She Was the CIO for an Entire State Government. Here's What She Actually Had to Figure Out.

Welcome to Work Unscripted, I'm your host, Savan, and today I've got my good friend, Ann Duncan. Ann, how are you?

I'm good Savannah, how are you?

man, I could be better, but I could also be worse. And that's fine. It's hard for everybody as we just talked about out there. And I am now at a place where I can spend my days talking to amazing people like yourself. And that's a great thing. So I can't complain that much.

That's great. I'm glad you're finding some rewarding work right now,

I appreciate that, I appreciate that. Today's conversation, is going to be about you and the thing I love most about you. There's a lot of things I love about you, but the thing I love most about you is this very diverse career that you've had, especially in industries where you don't think women are predominantly in. And we're gonna dig into a lot of that stuff. But before we get into the nitty gritty, I want to ask you about your time in college. Where did you go to college? What did you study? And what was it like for you?

Well, that's a perfect question. went to Georgia Tech. Yeah, yeah. So I started, I studied industrial engineering in undergrad and then manufacturing engineering, which is part of the IE school in graduate school.

That was a setup right there.

And it's so manufacturing programs now much more disciplinary, but it was pretty much IE when I was in it. And I focused on designing automated material handling systems. So talk about a field that did not have a lot of women in it. That was definitely one of those. But yes, that's where I went. And I am, as you probably know, I'm there now part-time as a professor of the practice and an external fellow. So a full circle moment.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, that's crazy. You know, it's funny sort of like how life brings us back to these points that we never expected. And I had the same full circle moment when I moved back to Washington State and now I'm a mile away from my parents. Growing up, I was always like, I'm never moving back here. This is not gonna happen. Little do you know, know, life brings you back. In the spirit of those full circle moments, when you were at Georgia Tech studying, did you ever expect to be back at Georgia Tech in any capacity? Was that on your radar at all?

no, not at all. I academics, an academic career was not on my radar. I flirted with getting a doctorate. But frankly, you know, I was not a good enough student even in graduate school probably to consider. I'm fairly certain my thesis committee, you know, passed my my orals just to get me out of there. So You know, it never occurred to me and I have posted more than once recently because they just renovated the building where my office is. So now in my home department is public policy. So my office is in public policy. They just moved into what we call the DM Smith building where I went to freshman history lectures. And so you had told me that, you know, many years down the road, I would have an office in the building where I studied freshman history. First of all, I probably asked, what am I teaching history, which

Okay.

Actually, of all the things I've ever taught, that's probably the most likely because I did better in some of the history classes than I did in some of the engineering classes. But no, I never imagined that I would end up back at Georgia Tech and thrilled to be able to do that.

Yeah.

Yeah, know, when I was going to school, to college specifically, this is the early 2000s, so I graduated high school in 98, and you know, I went to Occidental hoping to be a writer, and I was an American history major, never did anything with that, and then I finished at the University of Washington, and I took a couple computer science classes, but. You know, when I was going there, a majority of the people that were in that class were men, but also there was a lot of Asian men as well. And I feel like, I don't know what it was like when you were going to Georgia Tech, but taking these rigorous classes that were very analytical in nature, whether it was like mechanical engineering or math, what was it like for you being in those environments?

Thank

Yeah, so, know, it's interesting when you talk, I'm going to digress about computer science for just a second, because computer science, if you think back to the early times, it was, it was, there were a lot of women, you know, they originally sort of had the calculators on the NASA product project who were doing these things manually, who then graduated into working computer science and being programmers. And there were a lot of women who were programmers. And it was about 50, 50 until video games came out. And when video games came out.

Mm-hmm.

OK.

boys embrace video games and coding became a boy thing. And so there was this tremendous shift, you know, in sort of the eighties, nineties timeframe for women being sort of 50, 50 computer science to men really taking over that field. So just interesting digression there. But in terms of, George Tech, industrial engineering is the major that has the most women in it because it, it's about people, processes and systems and technology, not just about technology.

Yeah.

Right.

And so it tends to attract more women. I think it's majority women now. It was close to 50-50 when I was in school there. But it was definitely, engineering in the South was definitely a man's world. And there were much more men, many more men at Georgia Tech than there were women. Back in the day, so one of the things, Industrial Engineering Prize itself, and there's less of it in the program now since we moved from quarters to semesters.

Right?

variety of classes you took from across campus. One of us was engineering drawing. I'm a little older than you are and engineering drawing meant actually pen to paper or pencil to paper and there were these old dudes who were all and I say they're probably not that much older than I am now but they were

Uh-huh. Yeah.

a little older than I am now. they were, you know, knowing what I know now, they were the guys who probably got tenure a million years ago, but really didn't, hadn't kept up with the practice of civil engineering. So they were relegated to teaching the freshmen engineering drawing and they were all convinced that there should be no women in engineering. So that was, that was super fun. You know, most of Georgia Tech back in the day was, was not a kinder, gentler place anyway. We were a know, look left, look right, only one of you is going to be here in a year kind of place. So it was very much survival of the fittest, certainly until you got to grad school where they sort of took a little more interest in you, or maybe upper level engineering classes. So it wasn't necessarily harder for women in some sense, because there were enough women that, you know, you could build your support system that and I was, you know, I was pretty lucky I had men and women that I studied with and worked with and did projects with. But also, you know, they were sort of out to get everybody. It was an equal opportunity. We're going to flunk you out kind of.

Was it like that by nature or was that just the competitive spirit of all of the kids there trying to one up each other?

It was the way the system was designed. It was designed to admit a lot of freshmen and then not have as many places further on. Now, it's not like that anymore. In fact,

Okay.

Mm-hmm.

It's very much there's tons and tons of tools and systems focused around retention. We're measured on retention rate as a university, know, we're at 90 some odd 97, 98, 99 are way up there in retention. And the other thing is that we are we've become incredibly selective, more selective than we want to be because we want to not only admit lots of Georgia residents, we want to admit lots of non Georgia residents. And what happens is we've become so selective, it's really hard for those non Georgia residents to get in. So we keep trying to make our class bigger to get less selective and every time we make class bigger we get more applicants and we become more selective. It's great problem to have but I know it's incredibly frustrating to President Cabrera and others in the administration really want this broader cross-section of students to be less and to be less selective. So it's a fascinating problem. know most schools don't want to become less selective and actually we do.

