👩‍💻 *Women in Tech EMEA* Welcome to Cloudflare Women in Tech

Welcome to the Women in Tech Day. I'm really excited that you've tuned in today. We're happy to have you join us.

I'm Kyra Meier-Klodt. I work on the demand generation team here in EMEA as a marketing specialist and I'm based in London and I'm joined by Celso and Malgosia.

Celso is an engineering director and Malgosia is the head of legal here in EMEA and we're going to have a really exciting chat about building teams in the region today and their roles.

But before we get started, I wanted to introduce the event a little bit, why we decided to do this and it's because we've hosted several career days across various regions and seeing their success, we decided to host dedicated days to certain teams to showcase the great work that they're doing and we're lucky that we have a team full of inspiring women in tech who all have great stories and learnings to share about working in a competitive environment and you can expect to learn a lot about the tech industry in all these sessions and learn about the challenges some of us face and overcome and the skills that we've been able to hone and you'll also hear great success stories around building diverse teams and doing really well in this space.

So today's agenda, right now you're in the welcome session, the first session of the day, but it will be followed by a leading the change session at 2.30 which you'll learn from women within the CODFLIR team that are sharing their stories and experiences and their roles.

You'll learn about building a successful career in tech and also a little bit more about the technical and product specific information around our CloudFLIR applications and at 4 we'll have a future of diversity and inclusion discussion where we talk about the future of diversity and what is still what we still need to do to make a difference and then finally we'll be ending with Jen Taylor, our chief of product, talking about her perspective and industry experience and how she would look at building a career and product.

So before we get started, one more thing is if you want to engage with us at all, you can write within the LinkedIn events group CloudFLIR Women in Tech.

We also have the job role link under this video which you can look through all our open positions and then finally if you have any questions you can email CloudFLIR TV.

It's livestudio at cloudflir.tv. So without any further ado, let's get started.

Let's start with some introductions. Why don't we go with Malgosia first?

Introduce yourself, your background and your role at CloudFLIR.

Sure, thank you very much Kira. Hi everyone, nice to meet you. I'm Malgosia Zitara-Miller.

I'm heading the EMEA legal team. So for a very quick background, I joined Cloud for about three and a half years ago as a sole legal counsel in EMEA.

So at the time when I joined the team, we were all firefighting. I was the only lawyer outside of US, based in London office and I'm still based in London and it seems that a lot of things have changed and happened since then.

So we have built the team in EMEA which I'm heading, the legal team in EMEA that we are supporting business here.

And we are expanding with regional expansion in the region as well.

We are expanding our team. So very excited to be able to start as well hiring lawyers elsewhere in different countries than just London and Germany where we currently are.

Great, thank you. And Celso. Hi, thanks a lot for the invitation.

It's really a pleasure to be here with you. I'm an engineering director in the Lisbon office.

Joined the company about one year, so I guess I'm the newbie in the group.

But anyway, my role is on one side to manage a number of engineering projects at Cloudflare that includes things like Cloudflare radar, web analytics and email that we're about to launch.

And also make sure that I help the Lisbon office to grow.

So the Lisbon office is one of the newest offices at Cloudflare.

It's also one of the fastest growing lately in Europe and we're making sure that we can attract talent to work with us.

And that's also one of my main roles.

Great, thank you. Malgosia, you kind of touched on the fact that you have been part of growing the legal team or even starting it within EMEA.

What does it currently look like?

You started with being the first. What's the team like? How many people are there?

What's the growth been? Where are you headed? Sure. So this has been very exciting three and a half years that have passed at Cloudflare because that was immense growth that we have seen across the board in every department and in terms of people, but in particularly in the region.

So when I started, we had only one office in London, in Europe, and now we've got six.

So as Celso mentioned, we've got as well Lisbon office growing really, really fast.

We've got Munich, Paris, Amsterdam and Dubai as well.

And we continue to grow and continue to expand, which is very, very exciting for everyone in the business and including the legal team, because that brings more projects for us and more interesting things to be involved in.

In terms of people, by comparison, we have grown from 150 people in Europe when I started to around 500 where we are at the moment and that it's this number actually still changing month by month.

So it might be even over 500.

So what it means that when I started in the legal team, I was based here to do the firefighting basically.

So I was having a bit of a mini GC role and I continue to do so when you are just dealing with all legal matters, which means that we support business in the media for whatever needs they have from the legal perspective.

