Name: Watch Intel Exec Speak at Fortune’s MPW Summit
Uploaded: 2016-10-19
Duration: 14 min 17 s
Description: Diane Bryant on swearing and being homeless

[ BLANK_AUDIO ] She is on our most powerful women list. She has been for quite a few years. I never knew Diane's story, and it's an amazing story and I love to talk about how these women leaders who are on stage and then this room were not born leaders. It's a path that you have to, Confront obstacles and you learn lessons along the way. Yep. So, Diane, we'd like you to tell your story. My. So where did it begin? [ LAUGH ] So well, where did it begin? So probably the biggest transformation in how I became an engineer. I'm in my position at Intel because I took a path into engineering. It wasn't. There weren't. Many still unfortunately aren't a lot of woman in engineering and in technology but it's improving. How I got into engineering was on accident I will say. So I was at community collage. Well I want you to go back. So where did you grow up? I grew up in Sacramento California. Sacramento and you have, tell us about your family. Well, the most outstanding part of it is my dad is a convicted felon. So, he served five years in prison for armed robbery and he was a very violent person. I guess that kind of goes hand in hand. So growing up was kind of a difficult environment, and my mom took the majority of the abuse. But it was a difficult environment. And you have one sister? It's one sister, older, yeah. And so my dad made it clear that his legal obligations, as was done when we turned 18. And so when we turned eighteen, we were out of the house. And so my sister was older Let me just ask you. I'm curious now. Your father was in prison for five years. Yeah. At San Quentin during what age? Before I was born. Before you were born. So he got out of prison and married my mom. Yeah. And it was her first mistake. So [ LAUGH ] but she didn't know it at the time either. But yes, we always laughed that he had a room with a few. Because San Quentin is in the San Francisco Bay, and so heat least had a room with a view. So, my sister, turned 18 in August. After she graduated from high school, and so she was out on her own. Unfortunately I turned 18 in February, so I still had four months of high school left, so I was homeless the last four months of high school. And where did you sleep? A variety of places. [ LAUGH ] Obviously. So kind of, you know, you do the stints, the coach surfing, so girlfriends, an aunt. My sister was out and had an apartment with some girlfriends so I slept there a little bit but anyway graduated from high school, went to community college cuz I didn't have any money, sitting in calculus class and. What was the community college. American River Community College yeah in Sacramento, so I have very fond memories of that because at that point community college was free like literally you just had to pay the $ 20 parking ticket or parking permit that was it. So I was in calculus two because after you take calculus one you take calculus two, after physics you take physics two so I was just doing what you do you just keep chunking through it. So I was sitting in calculus two so this guy who wanted to spark up a conversation he said hey what's your major? So I said I'm undeclared I don't have a major declared and. And he said, we'll you ought to be an engineer. It's the highest starting salary you can get with a four year degree. And I was like, holy cow. I'm gonna be an engineer. [ LAUGH ] And I had no idea what an engineer was. [ LAUGH ] [ LAUGH ] [ INAUDIBLE ] This was great. And so, I literally left class, calculus class. I went down to the counselor's office, and I said to the counselor, I'm here to declare my major And I'd like to be an engineer and she said, that's great. Hardware, software. And I was like, crap, he didn't say there was more than one. [ LAUGH ] And then it got overly complicated cuz thought software sounds better than hard. Why would you do hard if you can do soft? And so I did software and I couldn't get a scholarship because I wasn't hardware. So I said that was a typo, I'm actually a hardware engineer. It was all crazy. But anyway I [ UNKNOWN ], it's a miracle I'm here. [ LAUGH ] No, I'm teasing. [ APPLAUSE ] No, and then I transferred to UC Davis and graduated UC Davis as Electrical Engineer, joined Intel. 31 years later, < 1st > I'm here. < 2ndt > And here you are. < 1st > Here I am. Im sure that's more then you wanted. < 2nd > No, that is fantastic So, you joined Intel, in what year? < 1st > In '85. < 2nd > Tell us about. There were forks in the road in your career at Intel, where you could have done one thing, but you did something else. What is the lesson from, what is the biggest choice you made and what is the lesson from that? My goodness. There has been a lot of works on the road. The situation I was in, I was truly a minority as a woman inside of the tech industry and that was a very rough and tumble era And you tried to play like the boys, didn't you? You had to play like the boys. The one thing, talking to younger women, it doesn't help to be on the outside of the circle. You're never going to have an impact if you're on the outside. So somehow you've got to get to the inside. As a minority, you have to yet they'd be willing to admit ," I'm a minority. I need to change the way I act and operate if I'm going to be on the inside and I'm going to have an impact.' And so, a lot of people say you sell out you know, you're not being who you are. Okay, better to be like them and in the game than sitting on the bench .>> What did you do to be like them? Well the first thing I did was I started swearing a lot. [ LAUGH ] A lot, and I'm not kidding. The worst experience, I was a junior engineering sitting in a conference room with all white men, older men. And they're talking rough and tumble and this one guy throws out and throws out the f word. Then stops and turns to me. So all eyes on me, 23 years old. And says I'm sorry. And I said no f'in problem. [ LAUGH ] And then I would like literally would just throw out the f word every now and then, just randomly. [ LAUGH ] And it was hard. I actually had to concentrate like swear now, now. Swear now. It was, it was really hard. So I did that and then I learned to drink scotch. Neat, right neat. You have to drink it neat. And then I got a stick shift BMW cuz engineers like BMWs and no one drives an automatic. I got a stick, and yeah, I mean, I tried to play the- Good for you. I didn't do the bad haircut, the $ 10 engineering haircut, I wouldn't go that far. [ LAUGH ] That was where I drew the line, but otherwise. There was a point, Dianne, I think, when you [ COUGH ] when you were encouraged by a boss to take another track out of sort of the engineering route. Yeah. And you chose to stay on your engineering path. How'd you hear that story? Yeah so our CEO said .>> What CEO was this ?>> At the time is Paulo Glini .