the global contributions to humanitarian appeals and responses, as well as advocating for humanitarian access wherever necessary. We need other governments, NGOs and the private sector to work together to respond to humanitarian crises at every phase. The United States is working with international partners to provide funding, technical assistance and other forms of support that help leverage humanitarian and development investments. And most importantly for this audience, we need USIP to highlight these issues wherever they arise and promote preventative diplomacy and peaceful resolutions. We also believe the private sector has great potential to provide meaningful support and engagement in humanitarian responses. We hope that organizations like USIP can help us partner with the private sector to help the vast number of people around the world who are affected by crises and who address long-term sustainability challenges. A global response with increasing financial support of multiple nations and groups is essential to effectively moving more help to the many who are in need and to ensure greater regional stability across the globe. Those are some preliminary thoughts from me. I know I've thrown out a lot of numbers and countries, but it's important for me to come here and emphasize the importance to the Department of State of our humanitarian mission through our colleagues with USAID and working through our own bureaus. So I think there's an opportunity now for questions. I'd like to turn it back over to Nancy. If there are topics you'd like to talk about, I'd like to continue our discussion. Thank you, Deputy Secretary Sullivan, and we especially appreciate your taking the time to come over during such a busy day and such an important day. And I know this will greatly increase your responsibilities. Thank you also for a rather sobering tour globally and for the leadership that the United States continues to provide on humanitarian assistance. So you just described an overwhelming number of crises with increased flows, increased needs. How does this make you and colleagues at state and the administration think about what the U.S. should be doing to think about tackling the causes of these crises and of these outflows of refugees? How do we begin to get more upstream on these issues? Well as I suggested in my remarks, just looking at humanitarian assistance, which is once the crisis has already developed and people are in danger or hungry, just meeting those immediate needs is something that the U.S. government, certainly not just the Department of State can do. Getting at the deeper root of the problem requires an even greater, broader support. Looking at what we do in the U.S. government, I'd focus, for example, on Africa, particularly in countries like Nigeria, the countries in the Sahel, and Northern Africa. The tragic scenes that we have seen of refugees and migrants leaving Libya, Tunisia, Algeria for southern Europe. And those people are coming from countries farther south in Africa, whether it's conflict, poverty, et cetera. So we've got to have, from the U.S. government's perspective, it requires an integrated strategy with our colleagues at the Department of Defense to partner with host governments. For example, the countries in the Sahel, the so-called G5, working with them to address the terrorism problems that are presented in the region to establish a baseline of security so that humanitarian assistance, development assistance, can flow into the region and remove the causes of people who are fleeing those countries, risking their lives to cross the Mediterranean to get to hope for a better future in Europe. So it's a whole-of-government effort, it sounds trite to say, but it's certainly true. We work closely with our colleagues at the Department of Defense, USAID, the State Department. I was in Abuja, Nigeria a few months ago, and the challenges are enormous. The threat from Boko Haram and ISIS West Africa, particularly in northwestern Nigeria, is very serious as we've seen just in the last few weeks with the kidnapping of another 110 schoolgirls, most of whom have been released, but only on the condition that they not be allowed to go back to school, which is astounding on its face. But we're thankful that at least most of those young girls have been released. But we've got to address the security situation, but there are deeper problems, economic and social, that require not just U.S. government assistance, but assistance from a wide array of private organizations, other countries, the United Nations. So that's what we're looking to mobilize to address the causes of the refugee flows out of that area and prevent these crises from developing. So just building on that a little bit, you mentioned in your remarks the entirely man-made causes of what's going on in Venezuela. Sadly, you could say that about any number of places around the world. And I'm very taken by the statistic that notes a decade ago 80 percent of our humanitarian assistance went to victims of natural disaster a decade later that's flipped. You alluded to it in some of your previous answer, but if we could just go a little further in terms of how does that therefore change how we think about the response? It's not only humanitarian assistance, but necessarily thinking differently about how some of our other assistance and activities work together, not just to meet the suffering, but to resolve the sources of the conflict. Sure. I think one of the reasons why those numbers flipped was the persistence of the security, not just security threat, but the actual manifestation of the carnage inflicted by organizations like ISIS and Al Qaeda in Syria, Iraq, Libya, you name it. This conflict with these terror organizations actually started before September 11th, but for most of us in our consciousness was really crystallized on September 11th, but that conflict has continued for the last 17 years, and I don't know that we see an end in sight. We may have defeated the so-called caliphate, removed almost all of their territorial ambitions in Iraq and in Syria, but they've dispersed, they've moved to other countries. There are still pockets of ISIS left in Syria, particularly in eastern Syria, that remain a threat. Our mission in Syria and northern Syria remains the complete eradication of ISIS, but as we move down, just using Syria as an example, as the U.S. military moves down the