Right?

Yeah, that's crazy. mean, we'll dive into Georgia Tech a little bit more down the line, but like, I do want to know from your perspective, Georgia Tech has one of the best computer science programs in the nation, if not the world, right? They're very elite in sort of like how they craft computer science engineers. But I've always wondered,

you

Is there certain character traits that organizations and institutions like Georgia Tech looks at when they're looking at applicants to come in? if so, as a high school student or as a person trying to get into a graduate program, how do you position yourself to be able to make sure you're lined up with some of those traits? Because I always thought that was like a black box, even when I was... applying to schools of like what it is that these institutions are looking for.

Yeah, well, is interesting. do think that there's a bit of, right, we want good grades, we want good test scores, we want...

Right.

diversity, right? So we want, we're not going to bring, you know, it's sort of the problem when I worked at Palo Alto across from Stanford, every kid wanted to go to Stanford, only maybe two or three are going to go to Stanford because they want a diverse class. You know, same thing here. We're not going to take every kid from Atlanta Public Schools into Georgia Tech. But there are lot of, there are scholarship programs that incents students to stay in the city of Georgia. So Georgia Tech, it's a very nice opportunity to get some really outstanding Georgia students. But yeah, there's actually, for Georgia

Yeah.

in particular, there's this concept that we call the Georgia Tech raw material. So the things that we look for in Georgia Tech students and the thing that we think are going to make them be successful. And it's six things. It's drive, so that desire to get stuff done. A reverence, which is kind of this...

Mm-hmm.

It's almost like thinking outside the box. It's seeing the world differently. It's not too serious all the time. It's inventiveness. We've been incredibly entrepreneurial as a school. Grit, which we talk a lot about grit. that's what gets people through these really tough classes. And it helps them be successful later.

Yeah.

yeah.

curiosity. So again, that goes with inventiveness, right? We want people to be intellectually curious whether they're going to be entrepreneurs, whether they're to be researchers, whether they're going to be engineers in industry, and then a desire to be part of a community. So those are the things that the admissions folks really look for when they're looking for students for Georgia Tech are those things, you know, and that's obviously built around, you know, on top of the portfolio that gets them above the bar, then they start looking at those things.

Yeah, yeah. Do you feel like your personality and your values as a person line up with some of the things that Georgia, I mean, let me try to reframe this. You go into school there back in the day to now teaching there, there has to be something innately that's built into the Georgia Tech DNA that has attracted you to be there for so long. across so many years. What do you think that is across, you just gave me six different things, what resonates with you, with Ann Duncan personally?

Yeah.

Well, the joke about from people who graduated when I did might be Stockholm syndrome. So, you know, when you ask someone about Georgia Tech who went there, you don't ask them when they graduated. You ask them when they got out. It's a very unique, you know, I mean, there plenty of other tough schools, but that's sort one of our unique things. It's like, when did you get out? You know, because typically it used to take five, six years sometimes to get an undergraduate degree. But I think that

you

Yeah.

It is a coupling, right? So again, you don't necessarily... I think the students now really appreciate when they're there. We didn't all necessarily appreciate we were there, but we do appreciate it in Hunt and Sight. in terms of, you the number one thing, right, is that I've given back over the years because of the tremendous value I got from education. You know, it was a regional engineering school when I went there. It has become a better and better university. It's like one of my jokes is the graduate program in ISY has been number one since the year after I graduated. So as soon as I graduated, boy, they got rid of me, I got better.

Right?

Yeah.

And the undergrad program has been number one almost as long. So that, you know, I get this reputation halo from Georgia Tech.

Right?

But also it is that sort of that grit, That people will work hard and tough out the problems that is one of the things that really resonates with me. But also that being part of that community, being around intellectually curious people, those are things that really keep me coming back to campus and now having me working. mean, you can literally find someone working or just any problem you can imagine and they're not engineering all engineering computer science problems. We have you know historians on campus, we have architects on campus, we have architectural historians on campus, we have you know I mean I was was corresponding with someone in my department I didn't look at his title as professor of philosophy. I'm like we got philosophy professors right we have you know political scientists, we have nuclear engineers, right? We have experts on non-proliferation, know, whatever you wanna talk about with someone, there's someone on campus who knows more than you do about it, which is very daunting when someone's like, you know, what do you wanna teach? I'm like, there's nothing I know that people don't know. So, yeah, it's that. Part of it, frankly, just like anything else is it's what you know, right? is something that becomes part of you because you know it and you become loyal to it, but it is a great place for sure. And I have no problem encouraging people to come to Tech.

Yeah, and one thing that you touched on, and I don't know if this is just the universe, you know, trying to remind me of the importance of it, was grit. And it's funny that that is one of Georgia Tech's values that they have and they talk about it. I'd written a LinkedIn post, this is probably about a year ago now, about the death of grit, and my hot take on it as I deal with LinkedIn from time to time. And this morning I was just listening to Angela Duckworth's book about grit on Spotify. She opens it up with her story about her dad saying that, you know, she's not a genius. And then she goes into West Point and how West Point is sort of trying to instill that through the rigorous sort of onboarding of new students.

Mm-hmm.

And what I'd like to know from you is, one, do you think that there are things that Georgia Tech is doing and that you're doing there that's hopefully instilling more grit into the students? And then the second part of that question is, are there things that we as adults, people that are maybe a little bit more seasoned, that have gone through a college of some degree that we can do to have more grit. I feel like that is one thing that's lacking in this world. And I don't know how we can get that back. I feel like in many ways, if we had more grit, we can have the ability to persevere through harder things.

Yeah, that you know, it's a super interesting question. And I think my answer is going to come back directly to you being an immigrant. So I think that years and years ago, I went to a conference. I don't remember the speaker. I remember where the conference was because I got food poisoning afterwards. So yeah, I think I don't think I've ever been more miserable in my life. But

Mm-mm.

The speaker that night before I got sick said the conditions that create wealth, and I'm paraphrasing them obviously after all these years, are not the conditions created by wealth. Which is to say that we become very comfortable, so the first generation creates wealth, the second generation becomes comfortable. mean, at, here's an example, look at the Rockefellers versus the Vanderbilt's. The Rockefellers' money is all still there, Vanderbilt's money is all gone.