>> Uh- huh >> So we were, so I stayed in engineering, as a direct contributor, as an individual contributor, so I grew nice foundation of true engineering knowledge, right, technical knowledge. And I think that was the first thing that was incredibly critical because as a woman everybody wants you to manage, you got such good teamwork, collaboration, good communicator manage a team I'm like no I went to engineering school I'm gonna be an engineer. That's when I threw out the other [ LAUGH ] and so that was the first decision and I have patents and published papers and so I feel like okay I've got some foundation under me right I earned this. And then I stayed in engineering and started managing larger and larger engineering teams, mircoproccesor design at Intel. And Otellini was the one that said to me you know damn it Diane you've got to get out of engineering and get over to marketing or sales if you want to be a general manager. And at the time so I still have two children, I was going to say at the time I had two children I still have two children [ LAUGH ] they're just a lot older now, they're in high school and college now and I had two kids and sales and marketing is a lot of travel right it's a lot of travel. And there's just no way I can pull that off but I can admit that I have 2 kids and [ UNKNOWN ] passing up an opportunity so I said " no you know I'm gonna in technology, stay on the tech side, dig in" and so I didn't move in to Sales & Marketing and I didn't do a stint and so the next general manager position came up. I got the, well, you don't have sales and marketing expertise, so you have to be two in a box with someone who does. And I certainly negatively impacted my career pace up the ranks into general management and vice president by not going that route, but End the end it worked out fine. It's worked out. My kids are fine, yeah. [ LAUGH ] So Dianne runs [ COUGH ] the 18 billion, that was the revenue last year, 18 billion data services division. And Intel reported earnings yesterday, you had record revenue, record profits as well. Fastest growing division, most profitable division at Intel. And the reason that it's growing so rapidly and it is so profitable is Intel is making this massive shift from chips for PCs to chips for cloud computing. And Diane, we're gonna move to questions in a minute, but briefly, What is the opportunity as Cloud computing, the internet of things becomes your business. How will you change the world? I think that is the exciting part. So I have been in this server infrastructure service storage network site intel for 18 years. I've been in intel for 31. But for the last 18 years it's like finally servers are sexy like now finally we're talking about the cloud, it's fun and the move to cloud computing is this big arictectural change in the way technology is delivered, it has been transformative. It has increased the reach of technology, increased the number of services. I mean you look at Google and YouTube and Facebook. It was a staggering stat that Susan said, 400 million hours of video uploaded on YouTube every minute, and that's thanks to cloud computing where you have just this massive elasticity Of technology. And it does. It unleashes tremendous, tremendous opportunities as what's fueling the growth of my business and the growth of Intel. I'm, 75 % now of Intel's growth is coming out of the data center business. And so much of, you have probably a bigger ability, opportunity to impact the world now than ever. I mean I know your mother died of At age 54 of cancer and you're working on all sorts of health. Yeah well the neat thing about cloud computing is it enables more things and devices to attach at lower cost, more efficiently, easier all that jazz. And so with that you get massive amounts of data. And data has been the buzzword in, at this event, it's been the buzzword in the industry, it is the big buzz. Data is the currency of the digital economy. And with that data you can do magical things and one of them is data applied to the healthcare industry. So what were, what we did in my group one of our efforts around artificial intelligence in the use of data for good. We talked about AI for good. Is applying analytics to healthcare. So we started an initiative called All In One Day by 2020. And in partnering with the major cancer institutes around the world. In 2020 if you have cancer you'll be able to walk into your doctor's office. You will have your full genome sequenced. Your tumor will be compared across the genome sequences around the world. All the millions and millions and billions of sequences around the world. A match will be identified between your tumor and all the other people in the world that have had that same cancer. The treatment for those folks and whether they survived or not will be determined. And from that, your personalized treatment for your cancer will be delivered to you. All of that in one day. [ APPLAUSE ] And all in one day. We have time for one question unfortunately. I'm sorry. This is fantastic. Hey, do not apologize. Your story is- We're solving cancer. Very inspiring in so many ways. Maybe we don't? Do we have any questions? No, do I. I will say to your point. My mom, I'm 54 now and it's not [ CROSSTALK ] that my mom died at 54. And half of all men and a third of all women will have cancer in their life which is a staggering number and you think about Data and technology applied to the healthcare industry, it has been so long coming. The healthcare industry is the last embrace in the [ UNKNOWN ] technology, and as someone said yesterday, President Obama has been at the forefront of grabbing technology and applying it to real problems. And certainly the healthcare industry is one of them. Education, applying big data analytics to education to get personalized learning Applying data analytics to farming to get precision farming. Drive up the yields. There's just so many opportunities now and it's pretty exciting. Fantastic. Yep. What's the best advice you ever got? Best advice I ever got is be confident. So confidence, we know, is more highly correlated to success than competence. [ LAUGH ] There's lots of research to show that. And I think my male counterparts have learned more quickly than my female counterparts that. Conveying confidence is critical. I always get this, why are men so confident? They're not confident. Inside they're just as concerned as you are but they've learned to convey confidence at all times because no one wants a leader that's walking around going holy cow, we're doomed, we're all going to fail. Right? It's like no. Who's going to rally to be in that group, right? You need to walk around going, dammit, we're gonna win. We're confident, we've got a path, we've got a vision. At all times, convey confidence. [ LAUGH ] [ APPLAUSE ] Diane, you are inspiring. Thank you. Thank you so much. [ MUSIC ]

Diane Bryant on swearing and being homeless