And that requires just more than one person, if you can imagine for 500 people.

So we as well looking where we are located. So we have another person added in German office to support their needs.

And we are looking now to as well having roles in Lisbon and Paris in our team to be able to support business, not only from people perspective, but as well looking what the business is doing, how the business is growing in those regions.

And that's very exciting from my perspective because it means we are learning, we are making us more regionalized, we are being more sensitive to the culture, we are getting even more diverse teams that we already have on the ground.

So I'm looking forward to more new destinations, new offices in Europe and more lawyers to be able to help CELSUS team as well sales team, people team that we are supporting on the grounds with the work that needs to be done for the company to be successful.

Great, really exciting.

Celso, you're working on the engineering team, but it's, at least from my perspective, I have no real contact with engineering.

It seems like a huge team.

How is it set up? What are the roles within engineering or branches? Kind of give us an idea of what the engineering organization looks like.

Yeah, so the engineering organization is one of the biggest at Cloudflare obviously because we're a technology-based company.

There are bigger teams and smaller teams that all depends on the kind of projects they're doing.

Cloudflare is global by definition, so one of the interesting things at Cloudflare that also helps with diversity is the fact that many times we have teams that have members in different regions, from different backgrounds, from different cultures, working in different time zones, and I think Cloudflare is one of the best companies to make that work in practice.

So we support products, we support infrastructure. Engineering is about making sure that Cloudflare is working, the lights are on, we keep launching new features, new products.

Cloudflare is known for its speed and agility, and I guess engineers are one of the teams that are at the core of this DNA at Cloudflare.

Great. Just continuing on that, what are, you said it's unique, kind of what are the things that make Cloudflare unique, at least in the engineering, or what are some exciting projects, or culturally, what have you been able to make work so that diverse teams can work well together?

Sure. So the answer I'm going to give you is part of the reason why I joined Cloudflare myself.

I think Cloudflare is in a very interesting spot right now where we're a big company, but we still behave like a big startup.

I'd say we're at the beginning of our exponential curve, there's a lot to do, and that's very gratifying in terms of you can actually see the result of your work, which is rare in big organizations.

And then on top of that, I think we have a great culture. We really work on making sure that we have diverse teams working with us, we are transparent, we are direct, we do share a lot of information.

One of the things that scared me when I joined Cloudflare is the amount of information I have access to.

And that's because it's a top-down culture.

Cloudflare really thinks they should share everything with the employees, and that's really great.

In terms of diversity, it's obviously a complex problem, especially in engineering, and I think there's a couple of things we are doing first of all, I think a lot of the issues with diversity or building diverse teams, especially in engineering, is about fear.

So we need to be vocal about the things that we're doing, we need to reach out to communities.

One of the things that I think we also do well is make sure that we have diverse panels interviewing the candidates.

So that includes making sure that there are different genders, different backgrounds, different angles.

That's really important during the interviewing process.

And also do our best to avoid bias. We actually do have training on that, and we need to make sure that we're looking at the data and the facts.

That's really important. Great. I mean, then similarly, Malgosia, perhaps, I mean, from the legal perspective, you can talk a little bit about some of the policies we're putting in place or within your own team, how you are promoting this same culture, or maybe a different one.

Absolutely. So one of the things that's also briefly touched upon, it was one of the policies we have in place, or guidelines, because we don't like putting everything too formal.

So this is the cultural thing, just being still young, dynamic, and fast growing.

And we like people who are in this environment need to like that, not to be afraid of change and trying to improve things.

And sometimes they happen very, very quickly, because we are growing very, very quickly.

So one of the things that we actually do is the Orange Cloud interviews that Selsa mentioned too.

So what it means. So we have, for example, I have a role open for a legal counsel in my team, who will be based in France.

I'm going to have somebody with an EMEA from any team. So whether it will be from Selsa team, or it might be from People team, or it might be somebody on the sales side who will be assigned to the panel for that role.

And they will be interviewing together with other my peers, my colleagues within the legal team, where we will be checking their qualities and skill sets that it's relevant for the role that sells from legal perspective.

And they will just give us this more objective view from from what we call is Orange Cloud interviewer point of view, which will help us to establish whether this person is a good fit, how does it they fit within the missions we've got for the company.

And as well, let's make us think about other things than just focus on the skill sets for for that particular role.