Euphrates River Valley, providing support to our partner forces in the S.D.F., when we liberate, when we remove ISIS from those areas, there's an enormous need for assistance for destabilization, demining, removing all of the booby traps mines and so forth that ISIS has left behind in places like Raqqa and elsewhere in Syria and Mosul in Iraq. Beginning the resumption of basic services like water and electricity, we're not really talking about nation building here, we're talking about the resumption of basic stabilization operations so that people can return to their homes, be safe, you know, removing rubble from streets for buildings that have been damaged and are dangerous to return to, knocking them down and clearing away dangerous obstacles, demining, as I mentioned. That type of, those types of assistance and stability operations is something that's very necessary for us to provide. As soon as our military moves out, we're looking to move in USAID, State Department, other U.S. government entities to provide that type of stabilization assistance so that refugees can return to their homes as soon as possible, not before they're ready to, but when they're ready to. We don't want to force people back in situations that are still dangerous. Refugees should return home when it's safe for them to do so, and it's incumbent upon us and partner countries and nations and organizations to do all we can to repair that damage that's been done once our military and partner forces have eliminated the security threat. So it's a huge challenge for us just in Iraq and Syria. Enormous challenge, number of internally displaced persons is in the millions in Iraq and in Syria. So just in that region alone, we have a huge challenge. You mentioned Venezuela, a different situation, but one that's been persistent over a number of years with first the current Maduro administration, but its predecessor administration, really governing in ways that have driven what was once a vibrant economy over the brink into an economic disaster. At this point, a country so rich in natural resources, but now its people are suffering. They're fleeing by the fleeing in enormous numbers across the borders of Brazil and Colombia, creating, straining the resources of those countries. Also the outbreak of disease in Venezuela now. You may have seen that the incidence of tuberculosis in Venezuela has spiked. It's really a very tragic situation and we're not able to get humanitarian assistance in because the Maduro government won't allow it. You mentioned the number of Venezuelans who are fleeing across the border into Colombia and Colombia of course is itself in a precarious place, struggling to implement a peace accord that ended 50 years of its own very bloody civil war. And we have other examples of that. You talked about Syria and of course the number of Syrian refugees who have fled to Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon, far outweighs the numbers that are hosted by anywhere else in the world. What are the obligations and the opportunities for the U.S. and our international partners to help ensure that those neighbors aren't pushed into their own new cycles of crises because of the burden of the refugees. And of course we're seeing that this has even affected our allies in Europe, these outflows. Well we see in our media stories about the refugee crisis in Europe for example and in the Mediterranean. But there are any number of examples I could cite for example Pakistan, which hosts an enormous number of Afghans who have fled violence in Afghanistan and it's a strain for the Pakistani government. It's something they cite to us as a burden on them and what they are doing in trying to support reconciliation in Afghanistan. There are any number of examples in this hemisphere and around the world of refugees crossing borders, straining the resources both of partner countries and NGOs and the numbers are staggering. Millions of people displaced and this administration is focused on, the president has made it a point of the media is focused on defense spending but we're also pushing the State Department for other countries and organizations to do more to support humanitarian relief and assistance. We'll remain the leader in humanitarian assistance, we the United States, but we want to see other countries stepping up and addressing that problem which is global in scope and staggering in the numbers of people affected. And you mentioned several times the importance of working with partners and I think we've seen U.S. leadership has always been important in mobilizing that kind of joint effort to address needs. Are you seeing that there's a willingness to join together, not just on the provision of humanitarian assistance but on really tackling those root causes as well? Yes, in certain areas we had a very good conference a few weeks ago in Brussels to address the situation in the Sahel, the G5 conference in Brussels attracted. I think it was 70 governments, many heads of state, it was sponsored by the EU but as an example of the United States working with partners including the French have been great leaders in this to address that crisis in the Sahel and surrounding areas of Lake Chad basin is an example of work by a large number of countries from around the world, not just the region, not just European countries but countries from around the world to address the security situation supporting the G5 nations as they try to build their security services to protect themselves but also providing humanitarian assistance, stabilization assistance and development assistance for that region and I'd cite that as an example of where the world community has come together to address a serious problem. And I want to go back to Iraq. You noted some of the efforts that are underway. I actually just was there recently with our board chair Steve Hadley and we were struck by what a pivotal moment this is for Iraq and there have been three million internally displaced who have already returned home and of course as you noted two million more especially from some of the hardest hit areas like Mosul. We have elections coming up in May. There are a lot of challenges left in Iraq. What do you see as the critical most important issues alongside humanitarian assistance that have to be addressed and the most important role that the U.S. can play in helping those two million displaced Iraqis still go home and