Mm-hmm.

wow. Okay.

Right.

So what did the Rockefellers do differently with their kids than the Vanderbilt's? And I'm sure that someone, maybe Anderson Cooper's written about that, since he's a Vanderbilt.

Right.

you it's a very interesting problem. And, you know, as an immigrant, you came in in very difficult circumstances. And, you know, that experience probably create a lot of grip for you, right? You're like, I've been through the wars here, literally in your case, and I'm going to go make myself a better life. And so it's hard, I think, to continue to create that environment where people

Yeah.

are motivated to to have that grit, to work that hard when they've had a comfortable upbringing. And I think it's why parents who are thoughtful about it struggle with how much do I give my kids and how much do I not give my kids? And you see these parents who have all the money in the world, they give their kids a $10 a week allowance. It's not, I can't afford to give you all these things, but I want you to understand the value of money and I want you to understand the value of hard work. And these others should give their kids everything. Doesn't mean that the latter kids are never gonna do anything, because there's also some inherent there's some inherent self motivation that comes in too, right? So you see these kids who have all the advantages who are super successful. Meanwhile, you see running to, just read an article this morning about this woman who just got in as a resident at Yale in anesthesiology. She had been a janitor at Yale, at the medical school at Yale where she's now a resident. She was a janitor there for 10 years while she was, you know, to make enough money to go to school. And her college counselor was like, you want to be a doctor?

Yeah.

you know, but she ignored the counselor and now she's an anesthesiology resident at Yale. That is someone who had no, you know, absolutely no advantage and has done amazing things. Opposite, I had someone asked to connect with me on LinkedIn, who the first thing on his LinkedIn is, I'm the son of ex-politician. I won't say who, because I don't want to the poor kid. I'm like, okay, so you're trading, you may be a great student, but you're trading on my daddy's important. This woman's got nothing, and she's now in medical ill. So I think it's a hard problem.

Right, right.

Mm-hmm.

I think that partly you, you know, when these students come in, some of them come from, you know, colleges, high schools where they have great grades, but maybe the academic program wasn't great. Part of what you do to create additional grit is they come into an extremely difficult academic program. And unlike in the past where we would be like, yep, sorry, flunked out. We put all the support structures around them, but ultimately they have to have that grit. think part of the answer is finding ways to challenge people. Part of the answer is that our system needs to...

Right.

not coddle people, The failure is okay. You don't get all the things you want. Or maybe you get all the things you want after you work really hard and you're 75 years old and you've worked to get all those things. But it is a hard problem because we all want to make life better for our kids. But if we make life too good for our kids, they're not gonna be successful on their own. And so I also think that it's why immigration is so important is because immigrants come in this country and they raise the bar. They work really hard, they push people who aren't immigrants, who maybe aren't as innately, some of whom aren't as innately motivated to work harder to find their place.

Mm-hmm.

which is also why some people want immigrants to not be here is they think, well, they're taking something away from me. And it's like, they're working a heck of a lot harder than you did to take that away from you. It's a really complicated problem. But I think that, yeah, we need to be less comfortable to create that grit because if everything's easy, you don't get there.

Exactly.

Yeah, I mean, I completely agree with everything you said, it's one of those topics that I continually think about, and especially as a parent of a 12-year-old now, where you want to be able to give them the things that they need to do in order to be successful, but at the same time, the lessons from failure are many times more impactful than the success that they could potentially be having. You you look at anybody with a track record of success, I mean, just even looking at your career, there's a lot where you had to probably push through situations that were uncomfortable or that were hard or put you in a position where you had to learn maybe five times faster than an average person in that situation would. And I do wonder, like, the mentality that you take going into situations, whether it's like, the CIO job or going back to Georgia Tech or any one of those things, how do you approach these new opportunities, especially in environments where you typically wouldn't expect someone of your caliber to be in there? Is there just sort of a, I don't give a shit, I'm gonna be doing this attitude that you bring?

Boy, there's a lot to that question. I mean, one thing is, that was okay. One thing is I tell people all the time, the students ask me these questions about.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

you know, advice and I tell people not to get too comfortable. So, you know, going back that grip, right? If you're, if you're enjoying your job, you know, too much, it's too easy. Then, you you need, you need to go do something else. need to do the thing that's hard. And I think, you know, understanding the difference between hard and I can do it and, and too hard, right? I can't do this. I don't know how to do this. Also is important. So, you know, the, when I went to EPA, it was a big leap. from where I was to EPA. But I was confident that I could figure it out. It was gonna be challenging, but I could figure it out. So I think understanding what you can do and having the confidence to do it is important. But then in terms of where I am now, I would say that I am not...

Yeah.

I'm with people, a lot of people who are higher caliber people are as good as I am at what they do, for sure. And now what I look for in opportunities is really, is it interesting? And in fact, someone approached me about something recently and apparently their boss said to them, why would I be interested? And I said, why be interested? Because it's interesting, right? It might not be.

Mm-hmm.

career move, but I'm not really looking for career moves right now. I'm looking for interesting. And I do think also that looking for interesting work is probably more effective than trying to figure out how to work your way up the ladder. Because if you try and work your way up the ladder and take on things you don't want to do, you're going be less successful than things you think are interesting and that you want to do.

Yeah, yeah. And I want to touch on maybe going a few years back, but your first job at HP, you'd mentioned to me that, you know, you'd gotten it through a loose connection of some sort. Tell me a little bit about that story. Like, well, how did that come to be?

Yeah.

Yeah, so I got a phone call from a hiring manager at HP. This was back when, that's how you got, someone called you on the landline telephone to offer you a job or to invite you, in this case, to invite you out for an interview. So, and he said, the guy said to me, Bob Cattell, who I will share Bob's name, because sadly Bob passed away this past October. Yeah, he's...

Yeah. Yeah.

our mutual friend believed that maybe he spent too much time in his battery lab and that that was the cause of the cancer he got. He was working on EVs before EVs were cool.

no.