So that's one of the things.

The other thing we do, and we encourage all managers across the board is to set up the diversity and inclusion goals for their teams, which I think it's a very good idea.

And we have been checked on those regularly. So we need to give an update and to give you an idea what those goals can be.

So it can be around gender diversity, that we want to increase gender diversity in a team by X number before the end of the year.

That's probably quite common in engineering, that that's one of the focus for diversity, or ensuring that we've got more diverse candidates in the funnel.

So making sure we have at least one one candidate and hire at least for one role diverse candidates.

So just being positive about diversity, just making this push, making managers thinking about it and making that push within the team.

The other is, I think it was actually our CTO, JJC, when he moved to Lisbon.

So one of his goals was building a new engineering team in Lisbon.

And he would like to have a parity between men and women in the team, which is great goal and working towards to, and we are very all supportive of that.

And then the other thing which I really liked, and it has been as well highlighted, whether via goals on or via trainings that we are having internally, for people to raise their awareness and diversity, diversity, awareness, and inclusion is about making people their unique voices heard.

So when you are coming through this potentially different person, how somebody you might make whole, and just making sure that you are focusing, making this positive and, and hire people for, for their potential, because I think this is what we do, which I really, really like.

And the other programmes obviously that we've got, we've got loads of different, different information that are available for anyone who is interested in diversity.

So we have diversity dashboard, we have best practice for hiring managers to ensure that they are thinking about this when they are building their teams.

We've got personal diversity inclusion goals that I have mentioned being reviewed together with our president, Michelle.

And as well, we've got special wiki page where we are talking about diversity trends to make people, everyone aware.

And we have a lot of groups that people can join and whether it will be Afroflare, whether it will be Cloudflare, who have generally, so we are all Cloudflare, sorry, I was, ParentFlare, which is in relation to the parents that I am as well, member of, LGBTQ, all sorts of other minority group or any group that we would like to highlight and people want to belong to, which I think it's a wonderful thing.

Yeah, great.

And thank you for that. That was extremely extensive and helpful. I think for, for both of you, I wonder if there's any challenges you two identify generally in the market within your field as pertaining to diversity and inclusion.

And you, Magosia, have now talked about some of the things that we're doing to tackle that, but are you still seeing that?

I think Celso, you can, you can start with this one.

Still seeing any trends and, and how are you tackling that as well?

Yeah. So first of all, it's still a big problem. Especially when we're talking about women in tech, we, we, this is not a new problem.

I think, I think things are getting better now, but still, and I think the problem begins earlier in the, in the cycle, it begins with education, then, then it goes all the way through the universities.

If you look at engineering courses and studies in the universities, the, the ratio between women in technology versus other genders is, is not, it's not good.

And, and in the end, when we open positions in engineering, we, we get a lot less candidates, women candidates than other, other candidates.

So the problem exists.

I think it's been getting better. There's a couple of things I think companies like Cloudflare need to keep doing.

So reaching out to communities is, is, is really something we're trying to do.

There's a couple of women in tech communities in Portugal that we're trying to talk to.

Universities, we can also reach out to universities and go there and present Cloudflare and try to attract a more diverse pool of candidates by showing what we're doing in our company.

And then some of the things that Malgosia mentioned, I think we need to set the example and we need to create opportunities.

We need to celebrate the work that our women are doing at Cloudflare.

And, and we need to show the facts.

We need to show that we're, that we're hiring more women in tech and, and that we put more women in the spotlight, because if we do that, then other candidates will be less afraid and will apply to our opportunities and, and, and then we'll reach a viral effect.

And, and, and I think, I think that's, that's really the path that, that we need to, to, to follow.

Yeah, that's, that's really great. And I think some of, something you touched on as well as us focusing on also highlighting the talent within us in Cloudflare already and what we're doing and are there things, Malgosia, that we're doing already to promote the people that we have within in terms of encouraging or creating environments that help people excel in their field, or I guess in the legal field?

Yeah, so we as well have very, so we have a Womenflare, we have EMEA Womenflare groups that people can freely participate and it's not just limited to women, it's as well to champions for, for that and for this diversity and inclusion.

And, and we do so, we are encouraging people from every level to be able to participate in the panels, having segments on CFTV, for example, as well to, to get the breadth of experience while they are here when, when they can then step up to the next level.