also to keep Iraq from falling into yet another cycle of conflict? Certainly. We've worked very closely with the government in Baghdad with the Abadi government and their military and security forces in defeating ISIS moving through Anbar province up to Mosul and the liberation of Mosul. But that was really just the it was just the start of what is a much larger undertaking which is now going to require long term efforts for first stabilization as I've mentioned, demining large swaths of urban areas, making places habitable again for internally displaced persons to return and we, the Amir of Kuwait hosted a reconstruction conference at the end of January seeking support from other countries for development in Iraq. We were pleased that there were commitments of over 30 billion dollars but that's probably a third of what's needed to be done in the Iraq. We were pleased that there were commitments of over 30 billion dollars but that's probably a third of what's needed to rebuild by what has been destroyed by war and terror in Iraq. Our most immediate focus in Iraq is seeking a peaceful election in May as you mentioned. We have been working with Prime Minister Abadi and the government in Erbil to reconcile the government of the KRG with the national government in Baghdad. I was actually in Baghdad in Erbil about a month ago, six weeks ago now to encourage a rapprochement between the Kurds and the national government. We've seen some progress recently. Steps have been made to reopen the international airports in Iraqi Kurdistan. It was very sad to go back to Iraq. I had traveled there a number of times when I served in the Bush administration to Erbil and when I was last there in 2008, which was to travel there, I arrived at the new international airport which had just opened. But because of the dispute between Baghdad and Erbil, the airport had shut down so when I flew in in late January, my plane was the only plane on the tarmac with all of these gates emptied, no international flights in. We've worked hard to get the government in Baghdad to work with the government in Erbil. The airport is being reopened. The government in Baghdad is going to be paying salaries for KRG employees, which is important. Many hospital workers, teachers, etc. haven't been paid in months. So trying to develop, improve that relationship and assist the Iraqis in conducting a free, fair and credible election in May to continue the development of democracy in Iraq. Yeah, we were struck by the shared understanding that without a more inclusive, more accountable government, then Iraq will surely not be able to stay on a positive pathway. So I know that all eyes are on this election with hopes that they'll be able to forge that kind of a government. It's going to be difficult for Prime Minister Abadi to form a new government if he were to get enough votes to be in a position to form a new government if there isn't more inclusivity, particularly with the Kurds and others. So it's absolutely necessary for the democracy in Iraq to develop. We've seen very hopeful signs, and we've been working closely on a daily basis with the Prime Minister and his staff. They've come for, I had meetings last week with his Deputy Chief of Staff on this issue, and we've worked very closely with them on it. So we're hopeful that the election will proceed in a free and peaceful way in Iraq in May and lead to a secure government that will lead to greater prosperity for Iraq. And of course, we're seeing in all the countries that you've mentioned, corruption is one of the most corrosive aspects of contributing to the kind of conflict that leads to humanitarian needs. Do you see this as an area where we have effective tools for beginning to address that? Well, it's certainly a pervasive subject. We can shift geographically to Ukraine. I was in Kiev last month. Corruption is an enormous problem in Ukraine, and the Poroshenko government is trying to address it. It's very difficult. It's a difficult challenge for the government there with the security problems that Russia and Russia supported organizations pose occupying territory in the Donbas and, of course, Russia's annexation of Crimea. But for Ukraine to survive and to prosper, corruption has to be rooted out. And it's really a legacy of the transition from the Soviet Union to an independent Ukraine. Corruption was allowed to flourish. It's a very difficult system to purge of that scourge, but it's something that's absolutely essential for that democracy, also focused on upcoming elections for its parliament and president. But corruption diminishes popular support and confidence in government, and that ultimately undermines democracy. So it's a priority for us around the world promoting free and fair elections and eliminating corruption. So I know we don't have a lot more of your time. What keeps you up at night? More than anything else? I could channel my inner marine four-star general and quote Secretary Mattis and say, nothing keeps me up at night. I keep other people up at night, but I don't have the wherewithal to back up that boast. What keeps me up at night is, and I've said this at town halls when I visited embassies around the world, it's not any of these crises that we have discussed. It's managing the Department of State and our personnel issues, personnel and people of our department. It's the heart of our department. We don't have tanks. We don't have carrier strike groups. We have people, men and women in the civil service and foreign service, and making sure that they are supported, treated fairly, inspired. That's what keeps me up at night, making sure that they are supported and given the respect they deserve, they have earned women and men who have served for decades in many of them in very, very difficult places and acknowledging their service, supporting them and keeping the department on a solid footing. That's my greatest, it's not a worry, it's my priority. So that's what, in answer to your question, that's my highest priority. Again, I want to thank you for joining us during such a very, very busy time. I know we asked you long before some of the recent changes, so we very much appreciate your coming over. Thank you for your leadership during this critical moment. We look forward to having you on our board. We're quite appreciative of your agreeing to do that. And please join me in thanking Deputy Secretary Sullivan for being with us.