But anyway, so he said Bob Cattell told me to call you and Bob was a guy that I kind of knew in grad school. He graduated two years ahead of me, so I was an undergrad and he was in grad school. You know, I don't know what possessed Bob. He actually twice recommended me, once for project person professors and then for this job. But it was a recession and I graduated in December and it was May, or I guess it was March actually when I interviewed when they called me. It was March and I still didn't have a job. looking for a job when I, it was hard. You're like answering, writing paper letters and answering, it was painful. I mean, it's painful now. It's just different kind of painful. So I'm eternally grateful to Bob for kicking off what turned out to be a

Yeah.

20 year career at HP. I never asked him why he did it and I suppose I should have because I can't now. But he obviously saw something that was worth recommending me.

Yeah.

Yeah, I always find that so amazing of how we either attract or are attracted by other people and what makes us start to engage with individuals that you may not necessarily ever talk to. I feel like this is our second time that you and I have talked, but I also feel like every time we talk it's... the conversations have been incredible in so many ways, whether it's through text messages, emails, or Zoom. For your situation with Bob, do you feel like there were certain things that you had done over the years that just said, and that's the one, if I have an opportunity to recommend her, I'm definitely going to. What are some of those things that could have stood out?

Well, I mean, it might have been a little more pragmatic than that as I think about it, right, which is that there weren't very so. So his job was very much around designing automated material handling systems, and he was moving to do that somewhere else in HP.

Yeah.

There weren't that many people at Georgia Tech in the master's program who were doing that work. in those days, HP really only hired people with master's degrees. So it have been more pragmatic than that. obviously, he saw something about the research I was doing that he could see the connection to that it would be valuable. for the, so I think it was probably more about specifically kind of the research I was doing that he thought was interesting. It doesn't explain that first recommendation. So there's something he saw in terms of our actions that I'm just not really aware of. But yeah, I think we see that in other people sometimes where, you know, like, like, you know, our, kind of, when I reached out to you, I was really, you know, touched by your story. And I was like, hey, you know, what can I do to help? Because your story is amazing. And so I think that sometimes we just see somebody and we go, that's interesting, or they're interesting, or whatever it is that causes us to pay a little more attention and make that extra effort.

Yeah.

Yeah, I love that for so many reasons. But I want to ask you, this interaction that you had so many years ago with Bob and having the opportunity then to go into this 20-year career at HP, has that shaped how you connect with people now when somebody reaches out to you? Or has that shaped how you engage with individuals that you may not know? And if it has shaped you, how has that?

Yeah, so I think, I don't know if that is the thing, but certainly, my take on is if someone, when people need help and they ask for help and they're honestly asking for assistance, which you have to sort of parse out from the people who are round about trying to sell you something. But I am always willing to take the time to have a conversation with someone or to make a

Right?

provide a reference to someone I know or to help people out. Whether it's that experience with Bob or it's something else, I think that now more than ever, we need to help each other out. The job market has just gotten incredibly complicated.

Yeah.

I think the resume is rapidly dying and the traditional application is rapidly dying because it's just getting flooded with AI. So more and more, I think we're going to be relying on those personal connections to find the right people. But I think just as much, people sometimes just need you to give them some advice. You've got more experience than they do. How can you help them navigate this path or even just simply help them realize it's going to be okay? When I left HP, my timing has always been impeccable about job transitions, this one, leaving the administration. That one in October,

Mm-hmm.

of 2008, right, smack in the middle of the Great Recession or the very beginning of recession. It was almost a full year before I started a new job. And I had, I think exactly two job interviews, including the one I got. It was a tough time. And so, you know, I'm happy to tell people that story because people are going through that right now. People are taking really long time to find a job. And it's scary. And knowing that, you know, you're good.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

You're talented. There will be a light at the end of the tunnel. You just got to keep working at it. because it was starting to feel to me like I was going have a real problem. And thankfully, I found something. And that was actually my transition to the public sector. So that's the other advice I would give people right now is think about things that are maybe not nontraditional where you might be a really good fit and where there might be more opportunity. And maybe you're taking a step back. I didn't. I wound up going.

Yeah.

HP, in spite of all the stories, HP really didn't pay that well. And so, you know, I basically got the same amount of money at that new job as I had at HP. Yeah. Well, also I moved from Washington state to California. So, you know, there was that. But, you know, I managed to, you know, find an opportunity that had a good title.

Is that right? That's crazy.

paid reasonably well in a totally different area which was public service. So you just you never know but people need to be looking for those opportunities that may not be what they expected and and now of course the big thing is contract hire and I think a lot of people don't want to do that and it's like there are places where it's the only way you're getting the door so a contract is a contract which is better than sitting at home.

Yep.

Yeah, I completely agree with that one. So your first foray into public service, that was your CTL position, right, of the school district. Which school district was that?

or. was Palo Alto, so the heart of Silicon Valley.

Gosh, that's gotta be a lot of pressure to be the CTO of Pal-El, of all the places across all of America that's probably one of the hardest I would imagine.

Yeah, I'm convinced that fully half the parents thought they could do my job if they just had a few extra hours in their week. And so in fact, we tried to have an advisor, a parent's advisory board, and it just was impossible because, you know, they were so sure they had all the answers. They didn't care to hear any of the constraints. So we finally packed it and we're like, this is not going to work.

Yes.

I was gonna ask you what was it like with the parents there with their background and their salaries and all those things. Were there just disastrous days? I could imagine that there'd just disastrous days across the board.

You know, there weren't too many disaster studies. Probably the, you know, for the most part, right, they were happy to do their thing and to not bother me too much. We had, you know, we had a very rewarding, there's this voluntary transfer program that's part of a many years, decades old court settlement now that brings students from East Palo Alto, which is a... underprivileged area over to Palo Alto and they start in kindergarten and they're promised a place through high school. So 60 years a year, you have to come in and do that. And it's not enough, but it helps. those, and dealing with those parents, as well as some of the parents who say lived in the mobile home park and in Barron park and things like that. which is incredibly rewarding because we had a program we loaned computers out to those folks and they went through my office. So these people are incredibly grateful. And there were some great parents I worked with who were very well off as well.