So we are just trying to encourage to develop different skill sets while, while they are working in a particular role as well, which I think is very important.

There is some strong support as well from leadership and women in the more senior position across the board.

And there is a lot of, a lot of discussion that we are having internally, trying to strategize and tackle the issues that are brought to our attention or the one that we have noticed ourselves and try to tackle.

And one of the examples is obviously in, in COVID situation, and it was not just a necessary issue from women perspective, but might be a little bit more, it was in relation to the childcare, how we manage that, how we support within our teams, that they can do their job in very different circumstances and having family, having this life, work-life balance as well possible while still working from home and having kids around.

And that was a topic that we discussed a lot, especially in the first year of COVID.

I think we are now quite well established. And I think the support that has been given by the company and by the managers themselves, the team paid off and people learn and manage that process, which, which was very, very important for, for the company.

And that's this inclusion, it's not only diversity, but as well, this inclusion part that we need to remember as well.

Definitely. Thank you for that. And kind of coming back to your roles, I'm aware of the fact that there might be someone watching that wants to get into engineering or into the legal field and wants to understand how they can be successful in a role here at Cloudflare in those departments.

So, Celso, what do you, what would you say it takes to be successful in engineering?

What are you looking for in the people that you are hiring?

Yeah. So the things that we consider important in our candidates, and I'd say this is true for engineering, but I'd say most of these things are also true for other positions at Cloudflare.

But technical skills are obviously important depending on the role, level of experience too, depending on what kind of candidate we're looking for.

But then things like creativity, empathy, how people think about problems, how they solve problems, how do they react on different situations, working as a team, working with their stakeholders, and, you know, things like their views on the industry, their views on our products.

Those are all things that are very important to us.

So hiring someone to work at Cloudflare is definitely not only about, you know, the technical skills in the case of engineering, but is working with the candidate on many different angles and making sure that the candidate is the right person to be part of our team and to work with us.

And also very important not only to join the team, but to get other people to work at Cloudflare.

So we always need to think ahead when we're hiring new people to work at Cloudflare.

It needs to be someone that we want to work with, but that we also think can attract more talent to work at Cloudflare.

Great, thank you. And I'll go to any additional notes, anything that you look out for specifically in your hiring?

Yes, I think what's also spot on in terms of we are not looking just for people with the relevant skill set.

We do not look for people just alike as well.

That's another thing. It's just we don't want to build same-same people.

So you've got manager or head of that team and then it transpires through them that everyone is thinking the same, they have similar backgrounds, they think the same way.

So it's something that we are very aware of because we strongly believe that diversity breeds innovation, that diversity builds better team and produces better business results.

And we really try to live by it. And then inclusion obviously allows us diverse teams to succeed.

So what I would be looking in addition to what you would expect if I want a lawyer, this person needs to be a qualified lawyer in the relevant jurisdictions and being able to deliver the things they will be working on on daily basis.

But we will be looking as well like how curious you are about your job, about us, about the products we do.

Then how much you want to develop yourself and learning skills, because we all do that at every level that's going from the bottom to the top and vice versa.

How open -minded you are, adaptable because we are growing fast.

So you need to be excited by this dynamic change that you will be part of.

So those things as well, very, very important when you are looking at a role at Cloudflare that you want to be in this environment.

It's not 95 job where you have just very set list of things you need to do and then you switch off, log off and you are just not need to think or feeling being part of something bigger.

We are all motivated by our mission as well. So that's probably even more on the engineering side, because from legal side we look at this probably from slightly different perspective, but it's still very exciting that we are building a better Internet.

And that's our mission. If you can get excited about that in your own way, that's fantastic.

Absolutely. And thank you for that.

We're kind of with one minute left. So I'll wrap things up and also just emphasize once again, I mean, in this conversation we've just highlighted how we really do believe in diverse teams and the importance of we're trying to encourage.

So if you're watching, there's a jobs board underneath and you can look at everything that's open.

I know that there are roles open in probably every single department at Cloudflare right now.

So we definitely encourage you to get involved.

And thank you very much Celso and Malgosia for taking the time to walk us through things.

Very exciting changes and I guess not changes, but growth coming for Cloudflare.

And next up for the next session coming up is leading the change with Mahapula, head of solution engineering and Alex Muraru, lead delivery engineering, talking about leading change and talking about their own roles.

So thank you very much for tuning in.