Mm-hmm.

you the challenge was you had lots of parents who were, say, in their 30s and retired. So whether that's because they made a lot of money or because they had family money or whatever it might be. So yeah, there were a lot of opinions, but it was overall, it was actually a good experience. I really enjoyed being in the district and working with the students there and really has an opportunity to modernize technology and to upgrade the

Mm.

upgrade the staff and in some cases that was changing staff but in many cases that was simply motivating the existing staff and getting them moving because there just hadn't been a lot of motivation. My predecessor was a PE teacher, which was a very typical school district thing for a long time. You know, you would find the HR professionals were former teachers, the IT professionals were former teachers, the business professionals were former teachers, and the districts certainly from an IT standpoint have realized they can't do

Yeah.

Wow.

anymore. And so your IT leadership is now, most districts, it's someone from IT starting to see that change in HR, starting to that change in business offices as people with those backgrounds come through. I mean, I have no problem, know, people change careers all the time. Let's take someone directly from, say, teaching. or being a principal directly into a senior role in a business officer, HR or IT, you got a few gaps there that need to be filled.

Yeah, no, for sure. For sure. I mean, that's probably a good segue to the next question. like, how do you lead people in a room? Because you had, I would imagine, 20, 30 IT employees while you were there just doing IT related things. How do you lead people in a room filled with highly technical individuals when you're not the most technical? Like, what's been your and Duncan's secret sauce to that.

Yeah, so I guess I'm never the most technical person in a room, not since I was designing automated detailing systems many, years ago. So I think the key is that number one, you need to know enough to call BS. So you need to know enough about what your people do that they respect that you know what they do, that you understand what they tell you. And that when they tell you something that's garbage, you go, really?

Yes.

Right.

And I have over the years had a few people test me on that, not many, but I've had a couple places where I have in the moment misunderstood someone and they have gone on without explaining to me and I've come back them and said, I realized I misunderstood you and you just changed the subject. So let's go back and have a conversation about that. there's a threshold where I will not understand, but also I try and learn quickly.

Yeah.

and and understand to develop that understanding but I think the most important thing there beyond you got to be to call bullshit excuse me um is

you can curse all you want. This is a curse friendly zone.

There you go. Is that you need to trust people. So the great thing about not knowing how to do so much job is you can't micromanage them.

Yes.

Let them go do their job and they appreciate that you're not micromanaging them. You're letting them do your job, their job. You're not second-guessing them. You may ask questions to understand their process or their decision-making, but you're not going to micromanage them. And I think that that is absolutely huge. And as part of how I've been able to be successful is by focusing on helping people get their job done as opposed to helping them do their job, right? Which is totally different. We're two totally different things.

Right, right. Oh man, yeah, it's the BS detector, think is one of the things over the years that you sort of naturally get better at. I think when you first start, a little bit hard to tell when people are bullshitting you, but as you get older, that detector definitely gets a little bit more refined. And I want to maybe switch gears a little bit and talk about a series of things, but

Hmm

The thing I want to hit on most is what was it like for you being the only woman in the room? And in many ways, you were the most senior person in a lot of these rooms. And I want to maybe get your experience of what that was like. You spent a majority of your career in places that were predominantly men, whether it was in IT or the CIO, many different places. in the private sector, but also in the public sector. When did you ever truly feel the weight that you were that person, you were the woman in the room, but you were also the most senior person leading these initiatives? What was that like?

Yeah, so I would say that there, you by the time I got to be fairly senior, there were rarely rooms that there weren't other women in. I was just laughing last night because someone showed me this picture of a friend of theirs who had gone off to, and they're in the legal field, they had gone off to their retreat in Napa and their husband went with them and showed me this picture of this table full of women and her husband Joe, right? So everybody else, was people

Mm-hmm.

people's wives and her husband. So there are still fields where it's very much like that. But I think that, you know, as engineers and scientists and technician, technical folks, for the most part, we graduated that space, which is not to say there are incredibly male-dominated spaces out there, but.

Yeah.

And there are usually still a good number of women in those rooms. can't think of, know, in fact, one of my last few jobs at HP, my boss was a woman. And for a brief period of time, everybody in the chain above me was female all the way up to Carly Fiorina. And our leadership team was almost entirely women.

Yeah.

There was obviously a moment in time, but it was a pretty cool moment in time. So in spite of the fact that there's no secret that I don't think Carly did H.P. any favors. That was a moment. But I think that it's definitely hard being the only woman in the room. It's definitely hard still for women to get ahead. And I think that's the bigger issue. And I also think I'm Gen X and we're sort of stuck.

Wow.

the boomers aren't getting out of the way. so there's a bunch of older white men when they're at the top and not getting out of our way. your generation is going to come along behind us and we're just going to be like, yeah, we never got our shot. But I think that it's true of my time, and I think it's probably still true for a lot of women now, depending upon the field, that

Right. You're right. Right. Right.

Yeah.

I would have been much more successful had I been tall, white, male, straight, all those things, right? Absolutely, 100 % true that there were times when I didn't get the opportunities I should have because of the Boys Club. Absolutely. And I think it's still true that there are times when the Boys Club...

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

takes the opportunities. And that's part of what, frankly, hopefully I can be political, the administration is trying to do now. They're seeing the boys club evaporate, the white boys club, and they're trying to grab onto that and keep it. And...

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

which is a shame because diverse organizations are more successful and there's a reason for that because diverse ideas create better outcomes. in terms of being sort of, I think my challenge has been more of some of the men I've worked for have been challenging and also the fact that we still have an issue with women undermining each other. Some of the most difficult people I've worked with, who literally I've had a couple over the years decide they were out to get me for no apparent reason. Women, I've had a couple men do that too, you know, and I think that's people sometimes feel threatened by other people who are good at what they do, even if they're not trying to threaten them. So overall, it's been great, but definitely, I think that there's still that challenge in terms of opportunities for women, for women to have as many opportunities as men have in any field. So.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

I don't know if I really answered your question, but hey.

No, that was great, Anne. I do wonder though, are there things, especially for younger women, I'm just even thinking about when my daughter eventually goes to college and tries to figure out what she wants to do. And funny aside, she was probably like eight and we were talking about what are some things that you would like to do when you become an adult. And she said she wanted to be a software engineer for veterinarians. I was like, oh, that's very specific. build software for animals, or people that take care of animals. I'm like, that's great. But like, I do wonder if there are things that we could do to help maybe enable or speed up the access or comp or even having brokering conversations so that we can get more women into

That's very specific.

these situations where they have the ability to be in the right place at the right time or have doors open that maybe aren't open now? Are there things that you've been thinking about over the years where we could maybe start to do those types of things?

Yeah, and think there's a few things. Number one is when you think about technology. what we saw, we see, and I saw this very clearly in Palo Alto, a lot of girls opt out of technology very young. so engaging girls in technology at four or five, six years old, keeping them engaged is important, right? Because technology, more and more, technology is everything. Every job is going to require technology literacy, technology skills that we didn't have to have. So,

Yeah.

Definitely that's number one. Number two, think is, you know, these programs that the evil DEI programs, which I always say, if you're going to say they're evil, then say them out loud, diversity, equity and inclusion. And what's wrong with that? Right. Why they use the acronym? It's a lot easier to demonize it. Those programs have worked and they've been valuable and things like creating requirements that companies have a certain number of women on their governing board, for example, has been has been hugely

Yeah.

important. know, you might be able to argue that you've got this early-duty engineering problem and you can't find a woman to fill it. If you got a governing board, there are going to be women who can fill those seats. There's no doubt that you can find them. You just have to go look for them. And so the goal here of these programs is to get them to go look. Go find the people. Don't just call your buddy. Go find them who are qualified. But also, I think all of us taking the opportunity to help people.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

You what I said about. It is true that there have been in the past and there still are a lot of women who get there and then they close the door for the other women behind them. And that there are certainly men who don't help women. But for every one of those, there's probably two of women who want to help other women, of men who want to help women and everybody who's not like them be successful. And so I think that's the most important thing is that you don't pull up the ladder behind you, you reach your hand out and you help that next person. And so I think it's incumbent upon all of us to do that, to help men and women both or folks who are, don't identify as either as well, help everybody. But that, you know, maybe a little extra helping hand for women recognizing that they've got the cards a little bit more stacked against them. But I also think every generation is better. You know, there's a disturbing, trend of some young people on the right that even the Republican Party is worried about of being really racist, really misogynistic. But I think the reality is that most people, every generation, cares a little bit less about that you're white or black or male or female and more about what you can do. And so I think just continuing to promote people who are younger than us, giving them opportunities to demonstrate that they are even less interested in color and race and gender than we are, I think is super important.

Yeah.

And I want to maybe switch gears a little bit because I love what you've said there, but I maybe want to apply that to lessons in leadership. The Department of Energy, the unofficial internal model when you arrived was you're not the boss of me. Tell me a little bit about that.

That's funny. Did your homework. Yeah. So one of my predecessors told me that the unofficial motto of DOE is you're not the boss of me. And it's very true. know, DOE is highly decentralized. And, you know, I recently wrote an op-ed for Fed News Network, which is related to this, not about DOE, specifically about government in general. Everybody gets their own money. Everybody's decentralized.

Right.

centralized, if you get your own money, you get to do what you want. So, you know, that's the bottom line. Everybody's got their own money. They do what they want. And so the point of that was about the fact that you can't come in and say, here's what we're going to do. In fact, when I showed up, you know, a variety of people in not so many words said, what are you going to do to me? Not with me, not for me, to me. And this is why I don't have to listen to you. So yeah. they, know, much of it was not that direct, but that was the gist of what was said. So, you know, what it demonstrates is the importance of building relationships, the importance of building coalitions. You know, we got a lot done at DOE.

Wow.

Wow.

Yeah.

and we got some of it done all across DOE collaboratively by convincing people that they wanted to play. So one of the biggest things we did, which probably doesn't seem very big, is we got all of DOE on one master contract for Microsoft services.

Right.

and I'll tell you what, pulling, building that, my, my team worked hard to build that coalition. I, we worked hard to keep it together. mean, literally it was days before Microsoft contract was going to expire. It was the end of Microsoft's fiscal year. They were like, we're not giving you an extension. You've got to get this done or, know, and people were readying, writing vehicles to put out to, to order on their own if we failed. And, know, literally like within hours, like hours from the deadline, we got this thing. up and running. there were lot of challenges with NASA SUBE because it was changing its contract structure. There were challenges in a lot of places including our own procurement shops. I don't want you to blame NASA. There were a lot of things going on and it was like literally not just the 11th hour but like the 11th and three quarters hour. Before we got it done,

Wow.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're cutting it pretty close there, Yeah.

But that happened because we convinced people that it was in their best interest to play, that there was value to them. It wasn't something we were telling them to do. It was something that we made it so they wanted to do. And so I think when you're working in the federal bureaucracy, unless you're the CIO of something very small, right? you know, some place where you have all the IT. I mean, you know, on the one hand, VA is very large, but almost all the IT is managed out of the CIO's office. On the other hand, you've got lots of, you see all these small departments and micro-department agencies and micro-agencies where the CIOs are just doing amazing things with tiny resources, and it's because they have all the resources and everyone's going along.

Mm-hmm.

Unless you're like that, you spend 90 % of your time as a CIO building relationships and building coalitions. Because that's the only way stuff gets done that's shared and cost effective.

Yeah. What do you do with the people that don't opt into the coalition and that are cynical or naysayers? What does Anne do? What is the Anne Duncan method?

Well, you you go, you get the coalition of the willing, right? So you bring along the people who are gonna opt in, who are here. And sometimes other folks come along later because they see the value, they see everybody doing a great job, they see the experience going well. Sometimes some of those don't and they, you're just gonna have to leave them behind.

Right?

And sometimes what happens is, if everyone else is going along, they get a top down, why aren't you over there? And they kind of come along and join the party. at DOE, DOE's got I don't know how many IT teams. I went to one site where I five different people tell me they were the CIO. more than one of them were right. It's just what are you the CIO of, right?

Yeah, one of them is right.

Yeah.

they you know, we had, sorry, I lost my train of for a second, what happened is we did a good enough job that people started saying, I don't want to do this myself anymore, will you do it for me?

Mmm.

Right before I left, the intelligence organization was like, would you please take all of our unclassified IT? And like, we can't afford the transition. Help us figure out how to afford the transition so that you can take all the unclassified IT and we'll just do the classified stuff. So, you know, those things when you do good work and people see good work.

Yeah.

they eventually go, well, why am I doing this myself? And sometimes it requires a change of leadership, or some other change for people who are entrenched in their views to see it. There's one large office in DOE that was, until very recently, still convinced that they were never ever gonna let the office CI do anything for them because of experiences a decade ago. But eventually the undersecretary in charge just said, I don't wanna do this stuff.

Mm-hmm.

my god.

and other things. Now go get rid of it. So, you know, it's just, it's, you just have to, sometimes you have to be patient. Sometimes you have to find different methods. Sometimes you just let them stay behind and maybe they'll join you later.

Yeah, I'm okay with that too. It's like you're either gonna get on the bus or you're not gonna get on the bus with some people. Yeah, you can't take everybody, right? You can't take everybody. And I wanna talk about F1. You mentioned you're a big fan of F1 and it's not as big in America as it is overseas.

Yeah, I mean, why stop everybody?

you

How did you get into it? Like what was sort of the first moment you were saying to yourself, this is an amazing thing to experience.

Well, I said that I could get sucked into almost anything. I remember turning on the television once and I think I was like darts run or something even more silly than sorry to any dark player. But something that seemed to me even more silly than darts. I can't remember what it But I'm like, I start watching this. I'm like, stop, turn it off. But

Yeah.

I'll say that goes with my wide-ranging interest, but it's a problem. But I had some friends who were British who got me started watching it, and I just got really interested in it. that was 26 years ago now, the 2000 season. And so it's interesting. because of course since then, no one in the US knew Formula One then and with Drive to Survive, which I've actually never seen because I have time to see it because I have to watch the actual Formula One. There's a lot of fans of Formula One in the US. There are now three races here. When I was watching, we barely had one. Indy had a horrible, was 2004, I think, or 2000.

Mm-hmm.

2004, then only six cars started at Indy because of a tire problem and people like, know, former one in the US is dead. And, you know, now we've got three races. So that's how I got into it. And, you know, I think I'm a bit of a sponge and, you know, I can get interested in almost everything. So I really try and control my behaviors.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. yeah, I agree. mean, I was watching like a pillow fighting championship on ESPN the other day. I'm like, how does this even get on the TV? What is it about F1 that attracts you? Because you also love Georgia Tech college football and I'm trying to sort of piece the two together. it?

it. Yeah, something like that.

The energy, is it the speed, is it the crowd? Like, what is it that gets you going?

Well, I think one of the jokes about the joke we have about Formula One is they turn left and right. But I think to me the thing is that it's a technical sport.

Yes.

Everybody develops their own cars. So there's a lot of engineering, which is really fascinating. It's not just everybody gets the same spec car. You get to see how different cars, different people developed, work differently. And then you put different drivers in them and see this driver, you know, I hate Max for stopping, but he can wrestle any car to the ground. I mean, he's talking about how much he hates this year's car. But in the first race, had...

Yeah.

had DNF in the second race, but in the first race, he wrestled that car to like a fifth or sixth place finish, even though he hated it. And he came from 20th because he had a qualifying problem. watching the talent of the drivers plus the...

Yeah.

the cars and then seeing you know teams rise and fall as they get better engineers and as people leave it's just a really fascinating engineering sport. I mean there are not a lot of sports where you can argue there's engineering involved. So that's to me that's really interesting. Yeah and college football so my disclaimer about college football is it's probably a horrible sport. If they banned it I wouldn't argue with them because all these people get head injuries from football but I love it. I just love watching Georgia Tech play. you know, we are on the on this. We had a great season last year. It didn't end as well as we'd like to. Eight, no, and to start. We only we only only wound up with nine wins. So was pretty frustrating and lost a lot of coaches and a lot of people in the transfer portal. So we're waiting to see, you know, what our coaches been able to put together. He got.

Yeah, fantastic.

Heisman Winters, younger brother, transfer from Indiana at quarterback. So we'll see what happens with that. you know, I just think that there's something, firstly, there's something about college football and the ritual and being on campus and, you know, the fact that, you know, people, people have these attachments to these teams because they went to school there. And so it's just this incredibly attachment you don't get. I mean, I know that some people are incredibly attached to their pro teams. Don't get me wrong. Don't want to offend anybody. But it feels...

That's right.

kind of different because you feel more, to me, you feel more part of it because you're a graduate of the school. But yeah, I just enjoy it. And it's like many things, like Formula One, the more you learn about it, the more you realize you don't know about it, and the more complicated it is. People tell you football players are stupid. Boy, you can't be stupid and play football now because it's a complicated game.

Yeah. Yeah.

So, but yeah, so that's that's part of this the story I've just you know, and I sort of can I'm like these are my things and I'm not gonna do it I'm not gonna look around not gonna do anything else because I barely have time to watch those two sports

Yep.

man, you know, I watched that Brad Pitt movie F1 a couple months ago. I want to get your hot take on it, but as somebody who doesn't watch F1 religiously, I thought that was a fascinating movie. I mean, the way they shot it, everything about it, especially if you've got like a good sound system, it's just like all the noise and visuals coming at you. It was pretty amazing. Did you enjoy it? Did you watch it?

Yeah, I mean, they shot it during races, right? They were there during the races. It's as realistic as it possibly be. So the commitment to be with the Formula One calendar for, I think it was over a year that they were there. It was amazing. So yeah, was an impressive, movie. And fun to see some of the cameos in there as well.

Yeah, yeah.

Yep.

Yeah, there was a lot. There was a lot. There was a lot. And I want to maybe close up our conversation here and get a little bit of reflection and your thoughts on the future. The one thing I wanted to ask you was, you know, over the years, we get advice from people, whether it's our family or mentor or friends. Is there one piece of advice that you've gotten over the years? That's turned out to be completely wrong and you regret following it

Wow, that is an amazing question. One piece of advice I've gotten. So, know, it wasn't specifically this advice, but my father was a very successful executive at IBM. He only got the director level.

Mm-hmm.

who knows if he could have gone further had he done something differently. But he was in tune with IBM. was a company man. He got the Rolex, the whole nine yards. And I was very frustrated shortly before he got sick. So one of the last times we had a serious conversation about anything. I was irritated because Randy Mott, was the HPCIO at the time, had said, we're moving all our data centers to Texas, which was kind of crazy. And they're like, we're going to have three redundant data centers and three redundant data centers in three regions. And the three regions were San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas. I'm like, those are not three regions. The same hurricane can hit them all.

Yeah.

But he's like, and we're going to move all our data over there. And here's the time for him to do that, or not over there, but over the internet and the network. And the team came back to him and said, this is technically not possible. We cannot move the bits this fast. And he said, fine, you're fired. Yeah.

Wow.

And I told my father this story, or I don't think he fired him, but he took him off the project, right? Because it was HP, it was still HP, so he probably couldn't fire him. My father's reaction was, yeah, that's what I would have done. I would have found someone who would say yes. So you were not interested in hearing...

Hmm.

someone tell you something's not technically feasible. Now I can understand maybe, you know, maybe I should delve into this conversation a little more, but I was for a flabbergasted, that maybe you're saying, you would say they need to me an alternative, which is a fair, you know, thing to say you need to bring me an alternative because I don't like to show up and say, no, you can't do it. I would rather show up and say, can't do it the way you want. could do it this way, right?

Yeah.

we could pick up some pack up some servers and physically fly them and that would work. But that just struck me as like really bad. He wasn't giving me advice, but he was. And he was like really bad advice. And I was like, wow, dad, everybody I ever talked to at IBM thought what a wonderful manager he was. And I'm like, man, where did that come from? So yeah, that was one moment where I was like, yeah, not doing that.

Yeah.

Thanks, Dad.

Oh, and I want to ask you this hypothetical question. it's the way that I framed it to a previous guest was, know, you've got like you've got three wishes. You found this gene on a beach and, know, your first wish was you wish for pizza. Your second wish was you wish for beer. You only have one wish left. If you could change anything within sort of the federal IT space.

Okay.

with that one wish, what would that be?

Gosh, pizza and beer. So I think that, well, I'm sort of torn between two things, but I think that the real answer is what we talked about earlier. Giving CIOs budget authority so that they control what happens because they have no ability to control the agenda right now.

Yes, I absolutely love that.

Yes.

Yeah. What is keeping that from happening? I just don't understand that.

Well, I'm of the opinion it's a Congress problem. I think so right now. Congress appropriates the money directly to the components. And that is because Congress wants to have a lot of control over what the departments and agencies do, which is kind of funny right now, given that the executive branch is, well, number one right now, the executive branch is flat out ignoring some of it. It's always been true that, as you know, the executive branch, you know, can sort of slow walk things and interpret things and find ways to not exactly do what Congress wants.

Yes, I know that.

But yeah, they want control over what happens to the money, so they appropriate it directly. And that means that CIOs can't control what they do, know, control what happens in their organization. So if you were to take just the IT portion out of that appropriation and move it to the CIOs, you know, that would help. the other thing is, right, it's that... The other part of this problem is when you think about working for a corporation, right, everybody works for the board and everybody works the CEO and everybody's aligned on the objectives of the company ultimately. mean there's fighting internally and silos but ultimately everybody's kind of going the same direction. The federal government, your executive, the president, and Congress may not be aligned and even if Congress and the executive are aligned there's people in Congress who aren't aligned. And so

Mm-hmm.

Congress often chooses not to enable the executive branch because they want something to happen. So for example, when I was at DOE, Congress really did not want to fund some of the diversity efforts and the energy equality efforts and the equity stuff going on in departmental administration.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

the office of CIOs in departmental administration. And even though we got a direct procurement and they could have just said, office CIO can have more money, others in DA can't. They're like, we're just capping DA. And so you guys have to fight among yourselves for money. And if you want more money for IT, there are programs over there we don't think you should be funding. And so, they wouldn't directly defund those things, but they also wouldn't give me more money. And so,

Mm.

And you know, probably no one in Congress would ever admit that that's what was going on. But it was clear that that was what going on, was they were trying to get these things defunded and they were capping HR, business office, CIO as part of that effort to control these other things. So, you know, that lack of alignment means that Congress out of one side of their mouth will say, we want IT to work right, we want it to be properly funded, please tell us you're properly funded or not. And on the other side of mouth, like, but we're not going give you the money you need. So, you know, those are two problems there. But if you directed the department-wide appropriation to the CIO, they wouldn't need as much money either. federal IT has more than enough money. It just needs to be spent better.

Yes, yeah. And we need to be held responsible for how we spend that in many ways.

Yeah, and if you don't have accountability within the organization, how can Congress hold the CIO accountable if the CIO can't control the spending? Which, and Congress knows that, which is why there's lots of noise and bluster and you gotta see on this report card, but they're not coming in and dragging me up for hearing and saying, why shouldn't we fire you? Because they honestly know what the problem is.

Exactly.

Yeah, no, I completely agree. completely agree. And last question for the show, my friend. What is the one thing that you are most proud of that is not on your resume or on LinkedIn?

you

I think, you know, the one thing I'm most proud of that doesn't show up on, you know, in writing is being a good leader. The number of the people who said to me there I was the best boss they ever had or the guy who said to me I was just marking time until you showed up and now I'm excited and I want to get to work.

Mm-hmm.

that's awesome.

You know, those kind of things, right? You know, those are the ones that made me want to get up in the morning and do it again, even though it was hard.

Yeah, especially for, you if you're working in the federal government, right? Like you don't have a lot of these perks that you do in industry. You don't have these cappuccino machines. You don't have the stock options. And it's about the mission and the people like you boil it down. So that speaks volumes. Yeah, I believe in all those things. Those people said just from the short amount of time that I've known you in, you've been one, a consumist. professional across the board, whether it's in writing or as we're speaking. But two, I think the thing that you have that has drawn me to you personally is this genuine spirit of giving and the ability to connect to other people that in many ways, especially for individuals that have this certain stature in life, it's very hard to break into that mold and get conversations that are true and authentic. But you've done that since the day we first engaged and I really appreciate you for that. I really wish there were more people like that in this world because I think the world would be a much better place in general. But I appreciate, for you coming on the show, it's been an honor to call you a friend and I hope you have a great rest of your day but also a great rest of the year.

That is incredibly kind of you and it's pleasure to be on your show, friend, as well. And thank you for having me. And yeah, I hope you have a great rest of the day, the year, and that all the opportunities you're looking for emerge.

I appreciate that. appreciate that. All right, friend. Be well. We'll talk soon. All right. Bye-bye.

Take care of yourself. Bye.